How to Create a Pitch Deck Competition Slide Investors Actually Like
The competition slide isn't a list of logos; it's a test of your strategic thinking. Here’s how to pass it and convince investors you have a unique, defensible plan to win.
TL;DR: Stop claiming 'no competition' or using generic 'Price vs. Features' charts. A strong pitch deck competition slide proves you understand the market deeply. Frame the landscape using strategic differentiators as your axes (e.g., 'Self-Serve vs. Enterprise Sales') or a feature table showing how you dominate on the attributes your target customer values most.
Key takeaways
- Never claim you have "no competition." Investors read this as naivete, not genius.
- Choose meaningful, non-obvious axes for your 2x2 diagram. Avoid "Price vs. Features."
- Clearly show how you are 10x better for a specific, valuable customer segment.
- Acknowledge all three types of competitors: direct, indirect, and the 'status quo.'
- Your slide must tell a simple story: why you win, why your position is defensible, and why now.
- Prepare a detailed competitive analysis in your appendix, but keep the slide itself clean and visual.
Your Competition Slide Is a Test (That You Can’t Afford to Fail)
There are three slides in every early-stage pitch deck that get disproportionate attention from investors: the team slide, the market size slide, and the competition slide. The competition slide isn't about listing rivals; it's a test of your strategic thinking. A good one proves you understand your market, have a defensible plan to win, and aren't walking into a buzzsaw. A bad one gets your deck closed.
Most founders get this wrong. They either flash a bunch of logos or, worse, claim they have no competition. Both are immediate red flags. Let's fix that.
The Cardinal Sin: "We Have No Competition"
Saying "we have no competitors" is the fastest way to lose credibility. To an investor, it sounds like one of three things, all bad:
- You haven't done your homework. You don't know the market you're trying to enter.
- There is no market. The reason nobody else is here is that there's no money to be made.
- You define "competitor" too narrowly. You're ignoring the real-world alternatives your customers are using today.
Competition is not just about another startup with a similar product. You must consider three types:
- Direct Competitors: Companies offering a similar solution to the same customer segment (e.g., Figma vs. Sketch).
- Indirect/Secondary Competitors: Companies solving the same problem with a different solution, or serving an adjacent customer segment (e.g., for a new project management tool, competitors could be Trello, but also Slack or even Google Docs).
- "Status Quo" Competitors: The existing habits and tools your customers use to solve their problem today. This is often your biggest competitor. For many B2B SaaS companies, the number one competitor is Microsoft Excel. For others, it's a manual process, a legacy internal tool, or simply "doing nothing."
Your job isn't to pretend these don't exist. It's to acknowledge them and articulate why your solution is 10x better for a specific group of people.
Framework 1: The 2x2 Matrix That Actually Works
The 2x2 matrix is the most common format, but 90% of founders completely butcher it. They plot their company on a grid with "Price" on one axis and "Features" on the other, placing themselves in the top-right "high features, low price" quadrant. This is meaningless.
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