Risks and Mitigation Slide: 5 Real Pitch Deck Examples
How to show risks in a pitch deck: five real risk slides compared, from a list of names to tables with likelihood, impact, a plan and an owner.
Risks and Mitigation Slide: How to Show What Could Go Wrong
Some founders add a slide naming what could stop the business, usually next to the ask. The five real slides below go from three risks named with icons to a five-column table. Read together, they show the parts a risk slide can include and which of them each company actually filled in.
TL;DR
A useful risk slide gives each risk five things: what could happen, how likely the team thinks it is, what it would cost the company, what the team will do about it, and who is responsible. It then says what would show the plan is working. None of the five slides here does all of that. Doorvest's slide names three risks and stops. Standard Treasury pairs each risk with a one-line plan. BizMallUG adds likelihood and impact ratings and concrete measures such as a 3-month working capital reserve. CodersTrust builds its responses into the business model. Dotty AR adds a named owner for each risk. Likelihood and impact ratings on these slides are the companies' own estimates; none of the slides shows evidence that a mitigation has worked.
Risk slides from real pitch decks
The first four run from least to most complete; the last shows mitigations built into the business model. Each example shows the exact stored slide above its analysis and links to the full teardown. Text is quoted as shown on the slides. We describe only what each deck shows; a company may have addressed these risks elsewhere.
Doorvest ask slide — slide 7
Real estate investment company. The 9-page deck's cover reads "Investor Presentation / Seed Funding Round".
Doorvest deck, slide 7. Exact stored slide matched to this analysis.
Our analysis: It names risks at all, which many seed decks skip, and keeps them to three.
Evidence and limitation: The deck shows no likelihood, impact, response or owner for any of the three. That does not mean Doorvest had no plan, only that this deck does not show one; an investor will ask.
What a founder can adapt: Keep the short list, but turn each label into an event and add one line on what you will do.
Supporting analysis
What the deck claims: "Three Core Risks": "Trust/Brand", "Capital Markets" and "Scaling Operations", each with an icon. The next slides are a testimonial (slide 8) and the use of funds (slide 9).
Presentation choice: It names risks at all, which many seed decks skip, and keeps them to three.
When it does not fit: The deck shows no likelihood, impact, response or owner for any of the three. That does not mean Doorvest had no plan, only that this deck does not show one; an investor will ask.
Banking software company whose plan depended on obtaining a licence. Stage and year are not stated on the slide.
Standard Treasury deck, slide 16. Exact stored slide matched to this analysis.
Our analysis: Each risk is written as something that may or may not happen, and each plan is an action. The first row is a fallback business if the central bet fails.
Evidence and limitation: There are no ratings, owners or triggers. "Slow down our burn" would be stronger with how far and how many months it buys.
What a founder can adapt: Write risks as events and plans as what you will do if they happen. A fallback for your biggest dependency is worth a row.
Supporting analysis
What the deck claims: "Risks & Mitigations" with two columns, Risk and Plan: "We can't get licensed; significantly less market demand" / "Sell our software to other banks"; "It takes longer to get license" / "Slow down our burn"; "It takes longer to ship our software" / "Speed up engineering hiring"; "If we can't find the right people" / "Work with headhunters and use contractors, as needed".
Presentation choice: Each risk is written as something that may or may not happen, and each plan is an action. The first row is a fallback business if the central bet fails.
When it does not fit: There are no ratings, owners or triggers. "Slow down our burn" would be stronger with how far and how many months it buys.
Ugandan business-in-a-box company. The slide follows its funding request (slide 35).
BizMallUG deck, slide 36. Exact stored slide matched to this analysis.
Our analysis: The mitigations are mostly concrete actions, and the cash-flow row ties to money in the round.
Evidence and limitation: No owner is named, the ratings are the company's own estimates, and the footer line ("provide structural resilience against the most common startup risks") is an assertion the table does not demonstrate.
What a founder can adapt: Where a mitigation is funded by the raise, link it to the use of funds so investors can check the amount.
Supporting analysis
What the deck claims: "Risk Profile & Mitigations" with Risk, Likelihood, Impact and Mitigation. Examples: "Slow Initial Adoption" (Medium, High): "Free workshop demos; money-back guarantee for first cohort; early testimonials prioritised." "Cash Flow Months 1–3" (Medium, Medium): "3-month working capital reserve in startup funding; aggressive pre-sales and institutional partner activation." "Key Person Dependency" (High, Medium): "Structured process documentation; Operations Manager trained as secondary product lead; advisor network." "Raw Material Inflation" (Medium, Medium): "Long-term supplier agreements; alternative supplier relationships; 10% pricing buffer built into all packages."
Presentation choice: The mitigations are mostly concrete actions, and the cash-flow row ties to money in the round.
When it does not fit: No owner is named, the ratings are the company's own estimates, and the footer line ("provide structural resilience against the most common startup risks") is an assertion the table does not demonstrate.
Enterprise augmented reality company. The slide is marked "Private & Confidential". Stage and year are not stated on the slide.
Dotty AR deck, slide 25. Exact stored slide matched to this analysis.
Our analysis: It is the only slide here with all four columns: risk, both ratings, a response and an owner.
Evidence and limitation: Several mitigations are arguments, not actions ("Financial crashes historically favour IT"), and "CTO and CEO" own four of five rows. The ratings are estimates, and the slide gives no terms or evidence for the PTC and ODG agreements.
What a founder can adapt: Copy the structure, then give each row one owner and one action you could report progress on.
Supporting analysis
What the deck claims: "Key Risks & Mitigation Strategies" with Risk, Likelihood, Impact, Mitigation Strategy and Responsible. "Cash burn at end of 2 yr runway" (high, moderate; CTO and CEO). "Technology" (moderate, moderate): "Collaboration agreements set with PTC and ODG reduce the risk significantly" (CTO and CEO). "Financial market crash" (low, low): "Financial crashes historically favour IT" (CTO and CEO). "Operations & process malfunction" (low, moderate; CTO). "Legal Compliance" (low, moderate): "Patent pending (first filed) technology" (CEO).
Presentation choice: It is the only slide here with all four columns: risk, both ratings, a response and an owner.
When it does not fit: Several mitigations are arguments, not actions ("Financial crashes historically favour IT"), and "CTO and CEO" own four of five rows. The ratings are estimates, and the slide gives no terms or evidence for the PTC and ODG agreements.
Education financing company that funds students' coding courses and is repaid from their later freelance earnings. Page 22 of the file; the slide itself is numbered 19.
CodersTrust deck, slide 22. Exact stored slide matched to this analysis.
Our analysis: Most of the responses are built into how the product works (who is admitted, who carries part of the cost, how staff are paid), so they operate all the time rather than only after something goes wrong.
Evidence and limitation: The slide does not say what "High", "Partial" and "Low" measure, whether they are likelihoods or labels for each risk, and it shows no drop-out or repayment figures. State what a rating means and show the number it will be judged by.
What a founder can adapt: If your model already absorbs a risk, say which design choice does it. That is often more convincing than a plan you would start later.
Supporting analysis
What the deck claims: "Risks & Mitigations" with three risks: "Drop-out", "IRR Volatility" and "Student Employment". Above them: "High" Student drop-out, "Partial" Repayment, "Low" Student employment. Each risk has four responses, for example for drop-out: "Student self-financing and skin in the game", "Selective in-take based on scoring", "Proactive monitoring", "Peer Group Learning"; for IRR volatility: "Self financing of students to split risk", "Bonuses depending on student payment", "Seniority of investment provides different risk profiles".
Presentation choice: Most of the responses are built into how the product works (who is admitted, who carries part of the cost, how staff are paid), so they operate all the time rather than only after something goes wrong.
When it does not fit: The slide does not say what "High", "Partial" and "Low" measure, whether they are likelihoods or labels for each risk, and it shows no drop-out or repayment figures. State what a rating means and show the number it will be judged by.
"Yes" means the slide states it; nothing here means the risk was or wasn't handled outside the deck.
Example
Risk as event
Likelihood / impact
Response
Owner
Evidence of progress
Doorvest
No (categories)
No
No
No
No
Standard Treasury
Yes
No
Yes, one line each
No
No
BizMallUG
Mostly
Yes (estimates)
Yes, mostly actions
No
No
CodersTrust
Partly (categories)
Unlabelled ratings
Yes, built into the model
No
No
Dotty AR
Partly
Yes (estimates)
Mixed actions and arguments
Yes
No
Key Takeaways
Name the risk as an event. Standard Treasury's "It takes longer to get license" is testable; Doorvest's "Capital Markets" is a category.
Pair each risk with an action. Standard Treasury's plans ("Slow down our burn") say what the team will do if it happens.
Rate likelihood and impact separately. BizMallUG and Dotty AR both do; the ratings are estimates and should be read as such.
Prefer measures to reassurance. BizMallUG's "10% pricing buffer" is an action; Dotty AR's "Financial crashes historically favour IT" is an argument.
Name who owns each risk. Only Dotty AR does, though it gives "CTO and CEO" for four of five rows.
Write your risk slide
Pick the three to five risks that could stop this round's plan, then fill one row per risk.
Risk. What event could happen, written so you could later say whether it did?
Likelihood and impact. How likely do you think it is, and what would it cost you in months or money? Label these as estimates.
Mitigation and owner. What action are you taking, and which one person owns it?
Evidence. What milestone or number would show the mitigation is working, and by when?
Copyable framework: [Risk event] | Likelihood: [low/medium/high, our estimate] | Impact: [months of runway or revenue at stake] | Mitigation: [action] | Owner: [name/role] | Progress shown by: [milestone, date]
Illustrative example 1 — written by us
Before: Capital Markets
After: Next round takes 6 months longer than planned | Likelihood: medium (estimate) | Impact: runway ends in month 16 | Mitigation: hiring plan can be cut to extend runway to month 22 | Owner: CEO | Progress shown by: monthly burn against plan
What improved: Our illustrative rewrite, not any company's text or plan. It turns a category into an event with a rating, an action, an owner and something to track.
What this guide adds
The ask slide guide covers how much you raise and what the money buys; the financials guide covers forecasts and break-even; the roadmap guide covers milestones; the regulatory guide covers approvals and pathways. None of them covers how to present the things that could stop the plan and what you will do about each one. That is the question here.
Risk slides tend to sit next to the ask. Doorvest's comes two slides before its use of funds, and BizMallUG's straight after its funding request, which is why this guide is filed under the ask slide.
Five parts of a risk entry
This is our editorial template, not something any one slide in this guide contains in full. Risk: the event, written so you could later say whether it happened ("licence takes longer than 12 months", not "regulation"). Likelihood and impact: your estimate of each, rated separately. Mitigation: an action you are taking or will take, not a reason the risk is small. Owner: one named person or role. Evidence: the milestone or number that would show the mitigation is working, such as a signed supplier agreement or cash reserve still above a set level.
Mark estimates as estimates. A "high" likelihood on a slide is the founder's judgement, not a measured result.
What to leave off
Legal risk-factor pages from offering documents and public-company filings are a different thing: they protect the issuer and list every possible risk. A pitch deck risk slide should cover the few risks that really threaten the plan in this round. See the disclaimer slide guide for legal notices.
Common mistakes
Categories instead of events. "Trust/Brand" cannot be checked; "first 100 customers take twice as long" can.
Reassurance instead of action. Explaining why a risk is small is not a mitigation.
Everyone owns everything. A founder pair on every row tells an investor nobody specific is watching it.
Estimates shown as facts. Likelihood and impact ratings are judgements; say so.
Legal risk factors. A long list copied from an offering document is not a risk slide.
Diagnostic checklist
Three to five risks, each written as an event.
Likelihood and impact rated separately and labelled as estimates.
Each mitigation is an action, not an argument.
Each risk has one named owner.
Each row names the milestone that would show progress.
Mitigations paid for by the round match the use of funds.
Frequently asked questions
How we chose these examples
Corpus: published pitch deck teardowns on StartupFundraising.com. Founder-uploaded private decks are excluded.
Selection (2026-09-29): we searched saved slide text and the private research text index for risk, mitigation, mitigants, precautions, contingency, obstacles, dependencies and challenges, then set aside legal risk-factor pages, public-company and offering documents, fund decks and slides where the words meant something else (for example a product that mitigates a customer's risk). Of the founder slides left, we inspected nine original page images and kept five that each show a different level of completeness. Mint (slide 13) and Chartmetric (slide 21) were inspected and not used because they repeat a lesson already shown here.
Overlap check: we read the sections of the ask, deal terms, financials, roadmap, traction and regulatory guides; none covers presenting risks with responses. None of these five slides appears in another guide.
Images: all five were rendered from the original public deck files (Doorvest 9 pages, Standard Treasury 47, BizMallUG 38, CodersTrust 26, Dotty AR 29) and matched to company and page on 2026-09-29 (editorial model review). No person has yet completed an editorial review of this page.
The five-part template is our editorial framework. Ratings on the slides are the companies' estimates. We make no claim that any mitigation worked or that any slide affected a fundraising outcome.
