Most founders study pitch decks the wrong way. They open the most famous ones, admire them and move on. But a Series D deck from a global brand won't tell you much about your seed round, and a consumer app's deck won't help much if you sell finance software to CFOs.

The decks that teach you the most are the ones closest to your situation: same sector, similar stage, similar kind of customer.

That's why we built this library of 30 real pitch decks and sorted it so you can find the right ones fast. It covers fintech, software, AI, health and consumer companies, and rounds from a $600K seed to a $355M Series D. This article explains how the library is organized, what each group teaches, and how to use it on your own deck.

The 30 companies fall into a few clear groups:

Fintech and software tools make up more than half of the library. If you're building in either space, you'll find several decks from companies that faced problems similar to yours. The AI group is small, but it holds three of the fastest growth stories of recent years.

In the rest of this article you'll find the library sorted by stage, the size of every round we could confirm, what each group of decks teaches, and a five-step method to go from "interesting decks" to a better version of your own. The full library is attached as a file.

Sector is the first filter. Stage is the second. A pre-seed deck has to sell a team and an idea. A Series B deck has to prove the business already works. Here's how the library breaks down by the round or purpose each deck was built for:

For the 14 decks whose round we could confirm, the amounts range from Airbnb's $600K seed in 2009 to WeWork's $355M Series D in 2014.

Two things to notice:

Fintech is the largest group, and it splits in two. Monzo, N26, Wise, Mint and Square sell to consumers or small merchants who need to trust them with their money. Carta, Payhawk and Lago sell to companies and finance teams. Both kinds of deck have to answer a question most startups don't face so early: why should anyone trust a new company with money?

The group also shows how fast a strong fintech can move once it has proof. Payhawk raised a $20M Series A in April 2021 and a $112M Series B just seven months later, in November 2021. Carta raised an $80M Series D in 2018 at an $800M valuation. If you're building in fintech, look at how these decks handle trust, regulation and the economics of each customer.

The three AI companies in the library show how quickly the category has moved:

The lesson isn't that every AI company will grow like this. It's that in AI, investors bet heavily on the team and the size of the opportunity very early. If you're raising in AI, study how these three explain why they can win against much bigger players.

This group is full of products people use every day, from beehiiv for newsletters to Pitch for presentations. beehiiv, built by former Morning Brew team members, raised a $2.6M seed round in October 2021 led by Social Leverage. Bubble raised a seed round of about $6M and, in 2021, a $100M Series A. Pitch raised an $85M Series B in 2021 at a $600M valuation. Twilio's deck comes from its $12M Series B in 2010, years before it became a public company.

For software founders, these decks are useful for one question: how do you make a product feel essential to someone who has never used it?

Oscar Health and HealthJoy both work in US healthcare, a market with heavy regulation, many stakeholders and long sales cycles. If you're building in health, pay attention to how each company explains who pays, who uses the product and who decides to buy. In healthcare, those are often three different people.

Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Tinder, Airbnb, Uber, Shopify, WeWork and Tesla are household names. Their decks are best read for the fundamentals: a simple problem, a clear product and a big market. Facebook's early deck is especially interesting because it was a media kit for advertisers, not a deck for investors. WeWork's is a reminder that a strong fundraising story doesn't guarantee a strong business: the company raised $355M in 2014 and filed for bankruptcy in 2023.

All 30 decks are included in the file attached to this article. Here's a quick overview:

Rounds are listed only where they could be confirmed with public sources.

Open the attached library, filter by your sector and stage, and pick three decks to read this week. The goal isn't to copy them. It's to see how companies like yours made their case, and then make yours sharper.