We recently connected with Sam Eisenberg and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Sam, thanks for joining us today. Going back to the beginning – how did you come up with the idea in the first place?

Jack Zerby, my now partner, approached me for help turning one his many skills, pitch deck design, into a course so he can reach many founders. Jack was a founder who had raised capital for various companies, exited one (at the time), and later built decks for Box Group and portfolio companies- before deciding to stop offering this service.

I had asked Jack why he stopped offering pitch deck design- and he said he found many parts of the process challenging- building pricing, having to manually import 100s of elements from their deck into Figma, chasing clients for payment, founders who change their whole story mid-process, and many others. As an operation person, I knew that even though I didn’t understand pitch deck design, I could resolve most issues in the process. Jack was hesitant.

We went ahead and built a course and sold it. Our students loved it, and one of them approached us to ask Jack to design his deck. He initially was hesitant, but seeing the customer really was eager, and was happy to pay for what he understood is a premium service, he agreed to give me a chance to refine the process. We built and refined the process, and Jack was very happy with the outcome. We then did the same with another student, further refining and accounting for issues that arose, and then decided to open up the business to warm referrals. The rest is history, we’ve built dozens upon dozens of decks for top Venture Capitalists (A-Star, AirAngels, FCVC, FJ Labs) and their portfolio companies- with outstanding results. Our process keeps getting better and Jack, myself, and our partner Etan have been doing this for 4+ years now.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Sam Eisenberg and the company I run is called Design For Decks. We, quite literally, design pitch decks for leading start-ups and investors. We later expanded our services to offer pitch deck reviews and ad-hoc pitch deck consulting.

We have a productized service for designing pitch decks, helping outstanding founders use design to bring out their story and help investors/audiences quickly understand their slides and make impact on them.

Our clients include FJ Labs, the most active early-stage investor, leading Angel syndicates (such as AirAngels), FCVC, David Energy, SmithRX, Haven, and many other successful brands. We are proud that our clients have raised upwards of $3B using our decks.

Beyond this, many dozens of founders have refined their decks with our pitch deck review service and also have gone on to successful raises.

We are honored that top founders trust us with their decks- and proud of the small role we play in helping bring their innovations to the world.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

100% taking care of our customers and always going above and beyond to deliver for them.
We do have set scopes, but if a customer goes out of scope, or they aren’t wowed by our work on the first take, we will always go above and beyond to deliver for them- regardless of the cost to us.

From all the marketing channels I’ve tried (and I’ve had a lot of success as a marketer) we found that with Tier 1 founders- nothing matters except for warm referrals. Practically all of our business has been warm, proactive referrals by VCs and founders we’ve worked with.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

Let me actually flip this one- I’m not the creative in the business, my partner Jack is. But working alongside Jack has really opened my eyes to the level of thought, process, and genius that goes into design. Non creatives have a tendency to use reductionist terms that minimize the thought and work that goes into delivering world class design (“make it pretty” “use your creative license”). The more time I spend with Jack and our other designers , the more I’ve come to appreciate it. Creatives are indeed artists- but much of what they do also follows a science of sorts. Process meets art is what allows for effective, beautiful design to emerge.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://designfordecks.com/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-shmuel-eisenberg/
• Youtube: https://m.youtube.com/@designfordecks