Shadowing Practice: How to Build An Investor Pitch Deck For Y Combinator - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Stop paying consultants $5 ,000 to design your pitch deck, stop trying to be creative with your slides, and stop guessing what investors want to see.

Y Combinator has a standard, boring, 10 -slide pitch deck template, and it's the exact format they recommend to build your seed deck.

Today, I'm gonna show you Doula's pitch deck built from scratch using YC's recommended template.

I'm Arjun, CEO and founder of Doula .com, a YC -backed startup in New York City that's raised over $13 million.

Let's get into slide one.

Slide one, the title slide.

My rule, keep it simple, stupid.

Seriously, add your logo and your company's description.

The doula example, AI business in a box.

Doula provides access to American entrepreneurship.

By the way, if you want the exact template YC shared and the template to the doula deck, we have all the links below in the description.

Slide two is the problem.

The key thing here is investors fund pain.

Be as specific as you can.

The mistake here is being a bit too vague.

So the doula example starts with Econ founders build their business

the hard way with several bullets exactly saying what the pain is.

Action item for you, write down the specific pain your user feels and put that down in three bullets.

Slide three, the solution.

This is where you simply need to explain what did you build to kill that pain.

The doula example is our business in a box solved this problem.

The user clicks a button, we handle the LLC paperwork.

The action item for you is describe your product in one to three bullet points, no buzzwords.

Slide four, traction or the money slide, quite literally.

This is arguably the most important slide because evidence beats promises.

You got to back up the talk with the walk.

So don't say we plan to launch, show actually a shart of your revenue growth.

Now, if you don't have revenue, I put your next best number here.

That could be a wait list.

It could be a signup, but show your metrics here.

Slide number five, traction part two or the impact slide.

So here, you can show additional revenue, but you can also show another impactful image.

So I would say show more revenue or another metric or a customer quote.

In our case, we showed a quote.

This is the single review that shows our entire value proposition in literally one image.

The person said, if Doula had a supermarket, I would buy from there.

Just an amazing company.

Action item for you, show your second best metrics here or flash your favorite customer quote.

Slide number six, the secret sauce or the how it works slide.

The main question here an investor is looking for is what is your differentiator and how does this work?

The doula example is our platform gets better with every LLC.

This is our AI co -founder flywheel in action.

The action item for you is answer or visually show what is unique about what you do.

Slide number seven, business model.

The rule here is simply explain how do you make money.

Again, keep it boring.

In doula's case, we said we make money on every founder.

We charge $3 ,000 dollars per year or 329 per month

and you simply do the math here keep it simple take

your unit economics take the price times the volume we covered business model

and speaking of business you were building this deck to ask an investor to give you money

but you cannot ask an investor to wire money into your

venmo account before an investor even looks at slide 10 the

ask slide they're going to ask one question do you have a u .s company

if you haven't done this yet do look

and help you get your u .s llc or c corp ready

so you're ready to accept a check click the link below to incorporate so you're ready to raise today.

Slide eight, the market or the TAM slide.

TAM stands for total addressable market and the rule is investors want to see big markets.

In doula's example, the US is a big market, but the non -US market is even bigger.

And we show this with a bottoms up calculation.

We also explain how we're going to become a verb.

You Uber from A to B, you Airbnb your house, you doula your LLC.

The action item for you is do a bottoms up analysis if you can.

Slide nine, the team.

The rule here is show your team.

And really what an investor wants to see is why are you and your team the ones to build this?

In Dula's example, literally show screenshots of your team.

You can even add one -liners and what they do in their background as well.

Slide 10, the ask.

The only thing here that you need to do is be incredibly clear.

What exactly are you asking for?

In Dula's example, we said, we need fuel for thrival not survival we are raising x

million to reach y million in revenue action item for you simply put the amount you're raising

and the milestone you will hit with

that money congratulations you now have a pitch deck

that is better than 99 of the pitch decks out there simply

because it's clear concise and follows the y combinator standard

but a pitch deck sitting on your hard drive gets you zero dollars you have to go out

and pitch your business i raised 1 million dollars in less than two minutes from HubSpot Ventures using these practices, click here to watch my one million dollar pitch next.

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85 sentences

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “How to Build An Investor Pitch Deck For Y Combinator”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: slide, doula, deck, investor, pitch. This video has 80 sentences and 948 words to shadow. The speech runs for 4:42. The speaker talks fast, about 202 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. Only 80% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.

Key vocabulary in this video

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
doula noun	/ˈduːlə/	A trained support person who provides emotional, physical and practical assistance to a pregnant woman or couple before, during or after childbirth.
investor noun	/ɪnˈvɛs.tə(ɹ)/	A person who invests money in order to make a profit.
template noun	/ˈtɛm.plɪt/	A physical object whose shape is used as a guide to make other objects.
metric adjective	/ˈmɛt.ɹɪk/	Of or relating to the metric system of measurement.
combinator noun	/ˈkɑm.bɪˌneɪ.tɚ/	A lambda expression which has no free variables in it.
traction noun	/ˈtɹæk.ʃən/	The act of pulling something along a surface using motive power.
bore verb	/boɹ/	To inspire boredom in somebody.
addressable adjective		Able to be addressed.
concise adjective	/kənˈsaɪs/	Brief, yet including all important information.
differentiator noun	/dɪf.əˈɹɛn.ʃi.eɪ.tə/	Anything that differentiates, or causes differentiation (in any sense); a distinguishing feature.
flywheel noun		A rotating mass used to maintain the speed of a machine within certain limits while the machine receives or releases energy at a varying rate, or as a form of…
impactful adjective	/ˈɪmpæktfəl/	Having impact.
entrepreneurship noun	/ˌɑn.tɹə.pɹəˈnɝ.ʃɪp/	The art or science of innovation and risk-taking for profit in business.
visually adverb	/ˈvɪzju.əli/	By means of sight.
milestone noun	/ˈmaɪlˌstoʊn/	A stone milepost (or by extension in other materials), one of a series of numbered markers placed along a road at regular intervals, typically at the side of…

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
back up verb	To move backwards, especially for a vehicle to do so.
go out verb	To leave, especially a building.
write down verb	To produce or set (something) down in writing; to record something.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

Let's get into slide one.
Seriously, add your logo and your company's description.
What exactly are you asking for?

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 11 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, don't, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: traction /ˈtɹæk.ʃən/, differentiator /dɪf.əˈɹɛn.ʃi.eɪ.tə/, entrepreneurship /ˌɑn.tɹə.pɹəˈnɝ.ʃɪp/, screenshot /ˈskriːn.ʃɑt/, calculation /ˌkælkjuˈleɪʃn̩/
Long words — get the stress right: combinator /ˈkɑm.bɪˌneɪ.tɚ/, differentiator /dɪf.əˈɹɛn.ʃi.eɪ.tə/, entrepreneurship /ˌɑn.tɹə.pɹəˈnɝ.ʃɪp/, visually /ˈvɪzju.əli/, supermarket /ˌsupɚˈmɑɹkət/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like doula, investor, template.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: How to Build An Investor Pitch Deck For Y Combinator - Learn English Speaking with Video

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