What is a Fractional General Counsel?

A Fractional GC gives you senior-level legal leadership — the kind of judgment you'd get from a $250K+ in-house hire or $900/hour Big Law partner — on a predictable monthly retainer. You get the expertise without the overhead.

What types of startups do you work with?

We work primarily with venture-backed startups from pre-seed through Series B across SaaS, fintech, healthtech, and emerging technology.

How is this different from a traditional law firm?

Traditional firms bill by the hour, staff junior associates on your work, and take days to respond. Flux provides senior counsel directly, charges a flat monthly fee, and communicates on Slack, email, or video — however your team works.

What does flat-fee pricing include?

Each tier includes a defined scope of legal support. No hourly tracking, no surprise invoices. If something falls outside your plan, we'll tell you upfront before any additional work begins.

Can you help with fundraising?

Yes — from SAFEs and convertible notes to priced equity rounds. We handle investor negotiations, term sheet review, deal documentation, and closing execution for Seed through Series B.

What's the relationship between Flux and Rubicon Law?

Flux is a productized offering powered by Rubicon Law, a boutique firm with 20+ years of experience advising hundreds of startups. You get Rubicon's depth of experience in a streamlined, subscription-based format.

How quickly can I get started?

Book a free intro call. If we're a fit, most clients are onboarded within a week. No lengthy engagement letters or committee approvals.

How to Build a Pitch Deck That Actually Gets Meetings

Most pitch decks don't fail because the idea is bad. They fail because the story is unclear, the slides are cluttered, or the founder tried to cram twelve months of thinking into twelve minutes of a partner meeting.

The good news: there's a framework that's battle-tested, founder-friendly, and responsible for some of the most iconic funding rounds in Silicon Valley history. It comes from Sequoia Capital — the firm behind Apple, Google, WhatsApp, and Airbnb — and it's been sitting on their website for anyone to read.

This post breaks down that framework, adds a few things Sequoia left out, and includes a free Google Slides template you can download and make your own.

Why the Sequoia Framework Still Wins

When Airbnb's founders were struggling to get meetings, they stumbled across Sequoia's pitch guide. They used it to build their deck. The rest is history.

What makes the framework so enduring isn't that it's clever — it's that it's disciplined. It forces founders to answer the questions every investor is already asking in their head, in the right order, with the right level of detail. It's a story structure, not a slide checklist.

Here's the framework:

The 10 Slides

1. Company Purpose

One sentence. That's it.

Define what your company does in a single declarative sentence. Not a tagline. Not a list of features. A mission.

This is harder than it sounds. Most founders default to describing their product instead of communicating their purpose. The difference: "We build AI-powered legal tools" vs. "We make legal protection accessible to every small business in America." One is a description. The other is a reason to care.

If you can't write your purpose in one sentence, you don't have clarity yet — and investors will feel that.

2. Problem

Describe pain, not features.

Who is your customer, and what does their world look like without your solution? Be specific. Use real numbers if you have them. Tell a story if that helps.

The key question: how is this problem being solved today, and why does that suck? If customers are duct-taping together three tools, paying for something that barely works, or just living with the frustration — that's your opening.

Don't overstate the problem to make your solution look good. Investors see through it. Just tell the truth about what's broken.

3. Solution

Your eureka moment.

Why is your solution uniquely positioned to solve this problem? What insight do you have that others missed? And critically — why will it last?

The best solutions have a "why didn't someone do this already?" quality. They feel obvious in retrospect. If your solution needs a lot of explaining to seem valuable, it may not be the right one yet — or your problem framing needs work.

Also: where does this go? A great solution has natural expansion paths. Show that you're thinking beyond version one.

4. Why Now?

This is the slide most founders skip. Don't.

Nature hates a vacuum. If your idea is good, why hasn't it been built already? And why is right now the right moment to build it?

Common triggers: a regulatory change, a new technology becoming accessible, a shift in consumer behavior, a market that just hit the right size. Sequoia calls this "the why now" — and investors love it because it shows you understand the market timing, not just the product.

5. Market Potential

TAM, SAM, SOM — but make it believable.

Define your customer and your market. The classic mistake here is presenting a massive TAM (Total Addressable Market) with no credible path to capturing any of it. A $500B market slide means nothing if you can't explain how you get your first 1,000 customers.

The best founders don't just size existing markets — they articulate how their company might create a new one. Think about how Airbnb didn't just compete with hotels. It opened up an entirely new supply of accommodations.

6. Competition / Alternatives

Don't pretend you have no competitors.

Every company has competition — even if it's "doing nothing" or "using spreadsheets." The 2x2 matrix is overused and often misleading. A better approach: show you understand the landscape honestly, explain what trade-offs customers make today, and be clear about where you win and why.

This slide is also a trust signal. If you undersell the competitive landscape, investors will assume either you're naive or you're hiding something.

7. Business Model

How do you make money?

Keep it simple. Revenue model, pricing, and (if you have it) unit economics. You don't need a complete financial model here — just show that you've thought about the fundamental drivers of the business.

If you're pre-revenue: explain your go-to-market and how you'll price once you launch.

8. Team

Why you?

This is the slide that often closes deals — or kills them. Investors are betting on people as much as ideas, especially early.

Lead with the most relevant experience. Don't just list credentials — connect them to this specific problem. The founder who spent 10 years in healthcare logistics is uniquely positioned to build a supply chain solution for hospitals. Show that.

If you have gaps, acknowledge them and explain how you're filling them. Investors respect self-awareness.

9. Financials

Show what you know.

If you have revenue, show it. If you have growth metrics, lead with those. If you're pre-revenue, show a bottom-up projection for the next 18–24 months with your key assumptions.

The goal isn't to impress with big numbers — it's to show you understand your business levers. What drives revenue? What are the big cost drivers? What does the path to profitability look like?

One slide. Clean. No spreadsheet dumps.

10. Vision

The big picture.

If everything goes right — if you execute well, raise the capital, build the team — what have you built in five years? What does the world look like differently because your company exists?

This is your chance to be ambitious. Don't shrink from it. The best founders have conviction about where they're going even when the path isn't perfectly clear. Show investors they're betting on someone who can see around corners.

Beyond the Framework: What Sequoia Doesn't Say

The Sequoia guide is the skeleton. Here's what makes the meat:

Lead with traction, always

If you have any real traction — revenue, LOIs, waitlist numbers, pilot customers, strong retention — don't bury it in slide 9. Mention it early. Even a brief reference in the intro sets a tone of credibility. Nothing kills uncertainty faster than proof.

Design matters, but not as much as clarity

A clean, minimal deck signals that you can communicate. A flashy deck with unclear messaging signals the opposite. Use a consistent color palette (two or three colors max), legible fonts, and lots of white space. Every slide should have one main idea. If you're cramming three ideas onto one slide, split it.

Less is more: 10–15 slides is the target

Most investors will decide whether to take a meeting within the first few minutes. The goal of the deck isn't to answer every question — it's to make them want to ask questions. Leave room for the conversation.

Tailor the deck to the audience

A deck for a seed fund looks different from one for a Series A investor. Early-stage VCs are betting on the team and the insight. Later-stage investors want to see growth, retention, and a clear path to scale. Know who you're pitching and what they care about most.

The deck is not the pitch

A great deck without a great founder narrative won't close anything. The deck is a leave-behind and a visual aid. The pitch is you — your conviction, your command of the details, your ability to handle hard questions. Practice as much as you design.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Jargon-heavy language — if you need a glossary to understand your slides, simplify
Generic market sizing — "the market is $10B" with no sourcing or logic
No ask — always be clear about how much you're raising and what you'll do with it
Too many slides — if you're at 25+, cut ruthlessly
No story arc — slides should flow logically from problem → solution → opportunity
Financials that don't add up — investors will notice

Free Download: The Sequoia-Framework Pitch Deck Template

We built a clean, minimal Google Slides template based on the Sequoia framework. It's got all 10 slides, placeholder text that prompts you with the right questions, and a simple design that gets out of the way.

Download the Pitch Deck Template →

Copy it to your Google Drive, fill in your content, and make it your own. No signup required.

Final Thought

Sequoia's guide ends with this observation about Airbnb: "It wasn't really the slides we liked — it was their ideas, the clarity of their thinking, and the scope of their ambition."

That's the real goal. The framework is just a vehicle for clarity. Use it to think through your business as much as to pitch it. If you can answer every question in this framework with conviction and specificity, you're probably ready to talk to investors.

Good luck.

Flux Law helps startups with the legal side of building — from incorporation to fundraising documents. Learn more →