The Get Backed pitch-deck and fundraising method (Baehr & Loomis, HBR Press) as an AI-ready playbook — build decks from the ten building blocks, audit existing ones, and run an investor road show with the Friendship Loop. Works with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Cursor, any LLM — or your own eyes.
Not a book summary. A working operator: give your AI this playbook plus your venture, and it builds the deck, scores the one you have, or plans the raise — with the book's actual rules, word limits, ratios, and scripts.
"Successful fundraisers don't raise money — they raise friends." Now a process your AI holds you to.
- Founders raising a round — from first deck to wired funds.
- Accelerator & grant applicants — the method explicitly generalizes to grant, accelerator, and partner decks, not just equity.
- Anyone who pitches — sales decks and partner briefings obey the same reading-deck physics.
- Investors & mentors — a consistent audit rubric for the decks that cross your desk.
- Readers of the book — every framework, threshold, and script in one operational reference.
Three modes:
| Mode | Question it answers | Core tools |
|---|---|---|
| BUILD | "Make my deck" | The ten building blocks (+cover), four story archetypes, sparkline, design/text rules, both deck variants (presentation + reading) |
| REVIEW | "What's wrong with my deck?" | Full audit checklist: block coverage, story fit, market-sizing honesty (bottom-up TAM/SAM/beachhead), CAC<LTV/3, design/text rules, FAQ from detected objections |
| RAISE | "Get me funded" | The four pre-raise questions, source selection, Two Lists, 30-investor pipeline (20 meetings/2 weeks), research profiles, email drafts, ask scripts, closing & diligence checklist |
Under the hood: the Friendship Loop (Intro → Build → Delight → Invite), the investor's three questions (like → trust → business, decided in ~3 minutes), leapfrog intros, "maybe always means no," direct asks with a number and a pause, and a diligence-ready closing pack.
get-backed/
├── SKILL.md # working playbook: 3 modes, blocks, loop, thresholds
└── references/
└── get-backed.md # full distilled method + modernization notes
Claude Code:
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/get-backed
cp -r SKILL.md references ~/.claude/skills/get-backed/Claude Desktop / claude.ai: attach the files to a Project, or zip as .skill and install via the skills menu.
ChatGPT: Custom GPT — SKILL.md into Instructions, reference into Knowledge — or paste to start a conversation.
Gemini: a Gem with SKILL.md as instruction.
Cursor / IDE agents: drop in as a rules/context file when building your deck or investor site.
Any LLM / your own app: plain markdown; SKILL.md as system prompt, reference retrieved on demand.
No AI: the review checklist works on paper — print it, score your deck, fix what fails.
You: Here's my seed deck (14 slides). We're raising $500k. Review it.
AI (with this playbook): Running REVIEW… Structure: 14 slides — over the 10–12 target; your three "vision" slides up front delay the product (the slow-opening trap). Solution slide has six bullet points — the one hard ban in the book. Market: you cite a $40B analyst figure top-down; rebuild bottom-up — who exactly buys, times lifetime value, then beachhead by job-to-be-done. Business model: CAC $180 against LTV $410 — that's LTV/2.3, below the LTV/3 bar; either raise LTV (hormozi-gtm has the machinery) or cut CAC before you pitch this. Team bios run 200+ words — cap at 75. No Use of Funds milestones — "what will be true when the money is gone?" Missing FAQ slide; your recurring objection (incumbent copy risk) belongs there. Priority fixes: 1) kill the bullets, 2) bottom-up market, 3) milestone-based ask…
Three sibling playbooks form a pipeline:
- thiel-zero-to-one — what to build: the 7 Questions scorecard, monopoly vs competition, secrets.
- hormozi-gtm — how it makes money: Grand Slam Offers, lead engines, money models.
- get-backed (this repo) — how to package it and raise: decks, investor pipelines, asks, closing.
They hand off: Thiel's output feeds the Opportunity/Competition slides; Hormozi's LTV/CAC math feeds the Business Model slide; and a deck whose substance fails Thiel shouldn't be polished at all.
- The book is from 2015. This playbook flags its dollar ranges as relative heuristics, notes that SAFEs have largely replaced the convertible notes it describes, and treats named tools as patterns rather than products. The behavioral method — blocks, stories, the Loop, the asks — is what accelerators still teach.
- US-centric legal details (Delaware C-corp) are marked as jurisdiction-dependent.
- It's a methodology tool, not legal or investment advice.
An original distillation of the methodology in Get Backed: Craft Your Story, Build the Perfect Pitch Deck, and Launch the Venture of Your Dreams by Evan Baehr & Evan Loomis (Harvard Business Review Press, 2015) — frameworks and rules restated in original wording, no excerpts. Ideas and methods are not subject to copyright; the book's text is © its authors. The book's 15 founder profiles and worked deck examples are worth far more than any summary — buy it.
Not affiliated with or endorsed by the authors or HBR Press.
PRs welcome: corrections where the distillation misstates the method, modernization notes (instruments, platforms), worked examples (deck before → audit → after).
Distillation and playbook text: MIT. Underlying frameworks remain the intellectual work of their authors.