By The title slide is the one nobody thinks about, which is strange, because it is the slide the investor looks at longest. It sits on the screen while everyone settles in, while laptops open, while the small talk finishes. For a full minute, sometimes two, it is the only thing in the room. And most founders fill that minute with a logo, a company name in a nice font and a tagline so vague it could belong to anyone.
Think about what that wasted minute costs. Before you have said a word, the investor is forming a first impression and your title slide is all they have to form it from. A slide that says only your name and a fuzzy phrase like empowering the future of commerce tells them nothing and worse, it tells them you did not think hard about the one slide they were guaranteed to stare at.
Put the one line where they will read it
So use it. Put your clearest single sentence on the title slide, the one that says what you do and for whom, in plain words a stranger could repeat. Not a slogan, a description. We help small lenders approve loans in minutes. We turn factory waste heat into power. When the very first thing on the screen makes what you do obvious, the whole rest of the pitch lands on prepared ground, because the investor already knows what they are looking at.
How long each slide stays on screen
Everything else can wait
You do not need the tagline. You do not need the founding year, the awards strip, the stock photo. The title slide has one job, to make a busy person understand what you do before you open your mouth and every extra element competes with that job. Company name, one clear line, done. If you want a logo, make it small and let the sentence carry the slide.
The handshake slide
It is the easiest win in the whole deck and almost nobody takes it, because the title slide feels like decoration rather than argument. Treat it as argument. The minute it spends alone on the screen is a minute you can either waste on a slogan or spend making sure the room knows exactly what you do. Spend it.