If you can't defend your funding ask in 30 seconds, you don't deserve the meeting ↓ The moment you put your desired funding number on your pitch deck slide, you've started a negotiation. If the investor asks "Why this specific amount?" and your answer involves feelings, friends' past raises, or vague runway estimates, you just lost them. Immediately. Your Ask slide isn't a wish list. It's a calculation. Ask ≈ Monthly burn rate × 12-18 months It looks simple because the rest of your deck and your calculations about burn rate, milestones, and timeline already did the work. Here's what investors actually want to see broken down: → What's your monthly burn? Not a guess. The actual number: • $XXK for engineering • $XXK for infrastructure • $XXK for customer acquisition → Why 12-18 months? Because that's how long it takes to hit the milestone that makes you fundable for Series A, and you need a buffer to actually raise that round without running out of cash. → What milestone are you buying? 100K users? $50K MRR? A specific product launch? Connect EVERY DOLLAR $$$ you're spending to that outcome. Your Ask slide itself should be simple. Just the number, how you'll use it, and what milestone you'll hit. But that simplicity only works if the rest of your deck already showed your logic. → Your roadmap explains what you're building. → Your go-to-market explains how you'll acquire customers. → Your financials show your burn rate. The Ask slide is where all that math adds up to one number. If investors question it, you're not scrambling, you're pointing back to slides 8, 12, or 15. I sat in investor meetings for years. They don't care about your feelings. They care about your math. -- P.S. If your math is solid but you have no idea how to show it on slides, let's talk 👉 Duygu Dulger