Building Sollos: The Pitch Deck
4 min read
Pitch Decks, Product Narrative, Venture Building, Early-Stage Ventures, Design, Strategy, Sollos
Before there was a product, there was a deck. Making the idea feel real was the first step to securing belief, funding, and momentum.
Need your idea to feel real to stakeholders?
Once the early research was complete and the core idea had some shape, the next challenge was obvious. We needed a pitch deck that made the concept feel real.
At Diverge, we say the same thing to every founder we work with. Your pitch deck is your first product. It’s how you make people believe in the idea, the opportunity, and your ability to deliver. Get it wrong and you rarely get a second chance.
Inside large organisations, good ideas stall all the time because they look half-formed. Scrappy decks signal uncertainty. Lo-fi presentations undermine confidence, even when the thinking is solid. A strong deck doesn’t just explain what you’re building. It shows intent.
At Universal Music Group, I always pushed for internal decks to feel like finished products. We treated them with the same care as anything customer-facing. That level of polish wasn’t cosmetic. It helped decision-makers imagine the future state, not just evaluate the present.
For Sollos, we worked closely with the UMG Brands team, alongside Rob Ryan and Andy Carne, to shape the early narrative and visual language. We refined the story, the structure, and the design until it felt credible. Not flashy, but confident.
The name evolved later. The brand matured. The product itself would change shape more than once. But that first deck did its job. It helped people understand what we were building, why it mattered, and why it was worth backing.
A pitch deck doesn’t need to answer every question. It needs to create enough belief that people want to help you find the answers.