Slide decks continue to get a bad rap — and another company is doing away with them.
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On an episode of Sequoia’s “Long Strange Trip” podcast released on Thursday, Block CEO Jack Dorsey said that employees at his fintech company no longer bring slide decks to meetings.
“Just two months ago every meeting that we would have, you see a presentation or a Google Doc and we go through it,” Dorsey said. “Now everyone is bringing a prototype that they built, which is pretty amazing.”
Dorsey, who cofounded Block in 2009, said the prototypes — built on either simulated or real data — have more “depth and realism” than a slide deck ever could. He also likes that they can be modified in real time.
And making the wrong decision doesn’t cost much, he added.
“The cost of being wrong on that path and going back up the tree and going down another path is getting closer and closer to zero,” he said.
In February, the company laid off over 4,000 employees, about 40% of its workforce. Dorsey cited AI-driven efficiency as one of the reasons for the cuts.
The Twitter cofounder is part of a broader shift among tech leaders moving away from slide decks.
In October, Aravind Srinivas, the cofounder and CEO of Perplexity said that he hasn’t built a pitch deck since the company’s Series A fundraising.
Pitch decks are slide shows that give investors and customers key details about a company’s founders, its product, and its financial performance.
“I just write a memo and I tell them you can do a Q&A and ask whatever you want,” Srinivas said, referring to potential investors. “And anything else that is not internal data, you can ask Perplexity. Like, it already knows everything.”
The pushback against slide decks isn’t new.
In a 2004 email to staff, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos banned “PowerPoint-style presentations” and said people should write a “4-page memo” instead.
Apple cofounder Steve Jobs’ meetings were also slide-deck-free.
“I hate the way people use slide presentations instead of thinking,” Jobs once said, according to a book published last month by David Pogue. “People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint.
