Co-Founder of Design for Decks & Exponential — on AI in Pitch Decks, What Separates Winning Startups, Building a Culture of A-Players, and Why the Best Opportunities Are the Ones You Say No To
Sam Eisenberg has sat across from hundreds of founders. He has seen the ones who raise on momentum alone and burn out quietly, the ones who look delusional on paper and then quietly win, and the ones who understand — early — that the real price of venture capital is not equity but sacrifice. As co-founder of Design for Decks, his boutique pitch strategy firm has helped early-stage founders raise over $3 billion from VCs, angels, and LPs. That vantage point gives him a pattern-recognition machine most startup advisors simply do not have.
In this episode, Sam is unusually candid. He talks about why AI is not a threat to pitch deck design but a multiplier — and why the flood of AI-generated decks actually makes the human story more important, not less. He walks through the real signals he uses to decide whether a startup will succeed: technical team depth, a founder with a genuine track record, and above all a culture of radical transparency from day one. He talks about the non-negotiable he uses in every hire — not experience, not credentials, but whether the person actually cares.
He also opens up about his own relationship with opportunity: why he keeps saying no to startups that excite him, how a private equity offer taught him something important about the kind of work he wants to do, and what it takes to stay yourself when the startup world keeps asking you to be something else. Sam does not have a neatly packaged framework. He has a point of view, earned over five years of working in the weeds of venture — and it shows.
Sam Eisenberg is the co-founder of Design for Decks, a boutique pitch strategy firm that has helped early-stage founders raise over $3 billion in venture capital. The firm works with a deliberately small group of clients — founders preparing to raise from VCs and angels, as well as fund managers raising from LPs — and focuses on improving both the pitch narrative and the deck materials that carry it. Five years in, Design for Decks remains what it started as: a project built around craft, not scale.
Sam is also co-founder of Exponential, an early-stage AI startup that helps senior care facilities — nursing homes, home health agencies, hospices — improve their census by processing complex patient intake packets and rapidly evaluating fit based on facility rules and financial criteria. Exponential is remote-first, which matters to Sam personally: he joined because he saw a team with families, a culture of understanding, and an idea he believed in deeply.
What makes Sam's perspective unusual is the combination of exposure and restraint. He has seen hundreds of startups from the inside of their most important sales moment — the fundraise — and has developed genuine pattern recognition about what works. At the same time, he is candid about his own limitations and preferences, and unusually willing to turn down opportunities that don't fit his life. That honesty is rare in startup circles, and it is exactly what makes this conversation worth listening to.
I only hire people who care. My first concern is not how talented someone is, not how many years of experience they have. They have to really care and that's a non-negotiable.
I view many of my engagements as projects more than businesses. A project can continue indefinitely, a project can close, can end, a project can evolve. And that's really where I'm at.
You have to get out of bed and speak to people. You have to get out of bed and learn about yourself. Finding what excites you doesn't happen from watching from the sidelines.