STOKE

Two decks that made a hard-to-label social app easy to get.

STOKE, a live social layer for cities

Investor deck signed off in 16 days, then a venue deck for Miami's first venue conversations.

"They helped us transform our investor pitch deck into something worthy of the product we built."

Kevin Battista, Co-founder and CEO, STOKE

A social app that kept getting misfiled

STOKE is a live map of where people are gathering right now: the bar on Friday, the park on Sunday, the coffee shop that became a regular spot. It was pre-seed and pre-launch, starting in Miami, with venues paying and people using it free. The deck was long, heavy on tech, and investors kept asking the same question: is it a dating app, or a nightlife app? The brief was a deck that explains itself, so the founders wouldn't have to.

One idea, said early

Kevin's own correction set the direction: nightlife is where STOKE starts, but the brand is a full social life. We showed the numbers visually, turned the business model into a single flow and put the product in real device mockups. When the founders' feedback showed the deck still read as two pitches, we tied it together with one line, "Find the energy. Find your people.", from the problem slide to the close. We worked slide by slide with the founders, and the 13-slide deck was signed off 16 days after kickoff.

Honest where it counts

At pre-seed, one claim that doesn't hold up costs more than a missing one. In the investor deck, claims we couldn't check came out, and the proof slide, at Kevin's call, shows what had been validated, the problem and the experience, rather than traction that didn't exist yet. (Numbers on the slides here are placeholders.)

A second deck, for the people who pay

A week before the investor deck was signed off, Kevin asked for a deck for Miami venue owners, to take into letter-of-intent conversations over Zoom or on a tablet. It had a different job: be emotive and visual, so an owner pictures their own room. Kevin's frame was that it sells a new behavior, not software: from "people either come or they don't" to "the decision is still happening, and I can influence it."

Built to be reused

The venue deck runs eight slides, from the half-empty room to an example night that fills. The phone screens are editable Figma frames, so STOKE can swap the venue name and photo for each pitch. Delivered on 6 August, five weeks after the first call.

Not just a dating app.
Not just a nightlife app.
A full social life.

The venue deck doesn't sell software.
It sells a new behavior.

Find the energy.
Find your people.

"People get it when they see it. They're like, wow, this looks different."

Kevin Battista, Co-founder and CEO, STOKE

The result

Investor deck signed off in 16 days, then a venue deck for Miami's first venue conversations.

"They helped us transform our investor pitch deck into something worthy of the product we built."

Kevin Battista, Co-founder and CEO, STOKE

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Project information

Client: STOKE
Stage: Pre-seed, pre-launch at the time
Discipline: Pitch deck, sales deck, narrative
Deliverables: 13-slide investor deck, 8-slide venue deck, deck copy, editable device mockups for per-venue pitches
Year: 2026
Timeline: July to August 2026
Note: the STOKE app, Studio and logo shown on the slides are designed by STOKE's own team.

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Two decks that made a hard-to-label social app easy to get.

Not just a dating app.Not just a nightlife app.A full social life.

The venue deck doesn't sell software.It sells a new behavior.

Find the energy.Find your people.

The result

Project information

More work

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Not just a dating app.
Not just a nightlife app.
A full social life.

The venue deck doesn't sell software.
It sells a new behavior.

Find the energy.
Find your people.