The Regenerative Pitch Deck: How Future-Ready Founders and Investors Build Regenerative Urban Futures

A living-systems blueprint for funding, designing, and stewarding the next generation of urban organisations.

The pitch deck you’ve been taught to build can’t get you into the future we are walking into. For decades, the traditional pitch deck ruled entrepreneurship. Ten slides. Linear logic. Problem → Solution → Market → Business Model → Competition → GTM → Team → Financials → Ask → Closing. Consultancies like McKinsey sharpened analytical storytelling. VCs such as Andreessen Horowitz, Fifth Wall, and JLL Spark promoted blitzscaling and dominance. Accelerators like Y Combinator, MetaProp, and StartupBootcamp encouraged minimalism, confidence, and exponential ambition. This approach thrived in an era of control, optimisation, and extraction. But that era is ending. The built environment now faces ecological collapse, social fragmentation, economic uncertainty, and spiritual exhaustion. We no longer need founders who solve yesterday’s problems. We need founders who can unlock future potential and create ventures that foster conditions for life to flourish. The key difference is profound: while the traditional pitch deck sees ventures as silos and exponential growth machines, the regenerative pitch deck views ventures as weavers of living systems.

The Gravity of the Old

Across urban landscapes, a quiet truth is emerging: “What if business wasn’t about domination and unicorn-style exponential growth, but about long-term and organic regeneration?” Many developers, architects, designers, urbanists, wayfinders, and innovators resonate. The old templates no longer reflect the complexity and potential of the living world. A regenerative pitch deck is needed, not as a performance with hollow and unrealistic projections, but rather as a dialogue between living systems. It shifts the question from: “How do we compete in a scarce and high-stakes market for a six-figure ideal?” to “How do we, as regenerative actors in a complex ecosystem, contribute to a healthy and grounded evolution of place, people, and planet?” Letting go is difficult. Investors still seek financial ROI and unrealistic, exponential growth. Boards want hockey-stick charts. Founders fear vulnerability. Yet clinging to the old story blinds us to a new, more interconnected reality that is emerging – a more holistic and systemic perspective – and a gaping need for ecological restoration, biodiversity conservation, climate and risk adaptation, personal and community resilience and belonging, and intergenerational stewardship. The classical pitch deck rewards the illusion of control and immediacy. The regenerative pitch deck rewards planting a legacy of coherence, emergence, and potential.

Crossing into the Field of Life

The shift starts with one question: “What if our pitch encouraged participation in regeneration rather than investment in extraction?” From this question, the pitch evolves. Just as we (Menno and Alejandra) have proposed a new Business Model Canvas [more coming soon] to great resonance to regenerative leaders and entrepreneurs, today we bring to you our ground-breaking Regenerative Pitch Deck: pulsating with life; bridging key themes in a complex and risk-laden world, and bringing the depth and complexity investors are ready for:

Classical Slide	Regenerative Slide	Essence
Introduction	Invitation into a Living Field	Set purpose, context, and the living field your venture activates.
Problem	Calling Forth Potential	Reveal systemic fractures and the latent potential hidden within them.
Solution	Designing for Systemic Evolution	Show how your offering grows systems rather than patches symptoms.
Product	Regenerative Expression of Essence	Present your regenerative offering as an expression of deeper purpose and coherence.
Market	The Ecosystem We Belong To	Map relationships, flows, and interdependencies, not static market sizes.
Business Model	Systemic Value Creation	Demonstrate multi-capital flows: ecological, social, cultural, financial, etc.
GTM	Stepping Stones for Co-Evolution	Replace funnels with pathways for participation and shared momentum.
Competition	Catalysing Ecosystems of Mutual Benefit	Reframe rivals as potential collaborators within a shared field.
Team	The Living Core That Nourishes	Show capacities, relationships, and dynamic roles rather than CVs.
Financials	Funding the Field of (Urban) Regeneration	Integrate financial KPIs with ecological, social, and cultural returns.
Why Now	Timeliness in Larger Evolutionary Patterns	Situate your venture within macro-systemic transitions.
Ask	Invitation to Stewardship	Invite investors into co-creating a living future, not extracting value / transactions.
Closing	The Future We’re Becoming	End with coherence and long-term, legacy vision.

Co-created by Menno Lammers & Alejandra Torres Dromgold

This is not idealism; it is realism grounded in life. Last October, we used this approach for the final Presentations during the closing retreat of the 6-month regenerative entrepreneurship programme, Custodians of the Earth, by Academia Musas®. All participants presented their persuasive proposals to Pravin Rodrigues,, a well-known impact investor who is very active and collaborative in Latin America and Canada, and the founder of impact funds Espera Ventures and Espera Capital. Pravin said of the regenerative pitch deck: “This is groundbreaking and innovative; it's the next natural step in the evolution to regenerative finance". The results were outstanding and helped spur the creation of a regenerative travel agency, an academy, a financial services company, and a digital services company, among others.

Where entrepreneurs speak from wholeness, investors invest in coherence. Investors also gain from this coherence in efficient ways. For example, regenerative ventures spread risk across multiple capitals, establish long-term stability by anchoring value in real ecosystems, and foster anti-fragile performance during uncertain times. As markets become more volatile, investors increasingly seek strategies that reduce volatility and strengthen resilience — exactly what regenerative design offers. Forward-thinking entrepreneurs, some of whom are in the B Corp movement, as well as investors are already shifting from funding short-term fixes to supporting companies that explicitly commit to creating long-term conditions conducive to thriving life. These agreements are becoming the foundation of long-term, multi-capital investment partnerships.

It is Time to Evolve

Every founder eventually experiences a downward phase. The deck feels empty. The narrative feels forced. The numbers seem out of sync. Behind each bullet point, there lies fear: fear of losing credibility, fear of being too different, fear of not connecting with the room. This is the cocoon, the dissolving phase. Here, deeper questions emerge: “What am I truly stewarding?”, “Who am I becoming through this venture?”, and “What does life want to grow through us?” This marks the start of the regenerative pitch. When founders reconnect with their deeper purpose, something shifts: Words resonate. Images carry meaning. Numbers reflect rhythm, not pressure. The pitch becomes a field, not a funnel. This is the feminine returning to entrepreneurship – intuition, presence, relationality, emergence. Investors feel it. Partners feel it. Communities feel it. It is the moment the venture comes alive.

Healing the System

The regenerative pitch bridges industrial-era gaps: Head → Heart: Numbers meet meaning; Self → System: Personal purpose connects to planetary evolution; and Past → Future: Ancestral wisdom aligns with innovation. This inner coherence constructs the invisible infrastructure of trust, the most valuable currency in regenerative urban environments and investment systems. Investors who cannot recognise this trust will fall behind. Investors who can cultivate it will shape the next urban era. Pitching becomes an invitation: not to dominate markets, but to regenerate ecosystems. Not to scale for exit, but to cultivate Return on Evolution (RoE). Not to attract capital, but to circulate multi-capital value.

FROM → TO (The Paradigm Shift)

From	To
Pitching to convince	Inviting to co-create
Market domination	Ecosystem participation
ROI	Return on Evolution
Product-centric	Life-centric
Linear logic	Living systems logic
Audience	Alliance
Transaction	Evolution
Control	Coherence

The Regenerative Pitch Deck as a Threshold

The regenerative pitch deck is more than just a fundraising instrument. It functions as a mirror, a compass, and a threshold. When we change the way we pitch, we reshape how we build and ultimately influence what the world chooses to invest in. The world does not need more polished pitch decks; it requires living invitations to regenerate urban environments, ecosystems, and communities. When you pitch as if you represent life itself, investors will not just fund you — they will walk alongside you and invest in life itself.

Authors

Menno Lammers & Alejandra Torres Dromgold

About:

Menno Lammers is a visionary, catalyst for systemic change, and an innovator with over 20 years of experience in real estate, innovation, and sustainability. As the founder of PropTechNL and the global PropTech for Good movement in collaboration with 42 PropTech national/regional associations, he has led the digital and sustainable transformation of the built environment. He has collaborated with leading public and private organisations across Europe, advised executive teams, mentored CEOs and innovators, evaluated hundreds of startups, and served as a judge for many startup awards. Since 2020, he has been leading initiatives in regenerative living and projects, delivering keynote speeches, and co-creating future-focused, life-centred visions. Last year, Menno left his old life behind, selling his house, closing his business, and starting a Tour for Regeneration. This personal and professional journey continues to shape his work: inviting others to reimagine cities as living systems where people, places, and nature can thrive.

If you want to explore how to walk this path or how we can walk it together, reach out to Menno.

Alejandra Torres Dromgold is a regenerative entrepreneurship mentor, impact investor and founder of Academia Musas, a global BIC academy for conscious leaders. As co-founder of a B-certified real estate company, Contempo, she guides entrepreneurs, B / BIC companies and change-makers to design businesses that honour life, regenerate ecosystems and remain unapologetically profitable. Top-ranked equity analyst for Colombia by Institutional Investor, valuing hundreds of companies working at, among others, ING Barings and the largest LATAM private equity fund of its time (Latin American Capital Investments). Chair of the certified B Corp movement in Colombia, founding chair of Colombia´s Green Building Council and Family Business Network, board member of the World Green Building Council, SDG negotiator and groundbreaking environmental project leader, “shark” on Shark Tank Colombia where she invested in female-led, impact driven companies. As an Amazon bestselling author, Alejandra bridges strategy and soul—bringing together business design, spirituality and activism to midwife the next generation of life-centred enterprises.

If you wish to explore Custodians of the Earth or join the programme in 2026, read more or reach out to Alejandra.