There are five numbers that decide whether an investor reads the rest of the deck: ARR and its growth rate, gross margin, burn, net revenue retention, and the runway those four imply.
Everything else — CAC payback, LTV, magic number, the Rule of 40 — is derivative. We are not saying skip them. We are saying an investor who cannot see the five headline numbers inside of ninety seconds will not sharpen their pencil on the derivatives.
The common failure mode is the decorated cover slide that hides the growth rate in a footnote. If the growth rate is the story, put the growth rate on the cover. If it is not, build a different story — not a different chart.
When we rebuild a board package, the first pass is a single page called "the numbers." Everything else in the deck has to earn its way back in.