Without question, the most popular slide in a startup pitch deck is the one showing hockey stick growth.

When you find product/market fit and start seeing rapid customer acquisition, the theory goes, your basic X/Y axis of time and revenue will show exponential jumps. Your monthly revenue goes from $7,000 > $70,000 > $700,000, hence the hockey stick graphic.

Obviously, this is an extremely attractive slide to put in your pitch deck or financials. And while it’s clearly oriented toward venture capital investors, over the last decade hockey stick growth thinking has made its way into private equity and the broader marketplace as others learned from and emulated the growth of Facebook, Google, etc.

The slide does have value, but investors, companies, and founders still frequently mistake the hockey stick as a model for growth, rather than the consequence of it.