How to share your startup decks on SlideShare
TL;DR
SlideShare is a presentation hosting site, owned by Scribd since 2020. Uploading is free and reading is free with ads, while a paid plan removes ads and adds downloads. It suits founders who publish decks, reports or guides that people search for, since uploads get indexed by search engines and can be embedded on other sites.
What is SlideShare?
SlideShare started as a place to share slide decks. LinkedIn bought it in 2012 and sold it to Scribd in 2020, and Scribd took over operations on 24 September 2020. At the time of the sale, LinkedIn reported a library of over 40 million presentations. Today the site brands itself "Slideshare from Scribd".
The upload page accepts PowerPoint (PPT, PPTX, PPSX, POTX), PDF and Word (DOC, DOCX) files. Each upload gets its own page with a slide viewer, and the upload page states that uploads can be indexed by search engines and embedded on other websites. The audience is people searching for slides on a topic: marketers, consultants, students and teams hunting for templates or data.
Who should upload to SlideShare?
- Founders who publish research, market reports or how-to guides in slide form.
- B2B startups that want their conference talks and webinars findable after the event.
- Consultancies and agencies whose buyers search for frameworks and templates.
- Skip it for an investor deck with numbers you would not show a competitor. Treat every upload as public.
- Skip it if you need direct sales. People come to SlideShare to learn, and few arrive ready to buy.
How much does SlideShare cost?
The SlideShare homepage states that no subscription is required to browse, read and upload. Free reading comes with ads. The paid plan starts with a 30-day free trial. In our check from Europe in October 2026 it then cost €10.99 per month, and prices vary by country. The paid plan adds downloads, text copying, an ad-free view and access to Scribd documents. You do not need it to publish.
How do you share your startup on SlideShare?
- Go to slideshare.net/upload and sign in or create a free account.
- Export your deck as PDF or PPTX. PDF keeps fonts and layout exactly as you designed them.
- Upload the file and give it a title that matches what people search for, such as "SaaS pricing benchmarks 2026" in place of "Deck v7".
- Write a short description with your startup's name, what the deck covers and your website URL.
- Publish, then embed the deck in the matching blog post on your own site and share the link on LinkedIn.
Tips to get more out of SlideShare
- Open with a clear cover slide that states the topic in plain words. It is the first thing a visitor sees in the viewer.
- Put your website URL on the first and last slides, since embeds and downloads travel without the description.
- Upload material people want to keep: a market map, a checklist, a teardown of your category. Sales brochures attract nobody.
- Upload conference slides within a day of the talk, while attendees search for them.
- Judge SlideShare by views, embeds and the visits it sends to your site, and do not count on link value for SEO.
Our verdict
SlideShare is a free, low-effort home for decks that people search for. Its reach depends on your topic and the quality of your slides, and it brings few customers on its own. Use it for educational material and keep your confidential pitch deck in a data room.
More options: see all startup directories and launch sites. Planning your launch? The Fe/male Switch startup game walks women founders from idea to first customers.