How to Practice Your Pitch Deck on Google Meet

The deck is the script. The pitch is the performance, and investors fund the performance. If Google Meet is the tool you already use, it’s a solid rehearsal setup — nothing to install, free, and you can put a real person in the room with you.

This guide covers practicing on Google Meet specifically. Not a Meet user? See the Zoom guide or the Loom guide instead — and the complete guide to practicing your pitch deck for the full picture.

How to share your slides on Google Meet

1. In the meeting, click Present now at the bottom.
2. Choose what to share:
   • A Tab — best for Google Slides. Open your deck, click Slideshow, then present that Chrome tab. Meet shares it at full quality and the slideshow controls stay on your screen.
   • A Window — best for PowerPoint or Keynote. Open the deck in a windowed slideshow first (PowerPoint: Slide Show → Set Up Slide Show → Browsed by an individual (window); Keynote: Play → In Window), then present that window.
   • Avoid Your Entire Screen — it exposes everything else you have open.

Presenting a single tab or window keeps your notes, email, and Slack off-screen. Practice this sequence until it’s automatic — fumbling the share in the first 30 seconds of a real pitch is a bad first impression you can fully prevent.

Record a solo run-through

Use Meet solo before you use it with anyone else.

Start a Meet call with just yourself, share your slides, turn your camera on, and deliver the whole pitch start to finish, out loud, standing up. Standing changes your voice and energy — do it.

Recording note: built-in recording on Google Meet requires a paid Workspace plan. If you’re on free Meet, capture the run with your computer’s built-in screen recorder instead:

• Mac: QuickTime → File → New Screen Recording, or press Shift + Cmd + 5.
• Windows: Xbox Game Bar → press Win + G → record.

Capture the screen and your webcam either way. Then watch it back — the replay is uncomfortable, which is exactly why it works. Look for:

• Filler words — count the “um,” “like,” “basically.”
• Eyes — are you looking at the camera, or reading the slide?
• The rushed slide — there’s always one you sped through. Rewrite it.
• Energy drop — find the flat 20-second stretch; it’s usually a slide you don’t believe in yet.

Do this across three days. Each replay surfaces two or three obvious fixes.

Run a live mock investor session

This is what Google Meet does that a recorder can’t: put a real person in the room.

Pick someone who’ll push back — not your most supportive friend. A fellow founder, a mentor, a skeptical friend in another industry. The further from your space, the better they test whether your pitch is clear to an outsider.

Brief them before you start. Three jobs:

1. Interrupt. Real investors don’t wait for slide 10. Tell them to break in mid-pitch.
2. Ask the hard version. Hand them your three scariest questions in advance — usually competition, “why now,” and “what if a big incumbent does this” — and tell them to ask the brutal version.
3. Say where they got lost. “You lost me on slide 4” beats “great job.”

If you have a Workspace plan, record the session and rewatch the questions you fumbled. Either way, ask them to drop timestamps or notes in the chat when something landed badly.

Don’t burn this early. You can’t ask a busy mentor for ten sessions this week, and pitches improve with volume of reps. Do your solo recorded runs first, get the script clean, then bring the mock investor in once you’re ready to be tested.

Time your pitch with a kitchen or phone timer

A timer is non-negotiable. If you’ve never delivered the pitch against a clock, you don’t know your real runtime — “about five minutes” is almost always seven. Demo Day slots are three minutes; investor meetings give you a soft ten.

You don’t need an app:

• Kitchen timer — set it for your slot, start it as you begin, and put it behind your laptop so you can’t watch it. When it rings, stop. The ring tells you bluntly how much pitch ran long.
• Phone stopwatch — hit Lap every time you advance a slide. The per-slide split almost always shows the team slide got 90 seconds and traction got 20, exactly backwards. Rebalance so the slides that win the deal get the time.
• Phone alarms — set chimes at the halfway and 80% marks so you build an internal sense of pace.

Never stare at the timer while you pitch — in the real room you can’t. Use it to review runs, not steer them.

A five-day routine

• Day 1 — Read it. Deliver the pitch out loud once, notes allowed. Cut every sentence that sounds like an essay.
• Day 2 — Record and time it. Solo Meet call, captured, no notes, lap-timer per slide. Rebalance pacing, watch the replay, fix your top three issues.
• Day 3 — Record again. Second recorded run. Confirm the Day 2 fixes stuck.
• Day 4 — Mock investor. Live Meet call with your skeptical friend. Get interrupted. Get the hard questions wrong a few times — that’s the point.
• Day 5 — Full dress. Two clean run-throughs, on the clock, in presentation mode, handling questions, no notes. If both land inside time and you didn’t freeze, you’re ready.

The deck gets you the meeting. Practice is what closes it. Open a Meet call, present your slides, start the timer, and go say it out loud.

Want the bigger picture, including how Google Meet compares to Zoom and Loom? Start with the complete guide to practicing your pitch deck.