Slide decks have long been the cornerstone of strategy discussions and meetings, but companies now seem to be moving to other alternatives.
Coinbase has banned slide decks at the company for several years now. Instead, it asks employees to focus on shipping products. If some employee has to communicate something through a slide deck, it gets them to write short documents in the place of creating slide decks.
“Coinbase banned slide decks a few years ago. One of the best decisions ever. Your idea should stand on its own in a document without shiny slides,” X user @Nick_Prince12 wrote.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong chimed in. “Spend time shipping product, not slide decks Short documents only (if you must)” he said on X.
Coinbase isn’t the only company that doesn’t seem to believe in slide decks. Amazon too famously doesn’t allow slide decks in meetings. In their place, employees have to write a detailed 6-8 page memo. Before meetings begin, the memo is handed out to all attendees, who them quietly read the memo for several minutes before proceeding to discuss it.
This shift away from slide decks reflects a broader rethinking of how companies communicate and make decisions in the digital age. The logic is straightforward: slides can obscure weak ideas with slick visuals and bullet points, while written documents force clarity of thought and reveal gaps in reasoning. By requiring employees to articulate their proposals in prose, companies like Coinbase and Amazon are essentially raising the bar for internal communication—demanding that ideas be fully formed and defensible before they consume meeting time and organizational resources.
Whether this approach becomes the new standard remains to be seen, but it signals an important cultural shift toward substance over presentation. For companies racing to ship products in competitive markets, eliminating the time spent crafting and presenting PowerPoints could translate into meaningful productivity gains. The question for other organizations is whether they’re willing to make the trade-off: exchanging the familiar comfort of slides for the intellectual rigor—and discomfort—that comes with putting ideas into clear, unvarnished writing.