How to create the Perfect Pitch Deck
A pitch deck is an entrepreneur’s or company’s presentation to a prospective investor. The best startups that went on to achieve great things hardly funded themselves. They raised money from series of investment rounds from Venture Capitalists (VC) or Angel Investors. Raising money is an integral part of a new startup and it comes with several challenges, even for the most experienced founders who gained significant traction in their companies. The pitch deck is a key component of your fundraising toolkit that contains the entire business concept being offered to an investor for the purpose of raising funds. The pitch deck is a common language amongst Venture Capitalists. It’s inevitable that your pitch deck be perfect! It’s the only way to get VC’s excited about you and your product or service. It is crucial that a startup completely nails its investor’s pitch deck with articulate information and a compelling story.
Tips for a Perfect Pitch Deck
Guy Kawasaki is an evangelist of the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. He preaches that a pitch should have no more than 10 slides, should last no more that 20 minutes, and should contain no font smaller than 30 points. This is not an enforced rule. A pitch deck can extend to 15–20 slides depending on the service or product requirement. However, it should avoid redundancy. Perfect pitch deck shouldn’t try to answer every possible question about the business. You should leave just enough information to capture interest and leave the investor wanting more. Hit the big point in a clear way and avoid over-sharing. It should focus the interest of an individual investor or VC. This relatively means you should not have a one-size-fits-all pitch deck. As much as you can, conduct extensive research on your potential investors. Study their investment portfolios and trends of what they care about the most. Many sources and renowned business analysts have agreed that the key slides that make up aPerfect Pitch Deck should include;
- The Company Overview/Elevator Pitch: This is the first introduction to your VC. A summary of your business, usually in bullet points. It states the problem(s) you solve and the solution(s) you offer, where your business is located, and your current experience or traction. It should also contain your company’s Mission and Vision Statements. However, you might decide to have this on another slide.
- The Problem: This should reveal an existing and unsolved problem; a vacuum that’s to be filled. The investor needs to understand the problem you are trying to solve, so your Pitch Deck should show the importance of this problem. Consider using storytelling during your pitch, if appropriate. A good story always resounds even after your pitch.
- The Solution: Your pitch deck should explain how your product or service is going to improve the market and fix the problem you stated. How will your customers feel after they experience your solution? Is there any improvement in their lifestyle? You don’t need to go deep into the technical architecture of your solution. Your pitch deck MUST show why your solution is better than any existing solution in the market.
- The Product/Service: Your pitch deck must vividly articulate your product or service and its uniqueness. It should reveal the key features of the product/service, it’s usefulness to the customers, why they would prefer yours over similar products or services, milestones, and possible future modifications to be made to the product or possible service improvements.
- The Market Opportunity: This part of your pitch deck should contain graphs and pictures showing results from your market research. It should reveal market size and scope (dollar size, your niche, demography). These slides reveals who your ideal customer is and how many of them exists.
- The Traction/Validation: Chance Barnett, the founder of Crowdfunder is an internet entrepreneur, advisor, and investor. He encourages, in his article on Medium, that founders should put their numbers and traction at the beginning of their pitch decks. This grabs the attention and clarifies the market opportunity, especially if the numbers are good. This means an investor won’t have to wait for 5 or 6 slides before the opportunity and gain are revealed.
- The Competition: Life is full of a lot of competition. It no surprise that this is applicable to the business world. Every business is in competition with one or more businesses that offer similar or same service(s)/product(s). Your pitch deck should reveal your place in the competitive market and how you plan to gain the advantage over your competition. It shows your Unique Selling Point (USP) which is like your secret recipe or secret sauce. The key is to show your uniqueness and edge over your competition.
- The Go-To-Market Strategy: This slide should outline your marketing and sales plans. It shows your key tactics which will be deployed for further business expansion. Finding and retaining customers can be a big challenge to most startups and even established businesses. It’s important you show your understanding of the market.
- The Financial Projection: This is possibly the most important slide to the investor. It should reveal your company’s current financial situation and proposed future “burn” rate (monthly and yearly cash loss while the company is developing and marketing its product or service). This reveals to the investor how you have managed your own funds so far, and how you intend to manage or spend any investment in your company.
- The Business Model: Your business model should show how you make money or how you intend to make more money. It should show your pricing model and you should be able to defend your reason for pegging the price at that value. It should show the number of customers in the market and your potential conversion rate. You should also highlight the potential market value of your customers showing how much you can make from each one and for how long. This shows how much the business can scale over time.
- The Investment ‘Ask’: This is the part that’s important to you. Your reason for all these troubles. This is where you ask for the money your business needs from the investor(s). Regardless of how much you are asking for, you should be able to justify why you require that amount and how you intend to spend the money to achieve your business goals.
There are a few other slides that were not highlighted above because they are optional. They include; The Management Team which shows the skill set of every key member of the business, Exit Strategy, Product/Demo Shots, Partnerships, The Technology, etc. You should include any of these based on their importance to your business.
How to send a send a pitch deck to an investor via email?
Typically, it’s advised that you send your pitch deck in Portable Document Format (PDF). Do not send PowerPoint or Keynotes (not everyone uses a Mac). This prevents any alteration or edits to be made to you pitch deck without your consent. The body of the email should contain 5–10 bullet points summarising your pitch with all the key metrics. As much as you can, try not to send it via DocSend or anything similar. These are great services, but you might be creating unnecessary tax bill for your investor should he receive your Pitch Deck via these services. You should also avoid using DropBox. You VC’s DropBox might be full and s/he may trying to manage space.
Entrepreneurs or new businesses that apply the outlined format for the perfect pitch deck are on the road to winning the hearts of investors that can provide funds to help grow their startups.
