How to Use Foundersuite To Host Your Investor Pitch Deck
Like any good startup, we “eat our own dogfood” — meaning we use Foundersuite products for fundraising, investor updates, and so on. As we prepare for our next fundraising adventure, we came up with a cool new use case for our Investor Update tool: hosting our pitch deck. It’s easy to do, it looks great, and best of all we can track which investors are looking at it. Here’s how to set it up.
STEP ONE: EXPORT YOUR POWERPOINT OR KEYNOTE SLIDES TO IMAGES
We built our pitch deck using Keynote, but PowerPoint works fine too. (Insider tip: if you need help building your investor deck, be sure to download a FREE copy of our “Ultimate Pitch Deck Guide” :)
Once you have your deck finished, the first step is to turn each slide into an image. Select PNG or a high-quality JPEG for the format. In Keynote, go to File → Export To → Images. In PowerPoint, go to File → Save As Pictures.
STEP TWO: SET UP THE INVESTOR UPDATE TOOL TO HOST YOUR DECK
The next step is to go into Foundersuite and on the left hand nav bar, click “Investor Updates” then click “Foundersuite Default Report.”
Give the report a name (e.g. “Acme Seed Round v1”) and Date (you can pick a single date (like today) instead of a range).
Next, we want to delete all default Report Elements, like this…
…so your Report looks empty like this:
STEP THREE: ADD IMAGE ELEMENTS AND LINE BREAKS
Now that you have a nice blank canvas, we want to populate the report with Image Elements. To do that you simply drag and drop the “Image” element from the left side to the canvas. Also drag Separator Lines as well. Add as many Images and Separator Lines as you have pages in your pitch deck.
With Image Elements in place, now you can add each pitch deck slide as an image. The simplest way to do this is to open up a Finder window and locate all the Keynote or PowerPoint images you exported in Step 1.
Click on the small “down arrow” on the right hand side of the Image Element, then drag each image onto your canvas, like this:
Rinse and repeat, and give each image a title and page number and click “Update.” Voila! It’s starting to come together nicely!
STEP FIVE: MAKE IT LIVE
After you have loaded all your images onto the canvas, click the “Add Logo” toggle and “Mark Private” if you want to track who views your report. You can “Preview” your report, then click “Publish” (don’t worry, you can always go back and revise the report later!)
STEP SIX: SEND IT OUT
Publishing your report generates a unique URL which you can then send to investors in an email. You can also send the report directly from the system to investors in your Foundersuite CRM.
Preface your email with something short but catchy. Not sure what to say? This is a good starting point — feel free to copy and paste and replace with your name (and get a warm intro to the investor if you can):
“I’m CEO of Foundersuite.com. We make the “ultimate startup funding stack” comprised of Investor Search + Investor CRM + IR tools.
We are disrupting how startups raise money and run investor relations.
We have great traction and product market fit — since releasing our new CRM in March, startups using it have raised over $101m.
I’m now raising $XX to scale marketing and sales. Here’s a copy of our deck. Up for a chat?”
STEP SEVEN: COME BACK AND FEEL THE LOVE
The final step after sending out your pitch deck is to check back frequently and see who has viewed your pitch deck. Simply hover over the “Viewers” icon with a number in it, and the email addresses will be shown. It will also show you how long they viewed your deck — a strong signal of interest.
Personally, I find it very useful to know if an investor has read my material- or not. If I see they have checked out my deck, I will often follow up a day or so later and give them a nudge toward a meeting or call. If they haven’t seen it, I’ll send another shorter email with a link.
That’s it — our quick and easy process for hosting your investor deck online using Foundersuite. Sign up today if you haven’t already :)
Good luck! We’d love to hear about your experience.
