Don’t Confuse Customer Messaging with Investor Messaging!

Key differences in customer versus investor pitch decks

Last month, I wrote about how sales, hiring, and fundraising have more in common than you may think. While they all derive from the same fundamental skill set and are at their core about evangelizing the business, that does not mean that the message is the same. Too often I see founders make the mistake of confusing customer messaging with investor messaging and not parsing the specifics of what is important to each audience. You are “selling” in both cases for sure, in one instance you are selling a solution to a problem but to investors, you are selling your unique insight on how the future will be different.

When a customer deck is repurposed for an investor meeting it often fails to start from a first principles line of reasoning. It dives right into a technical solution without properly setting up the context to the problem and establishing a shared reality of the pain point being solved. You, the entrepreneur, need to convince VCs this is a real enough and growing pain point such that a customer will pay you to solve it, and that there are enough potential customers that you will have a $1Bn+ business in a few years. Oh, and you’ll do all that while extracting attractive margins and not letting the competition catch up. That isn’t meant to belittle the challenge of product sales. Your challenge with a potential customer is to make it as easy as possible for them to say yes, create the lowest friction possible experience, and build credibility and trust. Both pitches start with empathy for the audience and use emotion, but recognize it is not the same audience and adjust accordingly.

Here are some key differences between decks for these audiences:

Starting with the right pitch deck and materials shows your audience you understand what matters to them. You build credibility and via the power of transference they will assume you also know how to properly influence other audiences — a key skill every entrepreneur should develop. Check out this helpful article on What Is the Difference between a Pitch Deck and a Sales Presentation.

Prime Movers Lab invests in breakthrough scientific startups founded by Prime Movers, the inventors who transform billions of lives. We invest in companies reinventing energy, transportation, infrastructure, manufacturing, human augmentation, and agriculture.

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