Pitch Deck Series Part 5: Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication
Leonardo Di Vinci said that “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” When it comes to building a pitch deck, I cannot think of a better mantra.
To understand why keeping things simple is so important, we need to unpack the perspective of the reader. The thing most entrepreneurs forget when building their decks is that the reader is likely learning about the business, maybe even the industry, for the first time. While the founder knows every little detail about their market, product, and customers, anyone building a deck has to assume the reader does not. In fact, it’s very likely the reader needs to be educated on most, if not all, of those topics. Thus, getting too granular too fast will backfire because an investor won’t be able to dive into the details of the business or ask intelligent questions if she does not have a solid understanding of the basics. If an investor does not understand what it is you do and how you do it, she will not invest.
This doesn’t mean the reader is dumb, he just likely does not have the same level of expertise on this particular subject that you do and nor should he. If you were to teach someone a game he never played before, you wouldn’t start with advanced strategies. You would start by clearly explaining the basic rules and what he needs to achieve to win the game. A pitch deck is the same exercise. Start simple and as the reader begins to understand more about the business, then you can go into more detail and nuance.
The second reason to keep it simple, as I have emphasized in previous posts, is that the goal of your deck is not to convince someone to invest, it’s to generate interest. If you send your deck out in advance of a first meeting, the one and only objective the deck must achieve is to generate enough interest to entice an investor to take a meeting. If you are going through your deck during a meeting, the one objective of the deck is to entice the investor to ask probing questions, not make a commitment of funds. Asking questions in order to drill deeper into a particular area of your business is a good sign that the investor is interested. If you get through your entire pitch and the investor did not ask a single question, the pitch was either not compelling to that particular investor or wasn’t clear enough for the investor to understand. If she can’t understand what you do because your deck isn’t clear, she won’t be interested. If she isn’t interested, she won’t invest.
Third, investors are looking for founders that have a clear vision and an ability to articulate that vision in a compelling manner. Investors know that this skill is not only needed to fundraise (both this round and in future rounds), but it is crucial for selling to your initial customers, recruiting talent, and effectively communicating with the existing team. Your deck is a reflection of your ability to clearly articulate what you are building. Demonstrating an ability to tell your story in a simple yet compelling way in a deck will give investors confidence that you can also portray a compelling reason for recruits to leave a high paying job and join your cause or motivate team members by aligning them to the goals and objectives for the company. Hence, trying to distill your message in a simple and compelling way is actually a good exercise for entrepreneurs as it will help in other areas of your business as well.
If simplicity is the goal, here are some tangible pieces of advice for achieving that goal when building your next pitch deck.
- A slide should have one main point, never more. And as I have argued in a previous post, the best way to do this is to clearly lay out the one takeaway in the title to make it obvious to the reader.
- Keep that one point at a high level. “We are growing 30% month over month” is all you need to say about your financials. Will a lead investor want to review your financial plan in detail at some point? Absolutely. But not in the first meeting. Remember, the goal of the deck is to generate interest, not close an investment. Diving into the financials or other questions in more detail is a great excuse to schedule a follow up meeting but a terrible idea to include in a deck.
- Visuals are better than words. Graphs are better than spreadsheets.
- When you do use words, less is more. Too much detail on any slide is overwhelming and can cause you and the investor to get stuck in the weeds. Use short statements, never paragraphs of writing.
- Avoid jargon and buzzwords as much as possible. Use phrasing a third grader, or your grandmother would understand.
- Use large fonts. First off, it’s much easier to read. Second, if you have to go below 24-point font to fit what you are saying on a slide, that’s a giant red flag that you need to simplify your message.
- Limit the number of slides. No more than 15 slides max. 10–12 is even better. The more you can force yourself to condense your message to its core elements, the better.
There is one exception to the simplicity rule that I would like to call out. If your product or service solves an existing problem that is complex, then it might actually be beneficial to have one (and only one) slide that explains the existing process in all its complexity. This is essentially your problem slide and the problem you are solving is complexity. If you do decide to go this route, make this slide as convolved as possible in order to drive home the point. But make sure that your next slide shows how you solve the problem in an extremely simple, elegant way.
Simple does not mean easy. In fact, it’s often harder to distill that message down to its core than it is to write a dissertation about every aspect of the business. It often takes time and many iterations but it’s worth the effort.
If you would like more tangible advice on how to build a better pitch deck, here are the first four posts in this series:
Part 1: Design your deck as a story, not a form you fill out
