Tips and Resources for Your Most Excellent Startup Pitch

To date at SOSV we have invested in almost 600 companies, with over 350 of these being in the past 18 months alone. As the CFO, I get to see a LOT of pitch-decks and financial plans.

With hundreds of early stage companies graduating from our accelerator programs annually across the world, many of them ask the same questions:

1. What do investors look for in a pitch deck?
2. Do you have a template of a pitch deck we can use?
3. How should we go about contacting investors?
4. What valuation should we set on our company?
5. What type of legal document should we utilize, and what do the terms mean?

Each of these questions are very relevant to all early stage companies, and being able to address each of these issues can mean the difference between success and ultimate failure for all startups.

Over the years I have researched and read many relevant resources and different links to learn and share with some of our teams on each of these points. Today I am sharing some of these in one blog post, with my thanks to each of the people who actually went to the trouble of producing the article and resource.

Docusend did a lot of research on 200 startups who raised their seed stage funding round. This link details their findings on what makes a successful deck and the process involved. It is a useful basis to consider prior to preparing your own deck.

Each of you have probably spent some time researching other successful companies’ decks and what they included that may have possibly helped them to raise funding. Some of my favourites are below. Ultimately you need to tell your own story and plan for success, but it is useful to see how others presented their story.

• Alexander Jarvis has kindly assembled an enormous collection of pitch decks from companies who got funded, it can be seen here.
• The aptly named bestpitchdecks.com has compiled a variety of decks and videos on pitching and examples.
• Quora created a discourse around ”where can I find good example slide decks for pitching investors?”.
• Forbes magazine also included an excellent “Ultimate pitch deck resource”.
• Startup fundraising has provided a free template and some excellent tips and other resources.

In terms of valuation, what you need to value your company at is a product of multiple items, especially at an early stage. Some of these include how much money you require, what sort of equity stake you are comfortable with losing, how many funding rounds you think you might require, and what type of demand there is to invest into your startup. Thankfully funders and founders have assembled a nice little graphic and an explanation article around this, which you can access here.

If you are worried about producing a term sheet and/or convertible debt document, there are numerous places that you can source these resources and information on legal terms and conditions.

In the US especially, many law firms provide discounted legal work for early stage companies which you can also avail of. TechCrunch did an article in 2015 that gives some further background on this. Below is some other links and information that you might find valuable to educate yourself on what the documents look like and also what is important to focus on.

• Ask the VC has an extensive library of resources and information.
• Series Seed also provides an extensive library.
• Our attorneys here at SOSV, Cooley have provided a document generator on their website that many companies find useful.

If you don’t know your full ratchet from your weighted average, then it is always an idea to educate yourself on how startup finance works and what the potential pitfalls and downsides could be. A resource that’s both easy to access and digest that I would recommend to provide you with some foundation knowledge on how to run your company and structure it in a positive way is the Kaufmann Founders School website. This is one of the most comprehensive and easy to digest resources I know. Each webinar is broken into short segments with many industry leaders giving great tips and easy to remember sensible advice. It is worth listening to.

Pitch.fm provides an extensive library of different podcasts that some of you might also find useful.

Now, if you are still reading at this point, then I think you really deserve a small reward! So here is an article from growth supply providing 300 free things for startups. If you are an SOSV startup, then please do not forget to access your perks section, which provides up to $450,000 in free perks and benefits.

Finally, there is a checklist on Reddit containing some excellent advice, education, and tips. It also features a fantastic American Idol meltdown video. So, before you think you’re ready for investors, you should go through it.

Keep in mind, you don’t have to meet every single point mentioned here, but the more that you do, the easier it will be to convince investors to invest in your company and you as a founder.

Hopefully some of you will find the above useful in order to help you along the road towards ultimate success, and I greatly thank all of those who worked hard to assemble those resources in order to help startups everywhere achieve success and continue to add value to the world we all live in.

Let’s keep making the impossible inevitable.

Originally published at sosv.com on November 2, 2016.