October 9, 2020 James Cooper

Your pitch deck is not intended to raise capital, but you can’t raise capital without one.

Isn’t this contradictory?

Not really. Keeping in mind that investment decisions are rarely (if ever) decided in the first meeting, expecting a ‘yes’ right after the initial pitch is probably unrealistic. So what should the goal be?

The immediate outcome you want from a pitch is not an investment in your business but the opportunity to provide more information and continue the dialogue with future meetings that will lead to a commitment of capital.

It is your only chance to make a first impression, so it needs to be good. You and your business will be judged on the quality and content of your pitch; everything you do from that moment on will be colored by their first impression.

Finally, the slides in the pitch deck are simply there to guide the conversation and emphasize your key points. The real presentation should be verbal and be focused on telling a story. In the human brain, decisions are not made with the ‘left/logical’ hemisphere, decisions are made in the right/creative side where stories reside and resonate.

Don’t try to crowd everything you’d like to say on a slide; it’ll just muddle the message and take attention away from you and your narrative. Make the audience listen to you and not just look at the slides.

However, a pitch deck is vital for helping the story along, and there are certain slides you must have for a great pitch deck. These include:

1. Vision & Value Proposition

Ideally, this is a one-sentence summary of your business and the value you provide to customers.
If you can’t Tweet it, it’s too long.
This slide is extremely important since you are telling investors exactly what they will be getting when they invest in you.

2. Statement of the Problem

Be very clear about the problem you are solving – no ambiguity should be allowed.
Have a story ready that illustrates the problem in human terms.
Be very clear about who has this problem (this will lead into the next slide) but don’t spend too much time on the competitive landscape (you’ll address this later on).

3. Target Market and Opportunity

Use this slide to explain in a bit more detail about your ideal customer(s). Who are they, and how many of them are there?
Total market size, positioning, what is the current spending in the segment, etc… You can divide the market into segments if that makes sense for your business,
However, it’s important to approach this particular slide with caution since it’s tempting to define your market too broadly. Remember, investors want to see realistically approachable markets and not ‘pie in the sky’ segments.

4. The Solution

Finally – the guts of the thing. Here you get to describe your product and service, the idea that you’ve been working on for a long time.
You can use two slides here if you want since you not only want to describe the product/service, but how your customers will use it.
Don’t succumb to the temptation to put this slide up front. Instead, rely on tried and true storytelling methods that build up to the solution by communicating how bad the problem is.
It’s also important to remember that you always have to focus on your customers and how your idea helps them. Do not focus on the idea no matter how cool it.
Where possible use pictures and stories to illustrate the solution,

5. Revenue & Business Model

How do you make money? Who do you charge, and who pays the bills? Give as much detail as possible, but don’t try to fill in all the gaps. You can leave the details to the Appendices or – even better – a separate spreadsheet.
You could ease into the competitive landscape to describe how others in your line of business make money – but be sure to emphasize how you are different, and how your offering fits into the landscape.
If you have an innovative business model, it’s often worth adding an additional slide to show how you plan to operate.

6. Validation Roadmap

If you already have customers, this is the place to talk about them. Nothing validates a business model or plan like customers! Investors always want to see that you’ve proven aspects of your plan – or even all of it!
It’s also important here to outline key milestones, KPI’s and targets for validation.

7. Marketing and Sales Strategy

Finding and keeping customers is always one of the hardest and most expensive parts of building your business so this is a vital part of the presentation.
How will you find new customers, and what will the sales process/sales funnel look like? Tactics? Channels?
If your marketing and sales approach is different to the competition, highlight that here.

8. Team

You need to have the right people in the right roles to scale the company up.
Even if you don’t have a full team just yet, be sure to identify the key roles that need to be filled and explain why those positions are so important.

9. Summary Financials

Don’t try to be too detailed on this slide since you’ll be providing detailed financials separately after an NDA.
You’ll have to provide: Pro forma P&L, sales and cash flow forecasts for at least 3 years.
Instead of data-heavy tables, use simple and easy to understand charts and graphs as the summary method.
Be realistic – investors have seen way too many ‘hockey stick’ projections to take them seriously. If you can explain your projections based on past experience and growth, then that is the best way to approach it.

10. Competition

Even if you can’t find a direct competitor, you still have competition. If you are opening an entirely new market, all that means is that customers are using other methods to solve the problem.
How do you fit into the competitive landscape? How are you different? What’s your secret sauce?
Why should customers choose you instead of a competitor or another solution?

11. Investment Needed & Uses of Funds

This is ‘the ask’, where you ask investors for their capital.
It is vital to explain in as much detail as possible how their investment will be used, how much you need, and your rationale for asking for that amount. How are investors’ funds going to be used to achieve your business goals?
If you have other investors on board, it’s a good idea to have them explain in their own words why they’ve chosen to invest.

Other slides to consider might include the following if they are relevant:

Exit Strategy – this is something investors are always interested in knowing, and the subject will come up at some point.
Partnerships – if you have any partnerships, disclose them. They can sometimes be critical for success in both the business and the fundraising process.
Demos & Screenshots – but only if relevant.

After you’ve pitched, be sure to have the following documents available. It’s usually best to send them by email rather than as a hard-deck since this gives you a great reason to reach out. Key documents include:

1. Executive Summary: I call this a ‘tear sheet’, a 1-2 page summary of the presentation that provides an overview of your business. In fact, I recommend that you develop this as soon as possible and use it as a marketing tool to help secure pitch meetings.

2. Detailed Financial Model: Detailed pro formas are absolutely required and form a key part of any business plan. You need include forward looking P&L, Cash Flow, and Balance Sheet statements for at least 3 years into the future. Also, if you have current financial statements, include those as well.

3. Detailed Market Research: If you have third party research, include this. If not, provide as much of the

4. Technical Documentation: This isn’t always necessary, but if you are a tech business or startup, it’s vital. Investors will want to vet your technical claims. Even if you aren’t a tech business, a business/operations flow document that describes how things will work is going to be helpful.

Besides having a tight pitch deck, it’s also important to shape your presentation in a way that will be effective. Some of the best advice and guidelines for a great presentation are:

Keep it simple. Don’t go chasing rabbits into the weeds and get lost in the detail. When it comes to investors, less information is often better than too much.

Avoid using bullet points. These are distracting and don’t help the narrative flow as it should. Use larger fonts and limit the content on each page. Wordiness = lost opportunities.

Tell a story. People love to listen to stories; numbers don’t inspire people, but stories do. All you need to do is to generate interest in your idea, so don’t go for full disclosure in the pitch deck. People will just turn off and stop listening.

Keep it short. The maximum attention span for most people is – at most – 20 minutes.

Keep it open to questions. Be sure to let investors ask questions as you go along but be disciplined by not chasing rabbits. If you treat investors with respect by letting them get involved in the presentation, they will appreciate it. Importantly, they will also make inferences from your approach and demeanor in the pitch about how you plan to treat your customers!

Don’t go overboard with the market opportunity. Focus on bottom up analysis and forecasts that provide realistic expectations for growth.

Ask for the investment. You’d be surprised how many entrepreneurs don’t do this, but you have to be ready to talk about how the money will be used.

Keep the pitch deck current. There’s nothing worse than going into a pitch with stale data and out-of-date information.

Send the deck as a PDF, not as a PPT file. Not only does this let you control the branding and appearance, but it also ensures that the information in the deck can’t be altered.

Be certain that the pitch deck stands alone without a presentation to back it up. In other words, it should tell the story clearly even if you aren’t there to narrate it.

Be willing to think laterally and be flexible. A straight line isn’t always the best way from Point A to Point B, so be willing to go sideways in order to go forward. Don’t be afraid of being creative.

Finally, and most importantly… be relentlessly positive!