Pitch Deck To Take To Investors

As a new entrepreneur, you might have cleared all the initial steps for your start-up like having an idea, goal, structure and long-term plans. But what about raising the capital? The capital can be raised by convincing business partners and inviting angel investors to invest in your business. Believe me, it is one of the most difficult tasks and is time-consuming as you are supposed to establish the value of your company via a compelling story. For raising the capital you require a successful pitch deck.

Whether your project needs a few thousand dollars or millions, it is essential for you to provide investors an insight into your business. And you can provide that through a presentation which is fundamentally called Pitch deck. The presentations are designed to summarise your company, your business plans, and long-term vision.

All large-scale businesses also started as a small enterprise which at some point had prepared pitch decks to take in investors. Even one of the most successful companies like Facebook and Google began with creating pitch decks. But preparing a pitch deck is not as easy as it seems. A professional and a pleasing pitch deck requires

A balanced approach like a great design, precise, crisp and complete information, accurate facts and statistics.

Before giving examples of successful pitch decks, look at some of the most important elements that are required for a great pitch deck:

1. A strong and self-explanatory summary slide

The first and the foremost slide should be a summary slide that sums up the whole business. The initial slide should be such that it attracts attention and communicates the extract of the whole business. Also, do not forget to provide the summary slides with a catchy headline that gives a gist of the whole concept.

2. The members involved in the business i.e. the team

Remember the investors will invest in your team, your goal, your passion. The slides should highlight your strengths in the form of the team you possess and bring the investors in confidence about your big future plans. So, the team is something that your investors look for. Invest in your manpower before you expect investors to do the same.

3. Your product/service

Explain how your product/service differs from the existing ones in the market. Also, describe the problems your product will meet the unmet demands of the market and solve untouched issues. So, the next few slides should describe YOU and YOUR PRODUCT.

4. The problem you will be solving

The slides that focus on problem and solution ideally convey the nature of market opportunities your business would address. Also, it reflects the size of the unexplored market opportunity. These should be two obligatory slides while preparing a pitch deck.

5. Marketing and promotion

The slides with marketing strategies will mirror the process about how to roll out the product in the market and capture the market share. Till you reach this part of the slide, you should be able to knock out the audience with your product and service.

6. Financial

Being a start-up the numbers in your projections will hardly matter. Nonetheless, weaving together factual and thoughtful projections on the revenue, expenditures will enhance authenticity and authority with the investors. Although they may feel your projections as premature, they will applaud your understanding of the financial market.

Above all, remember you need to be creative and set a particular tone for your whole presentation.

Examples of the successful pitch decks 2019

Do you know even the most successful businesses today began from a successful pitch deck? Your idea, metrics, concept validation is what defines whether your deck is appealing or not. Have a look at some of the instances of the successful pitch decks of the year:

Today every single person is connected via social media. The platform has thereby turned the world into a global village. But it was not a bed of roses for its co-founders 21-year-old Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zukerberg to make Facebook (named later) a world-renowned and widely used social media platform. The founders were trying to convince people to invest money into their idea of the facebook.com

Both the co-founders had basically created a media kit that contained the company’s online marketing strategy, key matrics and company’s value proposition as their pitch deck.

Initially, Facebook was not making any money so their presentation did not have a slide on revenue traction. In fact, their pitch deck did not even have a problem slide as it was being primarily created for digital interaction among college students.

Uber which was originally called UberCab has evolved from a simple idea to wide platform, thereby bringing a revolution into the car service industry. The co-founder of Uber Garret Cap had used a Pitch deck that contained everything from the UberCab concept to car services, operating systems, user benefits, marketing ideas, and future optimization to raise money in 2008.

Airbnb has used cover, problem, solution, Market validation, market size, business model, competition, team, press, financial, user testimonials and competitive advantages into its pitch deck. The above points make a pitch deck reliable and attract the investors towards the business. So, the amount of elements in the pitch deck conveys the appropriate message and adds value to the business.

Just like Uber, the pitch deck of Youtube was simple and straight forward. The best part of Youtube pitch deck was:

• The founders knew what they wanted and that was coherently mentioned in their pitch deck.
• They also banked on their team, which had sent the message that the people were highly skilled and professional.
• They even presented the metrics which made them even surer about the business and its abilities to capture the market.

Remember your pitch deck should have a balanced approach towards the text and the graphics. The pitch presentation differs from the demo day presentation where you will be doing all the talking. Unlike demo day presentations, a start-up pitch presentations should be self-explanatory as you might not be there to present everything.

Originally published at https://www.volumetree.com on October 4, 2019.