A pitch deck is a short narrative that budding entrepreneurs prepare when they approach investors. The pitch deck includes the company’s vision statement, future goals, and inspiration behind the founders’ ideas. But when you’re meeting with investors, you don’t get a do-over. Your startup pitch deck must be elaborate, explaining your mission from pre-seed to Series A, but at the same time, it must leave an impact on the listeners. Here’s a quick guide on creating the perfect investor pitch deck.
How does your pitch deck benefit potential investors?
A pitch deck is a slide show curated by founders to present to the investors before commencing a fundraiser. Before an investor decides to put down their money into a startup, they wish to see if the company will be a potential success. For this, an investor pitch deck is divided into two parts:
1. A teaser deck: Teaser decks build the investors’ enthusiasm as they begin learning about the idea, the team working on it, and the products they aim to build.
2. A long-form deck: This comes up when the investor agrees to the first meeting with the founders. It contains an elaborate explanation of the startup journey. It uses current market trends and their relevance to the product, a proposal, customer reviews, as well as a description of the team.
At what point should you have your pitch deck ready?
Presentation day calls for solid preparation for investors. So it would help if you had your startup pitch deck ready for a demo presentation before meeting the investors. If you are a couple of days or weeks ahead of schedule, you will have room for improvement.
Attributes to include in your investor pitch deck.
You cannot call a pitch deck complete and perfect unless you include certain elements.
- Vision Statement: Your end goals in the business matter, but your perception of the concerning industry is of greater importance.
- The Product: Your product or solution is the most crucial element of your pitch deck. How do you plan on designing and creating it? Include pictures and specifications for more details.
- Current Market: A potential consumer environment helps investors picture how the product may perform in the market.
- Engagement: This element is more relevant to a later stage in the startup. Factors like customer conversion, returns, profit generation, or references will help gather more funding from future investors.
- Challengers: place yourself among rivals in the market to show the investors where you stand in the competitive market.
- Performance Numbers: Your pitch deck must portray stable financial planning. You will have more data for this element once your company is independently established. The investor pitch deck should include the statistics of customers, monthly profits, gross merchandise value, and total revenues.
- The Team: A startup is made of people. The investor is backing a group of like-minded, dedicated, and enthusiastic individuals who support the company’s vision. Show the investors why your team qualifies for the problem-solving role and how they stand out.
Pitch deck modifications in different stages of the business
A startup goes through many stages as the business advances. First, it faces actual market conditions and undergoes economic unpredictability. Thus, it would help if you altered your investor pitch deck at different stages.
- Pre-seed: Team overview, rivals in the market, insights on the future, and a game plan.
- Seed: The above attributes, minimum viable product (MVP), new customers, and a sound direction for product-market fit (PMF).
- Series A: A 75% success rate in PMF with actual customers and a strategy for increasing demand
- Series B: Achieved 100% PMF, the scope for the increasing scale of the business, and new product launch
Some don’ts
- While an extensive pitch deck will attract investors, you don’t want to throw them off either with a 20-page deck.
- Long-term goals are solely based on numerical projections. They’re not facts.
- Steer clear of fake news regarding customers because investors will double-check your data.
Final Takeaway For your startup pitch deck to stand out to potential investors, make it visually appealing. Make sure your deck does not have many intricacies because investor feedback will require you to make edits. Remember that with investor pitch decks, less is more.
