Which slides of the pitch deck will get you the biggest bang for your buck? Well, let’s simplify that question. On which slides are you going to spend valuable time crafting and polishing every detail? When you make every slide look great, you naturally create a higher quality impression overall. All of the slides in the pitch deck are important, but some are more important than others.
When you look at examples of pitch decks that have been successful in collecting funding, you will notice that they are rarely very large. A successful pitch deck is short and concise, with an eye for design and storytelling as much as for data and information.
In our experience, it’s best to focus on making those few killers slides good. There are three important slides in a pitch deck that should look good. Given that, a good pitch deck needs only directly answer three questions about your company: your problem, your solution, and your traction. Problem: some aspect of the world that you can make better. Your Solution: how you’re going to do it. Traction: where you are, what progress you’ve made on the problem, and how the market has responded so far.
1. Cover Slide
To ensure that investors make the best use of every minute spent evaluating a pitch deck, an angel or VC investor will be skimming your deck, looking mainly for big, juicy red flags that can make or break your chances. The cover slide has tremendous weight in this context. It’s the first thing the investor sees and you’re giving the investor a clear opportunity to put down his iPad and walk away from you if what he sees doesn’t pique his interest. The cover page should include all the important information of a pitch deck. Keep a simple logo, a colourful image that keeps investors engaged with your content.
2. Team Details
In terms of people, a startup is not just its founders. It’s also the one or two employees that are going to remain. The idea is they’re not going to be staying there forever and their interest will be to leave as soon as possible. The pitch deck needs to have a clear introduction about the team and how it will help the product grow. The goal of this slide is to give the investors a very good picture of your team. You introduce the people, their strengths and weaknesses, what is their experience outside the company? How are they connected to investors?
3. Financial Details
The investor wants to see critical data and benchmarks easily understood, especially at the early stage. And they want to understand the assumptions behind them so they can validate them. The pitch deck needs to include all the financial plans and gains that are going to be in the company. The best startup pitch decks are based on facts, not opinions. Startups should base their pitches on ‘rough orders of magnitude’ calculations, and never rely on exact figures until the business is proven. They include market analysis and growth.
A great pitch deck is not about filling in every little detail. Even less so should it be about verbal explanations and storytelling. It’s meant to convince investors that they should take the next step with you, inviting them into your company’s ecosystem, where they will be able to meet and have conversations with the founders. The goal of your investor pitch deck is to drive interest and get to the next phase of knowing each other better. It is not to convince them that they should invest in you.
