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A pitch deck, also known as an investor pitch deck or a startup deck is an essential document for entrepreneurs. It lets potential investors know more about the business and help them decide if they want to invest. Pitch deck is one of the first tools entrepreneurs use to communicate with potential investors. It helps investors understand the purpose of the startup and make an educated decision about investing in them.
A pitch deck is a slide-based presentation designed to give a quick but detailed summary of your business.
There is a common question between entrepreneurs about which slides or how many should be in a pitch deck.
Let’s have a look at the slides to include in a pitch deck:
1. Cover: If you are making a live presentation, don’t forget: This will probably be the longest seen slide! On the cover slide, place your logo, your company name and write what your big idea as a slogan in one sentence. This is something that you do better than any competitor or something that differentiates you from the others. This one sentence must be understandable. You have limited time to engage your audience. The best way is to use attention-grabbing elements, like a catchy title, a snappy lead sentence and a good design. Apply your company brand colors and fonts.
2. Overview: Summarize the main points of your business/investment opportunity. Include your vision for the future too. Write this slide after you finish all the slides. This will be a visionary overview of your business.
3. Problem: Tell the audience which problem your business solves, why it is a problem, whose problem it is and why customers need your solution rather than the existing solutions. Don’t describe the problem too technically. Everybody should understand the problem in your specific area. If they don’t understand the problem, the rest of your pitch deck will not make any sense for them.
4. Solution: Tell about your solution to this problem, how you solve it and what benefits the customers will gain with that solution. Most entrepreneurs begin by focusing solely on their product, but they should rather be focused on the customer needs and on solving the problem that their product solves for them.
5. Product: Define and describe your product and the way it works in a few simple steps. Do not confuse the mind of your audience, they might not be as technical as you are. Describe your product as simple as you can. Tell about its good effects on the target customers. Tell the audience about the price too.
6. Business Model (Revenue Model): Describe how your business will make money. For example, it can be a subscription model, or a freemium model. It can be a retailer, franchise or a rental business, etc. The business model is important for your audience because they want to know about the characteristics of your revenue flow and they should have an idea about your business environment, supply chain, revenue streams, key partners, activities, resources and your cost structure.
7. Market Opportunity: Of course your product can solve a problem. But here is the question: Is it a problem worth solving? In other words, is there an enough market or group of customers interested in the problem that you are solving? Give your answers to these questions in this slide. How many customers are there in your market? How much revenue would your business generate if it could have dominated your target market? Write down the total market size and give a description about how you locate, position your company in that market. Consider dividing your market into different segments and targeting them with different types of marketing. You should also consider creating or adapting one type of product offering for each new segment.
8. Competition: Tell about your competitors and why your product is better than theirs. It is a killer mistake in a pitch deck to claim that there is no competition. This will frustrate the potential investors, since there is a broad description of competition.
First, identify the competition landscape. Have a clear look in your industry and similar industries and clearly describe where you stand. Analyze your competitors’ products/services, customers, financial numbers, businesses, strategies and tactics.
Describe where you stand in the competitive landscape and how you differentiate yourself from the competitors.
Some of the indicators that you can look at in a competitor are as below:
- Name & Location
- Overview of the company
- Founding year – experience & expertise
- Number of employees
- Size of the company
- Market share
- Products or Services they have
- Pricing
- Patents & Copyrights
- Brand Recognition
- Customer Service
- Technology
- Strategic Partnerships
- Human Resources
- Operational Systems
- Marketing Strategies
9. Marketing and sales strategy (Go To Market): In this slide, let the audience know about your marketing and sales plans. How will you attract the customers? Which channels will you use? How will customers buy your products? What will sales process look like? Do you have any marketing and sales advantages against your competitors? What is your Pricing strategy? What are your advantages or disadvantages?
Some examples to marketing strategies are:
- Social media advertising,
- Google ads, YouTube ads and web advertising
- Search engine optimization,
- Blogging,
- Influencers,
- Word of mouth,
- Blogging,
- Print ads, flyers,
- YouTube videos,
- Webinars,
- Networking events,
- Radio, Television ads, etc.
10. Roadmap : The roadmap slide allows investors to know about where your company was, how it is doing now, and what the future may bring for them. To present your startup’s long-term strategy, you’ll want to use a roadmap slide. It will show investors where your company is headed and how it plans to grow in the future. Use a timeline and milestones to show about your past accomplishments, present situation and future projections and goals.
11. Traction: This slide is where you show the audience what you have achieved so far. This slide can be proof that your customers love your product and are happy to pay for it. If you already have a growing number of users or customers, it would be a good idea to show this with a line graph.
12. Financials: Show your projected sales forecast, income statement and cash flow statement for the next 3-5 years. Be realistic. Do not overestimate, investors are not fool. If you are just starting up, do not put detailed 20-line projections. Just give an overview to the audience about how you can grow your business and how you can make profits in the upcoming years. Avoid in-depth spreadsheets. Be ready to answers questions about how you reached the sales numbers, how you estimated the costs, etc. In short, you must be prepared to answer the underlying assumptions to your financial numbers.
13. Team: Explain in detail why you and your team are the right people for this company. Introduce separately each key team member, give information about their past companies and achievements and define how they will be beneficial for your company.
14. Funding: You should definitely and clearly ask how much money you need and inform the audience about how you will use these funds. Investors always want to know how their money will be used and what benefits it is going to provide for your business.
15. “Thanks!” Slide : Thank your audience for their time and write your contact information.
16. Appendix and Sources : Not mandatory, but feel free to include. Also you can include some press reviews, referrals, etc. if you have.