The phrases you should axe from your pitch deck
What are the words or phrases that will have LPs rolling their eyes or regulators asking questions?
Expert analysis by Toby Mitchenall
For anyone spending the final weeks of 2024 finessing a pitch deck, here are some snippets of conversation that may help you edit.
At our?Impact & Transition Investor Summit in New York earlier this year, three allocators, a placement agent and a lawyer lined up to give their insights in a conversation that covered regulation, liquidity, natural capital, emerging managers and more.
As it neared the end of the session, the moderator asked a quickfire question: what is the one phrase you read in pitch decks that you would like to see retired or changed?
The lawyer went first with a biggie: “Sustainable”. Why? “Because there is a lot of greenwashing risk with the use of that term unless it is adequately defined.”
“I’d like GPs to do better in terms of transparency and how they use that term in decks,” she said.
Then followed a few phrases that may ring familiar: “Unique sourcing angle”; “hands on”; “proprietary pipeline”. Cue some nervous chuckles from the audience...