Pitch-Deck - A PPT to Inspire Investors

Pitch deck is a short presentation (10-15 slides) that a founder uses to introduce his business idea to potential investors, customers & partners. A good Pitch-deck helps you to present your idea with a business sense and enables investors to understand it leading to meaningful conversations. Few things a founder should remember in his pitch deck:

Answers of Fundamental Questions:

That an investor needs answers to. Such as:

• What problem you are solving?
• Who will buy your product and revenue model
• Why you are unique of special?
• How big is your market and how fast it is growing?
• How to get your customers and retaining them?
• Profitability and scale of the business?

Answers to 2 Primary Concerns:

1. Return of investment: As founder, you need to give them confidence that you can deliver the higher return at lower risk then other opportunities of investments. (T2D3 Revenue growth: Triple Triple-Double-Double-Double)

• Minimizing Risk: Provide details about how you are going to minimize 3 risks - (1) Market Risk (2) Product Risk (3) Execution Risk (AKA Team risk) and avoid startup failures (90% startup fails in first 5 years).

Current Traction: Having traction from potential customers is the best way to showcase your business idea to investors. It says a volume about your idea, execution, product and team capabilities to minimize all risks and strengthen returns of the investments.

Story Narration: Listening your pitch-deck presentation should feel like listening a story. It should instantly catch attentions and interests of listeners. Where you validate your theories with data as Numbers don’t lie. You don't need to provide everything on pitch-deck to keep it small and brief. Keep working on your narration and pitchdeck content with the frequent feedbacks received from the investors.

Bottom line: You don’t need to impress hundreds of people to write cheques for you, but only 1 or 2 investors. Be honest, progressive and perseverant while pushing and working on your way. You will find a way!

Headlines of an effective pitch-deck:

1. Cover: Your brand name and the big idea. Your logo and a smiling beneficiary photo.
2. Problem: Describe the problem and how the target customers are suffering from current solutions.
3. Solution: Explain a better solution & list of benefits of users and customers
4. Product: Show how your product works in 3 to 4 steps. (Keep it visual)
5. Revenue Model: How you make money
6. Target Market: Total market size in terms of revenue
7. USP or Underlying Magic
8. Competition & Comparables: List them in a matrix, table and feature wise comparison
9. Growth Strategy or Marketing Plan: How you will acquire and retain customers and keep your product competitive.
10. Traction / Milestones: Data that shows users/customers love your product and are willing to pay for it.
11. Financials: A simple bar graph showing next 3 years revenue projection with raising investments. (with 2-3 major assumptions)
12. Team: Introduce your team and its background that shows the high chance to execute the vision.
13. Funding: How much money you need and its utilization
14. Summary: Restate the highlights of business and investment opportunity to refresh the whole presentation
15. Appendix: Optional. Press mentions, happy customer quotes, detailed financial model, executive and advisor bios, etc.

Bonus: https://bit.ly/1f-pitch 

1. Framework & guidelines to create your pitch-deck slides.
2. Famous pitch-decks: (1) Facebook-2004 pitch deck | (2) Airbnb-2008 pitch deck | (3) Uber pitch deck | (4) Linkedin-2004 series B pitch deck
3. Pitch-deck templates: Ratan Tata, Sequoia Capital