Pitch Decks - What slides do I need?

Avoiding Common Issues in Pitch Decks - What slides do I need?

As part of the Avoiding Common Issues in Startups series, let’s talk about the slides that you need to include in your #PitchDeck. Of course your audience and the stage of your business are going to have a large influence on this, but we’ll cover the basics of what you need for a Pitch Deck aimed for investors in this article. If you think I missed anything, please comment below.?

General Guidelines

Your Pitch Deck is the equivalent of an Annual Report in the Corporate world. A good one can even serve as an effective Business Plan.?

Here are a few things to keep in mind as you are developing your Pitch Deck:

• Usually, your goal is to get people interested in your company and get a follow-up meeting.
• Simple is always better.
• A picture (or graphic) is worth a thousand words
• You are telling a story, make sure it flows well all the way through.
• You are going to have two or three things that you want your audience to take away from your Pitch. Figure those out before you start writing your Pitch Deck and work to highlight them in the deck. Also, highlight them on the last slide, if possible.
• The slides should have a consistent theme and color scheme.?
• Title each slide with the names given in this article. Investors are very smart people, but they are used to seeing things in a certain way. Make it easy for them to know what they are seeing.
• Number your slides.

It is worth reiterating how important it is to keep your Pitch Deck updated and tailor it as much as possible to the audience in front of you.?As mentioned in a previous article, we are now 2 months into the new year. All historical data for your company and market should be updated to last year, if at all possible. 2022 seems like it is out of sight in the rearview mirror and is irrelevant.

Also, make the slides look professional and visually appealing. If you don’t have that skill set, then get a commercial graphic designer to help you. There are some incredibly skilled people out there with great tools (e.g., Adobe Creative Suite), and in the end it is worth every penny.

Let's look at the slides...

First and Last Slides

To start, there are the painfully obvious, but incredibly important, First and Last Slides. I wrote an article covering those last week, so, please click here to read that (or the link above to get to all the articles in this series).

The Problem

State the problem in simple terms that someone outside your industry can easily understand. Sometimes this is easy. Sometimes it is really hard and takes many revisions. You may have to provide some industry context, but make sure that is done in layman’s terms. Get feedback from outsiders to make sure the problem statement is succinct and clear without a lot of industry jargon.?

Remember, if your audience doesn’t understand the problem that you are trying to solve, they will lose interest in the Pitch, and you won’t get them back.?

The Solution

Describe your solution in terms that outsiders will understand, being clear and concise without a lot of industry-specific terminology. Don’t fall for the illusion that your solution has to be complicated to be desirable. Quite the contrary.?

Complexity means risk. The more simple the solution is/appears, the more attractive it is!

If you have an app that is functional, use screen shots and say that these are actual screen shots from a working app! That is more impressive than using wire frames or mock-ups.?

Similar to The Problem section. If you lose your audience here, the rest of the deck is for naught.?

Our Story

Describe how you got into this business and why you are doing it. Why is it your passion? What happened to you personally to make you passionate about it? How did you get to be an expert in the field? Set yourself up to be the expert, who has witnessed The Problem first hand and found a way to overcome it. Convince your audience that YOU are the RIGHT person and the BEST person to solve this problem and that you can execute the solution. Bring emotion into it. Make it personal for the audience.?

This section is commonly placed before The Problem, between The Problem and The Solution, or after The Solution slides. It depends on where it best lands to help your Pitch Deck Storyline flow. We will talk more about the Slide Order in another article.?

The Market

This is a big one. Pay attention!

Make sure that you clearly define your market and that it aligns with the story you just told of the problem and solution. Make sure that what you put down REALLY IS your market. Your market is your buyer. For instance, if your service is sold to the real estate industry, don’t put your market size as $1 trillion (or whatever the value of all real estate transactions in a year is). The value of real estate sold in the US likely has nothing to do with the market size of your service. The number of transactions may be relevant, but the value of the real estate probably isn’t, unless your service price is for a percentage of the transaction amount.?(I have seen this one multiple times.)

Always try to use credible sources for your market research and cite them as a footer on your slide.?

Always use timely data. I have seen 8 year old data cited in a Pitch Competition. Honestly, it was so long ago that I hardly remember 2016. What market hasn’t changed significantly in the last 8 years? It just made the founder lose credibility with the audience.?

Sometimes market data is just not available. That is understandable and ok. In these cases estimates will have to be used. Make sure you talk through your assumptions and estimate calculations at a high level in your pitch. If you don’t, you are almost guaranteed to get questions about it at the end.?

If you don’t know the terms TAM, SAM, and SOM, Google them, understand them for your market, and put them in your slide in a nice graphic format.

(Sorry, but TAM, SAM, and SOM are outside the scope of this article.)

Warning: This statement is a red flag for investors: “This is a $14B industry and I only need 0.1% to be wildly successful.” This tells investors a couple of things (and none of them are good).

1. If the numbers are accurate, i.e., it really is a $14B industry, then there is likely a lot of competition.
2. Any competition is probably well established.
3. You haven’t really done your homework to understand the niches within this giant industry. (The niches are likely where you will be successful in a large industry.)
4. There probably isn’t a defined, realistic marketing plan for the company.?

This section can be very difficult, especially for emerging technologies. Take the time to figure this out thoroughly! Investors are very interested in understanding the market, and you should be too! Getting this wrong has cratered a lot of businesses. A quick Google search will show you that around 33% to 35% of businesses fail due to poor product-market fit. Investors know this - now, so do you!

Traction

There isn’t a better part of the Pitch Deck to show progress and get your audience excited about your business. I was a victim of this two weeks ago. I was reviewing a Pitch Deck about an industry that could be interesting. I didn’t know much about it, and it wasn’t terribly flashy or trendy. In fact, it was in an industry that I thought would be shrinking. When I saw how much traction (in terms of customers, revenue, and profitability) the company had, I got very interested, very quickly!

Show your progress. Be creative in the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that you show. Showing increases in revenue, profitability, and customers is first and foremost, but think of other, unique ways that you can show your success. The further along your business is, the more information you should have.?

And, make the slide pretty. It should be visually appealing. Remember that KPIs that go up and to the right on charts and graphs are generally a good thing!

Financials

Share your financials, past, present, and future. Show what money has been put in the company and the results of what you did with it. Create confidence that you used the resources that you had effectively and that you can keep growing this company.

Try to make this as visually appealing as possible. I.e., don’t insert a table with a lot of numbers on it - nobody can read all of it and you can’t explain all of it during a Pitch. Having the table with the numbers in a follow-up deck is great, though - it shows you are prepared with and understand the details.

Charts and graphs are usually better than tables with a bunch of numbers.?

The Team

The Team slide highlights the team’s past accomplishments and gives your audience confidence that the team will be successful. Make the leaders of the company more prominent on the page. List the role with each person’s picture, and maybe a phrase about what experience they bring to the team.?

This isn’t meant to be a copy of the teams’ resumes, rather a very brief statement of their roles and what they do - and by brief, I mean a dozen words or less. I have seen logos of past employers used effectively to very quickly and concisely show that the team had great industry experience.

List your advisors and mentors on the page, but only if they are actively advising or mentoring you. Let them know that you are listing them as an advisor - just as you would (should) a reference on a resume. Don’t be surprised if a potential investor contacts the people that you list as advisors without letting you know first. They will likely ask how active they are in the company and if they are invested in it. If an investor contacts someone you have listed as an advisor, and that person has no idea what your company does or hasn’t been involved at more than a cursory level, that, obviously, hurts your credibility severely.?

Exit Strategy

This helps an investor understand your goal for the company and when he or she will get his or her money back, which is very important. It also helps them gauge risk. E.g., if your goal is to be acquired by a competitor and there are only a few competitors capable of buying your company, that may pose a risk. In that case, be prepared for them to ask you for a Plan B.

If your goal is to run the business indefinitely, make sure that you convey how and when the investors will recover their money.?

The Ask and Use of the Money

This is where you let the investors know how much money you want, when you want it, and what you are going to do with it. Again, use graphics in this section and try to avoid a bunch of bullet points.

In pitches with very limited time, an effective way to combine this with the financials is to create a timeline with a few data sets on it, such as milestones, revenue, number of users/customers, and profitability. Start at the beginning of the company. Show consistent growth. Show where you want and expect to be in terms of your KPIs in 3 to 5 years. Tell a positive story.

Summary

Every one of these sections could justify an entire article on its own. We have only discussed the basics here. The Pitch Deck is the core of your fundraising initiative. Get professional help with your Pitch Deck - or at a minimum, get an outsider to review it and provide honest feedback. Make sure your Pitch Deck tells a good story to someone with no experience in your industry.?

These are the base slides that are required in most any Pitch Deck. As noted previously in the article and the series, tailor your Pitch Deck to your audience. If you need to add a slide that is specific to the particular Pitch Competition, your story, or your ask, by all means, follow those instructions! Just keep it clear and concise.?

If this leaves you wondering, “this is great, but what order should I put the slides?” That will be the subject of an upcoming article.?

I have thrown a lot at you in this article. Digest it. Read it again later. Save it as a reference for writing your Pitch Deck.

Questions? Put them in a comment below.

Need help with your Pitch Deck? Direct Message me and we can talk.

Follow me to see more articles on #PitchDecks and other common #Startup issues that we see as they are published.?

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