You need an impressive pitch deck to raise money for your business. It is important to create a pitch deck that engages your potential investors and gets them excited about your idea, hopefully leading to an investment. You will learn what you need to include in your investment pitch deck in this article.
Having listened to hundreds, if not thousands, of elevator speeches and pitch presentations, I am leveraging my knowledge. Having seen many different types of pitch decks and presentations, I’ve found a simple formula that always works.
Also, I have built my own and presented to major Silicon Valley VC firms over the years.
-
Vision and value proposition
This is a one-sentence summary of your business and its value to customers. Keeping it short and simple is best. Imagine this slide as a short tweet — describe your business in 140 characters or less in a way that your parents would understand.
Many tech companies compare their value propositions to those of other well-known companies. As an example, you see many pitches that begin with:
“We’re the Uber for Pets”
“We’re the Netflix for Video Games”
Using a high profile company like Uber as an example of growth potential may work, but make sure your comparison makes sense. You must have a business model that is similar to the company you are referencing.
-
The problem
With your business, you’re going to have a long uphill climb if you aren’t solving a problem.
Use this slide to explain what you are trying to solve and who the problem affects. It’s okay to discuss current solutions in the market, but don’t spend too much time discussing the competitive landscape on this slide.
If you are defining the problem, try to make it relatable by telling a story. Making the problm as real as possible will help your investors better understand your business.
-
Target market and opportunity
The purpose of this slide is to describe your ideal customer and how many there are. In what market is your company positioned and what is its total market size? To get a sense of the total market size, investors will want to know how much people or businesses are spending in the market. The scope and scale of the problem you are solving are described here.
You may want to divide your market into segments that you’ll target with different marketing methods and perhaps different products.
This slide should be handled with care, however. Trying to define your market as broadly as possible can be tempting. You will need to show investors that you have a very specific and reachable market. Specificity makes your pitch more realistic.
-
The solution
Lastly, describe the product or service you offer. Show how your product solves the problems you outlined on slide two by describing how it is used by customers.
It will be tempting to move this slide closer to the beginning of your pitch deck, but resist the urge. This is classic storytelling, where you describe how bad the problem is for a lot of people. The solution to that problem is your product or service.
When entrepreneurs should focus on their customers and their problems instead of their product, they are very focused on their product. This format will help you tell a more compelling story with your pitch deck.
Describe your solution using pictures and stories if you can. Almost always, showing is better than telling.
-
Revenue model or business model
The next step is to explain how your product or service makes money. Who pays your bills and what do you charge? It’s important to flesh out the details here for some businesses (content sites, for instance), which rely on advertisers instead of users to pay their bills.
This is also a good place to discuss the competitive landscape and how your pricing fits into it. What is the price point of your offering? Does it undercut existing solutions on the market or is it premium, high-priced?
Read more
List of Slides to Be Present in the Pitch Deck
Optional Sides to include in the Pitch Deck