A pitch deck is a brief presentation, often created using PowerPoint, Keynote or Prezi, used to provide your audience with a quick overview of your business plan. So, pitch deck is a fundraising tool that will help you get the million dollar funding. You will usually use your pitch deck during face-to-face or online meetings with potential investors, customers, partners, and co-founders.
Pitch Deck – A million dollar PPT
Entrepreneurs and Founders pay a lot of money for getting the right pitch deck for their startup, but why pay for the thing which can be achieved for free. At Entrepreneurial Development Council India , we help our incubated startups by providing them with pitch deck reviews by our panel of experts. The 12 month incubation program also offers 12k per month marketing allowance but more on it some day later.
The good 3-5 minutes in front of the investor are the most important moments for the founder, thus a pitch deck should be a culmination of good numbers in a concise and precise manner.
What makes a good pitch deck
Although it is very tempting to throw all your numbers and data on your potential investor, it is highly not recommended to do the same. Keeping your pitch deck as visual as possible is a good indicator of a successful pitch deck.
Here are the top most recommended slides which you must include in your pitch deck.
- Introduction
There must be several common reasons why 90 out of 100 startups fail and the person sitting in front of you has seen many worthy startups coming out as a failure. Think this before telling the investor about yourself and why you are the most eligible person standing in front of him. Try to keep it short and sweet.
- Team
Speak about the people behind your idea and why they are winners in their specific field. Describe their roles and prove to the investors that they are the hero of their own story.
- Problem
This is one of the most important slides of your presentation, and a complete article can be written about what should and what should not be included in the problem slide. Speak about what problem you are trying to solve and the market viability of that problem. Use Social proof to show that your problem does cater to a specific market and the problem is big enough to demonstrate commercial viability, hence the Goldilocks specificity. You can know more about the problem slide through this presentation by EDC India by clicking the button below!
- Advantages
Are you a first mover? Or do you have an innovation that is going to turn the existing market upside down? Speak about what makes your solution about the problem discussed earlier the best and most special one.
- Solution
Give a brief about your plan and how are you going to execute it. Keep it short and lay focus on what thing you are going to do differently from others. Make sure that the investors are awestruck by your way of doing it!
- Product/Service
How does your product or service actually work? Always remember that simplicity and automation are the key. If you have proof of your product or service in action with actual and good reviews, trust us, you are going to nail it.
- Traction
This slide should talk about the momentum your startup is getting and what is the initial growth. The traction decides when will your startup become a business and the parameter is your current customer which is a proof of your startup’s potential.
- Market
Predict the size of your market and prepare a plan about how you are going to capture that market. Let the numbers speak about your fundraising capital.
- Competition
It is well said that keep your friends close and your enemies closer, not exactly enemies but your competitors are fighting for the same bread that you are aiming for. Speak about what are the alternative solutions to the problem you are solving. Who are your competitors and how are you going to beat them.
- Business Model
This section of your pitch deck will speak about how you are planning to make money by providing your service or product to your potential users and being competitive to your competition out there. This page will be a glimpse of your Finance Deck, speaking about when you are expecting revenue to pour in.
- Investing
How are you going to use the money you are raising, will that money go into the infrastructure or will it be invested in the Human Resources for scooping out the best talent. In this slide you will prove the worth of your money that you are asking in return of the stake offered and how that is beneficial to the investor.
- Contact
Dedicate a slide about how to reach out to you quickly and drop links to your social media and other portfolios online.
Pitch Deck Must Do’s
- Storytelling
An emotional connection cannot be made by just telling facts and numbers, a good story is always needed and everyone loves a good story. Create a story around the use case of your product and make sure that the investors are engaged in your story.
- Conciseness
You must limit each slide to one idea and keep the thoughts of the audience on one idea being focussed on that page. Keep it short, visual and engaging to not lose the attention span of the investors.
- First Impression
Everybody likes surprises, first impressions are very powerful and if you manage to grab the attention of your investor then that impression is going to act as a huge plus for your startup.
- Consistency in your Presentation
Color Combination should be constant. Pay attention to font-size, font type and proper capitalization across all your slides. A professional look is important and must be reflected through your pitch deck.
- Know your Numbers
Traction, above all, speaks a lot louder than anything else. Show your numbers in a presentable manner that proves your accountability and future potential.
Pitch Deck Don’ts
- Don’t fire too many bullets
Avoid using a lot of bullet points for explaining anything. Too many bullets have the potential to kill your pitch deck.
- Don’t overstretch it
Your Pitch Deck should be between 10-15 slides, anything above that might go beyond the attention span of the investor sitting in front of you.
- Don’t be a transcriber
Nobody will like it if you will read word by word of your pitch deck. You are going to miss important eye contact and will be unable to understand the body language of the investors if you will be only looking at the pitch deck.
- No one likes boring texts
Images and visuals are scientifically proven to create a subconscious understanding about the subject. Avoid creating a text rich and picture poor presentation. Powerful images create an emotional connection with the audience.
- Don’t use small fonts
Keep your fonts large enough to be seen by all the audience members. Use 32 points to 44 points size for titles and more than 28 points size for normal text.
Conclusion
Pitch Deck is the million dollar presentation that proves the worth of your startup idea and thus should be created with caution and by keeping a lot of points in mind, which are mentioned in details above. Try to keep your pitch-deck concise and as visual as possible, and let your numbers speak for your startup and you.
Link to the awesome template: https://pitch-deck-edc-india.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/pitch.pdf
