When you are raising funds for the company of yours, having an impressive pitch deck is actually a vital component in your fundraising toolkit. A terrific pitch deck gets potential investors excited about your idea and engages them in a chat about the company of yours, hopefully leading to an investment.
In the following paragraphs, I will provide you with the formula for what you need to include in your own pitch deck.
Goals for your pitch deck This might sound counterintuitive, but your pitch deck’s goal isn’t to raise money. What? I know that does not sound right, but your pitch deck’s true objective is usually to reach the next meeting.
Remember, your pitch deck and pitch presentation are most likely several of the first things an investor will see to find out more about the business. And because investments rarely are made after only one meeting, your main goal is to spark interest in the business. It would help if you had investors ask for more after hearing your pitch and not showing you to the home.
Thus, while a good pitch deck is important to raising money, the deck’s major goal is usually to reach the next step – a request along with another meeting for more info.
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The eleven slides to include in your pitch deck one.
1. Vision and value proposition
This’s a quick one-sentence overview of the business yours and the importance you provide to your clients. Could you keep it simple and short? A fantastic way to consider this slide is usually to picture it as a terse tweet – describe the business yours in 140 characters or even less in a way the parents of yours will understand.
2. The problem
When you are not solving some problem in the world, you’re likely to have a long uphill climb with the company of yours.
Use this slide to discuss the problem you’re solving and who’s the issue. You can discuss the current solutions in the market, but do not spend a lot of time on the competitive landscape on this slide – you will have an opportunity to do this later on.
Ideally, try and tell a relatable story when you’re defining the problem. The more you can make the issue as real as possible, the more the investors of yours will understand the business yours and your goals.
3. Opportunity and target market
Use this slide to expand on who your perfect customer is actually and how a lot of them there are actually. What’s the total market size, and how do you position the business yours in the marketplace? When you can find the data, investors will want to know exactly how much folks or perhaps businesses currently spend in the market to get a feeling of the total market size. This’s exactly where you tell the story about the scope and scale of the problem you’re solving.
If it makes sense for you, you will want to divide your market into segments that you will address with different marketing types and perhaps different types of product offerings.
Be cautious with this slide, though. It is tempting to try and define the market of yours to be as large as is possible. Instead, investors are going to want to see you have a reachable and specific very market. The greater specific you’re, the more realistic the pitch yours will be.
4. The solution
Lastly, you get to dive into describing your service or perhaps product. Describe exactly how customers use your product and just how it addresses the issues you outlined on slide 2.
You will be tempted to move this slide closer to the start of your pitch deck, but try and resist the temptation. This’s classic storytelling where you build up the problem and describe how awful it’s for lots of folks. Now the product of yours or perhaps service is actually coming to the rescue to help solve that issue.
Most business owners are extremely focused on their product when they have to be centered on the customers of theirs and the issues those customers face. Try and keep your pitch deck focused with this format, and you will tell a much better story.
If at all possible, use photos and stories when you describe the solution of yours. Showing is almost always better than telling.
5. Revenue model or perhaps the business model
Now you have described your service or perhaps product; you have to discuss how it makes money. What do you charge, and who pays the bills? For many businesses (content sites, for example), advertisers pay the bills rather than users, so it is important to flesh out the details.
You can also reference the competitive landscape and talk about how your pricing fits into the bigger market. Are you a premium, high price offering, or perhaps a budget offering that undercuts existing solutions on the market?
6. Traction and validation/roadmap
In case you currently have early adopters or perhaps sales using the product of yours, talk about that here. Investors wish to see you’ve proven some aspect of the business model yours as that reduces risk, so any proof you have that validates that your solution works to resolve the problem you’ve identified is incredibly effective.
You can also use this slide to talk about the milestones of yours. What major goals have you achieved so much, and what are the major next steps you plan to take? A product or perhaps company roadmap that outlines key milestones is actually useful here.
7. Marketing and sales strategy
Just how are you planning on getting customers’ attention, and what’ll your sales process be like? Use this slide to outline your marketing and sales plan. You will want to detail the key tactics that you plan to use to get the product of yours in front of prospective customers.
Winning and finding customers can sometimes be probably the biggest challenge for a startup, so it is essential to show you have a great grasp of just how you will reach the audience of yours and what sales channels you plan on using.
If your marketing and sales process is actually different from yours, it is essential to highlight that here.
8. Team
Precisely why are you and the team of yours the best folks to build and grow this company? What experience do you have that others do not? Highlight the critical team members, their successes at some other companies, and the key expertise they bring to the table.
Even if you do not have a total team, however, identify the key positions that you still have to fill and why those positions are actually critical to company growth.
9. Financials
Investors will expect to see your financials: sales forecast, income statement (also called profit and loss statement), and cash flow forecast for a minimum of 3 years.
Nevertheless, it would help if you did not have in-depth spreadsheets for your pitch deck to be tough to read and consume in a presentation format. Limit yourself to charts that show profits, total expenses, total customers, and sales.
You must be ready to go over the underlying assumptions that you have made to arrive at your sales goals and what your key expense drivers are actually.
Be sure you try and be realistic. Investors see hockey stick projections all the time and will mentally be cutting the projections of yours in half. When you can explain your growth based on the traction you currently have or compare it to a similar company in a related industry, that’s very helpful.
10. Competition
Every business has competition in one form or perhaps another. Even if you’re opening up an entirely new market, the potential customers of yours are actually using alternative solutions to solve their problems today.
Describe exactly how you fit into the competitive landscape and just how you are different from competitors and alternatives that are actually on the market today. What key advantages do you’ve over the competition, or perhaps is actually there some secret sauce that you’ve, and others do not?
The key here’s explaining exactly how you’re different from the other players on the market and why customers will pick you rather than one of the other players.
11. Use and investment of funds
Lastly, it is time to really ask for the investment. That is exactly why you are doing this pitch deck, right? I know – I said that this pitch deck is not about actually getting funded. That is still true, but the potential investors need to find out the amount of money you’re searching for.
More to the point, you have to have the ability to explain the reason why you want the sum of money you’re asking for and just how you intend on making use of the cash. Investors will want to know how their money is actually being used and how it’s likely to enable you to achieve the goals you’re setting out for the business.
In case you currently have some investors on board, today is when you need to be discussing those other investors and why they chose to commit.
Other slides you might include in your pitch deck
While you want to keep your pitch deck short, you might need or even want to add in a couple of extra slides that help describe the business. You probably will not utilize them when you present, but they may be an excellent resource for investors to review after the fact.
Below are a few additional slides that are typically found in investor presentations.
Exit strategy
If you’re raising money from investors, you will have to show them exactly how you intend on giving them a return. You do this in the form of an exit strategy slide that outlines who your potential acquirers might be if you find a way to grow your company and be effective. Having an IPO and going public is actually a practical choice for some high-growth startups. At the same time, other organizations are very likely to be bought by larger players in the sector of yours.
Partnerships
Several businesses have key strategic partnerships which are essential to the success of theirs. This could usually be in the form of intellectual property licensing from a faculty or perhaps a key distribution partner who’ll be taking your product to sell. If your success relies on these kinds of partnerships, it is essential to showcase them.
Screenshots and demo
If you have a prototype of the product of yours, screenshots of the internet service of yours, or perhaps some other show and tell opportunities, it is wonderful to include things like a placeholder slide in the deck of yours in which you’ll really show your potential investors how your product works and what it does.
Other documentation
Keeping your pitch deck as succinct and short as possible is actually critical. Remember, your main goal is not to provide investors with all of the info they have to develop an investment decision. The primary objective is usually to tell a story, build excitement, as welandget that all-important request for additional info and a follow-up meeting.
You need to have more detailed, additional info that you can provide if requested, along with your pitch deck. Preparing these additional documents can also help make sure you do not attempt to fill your presentation with too much overwhelming info.
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