Complete Guide on Pitch Deck: How to Make a Convincing Presentation for Investors?

In search of funds, loads of founders are looking for investors to pitch their startup ideas and raise money. The easiest way to do it is a pitch deck, a brief presentation covering the key points of your project.

But don`t jump into pitching right away. In order to persuade the investor to choose your startup among the rest, you have to make your presentation stand out. Today we`ll teach you the art of a compelling pitch deck providing a step-by-step structure and mistakes to avoid.

What Is a Pitch Deck?

This is a short presentation that provides potential investors with an overview of your company's business model, products, services, team, and growth prospects. Fundraising is a multistage process where your pitch deck is the first stpe to take. The aim of a pitch deck is to catch investors`attention, make the believe in your project, and hence invest in it. If investors make another appointment with you after the presentation, you`ve pulled the challenge off.

Typically, a pitch deck consists of several slides that reflect the core aspects of your startup. You can make such a presentation using a standard program, for example PowerPoint or more advanced software like Beautiful.ai, Visme, SlideBean‍, Canva, or Google Slides + Creative market‍.

Pitch Deck Structure

Now let`s take a closer look at the components of a good startup presentation.

Introduction

To get off to a good start, you should be short and sweet. It literally takes one sentence to tell you who you are and what kind of project you represent. There`s no need to drag it on, so don`t be afraid to cut to the chase.

Problem

The idea of a startup is centered around a certain problem. It doesn't have to be global, the main thing is to focus on the most pressing issues that concern your potential customers, and clearly indicate what your product will be useful for and why they will buy it.

For instance, if you offer an app for travelling, you can say the following :"Travellers from all around the world encounter difficulties when moving around the city or finding the places they need. Our app is committed to tackling this problem with the help of travel-friendly guides, detailed instructions, and reviews."

You should also mention earlier ways of solving this problem and how you identified it. Let`s say you have conducted surveys among travellers and found out they suffer from complicated routes and lack of interactive guidebooks. Remember that facts are sounder than words.

Solution

Now you need to present your product in a clear and catchy manner. How can your service solve the mentioned problem and make someone's life better? Why now? A sense of urgency is a great trick up your sleeve.

How can the idea be scaled? And all this should be put on one slide with a minimum number of letters so that it is easy to read. Imagine writing an app description in the App Store — there should be a couple of lines that are yet able to get the main message across.

We recommend avoiding overconfident statements that you are a pioneer on the market. Maybe there are dozens of upcoming or existing companies with the same idea but you don`t know yet. But it is up to you to prove that only your product will lead to success.

Business model

Although it's important that your startup makes the world a better place, it`s not enough. Any investor wants to make sure you have a clear idea of how to monetize the product. Whether it`s one-time sales, subscription, or freemium, you need to determine a business model and pricing method.

How will you attract customers? What sales channels will you use? This is not the case when money is not talked about, so you can safely elaborate on the smallest details from the unit cost to margin to the margin amount.

If you have several ways or hypotheses of monetization and lack time, do not try to cover everything at once. Instead, highlight the most effective tools, but be ready to tell more about the rest during the questions.

Market

This is one of the most controversial aspects. Its first problem is an exaggeration of the market scale, which immediately fosters doubts about your project. The second one is the shortage of data and blurred statements without statistics.

As a rule, investors are focused on the long term expecting to gain a 10-fold, or even more, profit in 5-7 years. Therefore, they need to ensure that the market may provide such growth, that is, it is already large enough or has potential.

Market research is conducted "top-down" or "bottom-up". In the first case, you will most likely need third-party research of reputable companies to assess the overall market volume. Here it is worth specifying the data on TAM (Total Addressable Market) that reflects the total valuation of the target market and SAM (Serviceable Available Market) which shows the available market volume.

You should also state the market share you are intended to occupy. To get more insights about the market research, check out our article.

Competitors

Bold statements about the absence of competitors are better to cast away. Even if you don't see direct competition yet, it's better to give an example of slightly different companies than nothing. 

The slide should have a brief description or the names of your competitors. And the main thing is the advantage that makes you competitive on the market. Try to quantify your strengths — it is more effective to say "30% resistant" than "much more resistant" or "4 times more expensive" than "much more expensive". 

Take advantage of graphs to better display the differences between you and competitors. They are convenient for familiarization, but be careful with such images, because the characteristics of the company need to be considered along with the trends, and industry peculiarities.

The investor wants to see a holistic understanding of the market situation, and not just an optimistic chart. Sometimes it is more advantageous to focus on what exactly distinguishes you from the rest and why this feature will definitely shoot.

Team

Despite it might seem to be the simplest presentation slide, it greatly affects the result. The way you introduce your team can lead an investor to two conclusions. They may either believe you have a brilliant team or have doubts about its competitiveness.

If you have 10 or more people in your team, you don't need to talk about each one. Specify the total number and describe the professional background of key employees, especially of interest to the investor: founders, executive and technical directors, as well as marketing specialists.

Investors value achievements in sales or product development more than university diplomas or winning competitions. So if you possess vast experience in any of venture fields, focus on it. It is important that the project participants complement one another and the team composition is not homogeneous, but consistent.

Traction

By this point, you have already told investors about the project and how you want to bring it to life — now is the time to prove that this is more than a dream. This slide depends on what stage of development your startup is at. If you have something to boast so far, don`t hesitate to elaborate on them. But not to sound phony, provide some specifics like sales volume, number of customers, or monthly growth. Describe how long the main points of development last, including the idea, prototype and the first sales, that is, show your tracking.

In addition, a development plan is a must for a startup at any stage. Build a step-by-step roadmap for a year or even several years ahead. This strategic document is important both for the team itself to agree on a common vision of development, and for the investor, who will be able to assess how realistic and bold goals you set.

Use of funds

Here we come to the purpose of your fundraising. The general phrases "we are looking for funds for product development" can spoil the whole impression. You should provide a clear understanding of how much funds you need and for what purposes. Tell investors exactly how you will allocate the investments, whether it`s an office rent, recruitment, or ad campaigns. Show that you can track and predict your cash flow. If you have already had or have investors, it's time to mention them.

Conclusion

Your pitch-deck should be aimed at not just getting a potential investor interested in your idea, but also encouraging them to invest in your project. Therefore, you need to concisely utter the very phrase that will not just be remembered, but will become a vector for further cooperation with you. That is why take the time and come up with your call-to-action.

Mistakes when Making a Pitch Deck

As soon as you`re aware of the structure, you need to get familiar with common mistakes that can spoil your pitch deck.

Inappropriate content 

Well-selected information is the key to success of any presentation. It’s important to choose things to include in your pitch deck in accordance with your target audience. Think of the content that would interest not you but your listeners. 

No structure 

Your content should be clearly structured and sequenced well. Otherwise, it’s hard to convey your idea and persuade investors to put their money in your project. The most important thing is to make a plan beforehand, covering the above-mentioned points.

Too many slides 

Try to keep your presentation brief and informative. Therefore, define in advance how long your pitch deck is supposed to last. Allocate 1-3 min for each slide. This way you will understand how many slides you need and make each of them meaningful for others. 

Complicated charts 

When putting a chart into your presentation, mind it should be so simple that everyone could understand it within 10 seconds. Otherwise, the public will not work it out and your chart will end up pointless.

Overloaded slides

Don’t put a bunch of words in the slide. Each of them has to contain not more than 30 words and only one message. All the rest things will be extra and the audience will not remember them. 

There should be not so much text but it has to be well-readable. Basically, fonts without serifs look much better, for example, Arial, Tahoma, Verdana. If the text is not visible in the pictures, it’s better to type it in slides. 

Old-fashioned style

Step away from PowerPoint patterns, outdated shadows, gradients, and color combinations. Nowadays a pitch deck design tends to be simple and yet catchy. Use a one-colored background, give up gradients, and other distracting things.

The power of visualization is the speed of giving information. Though, it’s important to keep it simple and understandable. That’s why don’t forget to add captions to your charts and graphics. 

Bad quality of images 

Spend some time on finding good quality pictures for your pitch deck. There are many photo banks with images of a perfect quality. The best solution is to take your own photos and illustrations. This way you will avoid using pictures that someone had already included before. Each slide should have not more than 2 images. 

Rules of a Brilliant Pitch Deck

Finally, let us share the secrets of successful presentations to make your pitch deck even more flawless.

Don`t read

There is a rule of thumb about any pitch: never read the text from the slides. The presentation and your speech should complement each other so the overall effect is compelling. Keep an eye contact and use gestures.

Tell a story

Although your presentation may replete with graphs, important data, and catchy messages, it can me not enough. To make your pitch deck more personal, add some real stories and chips to attract the attention of the public.

Rehearse

Beforehand, practice your speech several times and see how it fits in with the presentation. Define how much time you have for each slide so that you meet the time limits. Introduce your pitch to relatives, friends, or colleagues to get a feedback and improve it.

Adopt others` experience

Thousands of people have already created pitch decks in the hope of fundraising. There are many presentations of companies that have become giants on the web. Look at their pitch decks to get inspired and see the ways to design slides. Put yourself in investor's shoes and think of a presentation that would impress them.