If you are with me, let’s skip the jargon and verbose and get straight to work. 

Here is what you will get from this article.

• A few awesome real pitch decks that worked.
• Slides that you can include.
• Dos and don’ts to take care of while creating an investor pitch deck

Here are the actual pitch presentations of Airbnb, LinkedIn and mint.  

Now when you have a fair idea of how a very good investor pitch deck looks like, let’s structure what all slides they are made up of. 

The slides:

Company Overview

Choose the bullet points setting and include: What problem does your startup solve, your unique solution, something that will define how good is your team (ex-Googler or Facebook), traction would be the cherry on the cake. Also, do not forget to include where you are based out of. 

Your Mission and Vision of the Company 

Let’s not confuse between your mission and vision. Vision is simply where you see yourself in a certain period of time, i.e. your goal and mission is simply your purpose, why you are doing it. Keep it that simple.

The Team 

Investors invest in people and not a fictional entity, i.e. company, which is basically its people. After all the characteristics of any matter is determined by its elements. You can include their pictures along with their titles and what they bring to the table. The Problem 

You spotted the problem, good. Now, tell how big is the problem is and why it needs to be solved. Not just any problem that can be solved will interest investors. 

The Solution 

Pen down the overview of your solution in a precise manner. You can also very carefully merge the next slide which is ‘The Product’ into The Solution slide itself.  

The Product

Here you need to showcase key features of the product or service you are offering, major milestones attained and what are potential features that could be added in the future as you scale.

The Market Opportunity

Here you will answer what the market size is, at what rate do you project to capture a certain portion of that market. 

Customers 

Here you can include your major customers and partners which will help establish credibility to your solution in the market. You can simply include their logos and that would be sufficient. 

Technology 

Mention about the intellectual property rights the company posses for eg,  patents and copyrights. How your technology is superior to others in the market and why would your competitors will have hard time replicating it. 

The Competition 

One of the most important slides in the deck. This will showcase if will be competing or endeavouring towards an establishing a monopoly. In both cases, you need to know your competitors and how you have an edge over them.   

Traction 

Mention your companies early traction may it be site traffic, app downloads, strategic partnerships or media mentions. 

Business Model 

Here you will answer how do you plan to make money, what is or will be your pricing model.  

The Marketing Plan

You can merge this slide with the above if you feel so particularly in your case. It will basically cover how you plan your customer acquisition. It could be paid search, social media, TV, or radio etc?

Financials 

Here your numbers shall talk. Sketch your three- to five-year financial projections, burn rate. Talk about unit economics and key metrics such as expenses, total revenue and EBITDA.

The Ask

This one is simple! Is it? Here you express how much money do you need, for how long will that money last and what milestones you project to achieve with the given amount? Mention where you will invest this money in (technology, expansion, new hires etc) and who are your existing investors, if any.

You can vary the slides you include as per the round of funds you are trying to raise.

Finally, we arrive on the third part of this article which is taking care of dos and don’ts of creating an investor pitch deck.

Dos of creating a pitch deck:

• Remember to send your pitch deck to the investor in the PDF format prior to your scheduled meeting.
• Use consistent font size, colour and compelling graphics in your presentation.
• Be sure to include the following information on the bottom left of the cover page of your presentation: Confidential and Proprietary. Copyright (c) by [Name of Company]. All Rights Reserved. 

Don’ts of creating a pitch deck:

• Don’t use a lot of acronyms making it difficult for the investor to grasp the meaning.
• Do not try to underestimate your competitor. 
• Try not to exceed a slide limit of 15 or in some cases 20. Keep it small yet powerful.  

Conclusion: 

What you read above contains the essentials elements you need to create a pitch deck and some additional information to make it help your product or service stand out from the crowd. It is not perfect and you can always add and subtract from something you create as per your requirements.

Main Image: ©Entrepreneur Handbook

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