A lot of startups are springing up and to keep up with their processes they need funding. The biggest roadblock in funding can be convincing investors to fund your Idea. A pitch deck is seen as a way to grab the investors' attention with your business Idea.
In this article I will try to cover how you can create a near perfect pitch deck which will in turn help you in the fundraising process
What is a pitch deck?
A pitch deck is usually 12-18 slides long and can be much longer or shorter depending on the business plan. It’s a brief presentation about your business plan and company to the investors. The audience for this is mainly VC funds and angel investors. Apart from helping raise funds, it can also be used for onstage presentations, board meetings etc. There are possibly 2 ways that you can pitch your idea to the investor using the deck
An investor spends around 3 mins 44 secs reviewing a pitch deck. This might give you an idea of how much time is given to consider a business plan. Keeping this in mind its always better to keep your deck short, precise and to the point. Also, it’s better to make the deck mobile friendly as approximately 12% of investors read your deck from smartphone.
Let’s take a look at the early stage pitch decks from some of the hottest companies that have successfully raised money, and see what we can learn from their decks.
Analysis of pitch decks of hottest funded startups
Earlier known as match box, tinder’s pitch deck can be seen as one that works its magic by depicting a story. Its 10 slides long i.e. its really short and precise. One thing that stands out in the deck is the use of informal language to grab the investors attention. As we move towards the end, it tells what all features are under the hood are. The last slide shows how the company intends to generate revenue as it grows. All in all, it can be said that it’s not the one that might catch the attention of your eye but surely ticks the other boxes for a great deck.
Snapchats pitch deck is totally centered around showcasing its features. It shows it uniqueness by showcasing features like automatic deletion of messages (how it is in-person conversation). It can also be termed as more of a 14 slide long “how to use” guide. The deck is self-explanatory in nature and text heavy, not a feature that we see in a lot of pitch decks and has lots of screenshots of the features that the application offers. It can be also said as one that can used for presentations and business meets, making it an all in one package.
Compared to the other 2 pitch decks discussed above this pitch deck is a bit different. It directly starts with the statistics depicting where the company stands at the moment and as we go further, it discusses the future plans (use of Algorithmic content). The biggest strength of the deck is that it shows the optimizations that the website offers to its users. Then as we move on, we can see how it has structured the revenue model. The thing that suddenly catches your attention in the deck is how it shows it USP (displayed by a Venn diagram i.e. it’s a common ground between media and advertisement). The use of website’s screen grabs to show features has been very planned and executed.
So, after analyzing these decks what could be some of the best practices? In the article below I have tried to come up with an answer.
Your objective here is simply to get funded. Depicting your idea in the form a story can you help you captivate the audience and hence influence their behavior. Assuming that the investor has a really short attention span, you want to make sure every second counts. Simply put, your story needs to be structured in a way where you first of all make them aware with a prevailing problem in market, How you intend to provide a solution to it, what is it that you can accomplish with the funding that you will get and what is the final result that could be achieved after implementation of plans. In the process, you need to make them fantasize that they will make millions of dollars funding your project.
Proper structuring of your deck is really important so that you don’t fall short of points on how your story is depicted. In terms of slides and categories, Sequoia Capital recommends structuring the slides in the following way:
There is no rule of thumb but its preferred that you keep the length of the deck less than 20 pages. You need to make a deck that presents everything required, without making it lengthy. Also try to avoid using a lot of text for explanation as it will eventually lead to loss of interest in your deck by the investor.
Always back up your claims with numbers. This will definitely make the investor believe in you. When you do so, it generates a sense in the investor’s mind that you have done all the research behind your idea and there is a very small chance that their investment in your project might fail to generate returns. Include financials, traction, industrial metrics etc. in you deck and try to explain how you reached that number and what lies hidden in them that can make money to the investor
Any day, a great visual deck can score more points as compared to one with bunch of words on the screen. Use images to help visualize emotion and convey the message on your slide. This can come in the form of stock photos, short videos, or infographics that show a bit of your company’s personality.
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