When you are trying to persuade people to part with their hard earned money, it is going to take a lot more than a quick informal chat. Potential investors are unlikely to have reached their level of success without being very financially savvy, so they will need to be suitably impressed by an investment opportunity before they agree to put money into your business.
One of the best ways to impress prospective investors is to create and deliver an excellent pitch deck. Technically, that should be two excellent pitch decks because the most effective way to pitch to an investor is to have one deck that will form part of the presentation (that is very visually focused) and another longer and more detailed one that you would send via email.
How to create a successful pitch deck
There are several different elements that you will need to master in order to create a really strong pitch deck that will win investment for your start-up. Here are the key considerations:
It must be compelling
Your main objective is to compel someone to invest in your idea or existing business model.
To be able to do this, you have to put a great amount of work into the content that you are going to use and also you need to hone your delivery of that presentation to perfection. In that relatively short pitch deck, you want the people you are presenting to, to feel like they can’t possibly miss out on the amazing opportunity you are giving them.
Keep it simple
When you are trying to impress people, you can sometimes over complicate your pitch deck content, either through using too much jargon, or going into the most minute technical details that are not really necessary.
This can quickly send an audience of non-technical people into a state of bored confusion, so try to keep it simple and very clear. If they do want more information of a technical nature, then you should have included all of that in the pitch deck you emailed to the presentation attendees for them to read through at their own leisure.
Easy to act upon
You must make it clear in the presentation what it is that you want from the investor and what they need to do in terms of their side of the agreement. So, the end of your presentation should give them a clear CTA (Call to Action).
Using pitch deck templates
If you haven’t created a pitch deck before, you might find it useful to use a template to provide the right structure and to make sure that you include all of the really essential content.
According to research, investors will only spend on average 3 minutes and 44 seconds on a pitch deck, so when you are designing it, think about how you present the information so it can be as effective as possible if someone is going to review it for just under 4 minutes. A page structure that has achieved a lot of success included:
- Problem
- Solution
- Market
- Product
- Traction
- Team
- Competition
- Financials
- Amount be raised
The slides that investors will generally be more interested in and will spend more time on are the financials, team and competition. So, make sure that these three slides are of really good quality.
Let’s look at what to include in these slides in more detail:
Problem
A product or service that is going to be in demand will need to resolve an existing problem. So, you should be covering the gap in the market that your business idea is going to fill. The more painful the problem is, the more chance you have of convincing the investor that you are providing them with a good business opportunity.
When you are describing the problem, you are adding to the case that they will be able to see ROI at some point in the near future. If your potential investor has had personal experience of the problem, then you have an even better chance of getting them on side, as they will be able to relate to the product or service better.
Solution
The second part to presenting the problem, is of course having the solution that is going to make that problem disappear. One important factor to consider with this section is why now is the perfect time to be providing this solution.
Many successful businesses owe their success to great timing; finding the right solution at exactly the right time, before competitor businesses emerge to take over the market share. It might be that something very similar is already out there, but you have a unique approach that will be able to disrupt the existing market.
Market
Following on from the solution, you can add more detail about the existing market including market growth and future potential growth. If you have done your research into your investors, you should already have an idea of the type of ROI figures that would usually attract them to an investment, so you should show how your business will hit that magic number.
This slide works best if you include a clear graph to show the market growth and the future potential growth, backed up by research completed by a reputable source.
Product
If it is a product that you are going to be launching, then you will also need to show the details of the product. This needs to show exactly how it works, you might even want to embed a quick video if that helps viewers to understand how the product works.
Alternatively, some high quality images will do, or you can bring a prototype or the actual product itself along if it is available yet. To emphasise what a great product you are marketing, you might want to include some reviews from customers if you have already made some sales.
Traction
Investors want to see how quickly your business is likely to grow, so your traction slide should include a graph to represent this, unless your month over month growth is going to be slow for a while.
Team
People often forget to include details about who they have working with them but this is a really crucial part of your pitch deck.
Investors want to see the team behind the vision, the ones that will be bringing that vision to life. Investors are going to have to decide whether they trust that team of individuals to make a success of the business concept and they will want to see if you have all of the pieces of the jigsaw that it takes to succeed with the venture.
On this slide you are trying to evidence what makes your team different to the next company that has the same business idea, so the skills, motivation, experience and any other relevant details should go into this.
Competition
As well as giving the investor a better idea of how competitive the market is, showing how much research you have done on this will help to convince them that you have put in the necessary preliminary analysis to indicate that your business has a good chance of succeeding.
Again, you should be getting across exactly what makes you different to every other person or company pitching that same idea. This is where you will share the financial performance of your key competitors, a bit of background on them and be sure to include the amount of capital they required to get started up.
Financials
Most investors will want to see at least three years of financial projections, but you need to make sure that you are not being overly optimistic with your figures. You need these to be as realistic as possible, because if they do agree to invest, after three or six months they will be asking you to show the milestones you included in the pitch deck.
If your figures are some way off those then this is going to look like you are not able to deliver the ROI that you projected.
Amount being raised
This is the section that will pretty much make or break the deal, where you ask for an amount of investment and they then decide whether they have seen enough in your pitch deck to persuade them that they are happy to invest the amount you are requesting.
It is usually a good idea to indicate a range of the amount you are looking for, rather than putting a specific amount and risking the amount falling outside of their investment limit.
What else to include in your pitch deck
If you include all of these slides, then you will be covering off all of the key areas that the investors will be most interested in. You will need to choose any additional slide content carefully, factoring in how long the investor will spend on reviewing the deck. In addition to the nine topics listed above, you should only add another 4/5 maximum, as you don’t want to make it too long.
There are lots of differing opinions regarding the length of the ideal pitch deck, with some experts claiming 10 slides is enough but others think 20 is better. You need to get the balance right between including everything that can help win the investment for you, and not adding any content just for the sake of it.
A slide with all of your contact details on is important, so include details like your email address, social media pages, website address, contact number and office/premises address. This information needs to be clearly displayed in the deck so that they can easily contact you when they have made a decision. You could include these in the introduction to the company at the beginning of the presentation deck.
You might also want to show more details about what it is exactly that you will be using the investor’s money for. If it is simply going into the manufacturing of X amount of the product, then state that. If the investment is being used for a range of different costs, then you should add a bit more detail around this. If there is an expensive piece of equipment or software that you need to pay for, you can explain why you need that specific one and a few of the benefits vs other alternatives.
What about the design of the pitch deck?
In terms of the design of your pitch deck, this can be just as important as your actual content.
It might be a good idea to ask a designer to produce an attractive template set for you to use, incorporating your branding and using colours and formatting that looks highly professional and adds more emphasis to the information within the deck. You don’t want anything that is going to take attention away from the actual content, so keeping it a fairly simple but attractive template design will give a bit more of an edge to your deck.
As well as making sure that you have all of the right information in your slide deck, you need to make sure that you are confident in presenting the pitch. The more that you practice delivering the presentation, the better you will get at it, so get your family or friends to listen to your pitch to help you to practice.
At the end of your pitch, you should open up the opportunity for the investors to raise any questions they might have. It can help to try and anticipate what questions they might have, although it might just be a case of referring them to a section of your comprehensive pitch deck that you sent them earlier on.
If you don’t know the answer to one of the questions, you can just be honest and explain that you will need to get that information for them after the meeting.
If you include all of the slides we have mentioned and take the other considerations on board, you will significantly improve your chances of securing that investment and getting your company up and running.