What is a Pitch Deck? –
A pitch deck is a brief presentation that gives potential investors or customers an overview of the company’s strategy, products, services, and growing momentum. As a business owner, you are aware that financing is essential for your project or idea.
Typically, outside sources—i.e., people who are not close friends or family—would provide this funding. This implies that you must present your ideas to potential investors in a way that whets their appetite for backing your company.
You’ll need a pitch deck, to put it another way.
Objective Of Pitch Deck
The purpose of a pitch deck is to attract investors’ interest or even excitement in a company, which can lead to the next meeting and the potential for an investment discussion. The first step in the process of raising funding for a company may involve using a pitch deck.
An investor pitch deck, often known as a pitch deck, is a presentation that helps potential investors learn more about the business.
As odd as it may seem, the primary goal of a pitch deck is to advance to the next round rather than to secure funding.
Financing requires a multi-step process. A good, insightful pitch deck is the first rung on the ladder. You should present investors with a proposal that piques their curiosity and intrigue and compels them to work with you.
A pitch deck presentation is sometimes composed of several slides that help you tell a compelling story about your business.
Tips For Making Pitch Deck
When creating your own pitch deck, keep the following points in mind:
Be open and honest
In their initial presentation deck, entrepreneurs may want to overwhelm investors with detail, but sometimes less is more. Simple, straightforward ideas presented in bullet points and with graphics are more interesting than lengthy paragraphs and can lead to questions or even follow-up meetings.
Prioritize the storyline over the statistics
The goal of a pitch meeting is to draw potential investors. A good story will have more of an impact than a compilation of numbers and statistics. Entrepreneurs must share with investors stories about their companies that have personal importance to them, such as how customers use their products or services to improve their quality of life.
Create it as a stand-alone deck
After the presentation, a potential investor might want to look over the pitch deck. Make sure the print or PDF version of the deck contains the key details customers need.
Keep it up to date
Businesses frequently make presentations to a large number of prospective investors before actually receiving funding. Verify that pitch decks are updated with the most recent information, especially critical metrics and major successes, before each presentation to maintain professionalism and avoid presenting out-of-date content.
Leave out the bullets
Avoid those when it comes to bullets. Slides with bullet points are boring and don’t help with story-telling. Reduce the number of words on each slide and use bold fonts. As much as possible, use imagery to help tell your story and elicit an emotional response from the reader.
Don’t exaggerate the market’s potential
Focus on bottom-up estimates that describe your expectations for how you’ll attract customers rather than top-down projections that claim you “only need 1% of a vast market” to truly be profitable.
Use it to inform the rest of your prediction if you don’t currently have statistics regarding how well an early prototype of your product is performing.
Send your deck in PDF format
Investors must either see your presentations in advance or receive a copy of them from you. Avoid sending Powerpoint or Keynote files if this happens. Send out a PDF copy. This makes sure that the typefaces and designs you chose will seem precisely how you intended them to for everyone who views the deck.
Check to see whether your deck can stand on its own without you presenting
While it’s always great to have you deliver your pitch deck, it should be able to communicate parts of your stories without you. Investors may wish to revisit the deck after your presentation because it contains enough information to illustrate numerous of your key themes.
What to do after you pitched to investors?
Making your pitch deck is simply the first step in the planning process for your firm. After an effective pitch, you should give the crucial planning documents to support your presentation. You must be prepared to deliver the documents listed below as just a few samples of what you must do after your pitch.
Executive summary
A 2-3 page outline of your business is what is commonly referred to as an executive summary or summary memo. It’s a document that potential investors could hand out to their coworkers and other people in their organization to provide an overview of your business. Whatever is in your pitch deck must be in writing.
Technical documentation
If you really are launching a tech or medical company, you might need to include more information about your technologies.
Giving more thorough documentation—charts, workflows, etc.—may be crucial since investors in these kinds of businesses frequently want a specialist to examine the technical claims made by the firms.
Detailed financial models
Any seasoned investor in your business would want to examine your financial forecasts for at least the next three years only to understand the fundamental assumptions underlying your projections.
The budgets for hiring and employee-related expenses, R&D costs, manufacturing costs, marketing costs, and so forth would be of interest to investors. Create thorough cash flow forecasts, profit and loss projections, and sales projections. The importance of a balance sheet cannot be overstated.
Comprehensive market research.
More information about your target market and previous market research may be requested from you. If you already know something, you should be prepared to share it in some form, even though that is not usually the case. Once more, this information needs to be made available upon request rather than being included in your pitch deck.
