The purpose of a pitch deck is to demonstrate to investors why they should invest in your business. It should provide a very clear overview of the business you’ve built, paint a picture of where your business is going, and why the money you are raising helps you get there.
1. Best practices
Balancing too many competing goals at one time while building your deck can inadvertently lead mixed results. Instead, we’ve selected the most important “rules” and excluded all the other noise. Follow these six rules and you’ll get most of the way there.
- Target 15 slides or less in total.
- Use clear headlines for each of the 15 slides. This is the story of your fundraise. To get started, write the headline of each slide and then write down what data, table, or graph you will use to prove the headline point. Build your slides out from there.
- Your deck should tell your whole story front to back simply by reading the titles of each of slide.
- Each slide should have one main takeaway (the headline of the slide).
- Use as little text as possible, leaning into charts, tables, and illustrations instead.
- Visuals should support the title of the slide and the main takeaway.
2. Sample outline
Below is a sample deck outline. Anything additional can live in an appendix or follow up deck for qualified investors that lean in. Note, every business is different, so don’t feel overly boxed in by this outline, but be very conscious of why you’re deviating if you are. Investors also read thousands of pitch decks and the more it conforms to what they are used to reading, the easier it will be for them to digest.
- Cover Page - Company name and one line description of what you do.
- Teaser - Best metric or thought-provoking point.
- Problem - The market problem that you are solving.
- Solution - How you are solving the problem and traction, (1-5 slides).
- Market - Market size and TAM.
- Business Model - How you’ll make money with your solution and be profitable.
- Competitors - Why you’re unique and who you compete with.
- Team - Why are you right for this market/business and any evidence to support that.
- Use of Funds - We are raising $[X] to do [Y].
- Appendix - Throw anything in here that you think is important to the overall story but doesn’t quite fit above.
3. Confidentiality
Circulating your deck to potential investors you’ve never met before can feel worrisome and uncomfortable. Unfortunately, this is just part of the fundraising process. In fact, you should expect your deck to land in the hands of your savviest competitors and don’t trust that signing NDAs with your prospective investors will prevent it.
We don’t recommend requiring investors to sign NDAs because it’s pretty ineffective anyway, and can even be a turnoff to some VCs that don’t want to invest legal resources before prequalifying a deal. That said, we do recommend tools like Docsend, which give you some comfort through basic email/password security features and also let you monitor in real-time who is accessing your materials and how frequently. It also can help you gauge the level of interest from your potential investors as you fundraise.
Resources
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