What is a pitch deck?
In plain words, a pitch deck is a business plan that you create in order to gain investor interest for your startup. A pitch deck lets your potential investors know about your business idea and see its feasibility. The pitch deck also differs depending on the stage your startup is in currently. If it’s just in the idea stage, the pitch deck will be a bit different than when your startup is already up and generating revenues.
How should be your pitch deck?
An investor receives hundreds of emails every day. While some of these are just introductory mails, some of them are startup pitch decks that founders share once they have developed an initial relationship with the investor. Your pitch deck should be as simple and concise as possible.
Slides to include in the pitch deck:
Your pitch deck should not be too long that the investor gets bored while going through it. It should ideally be somewhere between 12 -15 slides.
The Problem
Explain the problem that you are solving through your startup. This is one of the most important slides as this is the first slide that the investor will see.
The Solution
An exact way how you are going to solve the problem that exists through your startup. It should be very clear and you should not use jargon. A school kid should be able to understand by reading it.
Market Validation
Share information about the number of people who are already using services similar to the one that your startup is going to offer. For example, for AirBnB, the validation slide can show the number of people who travel every year, or who book rooms using Booking.com etc.
Product
A description of your product including the flow of how it works, it’s features etc. You can specify if it’s an app or a website or a physical product.
Business Model
This is one of the most important slides for an investor. Explain your revenue model here.
Market Adoption
How are you going to market the product? You can list out the different ways that you must have decided like work of mouth, digital marketing, content marketing, traditional marketing, pr activities etc.
Competition
A lot of startups don’t list out the competition because they think that it’s better not to tell the investor that a competition exists. This is a terrible idea. The investor may have already done some research into the domain and have found out your competition. Telling the investor that competition doesn’t exist will reflect poorly on you.
Team
Investors don’t back an idea or a great product. Investors back a good team. It is the most important thing as far as an investor is concerned. The investor must have faith in the team to execute the project. In this slide, list all your team members and their qualifications and previous work experience. Provide as many details as possible to make the investor know your team better.
Download Pitch Decks PDF:
This pdf contains the pitch decks of companies like Facebook, Linkedin, Youtube, Buzzfeed, AirBnB, Buffer, Square and Foursquare.
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