AUTHOR: Lolly
how to structure your investor pitch deck.
Loosen purse strings without having to be in the room.
YOU'VE ONLY GOT THREE MINUTES TO MAKE THE MOST OF THE MOMENT.
You’ve got three minutes to get your message across – at the most – and y’all still don’t know how to properly structure an investor pitch deck.
If you don’t remember anything else from this article, remember this:
You have to tell your whole persuasive story in just 11 headlines.
the hard truth.
I hate to be the one to tell you, but building a business is just a series of presentations.
You have the idea, but you need to get the people with the pounds to bet on potential – in lieu of proof. Oh, hello, seed stage investment pitch presentation.
You get some successes, stories and statistics under your belt and stretch for more support. Looks like a series A investor pitch presentation to me.
When you get bigger ambitions, the ask and the action get bigger too. You betcha, that’s a series B investment pitch presentation.
When you’re ready to raise serious capital from equally as serious institutional investors, you better raise a series C investor pitch presentation from the depths of your soul first.
Before you know it, you’re pitching for sales to see your stock on shelves or to kickstart the kind of partnership that could make millions.
Every change you want to make for future progress needs an internal pitch presentation to get the board on board.
One day, you find that you’ve taken this idea as far as you can – your time together is coming to a natural close. But you’re not done closing deals yet. You step up one last time to pitch the whole company in a final crescendo that does all the sweat and missed dinners justice.
Until the next idea hits, of course.
At every stage, you’re growing asks in line with ambitions.
Basically, what I need you to know is, there are three stages of life: birth, updating the deck and death.
Allow me to make that middle bit easier.
And if you want it to be even easier than reading the next 1,288 words, you can book a consultation.
what do investors want to see in an investor pitch deck?
Investors aren’t hard to figure out. They’re human. They want what any human wants. Financial projections, market analysis and a strong business model.
But, mostly, they want it all to be over in about three minutes with minimal effort on their part.
If you want investors to even think about loosening their grip on those purse strings, you need to tell your whole story in just the headlines and subtitles. There’s a chance they won’t even look at the body copy or your carefully-crafted charts unless the headlines give them a reason to give a fu…nding. Then you can use the rest of the slide space to get more creative, make your credibility impossible to ignore and support your core message with graphics and data points. But not too many.
Don’t fall into the trap of overexplaining or cramming every data point in. They don’t care. They have lawyers to go through the numbers for them. So, throw that in your data bank and focus on storytelling. Because these poor brutes see so many dull decks every day. The best way to stand out is to pour your passion – and your audience’s emotions – into the words.
how to get the right information to structure your investor pitch deck.
Step one: slide by slide, answer the questions in the next section.
Step two: shake off your ego and step into the investor’s shoes.
Step three: cut all that guff down to what’s compelling to them.
Step four: sum up everything you intend to keep on that slide into a short phrase. Voilá that’s your headline. Repeat for the rest of the slides.
Step four point five: if you don’t think you can sum everything up into a short phrase, you’ve probably got too many ideas on one slide. Consider splitting into multiple slides or, ideally, fucking all but one off.
Step five: reading those headlines in order, have you created a compelling argument? If not, revisit your headlines until they’re perfect.
Step six: repeat with the most compelling supporting point for each slide to create your subtitles.
Step seven: get an outside perspective to tell you if they’d buy based on your headlines and subtitles alone. If they wouldn’t, you’ve still got work to do.
Step eight: once you have your main story, is any information that you intended to keep just repetition rather than development? Ditch it.
Step nine: can you convey any of your remaining points as graphics or visuals instead of text?
Step ten: anything that’s left, turn it into clear and concise phrases.
Step eleven: edit edit edit edit edit edit edit edit etc.
the investor pitch deck structure you've been looking for.
Structuring an investor pitch deck is not the same as structuring any other kind of presentation. Pay attention.
1. Title slide
What problem are you solving?
What value do you bring to your audience?
What value could investment bring to them?
What’s your USP?
2. The problem
Who is the customer?
What’s their pain point?
Can you make it more specific, personal and significant?
What’s their big dream?
What happens if nothing changes?
What happens if everything changes?
Why now?
What evidence do you have that this is a real, sizeable problem?
Why don’t existing ‘solutions’ hit the mark in addressing the problem?
3. The solution
How does your business solve their challenge?
What are the benefits?
Are there any perks outside of the initial challenge being solved?
What will their world look like with you in it?
What part of your solution do your customers get most excited about?
Can you use their voices to back up your claims?
4. Market size and opportunity
Who is the target market?
If your solution is B2B, how many employees does a typical customer have? How widespread is their footprint? How influential?
If your solution is B2C, what’s the average age? Life stage? Household income?
What is the total demand?
What is the TAM?
What is the SAM?
What is the SOM?
What’s going on in the market?
Why now?
5. Traction and proof
Do you have any relevant:
Customer engagement stats?
Retention stats?
Revenue increase over time?
Customer numbers?
Monthly active user stats?
Number of deals signed?
Recognisable customer logos?
Testimonials?
Case studies?
Geographical expansion?
6. Competition and differentiation
Connect back to the problem and explore:
Who else is trying to solve this problem?
How is your way different?
How is your way better?
How are they missing the mark?
Why can your solution not be replicated?
Treat yourself to a little Magic Quadrant, if you’re nasty.
7. Business model
How do you make money?
What’s your pricing strategy?
What’s the potential for scaling?
What’s your go-to-market strategy?
What are your unit economics?
LTV?
CAC?
Any existing investors?
If you don’t have success stats of your own yet, can you show market research where another company has had success with a similar model?
8. Projections
Where is the business going?
What’s your estimated future revenue?
What’s your estimated future profit?
How do you predict customer numbers to grow?
How do you predict sales to grow?
How do you predict your global presence to grow?
How do you predict your portfolio to grow?
How do you predict your target audience to grow?
Can you show your workings?
9. The team
Who’s making this happen?
Why are they the best to do so?
What are their biggest achievements?
What relevant experience do they have?
What’s the team-building strategy?
What complementary skills span the team?
Any external advisors bridging gaps in experience?
10. The ask
What investment are you asking for?
What will you do with it?
What results do you expect to see?
How will this investment increase the overall value of the business?
What return should they expect to see?
Can you show your workings?
What’s the exit analysis?
11. Summary
What were the three most compelling points across the whole presentation?
What do you need them to do next?
Who do they contact?
Optional appendix
This one is dealer’s choice. As long as the dealer isn’t an idiot.
No matter what stage of in the birth, deck, death cycle you’re in, you never need to overexplain yourself in slide format. You just need to find the sweet spot where you’ve given enough to make your case but not so much to bore the poor bastard to death.
For example, the keen eyed among you will have noticed that – in several instances above – I’ve asked you if you can show your workings. On the main slide, you only want to put the very top line equation, such as:
Steady 50% YoY customer increase x £5 per unit = I dunno - I’m words not numbers - but you get the gist.
But, in the appendix, you could put the numbers that led you to that 50% stat – i.e a graph of YoY increase so far plus any accelerators you have planned.
If you think a fact dressed in assumption’s clothing is going to trip you up, bob it in the appendix and clearly link it from where you made the audacious prediction in the main presentation.
As the ask gets bigger, the need to add to the appendix grows too. That’s what she said.
you're ready to structure an investor pitch deck that loosens purse strings.
I started this article not sugarcoating anything, so I’ll finish the same way.
You will probably buckle it and end up building the same boring investor deck as everyone else. Breaking away from the crowd is a brave thing to do and I just don’t know if you have it in you.
If it turns out you don’t, you can find out more about how my big deck energy is a big hit with investors here: Investor pitch deck services
Or just book a consultation and see for yourself.