What makes a good pitch deck? A slide by slide breakdown.

What makes a good pitch deck? A slide by slide breakdown.

Pitch decks are a tool to raise money. They are how you communicate your deal, book meetings with potential investors, and how your deal gets passed around from an investor to their network of other investors. Nobody invests in decks, they invest in teams and businesses, BUT decks are crucial to success when raising money.


In this article, I am going to share about 1) The decks you should have 2) Guidelines for decks and 3) A slide by slide breakdown of what should be in your deck.

First, a couple things I want to share first:

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Ok, let's dig in!


In my opinion, you should have 2 pitch decks. 

Pitch deck #1 is the shorter deck that is meant to be glanced at without any dialogue to explain. If anyone looks at the deck, you want them to understand every slide and be able to grasp your business. This deck is sent to investors to attempt to grab their attention so they take a meeting with you. This deck typically doesn’t change from person to person, but you should update it regularly to add information as your company changes/grows and make the slides more succinct based upon feedback. 

I cannot push this enough: Investors spend 1-2 minutes looking at a deck to decide whether or not they want a meeting. You have an extremely limited time span to capture their interest. You don’t want the deck to be too confusing, unprofessional, or have any reason for them to quickly say NO.

Pitch deck #2 is the longer version of the deck that you use during a meeting with an investor that includes your dialogue explaining the different slides you show during the call. This type of deck should be tweaked every time you meet with an investor by tailoring the content/delivery to them. All investors have different knowledge about the problem, business model, and market, so you need to do your best to understand your audience and speak to that. Also, investors value different things, your traction, the market size, the technology, the team skill sets, etc, so it’s even better if you figure out what they care about most and spend your time emphasizing that.

When investors are looking at decks, they are often looking for pattern matching. The more obvious you can make connections between their existing portfolio (learn those companies) or perhaps market trends that they seem to care about (check their socials, interviews, blogs, etc), the better this long form deck can perform.

In this article, I am going to speak about pitch deck #1. All the additional stuff to add to pitch deck #2 is based upon your specific business and the specific people you are showing it to, so I can’t really write a one-size-fits-all article about it!


Before I get into the slides, I want to share some deck guidelines:

  • Your deck is not meant to tell a heartwarming story of you and your company, your deck is meant to SELL an INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY in your company. Sure, part of that is why you have the best way to do it and you’re the right team to pull it off, but never forget that this is a sales tool and what you are selling is a way for the investor to make money if they invest into your business. Investors are driven by potential returns and the likelihood of those returns (aka how ‘safe’ an investment feels to them).
  • Your deck should be extremely easy to understand. I like to use what I call the ‘intern test’ aka, if my intern looks at your deck and doesn’t get 1) what your product is 2) how you make money and 3) how you’re going to make a LOT of money, then the deck isn’t clear/simple enough for someone to take a look for 2 minutes and want to book a call.
  • I advise using a deck sharing app like docsend or another competitor (there’s plenty of cheaper options, just google it). This allows you to 1) capture the data on who is looking at your deck and exactly what slides they are looking at and 2) change your deck information anytime you need to. If you have a hot deal, your deck is going to get passed around and it’s strategic to know exactly who is viewing it.
  • Nobody invests in decks, but there is a certain expectation that they always look well made and professionally done. If you’re not good at design, it might be worth it to pay someone to design your deck (but make sure you don’t pay too much for it). I would rather you pay a designer to make your brand and then use those brand elements in your deck, as opposed to paying someone for just the deck.
  • My strong opinion is that you should not pay an agency to work through the entire deck with you. Instead, build a network of other founders who have raised capital who are willing to take a look and offer feedback. Or, hit me up and I can help through my role at the EC. (You can attend an office hours so I can see how we are best positioned to help your business. Then we can work together 1x1. And then we can put your deck in front of experts who have either raised money or invested money to get their feedback). 


Here’s the breakdown slide by slide: 

  1. Opening slide 

Put your company name and a crisp one-liner of what you do. Nothing else, really. (I put this in here because I see a lot of opening slides with way too much stuff lol).

The one-liner is really important though. If you can catch someone’s attention with your one-liner that means they might pay more attention to the rest of your deck (:

 

2. Problem slide 

This is the first place where I see people go wrong. They overcomplicate the problem! Make it so simple and obvious and that there’s certainly a demand for it to be fixed. Make sure the problem seems really, REALLY big. 

Often, people want to point toward several problems, but I find that the strongest decks highlight one really big, massive problem.


3. Solution 

This is where you explain how your startup is going to solve the problem. 

I see a lot of decks where people show how they solve many problems with many solutions. Instead, you need to pick one MASSIVE problem that you’re going to solve for. Often, the strongest businesses do one thing really, really well.

I try to coach founders on picking the smallest thing they can possibly build that solves a problem that people are willing to pay for. Sure, you might one day want to serve more customer verticals, have a varied business model, and create additional features that solve more problems, but those don’t need to be in your deck when you’re raising at an early stage.

You can have a roadmap for how you are going to solve all these other problems/reach more types of customers down the line, but when raising early stage funding, you want to be able to build an MVP that proves it has product-market fit, can scale efficiently, and can reach the milestones needed to raise additional rounds of funding.

Let me use Amazon as an example to explain this:

You might think an early stage deck of theirs would have:

Problem: Customers want to be able to purchase all the options of all products on the market. 

Solution: We’re creating a marketplace for every consumer item to be easily bought through the internet. 

Honestly, unless Jeff Bezos had already had a huge win under his belt prior in his career, I doubt that deck would have raised money. 

Amazon started by creating an online marketplace for books. Their early stage deck would look more like:

Problem: Book buyers can’t purchase the books they are looking for because book stores carry limited inventory. 

Solution: We’re creating an online marketplace for anyone to be able to purchase any book they are looking for.

Then, later in the deck Bezos would show what they think their next 2-3 verticals they would go after and why.

Long story short, less is more. Find the smallest thing you can prove, prove it, and then build what’s next.


After those first 3 slides, the order of the slides can vary based upon how you explain your business. Sometimes I have founders put a product next, sometimes a business model. Figure out what works best for you.


4. Business model 

Again, start with the smallest business model that you can get something to customers that they are willing to pay for! 

You want to pick business models that are known entities (b2b saas, marketplace, etc). Investors like things that they already know and understand because it allows them to know what metrics you are being measured against to determine your success. You want them to think, ‘oh, I’ve seen this and I know how to judge it.’ Otherwise, if it’s all too new, it will feel too risky and likely be a pass. 

Your uniqueness probably shouldn’t be in your business model, but in your solution and GTM strategy. If your uniqueness is in your business model, then you probably want to raise from some very edgy, risky investors (: 

I advise folks to stay away from ever using analogies like, we are the uber for X. If your business is obvious, people will make the connection for you. You don’t need to be the one to say it. You come off as an amateur when you use an analogy like that.


5. Your product 

Actually show what your product looks like now (or mock ups of what you plan for it to look like). 

Don’t make this slide too busy, but give folks a chance to essentially ‘feel’ more of what you are building. 

You might want to show the features here and the different value proposition of those features to your customer.


6. Traction AND/OR Go- to-market Strategy

If you have already launched your product, show what traction you have. Your traction should be clearly correlated to your business model. (For example, b2b saas is MRR or ARR based upon contracts).

The better you can nail down your unit economics in this slide, the stronger your deck. Here’s my post that simply explains what those numbers could look like. Your Customer Acquisition Cost vs your Lifetime Value of a Customer are crucial #s to nail down.  How do you use $1 to make $2? If you can actually explain that simply it puts you in a great position to raise money!

Your traction could be your existing customers and any logos that you can share. This slide can also include your pipeline and any pilots. It might even be helpful to share how you got those customers. For example, if those customers came from your network, that sometimes doesn’t prove that you found product market fit vs if those customers came from cold outreach.

If you haven’t launched your product yet, you should dig into your GTM strategy. 

You want to clearly demonstrate that you have a value proposition that solves your customers needs, you have an idea on how to price it, you have a plan on how to reach potential customers, and you have marketing and sales tactics to pull it off. 


7. Total addressable market 

There is ONE question that investors are trying to answer when looking at this slide- does this market support a business that can reach at least $100M in revenue? (Or if you are raising from blue chip VCs, a $1 billion business?) Everything else is just noise.

A lot of people recommend using TAM, SAM, SOM. Here’s an article about it.

My controversial opinion- a lot of those numbers feel a bit irrelevant and silly to me. I think you’re better off using as few numbers as possible to demonstrate how you can reasonably reach $100M in revenue, which is typically only your SOM.

I would recommend sharing, ‘Our market is W big. We think with our unique solution, we can reach X of that market because Y reason. With our business model, that would be Z in revenue.’ 

If one of your numbers on this slide is suspect, investors will assume all of your numbers are fake or not well thought through. It is often better to go with simple. 


8. Competitive differentiation 

By this point in your deck, you have hopefully made it obvious why people are going to use and switch to your product, but this is the slide where you get to really nail that reasoning down.

If you show a slide where you are doing all these things amazingly and how other companies do all these things poorly, what is the message you are trying to send? In my opinion, bashing other companies doesn’t lend you any credibility and it makes you come off as an amateur. (Especially when they might be a massive company and you are a no-name startup!!) Instead, share what they do well and what you do really well.

A lot of people use quadrants to compare themselves to other companies. I personally don’t like using them and I don’t think they tell a clear story often.

Instead, I prefer using columns to compare yourself to competitors. The key is not to have 17 features listed out because it can make it look like you don’t truly understand your market. People aren’t going to switch just because you have 12 additional special features. You need ONE thing that is valuable and different from the competition that people are willing to either switch or pay for.


9. Team 

My opinion about this slide is where I see more opinions different from mine, so take it with a grain of salt. But they are opinions I feel very strongly about.

I see a lot of decks where people put their university logo and the logos of irrelevant former employers. I think that it’s pointless and is almost a negative signal to me. 

As an angel investor, where you went to college is not proof that you are going to find a way to make this company work, unless you’re <25 years old and this is the only thing you have to show for your career.

Where you worked previously is not proof that you are going to make this company work, unless you truly were an early member at a startup (and can point toward what you did specifically for them) or worked at a business that is the exact market you’re going after with your new company (and can demonstrate how that uniquely positions you to build this startup).

Stay away from meaningless credentials and titles, instead spend the entire team slide explaining why this team is the right team to solve this massive problem. To me that looks a lot less like ‘this is what I was called/brand name/etc’ and a lot more like ‘this is exactly what I have already done.’ Aka show if you’ve ever started a business before (even if it failed), your experience and network in the industry you’re going after, years spent working on similar problems (for sales people, revenues you’ve earned, for tech people, products you led), special skills that you uniquely possess, and years spent working together as a team prior.

I’d rather you not put your advisors on your deck, but if you do, don’t do it all based upon credentials either. I see a lot of decks that are like, we got this big name person at this big name company as an advisor, and it’s like, ‘so what? You offered someone a % of your business for credibility, but how is that helping you succeed?’ Instead, share exactly how this advisor is helping you make your startup better and more likely to win.


Anything you would add, remove, disagree with, or suggest? Let me know!

If you have example decks that you’d be willing to share, please send them my way! I would love to make another post that includes some example slides and breakdowns on why they are great for people to refer to visually!

James Dawson

Authenticity or it’s fake 🤙🌺 | Persona Engineered Story Telling

9mo

As a founder who has raised capital and been responsible for deck building and pitching I think this is a solid take that covers a lot of the necessary elements. While a deck isn't designed to tell the heartwarming emotional story, all decisions are emotional decisions. Weaving your "why" narrative into the problem/solution can be powerful. As the owner of an agency that builds decks for founders raising capital I'd pushback on the idea to avoid working with someone like me, but I'd caveat that it is more stage specific. Working with a founder network and getting solid advice is great, and is probably the right play for early stage / seed. I offer free advice and help in this capacity often. I've found product led / technical founders raising series A have a need and desire to outsource and hire an agency to help deliver investor ready decks.

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Zap ⚡️Love this article! We've asked 100+ VCs, Angels and Accelerators what they're looking for in pitch decks and in terms of baseline narrative many slides correlate with what you give for a structure. Our research: https://www.launchdeck.space/pitch-deck-playbook/

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Dan Rogers CRE

Providing Loans for Commercial Real Estate Owners across the US. Supporting Banking Professionals & CRE experts who love their Business Owner Clients.

10mo

This was one of the best articles for nuggets I have read in a while. Fluff free. Shareable. Printable. TAM, TOM Sam... got it. thank you.

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Mark Charest

Ensuring our Vanderbilt medical teams in the OR have the supplies they need, on time, every time for the best patient care!

10mo

Zap ⚡️ check out Nancy Duarte. She also has a great book called Data Story that focuses on sharing complex data in an easier story setting.

Jeff Brown

President, The Biz Foundry Entrepreneur Center

10mo

You nailed it again! Spent all morning teaching exactly this.

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