Ep 253: Craft Your Perfect Pitch Deck

We’re going to be talking about the perfect pitch deck. And what is that?

A pitch deck is your proposal that you would give to investors to invest in your company so you look really professional. Just imagine a very professional paper that you would provide, like a doctorate dissertation or anything like that. You definitely want to look very professional.

I’m going to go over what should be in it. This is kind of based off of Peter Thiel, the famous investor and the things that he has in his.

Your Company Information

This is your logo, your startup name, picture the front of your business, etc.

Your Information

This is like your phone number, how they going to reach you, your email. <ake this big and easy to find.

Most investors are not super patient, they want to get hit with this quick next area…

Your Concept

What is this? Nobody’s going to invest in something they don’t know anything about or don’t understand, so you want to share with them the concept and if you have a photo of something that can represent this or maybe you’ve come up with a tagline for your concept, whatever that may be.

The Problem

Every business to some degree is solving a problem, so if you’re solving a problem, this is where you need to share it. What is the problem you’re solving? Add the urgency to it, why it needs to be solved, and how you’re going to solve it.

The Solution

So you shared the problem that you’ve encountered, now you’re sharing the solution. How your company is going to be a part of the solution?

The Market size

They want to know that there’s a nice big market that is willing to pay for this solution to the problem. Show where the market is, the market size, etc.

The Competition

We all know that nearly every business, 99% of the time, has competition. If you don’t know who your competition is, then you haven’t done enough of your homework.

The Business Plan

Because you could never be answering these questions just off the top of your head.

Your Competitive Advantage

What about your company is going to be different? What can you guys do better that really matters to your target customers?

The Product

If you’re a service company than this is a moot point, or maybe you have a service company, kind of like reputation defender where it’s a service, but you kind of have a product as well, and this is where you want to describe what are the features and benefits of your product.

This is where you’re constantly showing visuals. It might be statistics, or where you’re going to provide the difference.

Even though we’re a service company, we can show improvement in a product, showing this is what it looked like when we got there and here it is when we left, it looks like this now… Things of that nature.

Traction

You want to show your potential investors that you have traction for your product or service. What traction do you have with your customers? What testing have you done? What’s your feedback been? What’s the engagement you’ve had with your customers and what they have shared? What is your potential for growth?

Traction is huge. They’re going to want to know what’s going on with your business and what’s happened so far and what you’ve learned from it and where you’re going because of it.

 

Feedback

If you’ve ever watched Shark Tank, you’ve kind of seen this take place; getting feedback and then sharing where you’ve pivoted because of the feedback. They want to know you’ve kind of learned a little bit so far, and not everything’s going to be a crash and burn mission.

Your Business Model

This is the model that you’re going to use to operate your business and generate revenue. Don’t get so hung up in your strategies or your tactics, they just want to see that you’ve thought this thing through and that it makes sense in what you’re doing and how your business model is going to work. They just want to know that you have a strategy to earn a profit. This is not 20 pages of granular stuff here, this is just your basic business model for acquiring customers and generating revenue for your business. Just want to show how you’re going to acquire customers and generate revenue.

Your Financial Forecast

This is a guess, but they are going to want to see how this business is going to make money. This is kind of your burn rate, i.e. how fast you’re burning through money. What’s your break-even point? How many subscribers do you need to break even? What’s your profit margin on each customer and how many customers are you’re typically selling to right now? You’re disclosing the finances and where you see the finances going based on what’s happened so far.

Your Investors

They’re going to want to see who your previous investors are, or current investors. How much of the company’s been sold? In other words, what’s left? How many chickens on this bone? If you have obviously an impressive investor to this point, that’s good to share.

How You’re Going to Use Their Funds

What are you going to do with the money? Are you going to spend it on operating costs, or are you going to use it to grow the company? This is really important. So this is where if you think you’re going to be pocketing this money, that’s going to be disclosed really, really quick, and that is never going to fly. They want to see that you’re investing this money to grow this company. So it’s important that they don’t feel like they’re just providing survival for this business unless they’re going to be managing partners now and kind of taking you out of the equation and taking it over because you haven’t run it very well.

Your Team

This is where you share your founding team so they can see the talent level that you have. They might see where you’re weak and where they could help. If you look at startups, it’s not uncommon that you have big investors put people in the equation to help you where you’re weak.

 

Finally, you have a slide with your contact information again, but this is where I would just thank them for their time. And maybe you just finally wrap it up with kind of a quick summary.

Hey, wrapping it up on maybe really quickly why this is a good investment…Hey, we would love you to be a part of this because A, B, C, and D. This is a potential…

This is almost like an elevator pitch. Just hit them one more time, very briefly on why this would be a great investment.

I just gave you the perfect pitch deck.