“Go straight into facts and forget the jargon”.🔗

Remember a pitch deck is more than a presentation – it’s a substitute for you. Its goal is to leave the reader with enough interest to warrant further discussion. With Investors sifting through hundreds of decks weekly, you must ensure yours stands out.

The Key Elements of a Winning Pitch Deck🔗

To increase your chances there are some rules of thumbs that must be followed.

1. Format & Style
   A PowerPoint presentation is often the preferred format, as it is visually engaging and easily digestible. Use graphics, charts, and illustrations to bring key information alive. Use your company’s branding, including colours, logos, and any design elements unique to your business. This will bring to light and reinforce your identity throughout the deck.
2. Language
   Avoid jargon or overly technical language. Where possible, put things in layman’s terms – be cognisant that investors may often lack deep expertise in specific industries.Remember the golden rule is to keep your pitch concise and clear throughout to ensure your deck is both easy-to-understand and impactful.
3. Purpose & Goal
   Remember the purpose of your deck is to achieve two things. First it should present the investor with a backable venture proposition – that’s the reason you’re pitching, after all. Second, the aim should be to secure an introduction call.

Content & Structure🔗

The content of your pitch deck can be structured in different ways, but it must contain explicit answers to the following questions:

What is the problem statement and the solution?🔗

The pitch must immediately paint a picture of your company, outlining the problem your business addresses and your solution.

Always think to yourself, what is that I’m trying to solve? How does my product/service solve this problem? How is my solution better and different from what is already is available?

• Start with the value proposition – The first thing investors want to understand is the business’s purpose and offering. State this at the start to avoid an investor searching for answers to the most obvious question of all: ‘What does the business do?’
• Showcase the problem and your solution -The next natural question that will spring in an investor’s mind is why? Why is there a need for this? Highlight what makes your solution better, different and more desirable compared to existing alternatives.
• Cover the founding story - What inspired you to start the venture? What opportunity have you spotted? What’s your unique insight and why is this important to you?

Slide advice: Create a problem/solution slide that illustrates answers to common questions.

How big is the problem? What is your Ideal Customer Profile?🔗

Investors want to know how big the market is. They also want to understand the main drivers that will support sales of the product/service. And lastly, why is this the right time for investment?

• Market Size - I tend to discourage the use of total addressable market (TAM) and share of market (SOM), as most often your actual target market will be a small proportion of this. Instead, when calculating your addressable market, focus on a detailed view of your target audience.
  Think: Who are you selling the product/service to and how many of these customers are in the market? This will be the actual size of the market.
• Target audience/Ideal Customer Profile: Detail who you’re selling to alongside their characteristics. Explain how your target customer behaves, how they make purchasing decisions, and how they engage with products/service like yours.
• Key Growth Factors (Market Drivers): Identify the major trends or drivers supporting growth in your market (e.g. technological advancements, consumer behaviour shifts, or new/update regulations).
• Alignment with Market needs: Clearly show how your product or service aligns to these growth drivers. Answer the question: ‘Does this solution meet current and future market demands?’

Pro tip: Avoid presenting numbers in isolation. Instead, contextualize them to reinforce how your business meets market demands or leverages opportunities. Remember to validate your claims with real world data such as reports and case studies.

Slide advice: Where relevant, use graphs, charts, infographics etc. to creatively highlight data

How do you cut through the noise in the market and what is your value add?🔗

At this point, it’s important to highlight your competitive advantage and not only explain how you’re solving your customers’ pain points but also where your competitors are failing to do so.

• Competitive Positioning -Clearly demonstrate how your business is positioned within the market landscape. Use strategic visualisations to highlight your place among competitors and potential market growth. I’ve included some helpful resources below.
• Value proposition –Explain to the investor why customers are choosing your solution over others in the market. Highlight the value add or return of investment from your solution against the ones belonging to your competitors. It’s important to state clearly how your business cuts through the noise in the market and adds value to clients.

Resources (Competitive Positioning):A competitor matrix could be used to summaries how your positioned in the market.

• Growth quadrant from Semrush here.
• Magic quadrant DevOps platforms by Gartner: here.

Slide advice: Spell out the information with clear headlines, such as Competitor Analysis and Unique Selling Points

How do you generate revenue?🔗

After laying out your story, proposition, competitor analysis and USPs, the next core thing an Investor will be interested in is understanding how you generate revenue. There are two essential parts to this section covered below.

• Business Model – As concisely as possible but without leaving out key information, present the business model, i.e. is this a B2B, D2C, B2B2C business?
• Sales Channels and Partnerships - Where are you selling your products? Are you using any partner channels? Do you have any partnership agreements with resellers?

Slide advice:Use a simple chart or flow diagram to illustrate your revenue streams and go-to-market strategy

What is your Momentum? What are the early signs of product market fit?🔗

Now that they have a base awareness of the problem, business solution, model and market positioning, hit your investor audience with some key momentum metrics.

Momentum is a strong indicator of future success. Here is your opportunity to showcase early product market fit and strengthen the reasoning as to why this is the right time for an investment in your business. Remember to present your traction with hard data and evidence.

• Key Metrics - There are various metrics that can be used, and these may change over time, depending on the business and its stage. Check out the resources below this section.
• Real evidence - Investors want to see that your business is already gaining traction prior to the investment, which they expect it will expediate growth. Illustrate real evidence. For B2B SaaS VCs, prioritise milestones in the following order: Revenue > contracts > proof-of-concepts > paid pilots > unpaid pilots > pipeline > product launches > social media (assuming B2B SaaS).

Slide advice:Think carefully about what data you can present to illustrate early traction and examples of product market fit. Signpost this to make it clear and obvious.

Resource (KPIs):

• 30 Financial Metrics and KPIs to Measure Success in 2023 | NetSuite
• What KPIS are and how to know what to track, PWC research - 1316_UK KPI 2007_030907.indd
• KPIs by department- 170 Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Examples & Templates

What is the raise ask and how will the funds be used? Why now?🔗

Investors naturally want clarity around how the funds will be deployed and the rationale behind the raise. You also need to come back to that question of why? Why you and why now?

• Funding details – Detail the raise ask accompanied with the valuation and use of funds.
• Timing - You must demonstrate to investors that this is this is the right time to invest. Present how this raise will impact the next stage of growth. Investors want to see you are at an inflexion point – highlight your growth trajectory, pipeline, and milestones.
• Growth potential/Exit Horizon – VCs want to invest in businesses with potential for rapid growth and companies that are likely to g achieve a successful exit. Help them by illustrating how big this opportunity could get and who the potential acquirers might be.

Slide advice:As well as highlighting the rationale behind why you’re raising money, provide a breakdown of the plan and a detailed insight into your proposed expenditure.

Why is this the right team?🔗

Investors are not just backing ideas, a large part of it is about backing people. And as such, they need to have confidence in a management team’s expertise, capability, and experience delivering results. After you’ve been through the above steps, this is a chance to introduce your team and what they bring to the table.

• Team Background -Demonstrate how each team member's experience directly contributes to the success of the business by including the following:
  • Years of industry experience
  • Business and managerial background
  • Technical skills
  • % shareholding to indicate any incentivisation
• Prior Exits –Not a first-time founder? Highlight any prior scaling up experience or examples where you’ve exited a previous business or been integral to the process. This will bolster an investor’s confidence in your entrepreneurial abilities or those of your team.
• Advisors and NEDs - Include any advisors and NEDs.
• Investors - Include current investors who are backing the business, as this will be a positive sign for potential investors.

Slide advice: Don’t overthink things. A well-designed team slide with photos, names and brief relevant bios of key team members, Advisors, NED, and Investors is what’s needed here.

Finally assess externally and send it – Good Luck!🔗

One of the most important things you can do before sending your pitch deck to VCs is together trusted feedback. Share the deck with friends and family with no industry expert knowledge. Their understanding is a good indication for whether your deck is clear and portrays the business in the most accurate way. You could also reach out to other founders or known people within the ecosystem for a more in-depth opinion and critique, particularly if they’ve raised money before.

Above all, stay resilient. Don’t get downtrodden by investor rejections. VCs have different fund mandates and criteria, and while one may decline, another might see your business as a perfect fit.