bmann.ca
tags:
- startup
- fundraising
Creating a pitch deck is part of the startup fundraising process.
Every stage of investment and industry has different norms, but there are a lot of standard expectations and basics.
I’ll focus on sharing resources around early stage fundraising for your pre-seed or seed rounds, for what you think is a [[Venture Sized Business]].
There’s a movement towards writing up [[Investment Memos]] instead of Pitch Decks.
Slide Design#
10 slides#
Your pitch deck will be 10 slides.
You can (and will) have 10s of appendix / backup / alternate slides. The meat of your base pitch will only be 10 slides.
An overview or intro deck can / should be less!
Send a PDF attachment#
Build your deck in whatever you want - Keynote, PowerPoint, Google Slides, Figma, whatever.
When actually sending a deck, send it as a PDF attachment. This works on mobile, it works offline, it can easily be forwarded, and it’s non editable.
There are things like Docsend and various other “send this as a link and email gate it”. This is likely more appropriate for customer sales engagement or other purposes.
The title of the slide should be the take away#
LinkedIn post by Stephen Carroll
The best advice I ever got about building pitch decks is stupidly simple:
“Make the title of the slide the thing you want the investor/customer to take away from reading that slide.”
Example:
There’s often a “team” slide… Which is appropriately titled something like “Our Team.”
That title is okay, but it can be improved.
“Team of Industry Veterans with 28+ Years of Experience” has way more punch than “Our Team”
Frames the thinking around how qualified your team is… Before they were just getting a general introduction to your team.
Same info. Different title. WAY bigger impact.
Instead of it reading like a description, it reads like a punchline.
This is psychology.
Another example:
The “Our Product” slide
Typically followed with information about the offering.
Instead, just lead with the punchline…
“Our Product Reduces Manual Effort by 10x”
Much more powerful.