- Entrepreneurship is hard enough, and pitching your startup to investors can feel like a performance. In addition to showcasing your public speaking abilities, you'll also have to flaunt your design skills.
- We asked successful entrepreneurs and investors how to do it right. In short, they say you should keep it simple and tell a story in 10 slides or less.
- Their other tips include: Tailor your pitch to your audience, demonstrate why now is the best time to launch your business, and don't forget to say what your company actually does.
- We've included several resources to build your own deck, and a video in which the CEO of billion-dollar startup Carta walks us through his Series A and Series E pitch decks.
- Visit BI Prime for more stories.
They tell you not to judge a book by its cover — but investors will absolutely be using your pitch deck to evaluate your company's potential, so you'll want to make a stellar impression.
To that end, we asked a series of successful entrepreneurs and investors for their best advice on creating an impressive pitch deck:
- Justin McLeod, the founder and CEO of Hinge, a dating app.
- Kim Taylor, the founder and CEO of Cluster, which recruits for advanced manufacturing roles.
- Christina Carbonell and Galyn Bernard, the cofounders of Primary, a children's clothing brand.
- Megan O'Connor, the cofounder and CEO of Clark, a tutoring-software company.
- Jen Rubio, the cofounder, president, and chief brand officer of Away, a travel brand; Steph Korey was the CEO until 2019.
- Masha Drokova, the founder and general partner of Day One Ventures, an early-stage capital firm.
- Anu Duggal, the founding partner at Female Founders Fund, which invests in early-stage technology companies run by women.
Their main takeaways? Keep it simple, and include the information that's most relevant to each investor.
At the bottom of this article, you'll also find the recording of a webinar in which Henry Ward, the CEO of billion-dollar startup Carta, walks us through his Series A and Series E pitch decks. Carta has so far raised a total of $448 million.
Read on for a practical guide to pitch decks, a breakdown of some impressive examples, and some tools to get you started making your own.
Customize your deck to the specific investor you're pitching
You might envision walking into a room full of investors, requesting $1 million for your company, and walking out a few minutes later, triumphant.
That's not typically how things work.
McLeod said it's more common (and more effective) to form a relationship with the investor before making your pitch. That includes asking the investor what kind of information they want to see in a deck and which numbers are important to them.
Prepare multiple documents that tell your company's story
Taylor recommended creating three different versions of your pitch deck. Specifically, you'll need a short advance copy, one for in-person meetings, and another for follow-up calls.
Verify investors before sending them confidential information
Taylor warned founders not to include financial information in their intro deck and "blindly send it to people without qualifying them." She recommended DocSend for this purpose.
Make sure to visually represent your brand identity
Ideally, by the time you're putting together a deck, "you have enough of a vision for the brand that you're building" that you can visually represent that brand, Carbonell said. Too often she sees other founders' decks "either not well designed or generically designed," and missing their "brand personality," she said.
Taylor reminded founders to design their title slide and not to leave it as an afterthought.
"First impressions matter!" she said.
Don't go overboard with the information you present
Keep your pitch deck concise.
A few entrepreneurs mentioned that they'd used the venture-capital firm Sequoia Capital's pitch-deck template, which includes 10 slides, each with one key point.
And Taylor said she uses Guy Kawasaki's 10/20/30 rule: "A pitch should have 10 slides, last no more than 20 minutes, and contain no font smaller than 30 points."
Remember that your deck should tell a story
Your deck should outline the most important points about your business — not everything about your business.
As Bernard put it, your deck should "tell a story" so that investors "can understand where you think the business is going to go."
It goes back to knowing which numbers and metrics matter most to each investor. "If you throw all of your numbers into your deck, it may not tell a story," Bernard said, and the investors "may not latch on to the right point."
Rubio said founders should "paint a specific picture of the one (or maybe two!) biggest opportunities that you're working to leverage, and then focus your pitch on how you're going to approach them."
"Otherwise, it's too easy to give the impression that you're not clear on your purpose and the value you're uniquely bringing to the table."
Pretend you're creating a deck for your parents
Carbonell said one of the best pieces of advice she'd heard on this topic is to pretend you're presenting the deck to your parents.
In other words, don't be afraid to "brag a little bit" — your parents want you to succeed — and "give them a little bit of context for some things," since they might not be experts in the space like you are.
Carbonell said this mindset had helped her spot any holes in the Primary pitch deck.
Include just one point per slide
When you're creating a deck to use during in-person meetings, avoid the temptation to cram every slide with information.
"Each slide should have one cohesive, clear point, and it should not take a lot of text to make that point," O'Connor said.
Remember you'll be talking during the presentation, she said, "so you don't need everything you're going to say also on the slide."
Use one slide to explain who's on the team
"In the early stages, a VC is investing in the person (or team), not the company," O'Connor said. "They have to believe that you are the one that can accomplish the mission above anyone else."
That's why she recommends including a blurb on the entire team and their professional backgrounds. During the pitch, you can talk through your story as the founder.
Include your bio if it's relevant
Taylor said that "people remember narrative and why you are doing something." If your personal or professional background is relevant to the company, include that in your deck.
For example, Taylor grew up in an advanced-manufacturing hub in Wisconsin, so she includes that point when she's pitching Cluster.
Don't forget to say what your company is actually doing
Yes, it sounds obvious. But the Primary founders said it's easy to get so deep in the weeds that you forget to tell investors what the purpose of your company is.
"Occasionally, we are so close to what we're doing, what our actual product is and what we're offering, that we forget to say it," Bernard said.
Outline both your grand vision and your concrete execution
Your pitch deck should address two points, McLeod said: "Here's the grand vision of where this is going to go and why this is a big idea" and "We're going to really nail this one narrow thing really well."
When McLeod was pitching Hinge, he emphasized the global vision of changing dating culture. But he also showed that he had gotten people using the app in the first place.
Address the market landscape and competition
Duggal said one common mistake she sees in pitch decks is "not addressing competition or figuring out the market landscape."
"When we think about investing in a company, we want to understand — that's great that you have an interesting idea or you spotted something that has the potential to be an exciting business — but we also want to understand what is already in the market," she said.
Explain why now is the best time to launch your business
Don't just talk about the problem and your solution, Carbonell said. Also answer the question "Why now?"
"It can be very helpful in persuading an investor not only that you have a good idea, but why now is the right time to pursue it and why it hasn't been done before," she added.
Drokova said: "A deck is all about why [the business] should exist today and that you're ready and capable to execute it. With Day One Ventures, it was about our insights into communications and PR, and seeing how much it helps early-stage companies grow in size and valuation, and how it assists with recruiting top talent."
Highlight the cost of customer acquisition
O'Connor said investors are always interested in hearing about your cost to acquire a customer. "At the very least," she said, "you need to be able to show that your CAC will decrease over time, and what your plan is for making that possible at scale."
Include whatever data you can to inspire confidence
Early on, Korey said, "you might not have enough data to successfully show anticipated traction." In that case, "focus on other metrics that you can share," including qualitative feedback from your initial research.
"When the hard data doesn't exist yet, there are other ways to prove that there's an appetite for what you're building and a path toward success," Korey said.
Specify how you're going to spend the money you raise
Investors want to know what you'll be doing with their cash.
"You need to be more specific than just letting the investors know you're going to build the company and should be able to speak to things like headcount, office space, vendor agreements, R&D, and any other big expenditures for your business," O'Connor said.
Highlight your plans for growth
Duggal said every deck should include a five-year growth plan.
Tell investors how long it will take to get their money back
The "payback period" is how long it will take for investors to recover the cost of their investment.
"Investors are going to give your company money because they believe they can eventually make a profit off of it," O'Connor said. "So in addition to clearly articulating how that will be possible, you'll also need to share a specific timeline of when it's going to happen."
Tweak the deck based on the feedback you get from each investor
When the Primary founders started pitching investors, they realized they needed to make their deck even simpler.
"Not all of the points that we were making were coming across as clearly as we wanted to," Carbonell said. So they updated the slides for the rest of their investor meetings.
Use the tools you have, or find help here
There are a lot of tools available to create winning presentations, and depending on your team's design skills, many services out there to make your deck shine.
Most businesses have access to basic software like Google Sheets, Power Point, and Apple Keynote, but here are 5 online services that go further.
Each offer a free trial, and provide options for design and technical support. In order of least expensive to most for a premium annual subscription:
- Slidebean ($96/yr to $228/yr) — Slidebean uses artificial intelligence to automatically populate slides with your content.
- Canva ($120/yr to $360/yr) — Canva provides a full suite of tools for creating brand and marketing materials.
- Haiku Deck ($120/yr to $360/yr) — Haiku Deck has thousands of templates for presenting on any connected device.
- Pitch Deck ($499/yr) — Pitch Deck is a platform that enables teams to track the performance of individual presentations.
- Prezi ($240/yr to $720/yr) — Prezi is a dynamic canvas software that is more like a whiteboard than a slideshow.
Whichever option you choose, you'll want to make sure you can easily update your content and run the presentation smoothly, including jumping between slides, without too much fumbling around.
Also, having a backup PDF copy of your deck on hand can be a lifesaver in the event of a tech malfunction.
Looking for more guidance on pitch decks? Check out these decks that helped startups raise millions.
Now watch the CEO of unicorn startup Carta dissect his Series A and Series E pitch decks:
SEE ALSO: The first-time founder's ultimate guide to pitching a VC
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