15 Slides you NEED on your Pitch Deck - Startups 101
Summary
TLDRThis video script provides a comprehensive guide to crafting a compelling pitch deck, emphasizing the importance of storytelling and answering key investor questions. It outlines the ideal structure, from the status quo and product sections to market growth and the team's qualifications, highlighting the need for clear, concise information that can be consumed within four minutes. The speaker shares insights from creating hundreds of pitch decks, resulting in over $300 million raised, and offers a downloadable template to assist founders in presenting their business effectively.
Takeaways
- 📈 The script emphasizes the importance of a structured pitch deck in fundraising, highlighting a successful approach that has contributed to over 300 million dollars raised.
- 📑 The pitch deck is likened to a story, detailing the company's achievements and aspirations, and is crucial for engaging investors amidst a sea of metrics and day-to-day operations.
- ❓ The deck should answer fundamental questions about the market opportunity, the solution offered, the target audience, growth trajectory, and the team's capability to effect change.
- 📧 Most pitch decks are initially consumed via email, thus needing to be concise and compelling enough to secure a meeting with an investor.
- 🕒 The pitch deck should be designed to be consumed within about four minutes to ensure it holds the investor's attention and effectively communicates the key points.
- 🔑 The script underlines the significance of each slide in the deck, with a focus on clarity, brevity, and relevance to the overarching narrative of the company's story.
- 🛠️ The product section should be flexible, yet concise, effectively showcasing what the company has built, how it works, and who it serves, without overwhelming the reader.
- 📈 The market section is pivotal, addressing growth and scalability, and should include a go-to-market strategy and an honest assessment of market size and potential.
- 💡 The 'Why Us' section is critical in differentiating the company from competitors, focusing on market understanding and unique insights that the team brings to the table.
- 💼 The team section should feature key individuals with the relevant expertise and experience necessary to achieve the next fundable milestone.
- 💰 The conclusion of the pitch deck should seamlessly transition into the financial ask, detailing the funding required, terms, and intended use of funds, reinforcing investor confidence.
Q & A
What is the purpose of a pitch deck according to the script?
-A pitch deck is a story about what a company has achieved and wants to continue to achieve, designed to convince investors by answering key questions about the opportunity, product, growth, and the team's ability to change the status quo.
How much money was raised last year using the pitch deck approach mentioned in the script?
-Over 300 million dollars was raised last year with decks that were written or designed using the approach described in the script.
What is the main goal when creating a pitch deck for an email?
-The main goal is to create an 'email deck' that can answer the pitch deck's key questions within about four minutes, ensuring it is concise and easily digestible for investors who consume it on their own time.
What are the key questions a pitch deck needs to answer?
-The key questions a pitch deck needs to answer are: What opportunity have you discovered in the market? What have you built to tackle it and how does it work? Who is it for? How much are you growing and will you continue to grow? And why are you and your team the ones to change the status quo?
Why is it important to keep the structure of the pitch deck in a certain order?
-Maintaining a certain order in the pitch deck is important because it ensures the story is coherent and logical, making it easier for investors to follow and understand the company's value proposition without breaking the narrative flow.
What is the significance of the 'status quo' section in a pitch deck?
-The 'status quo' section is significant as it sets the stage by explaining the current market situation and the problem that the company aims to solve, thus justifying the need for the product or service being pitched.
How should the product section of a pitch deck be structured?
-The product section should focus on what has been built to address the market opportunity, how it works, and who it is for, often including screenshots, a step-by-step diagram of the product, and a clear explanation of its benefits and unique selling points.
What is the importance of the market section in a pitch deck?
-The market section is crucial as it demonstrates the potential for growth and the company's understanding of the market dynamics, including the go-to-market strategy, market size, and how the business intends to capture its share.
Why is the 'Why Us' section important in a pitch deck?
-The 'Why Us' section is important because it establishes why the team behind the company is uniquely positioned to succeed in the market, often by highlighting the competition's shortcomings and the team's industry expertise and unique advantages.
What should be the focus of the 'ask' section at the end of a pitch deck?
-The 'ask' section should focus on the financial aspects of the pitch, including the amount of funding being sought, the terms of the investment, and how the funds will be used to achieve the company's next milestones.
What is the role of a tagline in a pitch deck?
-A tagline in a pitch deck serves as a concise, five to seven-word description of what the company does, providing a clear and straightforward understanding of the business without using marketing jargon.
Why is it recommended to use screenshots over a demo video in a pitch deck?
-Screenshots are recommended over demo videos because they are quicker to consume and ensure that the interface of the product can be clearly seen, whereas a video may not be watched in full, and it takes up more of the investor's limited time.
How should the team section of a pitch deck be approached?
-The team section should highlight key individuals with the relevant skills and experience to bring the company to its next fundable milestone, focusing on industry expertise and related achievements rather than unrelated accolades.
What is the significance of the 'why now' slide in the 'Why Us' section of a pitch deck?
-The 'why now' slide, while optional, can be useful to highlight time-sensitive opportunities or advantages that the company has over competitors, such as market timing or unique insights that provide a competitive edge.
Outlines
📈 The Art of Storytelling in Pitch Decks
This paragraph introduces a proven structure for creating pitch decks, which the speaker's company has successfully used to help raise over 300 million dollars. The focus is on storytelling, a method derived from analyzing successful pitch decks from top companies. The speaker offers guidance on how to create each slide effectively, emphasizing clarity and simplicity. A template is available for download, and the speaker discusses the importance of answering key questions about the opportunity, product, growth, and team within the constraints of a brief, consumable email pitch deck.
🛠 Building the Foundation: Status Quo and Product Sections
The second paragraph delves into the specifics of the 'status quo' and 'product' sections of a pitch deck. It discusses the importance of identifying market opportunities and presenting them alongside the proposed solution. The speaker uses Airbnb's and Uber's pitch decks as examples to illustrate the connection between problem statements and solutions. The product section should flexibly describe what has been built, its functionality, and the target audience, with an emphasis on clarity and avoiding information overload.
🎯 Targeting the Market and Validating the Product
This paragraph focuses on the market section of the pitch deck, which aims to demonstrate growth potential and strategies for continued expansion. The speaker advises on the importance of showing tangible traction, utilizing charts for clarity, and detailing a focused go-to-market strategy. The market size is to be presented in a straightforward manner, focusing on the company's specific potential rather than the overall industry size. The section also covers the importance of market validation and the inclusion of a business model slide.
💡 The 'Why Us' Factor: Team and Competitive Advantage
The final paragraph addresses the 'why us' section of the pitch deck, which is crucial for convincing investors of the team's unique qualifications and competitive edge. The speaker suggests various methods for discussing competitors, such as using comparison charts or listing their shortcomings. The team section should highlight key individuals with relevant expertise and a history of achieving related milestones. An optional 'why now' slide can emphasize time-sensitive opportunities or unique advantages that provide a barrier to entry for competitors.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Pitch Deck
💡Storytelling
💡Metrics
💡Status Quo
💡Product Section
💡Market Validation
💡Business Model
💡Go-to-Market Strategy
💡Traction
💡Market Size
💡Competitive Analysis
💡Team
💡Ask
Highlights
The perfect structure for a pitch deck is discussed, which has been used to raise over 300 million dollars.
Pitch decks should tell a story about a company's achievements and aspirations.
The importance of distilling complex ideas into a clear pitch is emphasized.
A template for pitch decks is available for download on the platform.
The pitch deck needs to answer key questions about the market opportunity, product, growth, and team.
Most pitch decks are consumed via email, aiming to secure meetings with investors.
The deck should be concise, taking no more than four minutes to read.
The status quo section should clearly define the market problem and solution.
Product screenshots and diagrams are more effective than videos for pitch decks.
The product section should explain what's built, its functionality, and target customers.
Market validation is crucial, showing real customer interest and revenue generation.
A clear business model is necessary, explaining how the company intends to make money.
The market section should demonstrate growth potential and a path to continued expansion.
The 'Why Us' section differentiates the team from competitors and showcases unique insights.
Team bios should highlight relevant experience and contributions to the next fundable milestone.
The 'Why Now' slide can leverage time-sensitive opportunities or unique advantages.
The financial section should detail the ask, including funding amount and use of funds.
A pitch deck builder and investor finder tools are available on the platform.
The deck's order should not disrupt the narrative flow, ensuring a coherent story.
Not every suggested slide is necessary; select those that best answer the pitch's questions.
The importance of industry expertise in crafting the status quo and problem-solution sections.
The audience slide should define a clear target persona for the product.
A case study or sample scenario can effectively demonstrate product adoption and impact.
The product roadmap slide should outline key milestones and future plans.
Transcripts
this is to me the perfect structure for a pitch deck we've written hundreds of decks using this
approach over 300 million dollars raised last year with Decks that we wrote or designed and
we know that it works and we didn't make this up of course for years we've looked at pitch
decks from the most successful companies and every single one of them focused on telling a
story this structure helps tell a story in the end a pitch stick is a story about what your
company has achieved and wants to continue to achieve but when your day-to-day is metrics or
marketing or sales or Building Products it's not easy to zoom out and distill everything that you
have in your head so in this video I'm going to go one by one on those slides give you a
few pointers on how to solve each one of them that template is of course available on our
platform to download because we don't make a living from YouTube we're in the business
of helping Founders scale I've done a bunch of videos on Pitch decks for every year we
learned something new and we need to update it so this is everything we know about Pitch decks
foreign to each slide let's like I said zoom out a bit these are the questions that the pitch
deck needs to answer what opportunity have you discovered in the market what have you built to
tackle it and how does it work who is it for how much are you growing and will you continue to grow
and why are you and your team the team that can change the status quo that's it as you're writing
your deck make sure that you keep this cheat sheet of questions as a reference and you want
to test every single slide that you write against the question that it's trying to answer now most
decks are consumed over email decks for demo days or for meetings with investors can be different
because you'll be standing in front of the slots you'll be providing additional context and detail
and answering questions but those are the minority to get a meeting with an investor most of them
will ask you for a deck over email so that they can consume on their own time before spending a
half an hour with you I call that an email deck and it needs to do the job of answering those four
questions in about four minutes forget about the number of slides that's pretty relevant it's not
number of slides it's the time it takes to consume the deck if your deck is too long or
your slides are too crowded people will skim through them instead of reading if your slide
has three sentences then there's really no way that you can skip through that you're going to
read them regardless so now let's tie those questions to slides or rather to sections of
the deck the status quo covers what is happening in the market and what you envision as a solution
it answers that first question what opportunity have you discovered in the market then the product
section answers the question of what have you built to tackle it how does it work and who is
it for you can start to figure out that the slides that would probably go in the section
all relate to the product it's screenshots its Target customers Milestones roadmap and business
model for example next up is the market section this is targeted at answering the question of
how much are you growing and how much will the company continue to grow remember most companies
raise Capital when they have traction not before the market section includes things such as the
go to market strategy which is how you're going to get customers and the market size which is
simply how big does a business get finally we have the Y Us section which covers what you and
your team are the team to change that status quo this section gets into the competition and why
they suck as well as the team and there you go we've now answered every single question that we
set out to answer and we can wrap these slides with an intro and an ask if you've done your
convincing well you can now ask for funding now a common question that we get is well can
this order change I'm all for rules that were made to be broken statements but if you change
this order make sure that it doesn't break the story for example if you sneak the team slide on
the second slide you're essentially breaking the answer to that last question in two parts which
might be harder to get or if you first tell us about the product without touching on the status
quo then suddenly the product doesn't necessarily feel Justified we don't know if there's a need
in the market for it another important note before we jump into each one of these slides
is that you don't need every single one of them if you add every slide in this guide I guarantee
you're gonna have a deck that can't be consumed in four minutes you have to pick the slides that do
best job at answering your own questions the questions that your business is answering but
again you don't need them all and last note before we get into slides remember that we do this for a
living in two main ways our platform has a pitch stick Builder where you can find templates and
references from hundreds of decks it also has an investor finder and a four hour course on what
we're covering today and a bunch of other things and then we also have an agency branch which is
a team of analysts and designers that can help you nail that deck from designing the slides you
already wrote to writing them from scratch links below as always including a copy of the template
that I'm going to show you okay so let's go Slide by Slide the intro usually means just the coverage
there's not much to add here other than a tagline which is this five to seven word description of
what you do finding a tagline for your business is not easy took us months to get to hours also the
tagline is not necessarily your marketing slogan it's just a good description of what you do in
plain English without any marketing jargon now if the company has relevant traction it's sometimes
useful to brag about that early on to make it kind of a hook for the rest the deck this must
be really good traction exciting stuff think 20 monthly growth in revenue or in monthly active
users not vanity metrics like downloads if you don't have any of those just keep calm carry on
get to the status quo remember that in the status quo section we're answering what opportunity
you've discovered in the market just keep that in mind usually this is answered via a slight combo
it's the problem and the solution and you should always think of those slides as interconnected
airbnb's deck from 2009 the one they used for their y combinator demo day is I think perfect
example see how their problem statements problems get matched to a solution on the next slide these
statements need to be clear objective or based on real world data for example on Uber's deck we had
two problem slides which is totally fair and all of these statements are undebatable medallions
are expensive hailing is efficient there is no accountability these are all true statements
they could have gone with something like the taxi experience is terrible and I think for you people
would argue with that but it's always better to use facts rather than and you can almost connect
each one of these statements to an Uber feature so on the problem slide we're looking for short
to the point statements and facts over opinions on the solution slide we want to provide an answer to
each one of those statements on the problem slide now back to Airbnb notice how this answer doesn't
come in the form of features we're not getting into the product just yet the solution slide is
more of a 30 000 foot view of what your product what your company does now most companies start
there the founders identify an efficient process an underserved Market a missing opportunity in an
industry and they build a solution around it now there's an exception here because some startups
just don't solve problems games for example are not solving anything they're not solving a lack
of games in a genre but they're rather tackling a business opportunity I worked on this deck
the other day for an EV charging station company there are plenty of large companies who Supply EV
Chargers but the industry is expected to grow 10x over the next 7 years from 10 to 100 plus billion
dollars there's an obvious business opportunity here now remember this status quo section is key
for the investor reading the deck doesn't buy into this problem they might just stop looking at the
deck right here this very much connects to doing your research about that investor you want to be
sending this to someone who has an interest in the industry that you're playing in and lastly these
three or four sentences are key to proving your own industry expertise normally these problems
aren't immediately obvious to people so by coming up with solid questions about that status quo
you're showing your own expertise in the market that you intend to Target which you should
absolutely have in the Consulting projects that we take these are probably the slides that take the
most amount of time so don't be afraid if you're spending a few hours thinking of these problem
solution combinations and if you're struggling you know where to find us let's go to the product
section this is the most flexible really remember that we're answering what have we built to tackle
the opportunity how does it work and who is it for and it's usually easy for us Founders to
talk about our own products so the challenge for these slides is mostly about compressing the info
to a reasonable amount of slides and remember by amount of slides the concern is not the
number of slides but the time that it'll take to consume them a slide with a product screenshot
and a small caption takes five seconds to consume we'd rather see three slides like that than trying
to compress everything in a single slide also you don't get to see the interface if it's just tiny
inside a phone now let me speak quickly about the different slides that you can add to this section
you can have a slide with some product screenshots or a demo video not everybody wants to commit two
or three minutes to watching a video remember that their time allocation for consuming this
deck is about four minutes so I always recommend screenshots over video another way to approach
this is with a step-by-step diagram showing this simple map or story of how the platform Works
Now features slide lets you list some of the core benefits of the product I always recommend talking
about the benefit to the user rather than the feature itself for example for our pitch stick
Builder we've always used edit your pitch deck on the go on your phone rather than responsive
editor also make sure that you show don't tell if possible easy to use is very subjective while a
screenshot of a clean interface actually proves that you made that happen Same by the way for
AI and ml stuff these have become buzzwords in the past few years that people throw on quite
mindlessly it's much better to show how efficient your AI is at solving a task rather than just
saying that there's AI or machine learning in your platform now if your product has a unique piece of
technology you can use a tech infrastructure slide to show a diagram of the infrastructure it's not
particularly common but very much applicable to blockchain companies for example in which case
you're essentially elaborating about the white paper the market validation slide is important
if your product has a premise that people can easily get behind back to Airbnb for example
this idea of people hosting strangers on their homes wasn't obvious back in 2009 so they used
Craigslist and Couchsurfing as references to prove that thousands of people were in fact willing to
post other people strong Market evaluation slides use Revenue generating examples I see a lot of
funders trying to mention that they've interviewed 20 people in the industry which is something you
should have done anyway so I don't think it necessarily deserves a slide now I do consider
the audience slide a necessary one in this slide you want to identify a Persona that buys your
product having a well-defined Target user goes a long way it shows that you know who the product
is for it shows that you've researched them it shows that you've narrowed down your focus which
means that your features and your growth efforts will have a target a thought out audience rather
than spreading yourself too thin think of genres age brackets location income brackets no startup
can Target all audiences at the same time another way to approach this Slide by the way especially
useful for B2B companies is with a case study ideally this should be an instance where your
product was adopted by another company so you can mention who used it how useful was it and how it
affected their job this once again shows Focus the business in the case study should reveal
to the reader the industry and the size of the company that you target it should also let them
know who the key person in that company was the key decision maker who will eventually become your
buyer and who you're going to be targeting all the time if you have a real case study absolutely go
with that if not a sample scenario still works the business model slide is also necessary I
think we're going to need those details for the market so size now this is a pretty easy
slide that people like to over complicate all we want to know here is how you make money is
it a subscription is it a per use thing what's the average deal size or if it's a Marketplace or any
Commerce how do your margins look like don't spend any time on this slide talking about projections
just tell us how you charge customers and then to wrap the product section you could add a roadmap
slide that talks about key product Milestones as well as future plans for the company remember we
are talking about the product here it's not about Revenue again not Revenue projections more about
the product roadmap investors also don't care too much about Milestones like incorporation
or recruiting a team member it's more about the product itself as for the future your focus should
be especially on what's going to happen over the next 12 months which is a time that likely this
round of capital is going to be funding if you have a long term or longer term product Vision
you can even branch that out into a new slot so that it doesn't feel like a distraction from
the immediate future which again is where your investors money is going to go okay so now moving
into the market section remember what we're trying to answer here is is how much are you growing and
how will you continue to grow this all starts with attraction slide of course if you have no traction
you should first reconsider who you're pitching with this deck companies in idea stage can raise
money from friends and family so you might need a deck for them but it's unlikely that you will
raise money from strangers a good traction slide should show growth on core kpis like revenue or
monthly active users and avoid vanity metrics like downloads or signups since they don't really
represent true adoption of your product lastly remember that single data points are just dots but
you can turn that into a story by just turning them into a chart with historicals making ten
thousand dollars this month or last month is cool but we want to know if that's growing or shrinking
if it's a trend or an anomaly and the easiest and quickest way to understand that is with a chart
the go to market slot is another one where we see a lot of Founders struggle most of the bad slides
I see are just a list of 10 marketing channels which shows that the team hasn't really thought
out any of them through again shows a lack of focus a great go to market right focuses on
one maybe two strategies and Dives very deep into them if these are strategies that you're
already using you can even get into some of the unique economics and the costs if they're new
then you can just detail a plan a timeline budget expectations ideally these should be campaigns or
channels that you've previous experienced with even if it's working within other companies and
that you can attest to its Effectiveness it's not just a random list of what you have in mind to do
go to market is important not only because a good portion of raised Capital usually gets invested
in growth but because you need to prove that you're reaching your next fundable milestone
for software companies for example a pre-seat round is usually a pre-product idea stage type
of round but whatever you raise needs to be enough to get to the next fundable Milestone
which is seed funding is seed round again for software companies is usually raised with a
live product and with some solid month-over-month Revenue growth maybe 20 or more once again your
go to market needs to show that you can reach the next Milestone which is series a for SAS
companies specific play series a rounds happen at around 1.5 to 2 million dollars of annual run rate
at least Hardware companies blockchain companies and biotech operate very differently around what
these Milestones are but again you need to show that you've budgeted what you need to reach that
next Milestone the market slide is another slide where Founders struggle a lot it should answer the
simple question of how much revenue can your business generate annually it's not the size
of the industry it's not the size of the market in general you don't need to break down the Tam
Samsung it's about your specific business and how big it gets the math is extremely simple and at
the same time it's really hard to get right it's just potential customers times annual revenue per
customer that's it finding your annual revenue per customer depends on the business model slide
which we touched on already the hard part here is confirming that your business model is indeed
compatible with customers that your pricing your plan will be accepted by the market finding the
number of customers is the hard part because you have to really narrow that down to the people
or the companies that will buy AI from you Steve harsh one of our investors made a fantastic video
of good practices on Tam and I'm going to drop it in the description below okay so now we're at the
last bit of the deck the question to answer is why you and your team are the team that changes
the status quo you can talk about competitors in a bunch of different ways but the end goal is
always to show that you understand your market and that your competitors don't that you have a better
understanding it's less about comparing features again it's about why you for example you can use
the famous to access chart that Steve Jobs used as long as you use it right those charts work as long
as you have just two clear variables one for the horizontal one for the vertical axis it also works
as long as your product is a clear outlier if you have other products on that top right section then
it's not really the best of arguments another approach is to just list features pricing and
to compare them that works as long as it focuses on Market understanding it's not just showing
that you have more features or cheaper pricing but confirming that your competitors can easily copy
this or wouldn't want to the last approach I'll mention is just list listing three companies and
writing a few lines about each one of them you can mention their size their location their funding
as a reference and then simply State what they don't know about the market that you do talking
about how much they've raised also helps give investors a perspective on how big the market
can get or how big your company can get as for the team what we want to see here is not Founders not
advisors not the entire team but key people the people on the slide should have the skills to
bring the company to that next fundable Milestone if you're building an app then the technical lead
which is likely your CTO should be here if you're aiming for 20 month of a month growth then you're
ahead of marketing or your head of sales should be here regardless of their founder status if you
don't have that person on your team you probably need them before you can actually close around
recruiting for early stages really hard and money is not the answer it's networking it's getting
people to believe in this idea enough to take a risk and work with you funding is not going
to solve that we have a whole video on finding co-founders which I'll also link down below now
the bios for those people should also focus on that industry expertise on what they're doing
for them company what they've done before that's related to this rather than unrelated achievements
after looking at thousands of decks trust me Ivy League schools stopped being surprising they're
not irrelevant don't get me wrong but experience is what really makes a team interesting now you
can close the Ys section with a why now slide which is optional but useful if there's some time
constraint that you want to use to your advantage to close the round if for example there are a few
competitors at the moment either because people haven't figured out this business opportunity or
because there's some legal or logistic barrier for others to enter the market and money can make you
sort of win that race you can also frame this slide as the secret sauce where you highlight
some unique technology strong network connections or a very unique understanding that nobody else
has and that sort of protects you that builds a mode against these competitors and that concludes
the story side of the deck and if you did your job well investors should be convinced by now the last
couple slides which would represent the ask focus on your financial estimations and on the amount of
money that you're raising the terms and the use of funds but it's not about the story of the company
now by no means should you underestimate these slides mind you we have plenty of videos covering
how to solve your financial models including this one from last week which covers Financial modeling
from the abstract to the spreadsheet remember that this template that I've been referring to
is available for download and swiping with just a click you can apply your branding and be on
your way if you need our help to write or design any of the slides on the deck you can chat with
our sales team I've linked their calendars Below Good Luck thanks a lot for watching
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