How to Design a Pitch Deck for Investors
Designing a pitch deck for investors involves more than making a presentation look attractive. The real goal is to communicate a business opportunity clearly enough that an investor can understand what the company does, why the opportunity matters, and why the business may deserve a closer look.
Investors may see many business ideas and presentations. A pitch deck therefore has to communicate efficiently. Complicated slides, vague explanations, unnecessary information, and excessive text can make a promising idea harder to understand.
There is no single pitch deck format that is right for every company. The appropriate presentation depends on the business, its stage, the audience, and the purpose of the fundraising. However, the following principles can provide a useful starting point when designing an investor pitch deck.
1. Start With a Clear Explanation of the Business
One of the first things an investor needs to understand is what your company actually does.
Try to describe the business in straightforward language. What product or service do you provide? Who uses it? What important benefit does it offer?
Avoid assuming that investors already understand your industry, technology, or terminology. If the basic business requires a lengthy explanation before someone can understand it, look for a simpler way to communicate the central idea.
2. Define the Problem
Before explaining your solution, help the investor understand the problem that created the opportunity.
Who experiences the problem? How frequently does it occur? What does the problem cost people in money, time, convenience, productivity, or some other meaningful way?
The more clearly an investor understands why the problem matters, the easier it becomes to understand why customers might want the solution you are about to present.
3. Show How Your Product or Service Solves the Problem
After establishing the problem, explain the solution in terms that are easy to understand.
This may be an appropriate place for a product image, screenshot, diagram, demonstration, or simple explanation of how the product works. The objective is not necessarily to document every feature. It is to make the value of the solution understandable.
If your product is technically complicated, distinguish between the technical details that are necessary for understanding the opportunity and details that can wait until a later conversation.
4. Explain Who the Customers Are
Investors need to understand who will actually use or purchase what your company offers.
Be as specific as the circumstances allow. A description such as "businesses" or "consumers" may be so broad that it tells the investor very little. Describe the types of customers you expect to serve and what makes those customers likely to need your product.
If you have already identified particularly promising customer segments, explain why you are focusing on them.
5. Describe the Market Opportunity
A useful product does not automatically create an attractive investment opportunity. Investors also want to understand the potential market for the business.
Market information should help answer practical questions: How many potential customers exist? How much might they spend? Is the market growing? What portion of the market can your company realistically pursue?
Large market statistics can sound impressive, but they are more useful when connected to the actual customers and opportunities your company can reasonably address.
6. Explain the Business Model
An investor will generally want to understand how the company expects to make money.
Explain who pays the company, what they pay for, and how the company earns revenue. Depending on the business, this might involve product sales, subscriptions, licensing, commissions, advertising, transaction fees, professional services, or another revenue model.
If pricing or the business model is still evolving, it is better to describe the current thinking accurately than to create a false sense of certainty.
7. Show Traction When You Have It
Evidence that real people want what you are building can make an investor presentation substantially more informative.
Depending on the company, traction could include revenue, customers, users, recurring usage, growth, signed agreements, partnerships, pilot programs, waiting lists, successful tests, or other meaningful milestones.
Early-stage companies may have limited traction. If that is the case, present the strongest genuine evidence available without exaggerating what the numbers mean.
8. Address the Competition
Investors are likely to wonder what alternatives customers currently have and what prevents another company from solving the same problem.
Your competitors are not limited to companies selling an identical product. A competing alternative may simply be the method customers use today to deal with the problem.
Explain the competitive landscape fairly and then describe what makes your approach different. That difference might involve technology, cost, convenience, distribution, expertise, intellectual property, network effects, customer experience, or another meaningful advantage.
9. Introduce the Team
Investors are investing in people as well as businesses. Your pitch deck should therefore help explain why the team is capable of pursuing the opportunity.
Focus on experience, accomplishments, skills, industry knowledge, or relationships that are relevant to the company. A short explanation of why a founder is particularly well suited to solve the problem may be more useful than a long list of unrelated credentials.
If important positions have not yet been filled, you can also identify significant gaps the company expects to address as it grows.
10. Include Financial Information Appropriate to Your Stage
The amount and type of financial information appropriate for a pitch deck depends heavily on the company's stage.
An operating company may have meaningful historical revenue, expenses, margins, and growth information. A very early-stage startup may instead rely more heavily on assumptions and projections.
Whatever information you present should be understandable and defensible. If projections depend on important assumptions, be prepared to explain those assumptions rather than presenting forecasts as if future results were guaranteed.
11. Make the Investment Ask Clear
If the purpose of the pitch deck is to raise capital, the investor should understand what you are asking for.
Depending on the circumstances, that may include how much money the company is seeking and what the investment is intended to help the company accomplish.
Connecting the funding request to concrete objectives can help an investor understand what the capital is expected to enable, such as completing product development, hiring key employees, expanding sales, entering new markets, or reaching another important milestone.
12. Design Slides for Communication, Not Decoration
Visual design matters, but its purpose should be to make the presentation easier to understand.
Use readable type, sufficient contrast, consistent formatting, and enough open space that important information does not become buried. Charts and graphics should communicate something useful rather than simply make the slides look busy.
A professionally designed presentation can create a positive impression, but visual polish cannot compensate for an unclear business proposition. Start with the message, then use design to make that message easier to absorb.
13. Remember That Some Investors May Review the Deck Without You
There is an important difference between a presentation you deliver personally and a pitch deck that someone reviews independently.
When you are standing in front of an audience, you can explain details, answer questions, and provide context that is not written on the slides. When an investor opens the presentation without you, the deck has to do more of that communication by itself.
Before distributing your pitch deck, review it from that perspective. Ask whether someone unfamiliar with your company can follow the story and understand the important points without hearing your spoken presentation.
14. Don't Try to Answer Every Possible Question
A common temptation is to put every available fact into the pitch deck. That can make the presentation longer and harder to understand without necessarily making it more persuasive.
The pitch deck does not have to replace every future conversation, financial model, product demonstration, due diligence document, or business plan. Its job is to communicate the opportunity well enough to create understanding and, ideally, interest in learning more.
Keep supporting information available for investors who want additional detail, but do not allow secondary information to bury the central story of the business.
Before You Share Your Investor Pitch Deck
Once the pitch deck is finished, review the entire presentation one more time from beginning to end. Check for spelling errors, outdated information, inconsistent formatting, unreadable charts, and slides that no longer contribute to the story.
You may also want to have someone unfamiliar with the company review the deck. Ask that person what the company does, what problem it solves, why the opportunity is interesting, and which parts of the presentation were unclear. That kind of feedback can reveal problems that are difficult for someone close to the business to notice.
You've Designed the Pitch Deck. Now How Will Investors See It?
Designing the investor pitch deck is only one stage of the process. Eventually, the presentation needs to reach the investors and other people you want to see it.
You can send the original PDF or PowerPoint file as an attachment, or you can make the presentation available online and provide the viewer with access to the hosted presentation.
PitchDeckHost.com was created for this stage of the process. You can upload a supported presentation, provide investors and other viewers with online access to it, and obtain information about how the presentation is viewed.
Learn About Pitch Deck Hosting
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