If you need to raise funding from a VC for your startup, the initial step is to craft a pitch deck. An investor pitch deck is a brief presentation that helps investors to understand your business. It should necessarily include your product benefits, your business model, your monetization strategy, introduction to your team, and your plan to acquire users.
A pitch deck is a vital fundraising tool that helps you get investor attention - be it just $50,000, $500,000, or a whopping $50 million.
Pitch decks usually run for fifteen to twenty slides.
And although presentations are a short, concise form of your entire story, creating one isn't an easy task. It's another thing if you've done it before. But if it's your first time, and you're a first-time entrepreneur, it can prove to be incredibly daunting.
To help you with this daunting task, we at Pitch Deck have taken cues from top startups who've raised money from angel investors and VCs with effective pitch decks and went ahead with redesigning them. While you can check out these redesigned pitch decks for inspiration, you can also use these templates as a base for your cake.
“ We want everyone to have a great experience building their pitch decks — and with Pitch Deck they get just that”
Buffer was founded in 2010 and is one of the most successful and well-known SaaS start-ups today. The team raised an initial USD 400K round of funding in 2010, which they used to grow the company up to a $60M valuation for the Series A financing in Oct-2014. Early traction and cash flow positive were key variables to Buffer's success.
Now, as much as we love Buffer, we at Presentations. AI have several questions regarding the thought behind the design of their Pitch Deck. For instance, the competitive landscape slide from their original deck is very confusing. When you email such investor pitch deck out, and you always will, investors will see this and not understand your competitive landscape and think that you have no understanding of whom you are competing against. Moreover, chances are Investors may also overlook you because your market looks way too big and you are going to get washed out or ignored inevitably
Cover Slide
Cover slides in a pitch deck should stick to the very basics: company name and tagline. The Airbnb pitch deck does precisely that. A tagline is simpler said than done; this should be a 5-7 word sentence that summarizes what your company does. 'Book rooms with locals, rather than hotels', is a perfect explanation of Airbnb's service, business model, and target audience. It's written in simple words without any start-up jargon.
Opening Statement and Quote
The Buffer pitch deck starts with a powerful statement and a couple of quotes showing that social media is emerging and is gaining significant traction. It is an excellent way to start a slide as it helps to grab the viewer's attention in the first few seconds because nothing beats social proof. However, it sets a premise for the story they're going to narrate in the following slides.
The hooking Question
"How do you use Social to drive traffic," is a potentially strong opener. It creates an opportunity to discuss both the possibility and the problems of social media marketing. The Buffer Pitch Deck, unlike most of them, have a different approach to describe their business. Starting off with a question helps the presenter and the audience to be on the same page. It also helps the audience relate to the subject quickly.
Queue your updates
The problem slide in the Buffer Pitch Deck is a question. A question that provides an opportunity for the presenter to intrigue the audience. The Question would have given raised several answers. People would think about how they run their social media activities on a day-to-day basis. And then when this slide from the Buffer pitch deck arrives, it gives the audience an absolute clarity. It helps them comprehend the ease of the solutio
Traction
Ideas are great. It's even better when the idea can solve a significant problem. But investors put their money in your gig, not only because it solves a problem, but because people actually use your solution to solve that problem. So, it is imperative that you show quantifiable proof that your idea is worth investing in. Also, in a pitch deck, the earlier you show that evidence, the chances of your prospective investor buying your idea gets better. This is precisely what the Buffer pitch deck has achieved. They spoke of a problem, displayed how their solution will solve the problem, and then jumped right into the numbers. The traction slide in the Buffer pitch deck has information about the number of users, annual run rate, margins, and other parameters showing the current status of the company - thus helping the investor understand the current stage of the company.
Milestones
Once traction is established, naturally, the next logical step should be to walk investors through how you achieved those numbers. Fundamentally investors expect a periodic progression on your pitch deck. These progressions could be significant launches, product updates, customers acquired, or even revenue generated. In this case, the milestone slide in the Buffer pitch deck presents a broad overview of the company's achievements over time.
Business Model
The business model slide in the Buffer pitch deck covers all aspects of their revenue streams. The business model for any company is its cornerstone. The model reflects information ranging from operation to finances. Here, the Buffer pitch deck shows its freemium model along with user count and revenue.
Market Opportunity
The Buffer pitch deck, here, explains the social media landscape. It talks about current trends and future possibilities. It talks about how Buffer can leverage the current situation in the social world.
Press and testimonial
Be it a website, a brochure, or your pitch deck, social proof is that final reassuring factor that leads your prospects to have faith in you - because if it worked for someone else, it would work for me. This is precisely what the Buffer pitch deck has pulled off. This slide is here to provide validation. Your Press slide proves that your concept is interesting enough to be featured in the article and that your team was intelligent sufficient to get you featured.s.
App Integrations
App integrations are always a smart way to cross-sell your solution. Here, the Buffer pitch deck talks about how Buffer will be a sharing standard for all social media apps.
Competition slide
This slide points out the attributes of the company that proves that the business is outperforming its competitors. In this slide, Buffer has listed out several qualities that make them better than their competitors. The diagram that the Buffer pitch deck has used is one of the best ways to represent the competitive landscape-it's easy to convey the point visually.
Team
The team slide is crucial in a Pitch Deck. Team slides are typically limited to the founders, but can occasionally include critical other team members. This slide should also cover the stuff that makes your team the right team for this challenge. The team slide In the Buffer pitch deck focuses on the roles of each of its key members. It also points out their previous investors.
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