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 $50 million.
Pitch decks usually run for fifteen to twenty slides.
And although presentations are a short, concise form of your entire story, creating one isn't an easy task. It's another thing if you've done it before. But if it's your first time, and you're a first-time entrepreneur, it can prove to be incredibly daunting.
To help you with this daunting task, we at Pitch Deck have taken cues from top startups who've raised money from angel investors and VCs with effective pitch decks and went ahead with redesigning them. While you can check out these redesigned pitch decks for inspiration, you can also use these templates as a base for your cake.
“ We want everyone to have a great experience building their pitch decks — and with Pitch Deck they get just that”
It is often argued that it is hard to succeed in the start-up world without a disruptive idea or a product that belongs to a new category. However, it is sometimes enough to capitalize on better solutions for an existing problem, and Intercom did just that. Known for its iconic 49$/month blue button that sits on the corner of more than 25,000 websites, Intercom has pioneered the business-to-client messaging business, providing live assistance via chat to the customers of multi-billion companies such as Yahoo!, Hootsuite and InVision. A day after the company announced that it has raised $50 million in an investment round led by Index Ventures, the co-founder and CEO of Intercom Eoghan McCabe shared in a post what the first pitch deck of the startup looked like.
“Yesterday we announced Intercom had raised $50 million in an investment round led by Index Ventures. So today I thought it would be interesting to share the first pitch deck I ever used for Intercom. It’s from late 2011. When raising $600,000 was a monumental task. And when I thought it could get us to profitability.” Eoghan McCabe
The pitch deck has eight slides, covering the most important aspects of the business – starting with the team, and continuing with the problem, the solution, the market, the competition, the progress and, finishing with a slide, highlighting what they are looking for..
Check out the Intercom Pitch Deck from late 2011 which was used to raise $600,000
Cover Slide
Cover slides in a pitch deck should stick to the very basics. The Intercom pitch deck does precisely that.
Team Slide
A team slide generally contains a photo, designation, and a one-line description of the brains behind the company, and is a significant addition to a deck. However, it is not a norm to start a pitch deck with this slide. Here, the Intercom pitch deck has done precisely that.
Problem Slide
A good problem slide should invoke a sense of absence among the audience. Here, the problem statement in the Intercom pitch deck does precisely the same by introducing the investors to the existing problems in the market.
Solution Slide
The solutions listed should complement the shortcomings existing in the previous slide. For instance, the 'customer relationship management' solution offered by the company is a remedy for the absence of a tool for customer management. The intercom pitch deck talks elaborates on the various aspects of the solution–from deployment to easy access.
Market
This slide in the Intercom pitch deck shows the potential growth of the market in the coming years. It exposes the investors to the viability of your solution.
Progress
Listing milestones have become too mainstream, but still holds a significant role in many decks. The company progress in the Intercom pitch deck shows how much the company has grown from its inception, thus presenting a rate for the investors to gauge the company's potential.
Investment Details
Finally, the investment slide in the Intercom pitch deck has all the details of their round or fundraising efforts.
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