Hi, everyone. This is Alejandro Cremades,
and today we’re going to be talking about the do’s and don’ts when creating a pitch deck.
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If you’re even thinking about raising money, you’re going to need a pitch deck. You’re going to
need to capture the essence of what you’re doing in 15 to 25 slides, depending. Here’s the thing:
there are many things, there are many shoes, many problems, many pitfalls that you want to
really avoid so that you can get that excitement on the other side of the table so that investor
gives you the money, jumps on board, wants to help in investing in you, investing in your company,
and helping you to build a business. In today’s video, we’re going to break down what are the do’s
and what are the don’ts so that you’re able to have a better path and really understand how
to guide yourself to what’s in front of you. So with that being said, let’s get into it.
Starting with the do’s, you want to keep it super clean. Here, you want to keep that balance between
the text and the visuals because I can’t stress enough how many times I’ve seen a pitch deck,
and then I review it, and it’s like you need to read it, you need to spend time per slide.
Investors don’t have time to go through stuff. You cannot literally give the stuff to them to
figure it out. You need to hand-hold them, and that’s why having that nice balance between
visuals and text is going to allow them to skim through the presentation much quicker.
Typically, investors remember that they’re going to be investing about 2 minutes and 41 seconds.
By the way, below is a pitch deck template that you can use
to get started, and that’s something that founders are using around the world
to raise millions. Again, remember that it’s all about keeping the balance,
and perhaps bringing in a designer to polish the visual side more is something that may pay off.
You also want to focus on your most important slides. Here’s the thing: you’re not going to
be able to really nail it on every single slide. There are always going to be goods, and there are
always going to be bads on some of those slides. But here’s the thing. When you’re especially
dealing with investors, you’re going to also need to get good at taking the temperature of the room,
understanding, and not leaving a single question unturned because remember that those questions
that are in-between you and the money is really what’s going to forbid you from closing the round.
So always, always, always make sure that you’re asking if there are any questions if you’re
on the financial slide, which is the #1 slide where investors spend the most amount of time.
And then also on the team slide because remember that at an early stage, especially, the investor
is investing in you. They’re investing in your team. They’re investing in helping you to build
the business. So make sure that they don’t have any questions around your background,
your capabilities, your previous accomplishments, either yours or perhaps your teams.
Also, you want to talk about the market size. Those are the three key areas that you
want to really be completely sure that there are absolutely no questions and
that you’ve really nailed it on your pitch deck in terms of putting those
slides together. Metric slide:
This is the thing. A lot of people can talk, but not a lot of people can do the walk. So,
you want to do both. You want to grab a KPI; you want to grab a metric that you’ve exceeded at,
and you want to put it in that presentation and show that investor that over the course of time,
that it’s growing, that there is progress, that they’re going to be investing in something
that is moving in the right direction and that you’re giving them, ultimately, that assurance.
You want to show them what you’re going to be using the money for and do some research. I
remember being part of certain presentations where the founder would come into pitch. I
would listen to the presentation, and then I see that on the use processes, they say, “No.
This engineer in New York City is going to cost me 30,000 bucks.” And, essentially, it’s not $30,000
what that is because an engineer in New York is costing you $100,000 or even more nowadays.
So, always do your research. Come across in a way that shows that you’ve done your homework,
that you’ve done the work ahead, that you know how you’re going to be grabbing that money
and putting it to work because if you’re not able to have an understanding on the money in
and the money out, then the investor is going to be like, “Why would I give this entrepreneur
my money. So, don’t make that mistake. Make sure that you’ve got your numbers to the T.
You also want to get feedback. You want to distribute this presentation – maybe team members,
maybe advisors, maybe other people that you trust: family, friends, former classmates.
Because it’s all about crowdsourcing that process, it’s about understanding what are some potential
holes that you may have in your story and perhaps cover them by people that really care about you.
One thing that you could do is rather than going to the investors that you really care about,
maybe what you do is, you go to the Tier 2 or Tier 3,
get that as a practice run, get some of the feedback from them,
and that will help you to uncover things that you didn’t know were there. And, essentially,
once you’re able to implement that, then you go to the actual investors that you care about.
In terms of the don’ts of the pitch deck, the first one is not going too long.
That is whether you’re doing the pitch deck and you’re going over 25 slides when it becomes like
reading a book and people don’t have the time for that, and certainly, investors don’t have the time
for that and also, when you are missing the boat when it comes to listening. If you’re presenting
your pitch deck, for example, and the investor is asking you for the projections of year one,
you should not give them year one, plus year two, plus year three, plus year four.
You need to be down to the point. If they’re shooting you a tennis ball,
give them a tennis ball. Don’t shot back a basketball, a soccer ball, and
everything and their mother to make sure that they get it. Avoid that mistake at all cost.
Don’t put anything in there that requires an NDA. Here, you want to keep it super high-level. You
want to avoid any barrier. You want to avoid all this admin stuff or having them negotiate
to take a look at an NDA because when you’re at the early stages of those discussions,
it’s just, for the most part, getting to know each other. I hate when, for example,
I see a founder – and I know that investors hate it too – when they say, “We’d love to
get together; we’ve love to chat.” And then, just for introduction, the founder says, “Hey, can we
get an NDA in place?” You’re creating friction. You’re putting hurdles. You shouldn’t do that.
What I would highly recommend that you do is keep it high-level. The secret sauce
is something that you remove and that you keep for when you sign the NDA, once you’ve
gone into the due diligence process. But for the time being, during those initial interactions,
just keep it super high level and avoid putting in an NDA so that you can get that flow of
information, that flow of the discussion, that flow of getting to know each other.
Don’t try to reinvent the pitch deck. This is another don’t of the pitch deck because the
thing is that ultimately the investor is going to be used to a certain type of structure, to
a certain type of flow when it comes to reviewing different stories of the different companies that
are sending them pitch decks. So you always want to keep the standard format, and that’s
why you always want to keep – like if you take a look at the pitch deck template below, that’s
the type of structure that you want. It’s like the problem, solution, market size. That’s the
way that you want to keep it because that’s the way that the investor is used to seeing things.
Another don’t is forgetting your contact information at the end on the thank you slide.
You’ve got to even put in your cellphone if it’s needed because
if there’s an investor that is interested in calling you at 2:00 am because they’re
interested in making a potential investment, you need to be right there on the spot,
ready to pick up the phone, and discuss whatever concerns or whatever questions they have. So put
in there your contact info, your title, even your email on that thank you slide.
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if you have anything that’s going on, I would love to hear what you’re up to on the comment section
below. You could do that. And if you’re raising money, you can reach out to me if you need help.
Send me a note at alejandro@pantheraadvisors.com. Thank you so much for watching.