in the starter world it's pitch decks not business plans that get companies funded a deck is often
the first impression an investor will get at the company so it needs to look stunning
which makes a pitch like an art a science but most importantly a story and this right here
is the perfect outline i think i know this is long video so here you have it at the beginning
you don't need to scroll around you can download this chart from our website link is in the
description or in the little card over here now for the rest of the video i'm gonna dive deep into
each one of those slides what it should accomplish and of course why this structure actually works
so the deck should achieve three things it needs to tell your company's story it needs to convince
an investor that they can make money with this company they can make money with the company
and it needs to do that in under four minutes what our company does for a living is quite literally
help founders pitch investors so we get to see hundreds of these decks and i personally get to
talk to dozens of these companies every month and the most common problem we see is founders getting
caught up in the slides and the details like the rules on where they should focus the story you'll
find a bunch of articles saying that you have to keep your deck to under 10 slides or that you
need to have a board of advisors slide but we base our thesis on some more tangible examples
companies like airbnb intercom buffer uber have released the actual pitch decks that they use
to raise their first rounds of funding and if you look at their structure you can essentially
find the same set of slides angel investors and venture capitalists have also learned to expect
standard pitch tech as their first filter when they're evaluating a company to invest in
and venture firms like sequoia have also released pitch tech templates of their own and well
you want to listen to them so we're going to use that to distill this ideal structure for
a pitch deck and we're going to combine that with a little bit of storytelling so storytelling 101
let's talk about that first because who doesn't love a good story a story of how this team used
their wits to overcome difficulties or a story of how everything stacked against them
and they won by the skin of their teeth i learned this stuff in film school and it ruined
movies for me a little bit but most stories films included follow a three-act structure that looks
like this during act one the setup we introduced the characters and the status quo we are presented
with a universe that we can't believe in and that we invest in as long as it's realistic
and consistent with our own experience then comes the plot point number one around a third of the
movie and it's a point in the film where the story takes an unexpected turn and the plot changes its
direction so in this social network this is when mark zuckerberg gets introduced to this platform
that the winklevi are building harvardconnect and he decides to steal it so this first plot point
opens a range of possibilities of where the story could go as viewers we are at the mercy of the
script at this point and we have no idea where the conflict could go as the plot changes direction
stakes start getting higher we care about these characters and that builds excitement it also
builds up to the story climax which comes right after the second plot point again in the social
network the second plot point of the movie is eduardo freezing the facebook account so it's
another unexpected turn in the story but instead of opening possibilities of where this could go
it narrows them down so the second plot point is followed by the final confrontation in the story
which is the fight between mark and eduardo in the facebook office and then the resolution so
try placing a pitch story in this story arc we can start with an introduction the status quo what's
going on how does the world operate today what are the flaws and then your solution slide is the
first plot point you're pivoting the direction of the story you're disrupting the status quo
and the possibilities are endless now you start narrowing that down so the product takes shape
stakes get higher we meet the hero of the story which in this case is your product so the second
plot point and climax could vary depending on your business maybe it's in your traction slide because
you tapped into an incredible distribution channel and you're growing super fast maybe the plot twist
revolves around the competitors and how they foolishly overlook something your team knows
maybe it's about your team or your background and your unmatchable experience it's at that climax
when the viewer is most vulnerable and it's after that climax that you get to ask for money remember
a pitch deck is a summary of a company's story if we can structure that story in the right order
then the next step is giving arguments on why the company is incredible we can talk a lot about
slides the slide order and the story and we will but in the end your pitch stick needs to answer
a question of fundraising these are the questions what opportunity have you discovered in the market
what have you built to tackle it how does it work and 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 if you forget about everything else in this video remember those four questions take
your deck and find out if it succeeds at answering them it's easier said than done of course we see
founders getting lost on those technicalities the market size the business model and the projections
when what you should be doing is focusing on answering those little set of questions in under
four minutes so let's combine that with the three act structure first we have the setup this is
the intro the cover and the status quo questions what's happening your solution slide becomes the
plot point we change the direction of the story then we have rising action this is your product
section we're meeting the hero and once we get into the market how the market is reacting and how
big the market is the stakes are getting higher and then finally the crisis your competitors
and how you plan to beat them it's the climax of the story your team your competitive advantages
your ingenious rollout plans are all going to be part of this resolution to reach this conflict
that you've unearthed and now you get to ask for money so now before we dive into the actual slides
let's go over three different approaches that you can take depending on the context of where you're
presenting or sending this pitch stack so the term pitch stick is broad i've seen it used to
refer to a sales deck you could even refer that to a movie pitch but for investors we have three
specific decks which are the demo day deck the email deck and the meeting deck so for a demo
day the conditions for a demo they pitch are very peculiar you have the founder presenting
so the slides don't need to be self-explanatory they're rather a support or an illustration for
what you're saying in the background you have a time limit usually three or five minutes so
maybe here that rule of the number of slides isn't complete crap and then you're presenting in front
of a large audience which means that you should refrain from sharing confidential information
there's some regulations in the u.s around what you can and cannot tell non-accredited investors
which are likely to be in your audience now for the email deck most deals happen because you get
interest to investors unlike cold emails which is an approach many founders choose to take and you
shouldn't and we made a video about it if you want to check it out so when you get an intro to an
investor they will either ask you to send a pitch deck or you will ask them if they can take a look
and this is the deck that gets you a meeting which is the next step and probably it's the deck that
needs the most amount of work because it's going to be seen by a bunch of people so the email deck
is also used in other contexts for example when applying to an accelerator or when submitting your
deck to a competition but with that context we can infer some characteristics about the email deck it
needs to be self-explanatory because the investor will consume it on their own without your voice or
your narration it'll also be the first impression an investor will get about your company so it
needs to look stellar and it's only being sent to hand-picked investors so you can reveal a little
bit more of your secret sauce in the deck it's also designed to get you meeting so you don't have
to tell everything about your company just enough to create attention curiosity and to get called to
the next stage of the process and here's a little extra insight platforms like slide bean will allow
you to track the activity of your slides so we know we know in which slides investors spend the
most amount of time and it turns out vc spent an average of three to four minutes looking at a deck
and you can't assume that you'll change people's behavior so if your deck can't be consumed in
three to four minutes chances are investors will skip through some of the content and just give up
after a certain amount of slides and that's why we always encourage texts to be short enough so
that they can be wholly consumed in four minutes finally on the meeting deck if the email that
gets you a meeting you'll need a meeting deck so to me this is an evolution of the email deck
it's essentially the same thing with some extra details a usual first investor meeting will go
five minutes to settle and small talk 15 minutes for you to go through your slides and your company
and then 30 minutes for discussion questions and follow up so as you can see you're turning that
four minute self read into a 15 minute narrated deck so it's just adding a little bit more
meat it may be unrealistic to build and maintain three decks especially with the insane
schedules that we often have and that's why most companies just resort to making something that's
close to an email deck and then using small variations of that for everything it's a fair
approach i know that i've done it so i think that you must understand the differences between these
to avoid common mistakes like taking the same email deck to a meeting because you're expected to
bring a little bit more or using a demo day deck which is not self-explanatory to be sent via email
or sending a meeting deck over email which may be too long great now that we understand the use
cases let's look at the structure finally based on everything we've covered a fantastic pitch
tech outline looks like this so let's go over each slide first the intro section i have this
as a separate section mainly because we have some optional slides here that i really want to talk
about which are different from the status quo so first the cover slides so the cover slide should
have a five or seven word description of what you do it should be simple self-explanatory and
so short that you can read it without even trying so this tagline is not a marketing tagline it's
a very brief description of what your company does you also have as an option the traction teaser so
if you want to hook your audience early on you can include a short traction slide that validates your
company and gets people excited early on remember they are coming into this deck without knowing the
context of your business so they aren't really sure what you do or how you make money so the
information that you put in this teaser needs to be universally understood without a lot of
context some companies choose to put an executive summary in there and i never recommend adding one
to me it feels like you're just spoiling the movie right so don't don't do an executive summary also
you sort of have to cram up a bunch of information into one slide which defeats the purpose of the
rest of the slides so i don't see a reason to include it let's go to the status quo section
again this needs to be a believable picture of the current world like in the movie so first you have
the problem slash business opportunity slide most great companies solve global problems uber solved
taxis slack solved excess emails and meanings and dropbox saw file syncing across devices there's
a bit of an aha moment if you get this slide right and if you can point out a problem that
people have been experiencing investors have been experiencing regularly that's standing in front of
them that's so obvious that they haven't seen it yet and this slide can also make your whole pitch
fall apart if you get it wrong especially if you come up with questionable statements because if
investors disagree with you about this premise you might just lose them here for example i've
come across a fair share of social media startups that begin their problem by saying
current social media is boring that's an opinion it's not a fact you don't want to
get into an argument at this point the investor might love spending time on social media so you
might lose them right there also some companies aren't necessarily solving a problem but instead
they're tackling a business opportunity that has risen so examples here are mobile games
which certainly don't solve a problem they're just jumping out on a business opportunity that they've
discovered now for the solution slide think of the solution slide as a mirror to the problem slide
remember this is your plot point this is where you break the status quo great solution slides
are also concise they don't involve technology or features it's not time to talk about the product
just yet we're just presenting our thesis what if instead of doing things like this we do things
like this now for the product section there's a little bit of elasticity in this section depending
on how complex your product is or how much time you need to reserve for the next sections you
normally start with a product slide and you can approach that with a video demo please a short
video demo or maybe how does it work diagram or maybe a series of product screenshots and these
slides will probably not be too different from your marketing landing page you can probably
get some inspiration from that next up a features or benefits slide and i like to keep that to five
or six benefits tops and notice how i'm using the word benefit instead of feature
because a feature would be saying that sliding is fully responsive and the benefit would be that
you can edit your presentations anywhere even on the phone while on the go while just removing the
responsive jargon and adding a real live use case scenario the statement becomes more impactful you
can also do an audience slash use cases slide and you'll see that the slide is not included in any
of the decks that we analyzed but i think it's a critical slide especially if you're raising c or
series a the idea of this slide is to prove that you understand who the product is for and so many
companies don't know the answer to this question and that's a common deal breaker you can also
do an infrastructure or underlying magic slide so for products with a strong technological component
or when the tech infrastructure is one of their core differentiators it's also relevant to include
an underlying magic slide next up the market validation or the why now slide this is optional
but a market validation slide is included to support products where adoption could
be a challenge for example in the 2009 airbnb deck they had a slide to support the thesis that people
would be willing to state a stranger's couches so they used uh couchsurfing and other examples to
prove that people were looking for those options we actually had our team redesigned the old slide
because it looked like [ __ ] so here's the new version now for the business model this is one
of the easiest slides to solve and one of the slides that many entrepreneurs just get wrong
this slide is not about your projections it's not about how much money you can make if you
get a million customers it's just about how you make money so is it a subscription well you don't
need to lay out every single plan and its ins and outs in my experience that's going to be changing
regularly and you're going to experiment with a bunch of combinations so just tell us that it's
a subscription it costs this much on average it has a trial or not done is it a product or service
well tell us what the price is maybe the average order size and give us an idea of the margin
is it 30 is it 60 or maybe it's a marketplace so how much do you charge per transaction 10
okay done that's it don't over complicate it finally for this action the milestones are
roadmap slide because i think it's an excellent bridge between the product what it is how much
it costs and what's coming up in the next section which is the numbers and the traction so to me an
ideal roadmap slide goes over some of the major highlights of your product evolution and your
company history and then it talks a little bit about what you intend the product to become over
the next few months not in the long term future we are not making financial projections yet so this
is a product section remember we're talking about the product its vision not the number so don't
get revenue projections mixed up in here now for the market section you're going to start with the
traction slide this is a slide about numbers think of a number as a photo but think of a chart as a
story or a film saying that you've made a million dollars in historical revenue sounds cool but
what we want to know is the journey getting there how much of that revenue came in the last month
how much was that month compared to the previous month and the one before that what breakthroughs
did you make that completely changed the direction or the tilt on that chart there's no faking
attraction slide it is what it is and that's why it's so important now for the go to market
how will this money that you're about to raise accelerate your growth and we can answer these
questions by covering three main questions what have you done to get here what are you doing now
that shows promise that keeps you growing and what are you going to do next so remember rounds
of capital usually fund 18 to 24 months worth of operations so you're looking we're looking for a
growth plan a marketing plan and how your company will get to the next fundable milestone before
your money runs out the most common mistake i see is go to market slides that lack focus
can't count the number of slides that just say oh we're gonna do social media and seo and
influencer marketing that's what everybody's doing everybody has to do that these days almost so
it doesn't make you unique it makes you generic a great go to market slide talks about two maybe
three very concrete channels that you're using to grow your customer base and that you will continue
to use in the future next up is market size so in the previous slide we already talked about how big
this company is getting over the next year now it's time to answer how big can this company get
total the concept of that is tam or total addressable market but it's a bit foreign to many
of us so what does tam mean using a sas software service example your market is not the sas market
size market is 200 billion or whatever it doesn't matter how big it is because you're not
gonna get a percentage of that saying that you're getting a percentage of the market is
just oversimplifying things your tam is also not the size of the problem so for healthcare startups
it's not the amount of money wasted on x or y process that you're solving you're not earning
that money your company's not worth that you're solving a problem and you're charging a fee for it
so startups are exciting to investors if their tam is at least in the hundreds of millions of dollars
again it's not about inflating your numbers it's about this self-assessment is my company potential
significant enough to get investors excited one of our investors did a fantastic piece on this
explaining how to estimate your tamp steve barcelo check out the video that's hosted on our channel
now for the why us section let's start with competitors you can approach this slide as a
simple business 101 chart like the one steve jobs used you can do a table comparing features or you
can just summarize some of your core competitors in the next slide you'll talk about your
competitive advantages or your secret sauce when you talk about competitors more than comparing
features more than comparing what your pricing is it's about showing that there's something that you
understand about the market that the others don't seem to get that's what makes great companies
unique insights that you've discovered that you and your team have discovered that established
competitors haven't figured out yet complementing that you have the team so the founding team at
a startup needs to have the skills to take the company to a million dollars in revenue if you're
building an app getting to a million dollars in revenue requires marketing development ux business
operations if you're building a b2b sas platform for enterprise you need engineers and business
development and sales and i can't count the number of decks that i've seen where the current team
doesn't have the necessary skills to reach that scale you don't raise money to recruit people
you don't raise money to recruit people you form a team and then you go out to raise money super
common mistake now for advisors i really don't recommend an advisor slide unless your investors
know who the advisor is either they're a celebrity or the investor is connected with them on linkedin
i would not waste any space on this slide advisors are great they're helpful but chances are
they'll spend one or two hours a month with you tom so company is going to be built by its team
that's the people that we care about finally the ask section so first the financial slide which is
pretty straightforward if you've been operating we want to see the last year financial data and then
for everybody we want to see three or five years of financial projections for the company founders
typically add a simple table with their sg a their cost of goods sold their capex and revenue
with a final profit margin and percentage numbers requiring you to do some financial modeling that's
a story for another day we have a bunch of content on how to do financial models we have a financial
template if you want to use it so go check that out and finally the last slide is the fundraising
or use of fun slide so this should cover how much money you're raising and should be super clear
about what your next fundable milestone is we talked about this a little bit so a seed round
is supposed to last until series a series a to series b so closing around takes about six months
so this round should last enough for you to get to series a or i mean to the next fundable milestone
plus a few extra months to actually close that money because it takes a while you'll see that
a lot of decks talk about hey this round will fund 18 months of operation and that's not necessarily
bad as long as the math behind that responds to a next fundable milestone it's not about the time
it's about the metrics and that's it those are all the slides in the deck don't add a thank
you slide you don't need it so if all of this was useful here are some tips that you can follow next
first you should try your bridgestick builder it lets you just fill in the blanks and the
slides will be magically generated for you second we're releasing a 90-minute course
on skillshare which goes over much more detail about solving each one of these slides which i
went through if you still need help our team can jump in and actually design and write the
slides with you that's our pitch tech writing service and you can find more about that on
slidebean.com if you're still watching you can hit that subscribe button and that little bell button
and leave a comment and help the algorithm thanks a lot for watching and we'll see you next week