Hi, everyone. This is Alejandro Cremades, and today we’re going to be talking about
the pitch deck outline. Before we get started, make sure that you hit that subscribe button,
and this way, you will never miss out on any of the videos that we roll out every week.
If you’re looking to raise money, you’re going to need very powerful slides. You’re
going to need to really capture the essence of your story in some slides so that you can
really captivate the attention and the excitement from those investors that you’re looking
to target. In today’s video, we’re going to be breaking it down for you on how you’re
packaging it, how you’re positioning it, and how to make it happen when you’re putting
your story in front of investors. So with that being said, let’s get into it.
The cover slide. The cover slide is more than just putting your logo or putting your contact
information at the front and center. That’s what most founders do. You need to understand
that the cover slide is essentially like what the movies are. Before going to the movies,
you’ve watched a trailer, or maybe your significant other got familiar with what the
movie was about, and then you go to the movies because you’re playing it safe.
It’s basically the same thing with the cover slide. It’s essentially establishing and
setting up the expectations so that the investor gets an idea of what they’re about to review
because remember that on average, investors spend 2 minutes and 41 seconds per presentation.
So here, what you want to do is right away set the expectation for what they’re about
to review, and then they can continue going, but they know what they’re about to encounter.
Again, the cover slide is like the trailer, and the way that you want to position it is
by putting very powerful visuals that essentially, right away, just by looking it, the investor
is going to get an understanding of what you’re doing with your business. You can combine
that with a logo, with a nice tag line. For example, a tag line like Uber’s, “Everyone’s
private driver,” is a really great tag line. So, something that you can play with. Again,
you would put your contact information and then putting that, so they get the idea of
what you’re doing. Then you go into the problem slide. The problem
slide is essentially what you’re tackling. Think about a world where your company doesn’t
exist. Think about that day where you really started incubating that frustration because
there was a gap that you saw in the market, and you were thinking about something that
you could do about it. But again, it’s all about the problem, and the problem is always
one. It’s not going to be two; it’s not going to be three. It’s always one problem
that you encounter, and it needs to be a problem that perhaps the investor can relate to. So
it needs to be something that they either experience themselves or maybe a family member,
but it needs to be something that they can relate to. Here, what you want to do is maybe
you want to put a problem statement, combined with a really powerful visual showcasing that
problem, the frustration that is causing the problem, so that they can capture what you’re
trying to tackle. Then is the solution slide. On the solution
slide is what you’re bringing to market – what you’re doing with your business
and how you’re covering that problem that you’ve identified, and it needs to come
across with a really nice solution statement. It could be a variation of the visual that
you’re using on the cover, but something that right away they get and understand, like
on one hand, what is that problem you’re looking to cover, which is the previous slide.
But now, with the solutions slide, how you’re essentially covering that problem. That’s,
in essence, what you want to do on the solution slide, and again, use very powerful statements
and don’t overcomplicate it. Just really make it simple and down and straight to the
point. Then you want to tackle the market size. The
market size needs to be really big, and we’re talking here about at least one billion or
more because, remember, that the market is going to potentially limit the returns that
the investor is able to capture out of their investment. That’s why you can have a great
team operating in a really small market, but having a mediocre team in a super big market
– they’re always going to go for a mediocre team in a super big market. So, always go
after big markets because there’s no ceiling. The sky is going to be the limit. So, try
to showcase how big this is. You want to put the market size; you want to put the compounding
annual growth rates so that they see you’re not at the peak and that the project and the
market are growing over the course of time, and that is exactly what is going to get people
excited. On the competition slide, don’t try to hide
logos. Maybe you want to put in a diagram where you’re putting yourself at the top-right
in a very powerful way because that’s always where the eye is going to go. But always avoid
not putting some of your competitors because maybe they’re going to not make you look
so good, or maybe you forgot some of them. Then people are going to think that either
your hiding something from them or that you have not done your research on the market.
Again, always, always, always try to capture the landscape, and put yourself in the top-right,
and then put everyone else scattered all across the board. And perhaps you want to use an
X-axis and a Y-axis, where essentially you are talking about your strengths that also
played to the weaknesses of your own competitors. Right after you’ve showcased the competition,
and people have an understanding of who your competitors are, you want to include here
the competitive advantage. On the competitive advantage slide, you want to list all those
competitive advantages, maybe in bullet points with some nice, good-looking icons next to
it to make it more visually appealing. But here, what you’re in essence doing is breaking
it down as to why you have an edge over some of those existing players that are already
in the market. This is your chance to really beef-up and follow-up on the previous slide
on the way that you were differentiating yourself from the Y-axis and the X-axis. This is a
way to close it on a high note so that people know what separates you from the rest.
On the product slide, you want to showcase some nice things about it. You want to put
the product or the service in action. You want to talk about some of what your customers
say that is so great about it. If you’re in-person, maybe you want to remove the slide,
and what you do is, you can actually give them the product or show them the product,
a demo of it so that they can see it; they can feel it; it’s more tangible rather than
just putting it up on the screen. If you’re not in person, then, obviously, you’ve got
to include it in the deck, and you’re going to be sending it across in the deck. But try
to put the product or the service in the best light possible, in action, so that they get
an understanding of what it is about. Then there are the target customers. Who are
you going after? Who are these people? What are the age brackets? What is the gender?
Where do you find them? What are their interests? Maybe there are some quotes that you can allocate
from some of those customers. But, essentially here, you want to break it down so that the
investor gets a clear understanding that you know your customer. I can’t stress enough
how many times I’ve seen the typical founder that goes into the office of a venture capital
firm to see if they can invest in their business, and they’re just playing on their phones.
They’re not paying attention, and all of a sudden, when the founder talks about their
customer, you would see people putting their phones down, really listening, and that’s
why you’re telling the world, telling those investors that you understand your customer
inside and out is critical because, at that point, they’re going to be like, “They
have done their research. They know who they’re serving.” That’s going to get them really
excited to invest in your business. The traction slide is super important. Here,
if you are in the early stage and you don’t know what to include, maybe there are some
other aspects that you can insert. You can even go week-by-week rather than going month-by-month
or year-by-year. Here, you can talk about the number of customers, number of repeat
customers, their revenues, something. You’ve got to use metric that it’s going to ultimately
define the health of your business, and that’s something that’s going to tell the investors
that there is growth happening. It’s funny how, in many instances, there
are investors that you would ask, “How would you define traction?” And they don’t even
know how to define traction. Traction is ultimately a KPI, a metric that is showing evidence that
there is clear growth and that the business is heading in the right direction. So there’s
always something that you can grab and include, but you want to show progress, which is what
it’s all about. Then, on the business model slide, keep it
simple. Here, you want to showcase how you’re making money. Is it a subscription on a monthly
basis? Is it a one-time purchase? Is it a setup fee? How are you making the money? Break
it down here, so the investor understands where those revenues are coming from? What
are those ways in which you’re monetizing those customers so that they can model it
out on their end and then see and project? Like, do some numbers on the back of an envelope
kind of thing. But here, break it down how you’re planning or how you are now monetizing
your customers. Then, on the financial slides, I always see
founders making the mistake of grabbing a screenshot from their financial model and
dumping it into the pitch deck. You can actually take a look at the pitch deck template below,
which is a template that founders are using all over the world to raise millions. I’ve
basically put in there as a template a really beautiful way of showing nice graphs that
you’ve extracted from the model that you can place there so that people can right away
see and do the analysis on how you are growing different metrics and different numbers.
You do not want to just put a screenshot. You need to hand-hold the investor, and the
best way to do it is by breaking it down in three or four slides, the financials, and
that’s one thing that investors are going to appreciate because remember, there are
studies that have followed pitch decks, the way that investors invest their time with
pitch decks. On average, they spend about 2 minutes and
41 seconds, and it is proven that the slide that the investor spends the most amount of
time on is the one pertaining to the financials. So, here, you want to nail it. You want to
go with your best foot forward, and that’s why you don’t want to just take a screenshot.
You want to really create those beautiful graphs and model it out for the investors,
so they get excited when they understand your numbers, how that money is coming in, how
that money is going out. That’s going to be essential.
Then you’re going to go into the other investor slides. Maybe you want to talk in this slide
about who else has invested, how much money you’ve been able to raise. Maybe you put
some logos of some of those venture funds or private equity firms or whoever invested
in your firm. You can include that as a way of social proof, meaning some logos are going
to help them understand that “There are already some other people involved in this
business, credible sources. I know some of them; I should call them up to see what they
think about this company.” It always acts as social proof. This is a slide that you
want to keep. Then you’re going to go into the team slide.
The team slide is your opportunity to shine and tell that investor why you have the right
people in the right seats. Here, you can throw some logos of companies that your team has
worked for. My recommendation is that you keep it simple. You keep it to the leadership
team rather than including all your employees because, the thing is that you need to be
able and you need to be in a position to put your hands on the fire and know that every
single individual that you’re going to be putting in the slide is going to be sticking
around, at least for the next six months. Because fundraising is about removing concerns,
not adding more concerns. If you have people that are leaving in the
middle of your round, and then all of a sudden, they’re going to be like, “Where is this
person?” “Oh, that person left.” “What about this person?” “No, that person left.”
Then they’re going to think, “There’s something wrong with this business. I’m
not investing. I’m out.” So you want to remove those barriers. With that being said,
only include the leadership team, the people that are going to be sticking around. And
show in there some of the previous experience to tell the investor that you are having the
right people seated on the right seats of the bus, and that eventually, you’re going
to find that path toward success. Then you want to talk about the amount that
you’re raising. Here, you can talk about a range, perhaps from X to Y, rather than
just throwing the specific amount because this way, you’re making the net a little
bit wider rather than just going by – let’s say if you’re raising 2 million, to the
people that are investing 2 million and down, here if you were to say between 2 to 4 million,
you’re capturing every single one in-between. So you’re making it a little bit broad.
This is a good way to cast a wider net and be able to get more people and more meaningful
conversations going. Then you’re going to have the use of funds
slide. In the use of funds slide, essentially, what the investor wants is to get an understanding
of where you’re planning to deploy the capital. Typically, here what we’re looking at is
marketing, development; it could be recruiting; it could be office. It’s the typical ones
that you would see. I would not recommend going too much into detail as to what percentage
you’re going to be allocating that money because the investor may disagree with you.
So keep it high-level, and you’re going to be making that be part of the conversation
with the investor to get a line as to where the money and how much should be spent on
each one of those categories. Obviously, your financial model is going to contain that level
of detail, but I think, here, just keep it high-level.
Then you can include the road map slide or the milestone slide. Here, what you’re talking
about is the product and what you’re doing about it, certain milestones that you’re
going to be accomplishing over the course of whatever amount of time; maybe Q1 of this
year or Q2 of that year. But provide that roadmap, that path of how you’re thinking
about the execution, perhaps for the next 18 to 24 months. This is going to give them
assurance, and the investor is going to be able to understand that you have a clear journey
that you’ve already outlined to follow and make things happen.
Then is the closing slide. On the closing slide is the thank you, the contact information,
maybe a picture of the team smiling, posing, so they get that personalized level, and I
think that’s going to come across in a way in which they’re going to see that there
are actual human beings behind this business. So, with that being said, I would love to
hear on the comment section what you’re up to. Make sure that you hit a Like on this
video and subscribe to the channel so that you don’t miss out on all the videos that
we’re rolling out every week. And also, if you’re raising capital and you need any
help, feel free to shoot me a note at alejandro@pantheraadvisors.com. Thank you so much for watching.