If you have binge-watched inspirational movies about Silicon Valley, you are probably familiar with the signature "elevator pitch moment." In reality, before giving you money for your dreams, investors would want to see your best pitch deck behavior. The movies never show a 2-hour 20-something slide show that actually persuades people to invest in your business idea. So let's talk about what happens behind closed doors and, more importantly, answer the question, "Do I have to use the Airbnb pitch deck template?
And it takes up to 15 minutes. That's why they call it a pitch. Not a home run.
A tip: It also serves very different purposes, multiple pitch deck examples for multiple goals, from trying to get a meeting with a new investor to presenting in front of a stage.
For instance, a tinder pitch deck or a WeWork pitch deck.
A pitch deck's essential info includes:
A pitch deck must thrill people to join your company or make them empty their pockets to invest in it.
1. What problems are you solving?
2. How do you solve them?
3. Why should someone invest in you?
Scenario 1: if you get to present a pitch deck to potential investors yourself, it should be very visual and easily seen from afar. You will be in charge of the talking.
Scenario 2: if potential investors will get your startup pitch deck via email, make it self-explanatory. Don't be afraid of small fonts. Investors also have a zoom-in button.
A tip: find a tool to track your reader's activity. To see if investors read your original deck and if not, what stopped them. Maybe you included unnecessary info, or your soon-to-be-share-holder found your meme offensive. In any case, this is vital when choosing the frequency for follow-up emails. This way, even an unanswered email can give you a valuable lesson.
Using clear terms, explain your business. Simplify complex ideas, so your audience can understand them. Your investors will not always understand your field. You might want to include a unique value proposition in your first slide. Compare your product or service to another company, but do not make it about them.
You get one slide. And one slide only.
The pitch deck needs to explain a problem that the target market faces. Basically, answer the question of why your product should be on the market. What is the pain point of your target audience? Get on the drama queen side for a change, and vividly describe how miserable people feel.
Your product is aimed at a specific group. Form a group of people that share similar traits. Create personas that represent those people. Give them names and personalities and feature them in your original pitch deck.
More importantly, research info on the competitive landscape of your realm of business and highlight the market opportunity. What is the market size for products or services like those offered by the business?
Disclaimer, everything above used at most 5 slides, so you still get 15 more.
This slide states how your company/product/service solves the pains your target audience is facing.
Remember how everything requires storytelling? The best way to dispatch this statement is through a narrative approach. Think of it as TikTok. If you only react to something if it's relatable, so provide relatable stories of customers using your product to improve their lives.
Hire a designer to support those statements with illustrations of the products or services, including photographs, screenshots, or even videos.
Describe the process of how the product will be marketed. What tools will you use to hunt your targeted audience: will you get a collaboration with a fashion company or rent a billboard on a highway? You might even create a documentary for KPI's sake. Keep in mind that this is another chance to leverage the understanding of the market size and show your potential investors how your advertising technique differs from your competition.
Also, show your investors you know the difference between marketing and sales. But more importantly, show them how you can do both to track and persuade people to buy from you.
If you have difficulties with this one, try to think of your company's milestones, such as the number of users, annual revenue return rate, profit margins, amount of traffic generated, engagement rate, partnerships, and clients achieved or numbers of users. Simply list them in bullet points. That will suffice.
Note how your funding will be spent to help the company expand and reach its goals. By explaining this, you will build much-needed trust with investors.
This one is on the surface. People respond to CTA. Have you ever wondered how many times you liked/shared something because of the magic words "Like/share/repost" spell? So go try it on your investors.
Welcome to the pitch deck startup Pinterest. Get ready to tailor up one of your own. Steal like an artist.
How to go from a good pitch deck to a great pitch deck?
We have digested over 100 great pitch deck examples to give you the crème de la crème insights and save you time.
Disclaimer: their slide deck is outlined to get ready to develop a pitch for seeking investors. This pitch is structured to answer potential questions of the investors.
Each pitch deck slide will help you walk your potential investors through the one-in-a-million investment chance you’re delivering. The slides from the Sequoia Capital Pitch Deck Template have a specific intent that leads them down the path of discovery in your pitch.
Homework: think about the selling point of the Sequoia Capital pitch deck.
The Airbnb Pitch Deck usually gets googled the most. Probably because it is extremely popular, this is a classic 10-Slide Investor Deck template, and most startups get a page from their playbook.
This is the Original Airbnb Pitch Deck slide layout:
In the business model slide, they managed to lay out their revenue model in a way anyone could understand. They make a 10% commission on each transaction, perioddd.
Remember, if you want to get some help with the financial business model, you can rely on Fuelfinance. We get spreadsheets done, and what is more important – we love doing that.
Originally, BuzzFeed was only five people in a tiny office in Chinatown. But one day they woke up and decided to go big.
Their UVP point was visualized on slide 18 of their pitch deck. BuzzFeed launched the idea to treat advertisement as content instead of having content and advertisement as two different entities.
Content generated by users, computer algorithms, and advertisers made them different from other journalistic websites.
In the pitch deck, BuzzFeed founders showed precisely how their idea worked and how it would look online. They also illustrated how the “advertisement as content” idea would benefit them, adding screenshots of the actual website.
See their second-last slide? They were not shy to show just how their idea on viral media could take off.
Emphasize the importance of timing because your idea/product/service is the right person at the right time.
For example, Dropbox did it by highlighting trends that are relevant to its target audience. Like growing interest in the use of digital devices and more remote teams.
Tinder chose a safe option of walking investors through a customer journey map with screenshots.
Consider this before hitting the "sent" button on your pitch deck email.
1. Be straightforward. You may want to splurge and overload investors with information on their first pitch deck, but remember, "the less is often more."
Clearly-explained visions, bullet points, and infographic content are more attractive than lots of text. Avoid the lead to unnecessary. Or you will not get a chance to hear the important ones.
2. Story over stats. Put your raw numbers into contexts and stories.
3. Keep it updated. Include only recent milestones, and avoid presenting out-of-date information.
