Investors need to know your market opportunity and the pain points it addresses, as well as whether or not you have a team in place that can execute on its vision and mission.
Traction should be included as one of the cornerstones in your pitch deck presentation, to demonstrate that your business is on track with meeting its sales projections.
1. Know Your Audience
Learning your audience is essential when developing an investor pitch deck. Different investors will have different interests and expectations – some may care most about your team and market opportunity while others require more detailed financial projections.
Deliberately selecting your audience will enable you to craft an engaging presentation that draws investors in. Doing so also makes responding to feedback or questions from attendees much simpler during or after your pitch, using features such as Papermark’s customisable paths and surveys for gathering structured responses and contact details of potential investors – which helps build trust while increasing chances of landing that term sheet offer.
2. Make It Easy to Read
Investors expect a pitch deck to contain plenty of information, from an overview of your business to its mission and offerings, market size estimation, and an explanation of any jargon or overstated claims about capabilities of your company. It is therefore imperative that investors have as much detail in your pitch deck as possible in order to assess it effectively.
The status quo slide sets the scene for your presentation by providing an overview of the issue at hand and emphasizing its importance, along with providing data or research as support to demonstrate scale of issue. It should also demonstrate urgency for change.
Ideal, each slide should flow seamlessly from the last, constructing your story logically and progressively. Adopting a consistent design theme with few fonts and images helps maintain visual coherence.
3. Keep It Simple
As with all pitch decks, it is key to keep its contents as concise and clear as possible. Complicated presentations may cause investors to become disinterested.
Create a “Product Details” slide, which can serve to highlight specifics about your product while giving visuals to your audience. Use this to share demo videos, mockups, screenshots or photographs of devices or storefronts.
As part of your deck presentation, it’s also advisable to include target market data to illustrate its size. This will reassure investors that you have given this consideration and understand what you are doing – further giving them assurance. You could even embed a survey or form directly within Papermark so as to collect structured feedback or contact information directly within it.
4. Make It Visual
No matter how great your product or idea may be, it must also stand out from competitors and capture and increase market share. Utilize this slide to highlight how your solution addresses gaps in the market or capitalizes on an emerging trend.
The Product Details slide enables you to provide more in-depth details about your product – for instance, technical infrastructure in an app pitched to tech investors or screenshots and pictures of consumer devices sold directly to consumers. This will give investors a tangible sense of your product while assuring them you understand your audience well.
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5. Don’t Overdo It
Investors want to see that you have a comprehensive plan on how your business plans to make money, including revenue projections, competitors and market size analysis. Be cautious not to give investors unrealistically optimistic figures as this may cause them to lower or dismiss forecasts entirely.
Investors want to see that there is a strong team behind your business, so include a slide describing their backgrounds and expertise as part of your pitch deck presentation. Studies have indicated that slides with teams at the beginning may not be as successful in getting investors’ interest.
Before presenting your pitch deck to anyone else, show it to some trusted friends or colleagues for feedback. Their honest assessment can help identify any shortcomings in your presentation that need improvement.
