Making the Right Pitch Deck to Find Investors

Investor search is a tedious process and if you have a startup then you may have knocked on a few extra doors, just to find the right investors for your business. While delivering the well-practiced elevator pitch at the many investor networking events, you might have got through and cracked the deal of finally presenting the pitch deck for your business.

What drives a  potential investor to listen attentively to your pitch deck? We have borrowed the learnings from the Art of the Start, by Guy Kawasaki, a venture capitalist, and marketing specialist. He has worked for companies like Google, Apple, and Canva.

We love Guy Kawasaki’s theory about “microscopes and telescopes” and interpret his point of view in this blog by empowering young entrepreneurs to see through the telescope and bring the future closer while ensuring that every minute detail in their startup is taken care of through the microscope! And with that, let’s look at the three main rules of making the right pitch deck – the 10/20/30 rule!

What is the 10/20/30 Rule?
The power of 10, 20 and 30 is that:

• There should be 10 slides.
• The speaker must present the pitch in 20 minutes.
• And the font size for the text should be 30.

The second and third points are self-explanatory hence we would outline the key components to be added in the 10 slides.

10 Slides

1. Title Page/ Cover Page
The title page should have information regarding your organization as well as your name, designation and contact details.

2. Problem
List 3 to 5 problems that your company faces and wishes to solve. 

• Give a striking overview of the problem at hand and explain it briefly.
• Elaborate on how this negatively impacts people and their experiences.
• Frame the problems effectively as this will set the stage of your entire pitch.

3. Solution
The third slide requires that you state the required solutions to overcome the problems noted in the second slide. Describe HOW you intend to resolve the problems, communicate big value conveniences while being truly straightforward and be clear and concise.

4. Business Model
“A business model describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value, in economic, social, cultural or other contexts.”[2] In this slide, how you make money, who pays you, your channels of distribution and your gross margins. You can always state other successful businesses that are using the same business model as yours. Through a graph or chart, show the viability of your product. In the case that you have multiple ways to make money, then consider using only one such as subscriptions, ads or transactions. Also, touch on the key metrics such as lifetime value and customer acquisition costs.

5. Underlying Magic
Everyone has a secret ingredient behind why their product or service is unique. In this slide, you must describe the technology used as well as your product or service’s “secret sauce”. Try not to make this slide wordy and add diagrams, schematics, and flowcharts as well as white papers and objective proofs of concepts.

6. Marketing and Sales
Explain how you would reach the customer and your marketing leverage points. Convince the audience that you have a great market strategy that is feasible and not uber expensive.

7. Competition
Outline a complete overview of the competition. In this process, show why your organization is good instead of outlining why the competition is bad. Also, together with the direct competitors outline the indirect ones too. In this slide, show the path to reach your customers as well as effective ways to reach them such as events, ads, partnerships, etc.

8. Management Team
Describe the key players of your management team, the board of directors, the board of advisors as well as major investors. Since your company is a startup, do not be afraid if you don’t have the perfect team as long as you are aware of not having a perfect team but are working towards achieving it in the near future.

9. Financial Projections and Key Metrics
Provide a five-year forecast of your business which includes the financials and key metrics such as customers and conversion rates. Try to do a bottom-up forecast which takes into account long sales cycles and seasonality.

10. Current Status, Accomplishments to Date, Timelines and Use of Funds
Explain the current status of your product or service, what is your prediction for the product in the near future and how you plan to use the capital that you are raising. 

These are the 10 slides as advised by Guy Kawasaki in his book ‘Art of the Start’ that should be added to one’s pitch deck. While many would consider adding more slides, using only 10 slides would ensure that the audience’s attention is kept and the pitch takes a mere 20 minutes to present, leaving more room for questions. If you like this article, please let us know your thoughts in the comments section. Also, give Alumni Alliances a thumbs up via the various social media platforms. 

References:
1. Featured Image – Campaign Creators
2. Business Model