Elements of a pitch deck to raise funds

August 23, 2019

So, in this article we defined how to create a pitch deck. But now, let us pause on the structure to a pitch deck, precisely, and go over the nitty gritty of its order and other data.

The most recommended pitch deck structure is known to have the following elements:

Cover
Problem*
Solution*
The Product Demo
Market Size
Business Model*
Competition*
Underlying Magic
Go-to Market
Team*
Traction/Milestones
Fundraising Information*

If you haven’t taken note of this by now, rest assured it will be helpful (and free!) to copy and paste this list directly into your pitch deck slides. Or just pick one of Slidebean’s pitch deck templates for pre-filled information with examples.

In this entry, we will cover the first half of the mentioned structure, leaving the second half for this entry below. Also, we’ll get to the importance of all highlighted areas soon below.

What Makes A Good Pitch Deck Intro?

The introduction to a pitch deck is a set of slides that are technically comprised of your cover, the problem you’re addressing, the solution you’re offering and your product demo.

In other words, this is where you present your case, your problem, your premise and your proposed solution. This introductory block of information is critical to your pitch as it determines whether you will keep your investor’s attention throughout the presentation.

Image contains people sitting around a table listening a man

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How do you keep it concise and to the point? Remember this will be an investor’s first impression and look at your business. The overall intro should truly be remarkable.

How to Excel with A Cover’s Design

Let’s face it; we run businesses and pitch ideas. Most probably, you’re not the designing type. And a good starting point for any presentation is the best cover possible. In the end, the very basics of a cover slide come down to company name and tagline.So, how to reconcile both worlds in efficient and classy terms?

Fortunately, our company is made by solid entrepreneurs who also have a large set of expertise in high-quality design. This is why Slidebean uses AI-powered presentation design.

Our best piece of advice for you is to deviate from the standard, same-looking ever-known presentation covers, and go for simple, yet professional presentation designs that make your pitches go a longer way. And it’s not all just about aesthetics, actually.

Large, bold fonts are more of your friend than we typically think. Legibility is key. Otherwise, your audience desists from trying to read, zone out, and you’ve lost them!

Trust design that’s innovative and appropriate for your industry and niche, but also know that lots of text is truly inconsolable and inefficient.

Rely on keywords, charts and graphs, instead. People remember images better than fully fledged texts, every time. In that sense, a single high-quality image is better than more.

Create a Pitch Deck

Presenting the Status Quo

A problem slide to a pitch deck is the summarized version of that which your business is tackling, head on. You should be able to communicate this without room for debate or technical and complicated lingo. How down to earth can you make it?

Airbnb has been able to pin this down to 3 concise sentences. Check out our CEO’s video here for this precise example as well as more material on this precise topic. Again, we are looking for 100% straight-forward verifiable claims as part of your problem slide. Basically, the entire premise of your business should be neatly known here.

You’re also looking for this spot to be the one to create empathy with your investors, by the way. Make sure nothing you state here can be questioned, saving you from an overall doubtful pitch altogether.

Image contains a woman talking to more people who are around her

Presenting Your Company As A Solution

This is the whole reason why we’re doing this, correct?

Your pitch deck’s solution slide should be where you mention 3 or 4 core functions of your product or company in terms of how they address the problems you just described. Avoid tech jargon in doing so, as well.

We’re looking to hear about the benefits you provide, not so much the features to your product. Rather than highlighting what your product or company can do, which might be great and revolutionary, we here want to know about the literal solutions you offer.

What benefits does your product provide? And what is the end result of what your product can accomplish for your targeted audience? On that note, if your solution does not address your investors’ needs, but another particular audience, make sure to include that reference. It is a very important piece of information.

Best Ways to Include A Product Demo

Context makes a difference here. Are you presenting live or sending your pitch deck for email review?

If you are having an in-person meeting, make sure you’re able to control the flow of this product demo in ways that enhance your overall presentation. If you’re emailing your pitch deck to investors, it would be a courteous thought to embed a video rendition of your content here.

In any case, recall a demo is not an extensive tour with lots of details around your offer. Think of highlighting and offering solutions, again, and not giving an extensive feature description.

Talking Market Size with Investors

This is clearly the slide where we hear all about your market projections and data. How large can your company become?

For your market size pitch deck slide, you should decide whether to go with the bottom up or top down approach. Are you taking your total market to estimate your share thereof? You’d thus be engaging in a top down analysis. Or are you estimating potential sales to determine a total sales figure, instead? This entails using a bottom-up reasoning, instead, in evaluating how product can be sold, the sales of comparable products and the slice of current sales you can carve. Consider the higher level of accuracy for this second approach in that sense, as well.

Making or Breaking your Pitch

We finally get to your business model slide. This is where most magic needs to happen, and it does not happen on elaborate accounts of a difficult-to-understand strategy. On the contrary, we here turn to simplification for a core overview of how the business works and how the money flows.

Clarity and simplicity should override questioning over your ability and knowledge in producing returns. Revenue streams and cost structures should be so clear in these slides that there are no questions left in terms of how your business is going to work.

Are there key partners to be considering here? Which percentages are being tackled over which numerics for the industry? Are you challenging existing business model behaviors? In which case, a bit more time will be needed in getting your vision across in a way that is equally simple and clear.

For Airbnb, for example, this slide is filled quite simply. They take 10% of all transactions made in a $500MM serviceable market, thus projecting a 15% market share that results in fantastic numbers for even just a rough estimate. It really needs to come down to such simple numerics.

Most Important Slides to a Pitch Deck

We promised we would get to the highlighted areas to pitch deck elements, so let’s get to it!

The reason the problem, solution, business model, competition, team and fundraising slides have been specially marked for you as key elements that need to be on your deck has to do with every single person who knows what they’re doing on this topic signalling to these as the absolute most important slides in your presentation. We’re talking about accelerators, venture funds, successful startups, authors and internet personalities that all seem to agree about these slides being fundamental to your pitch decks.

For as much as creativity has been known to create exemplary pitch decks, we highly discourage you from trying to reinvent the most important areas to a pitch deck by leaving any of the noted slides above straight out of your pitch. For any investor (honestly, serious or not about doing business with you), these are just crucial pieces of information to have for an investment decision to be made. So, keep them in there, and do make the best of them that you can.

We hope this has been of help. Shout out to us if you need more, and start by giving our pitch decks a solid try!

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