• Cooking time: 3 minutes
• Amount of ingredients: 18
• Variations: 24 and more stats
• Equipment needed: An excellent team
• Container: Mobile
• Budget: Your financials
• Initial step: Your value proposition
• Number of servings: Unlimited
  

We’ve come up with the best recipe to make a pitch deck! Best of all, the result of this is so great that it will only take 3 minutes to digest in full! Here are its cooking instructions.

Fast food of pitch deck versions

And who said fast deliveries called for careless stewing? On the contrary, coming up with the best possible version of a 3-minute pitch deck will take all you can give to cook this one right. We mean that. 

Fortunately, our 3 Minute Pitch Deck Template is highly-rated. It can be served as the most ideal base to capture your audience’s attention. Your startup metrics come at its beginning, and bold text in large fonts spice up your statements.

Number of pitch deck slides

Think of this less as a generic production and more like an haute cuisine type of dish. Now, the number of ingredients to a pitch deck is variable. The best recipe to make a pitch deck uses the least amount of slides to fit everything you need. 

It’s not about cramming it all up in a bowl to produce the shortest content, either. It’s about using the tool so well you won’t need to extend beyond a reasonable result. In other words, don’t go for quantity, go for the absolute best quality. And that calls for a mix of things, so stick with us to the end.

Ranging usually at 10-20 slides, the exact number of slides you need for a pitch deck depends on who you ask. Renowned references in the startup world go for 10 or 11 total, others go for more than 15. VC firms and successful startups have all come up with their own personal recipe to find pitch deck success. We summed them up visually in a helpful diagram. In it, we very succinctly highlight which firm or company includes what and which slides are part of every option. Take a look at our complete presentation guide for it. We promise it’s worth it. 

Of course, leaving some slides out or fitting extra ones means either expanding with more proof on a single topic or, typically, including or excluding a specific topic altogether. We recommend studying what goes into a killer startup pitch deck before you make up your mind on what you’ll do with your own. 

How a pitch deck looks definitely matters

Our AI tool separates content and design for a reason. Just like a cake, one thing’s working on a delicious batter, another is making the icing look fantastic. They’ll both end up affecting the overall aspect and flavor, but how we color it and make it look absolutely matters. With slides, we have to think similarly. 

We can’t expect everyone who needs a pitch deck to know how to design professionally. People go through years full of college education in design. Not every entrepreneur is built to do that well. So, first off, know there’s consulting and design services you can pay to get your slides looking like any top-notch deck needs to end up. If your icing is going to look home-made no matter how much of an effort you put into it, it might be a good idea to outsource this to people who do this for a living. We’ve helped out over 30,000 companies, so we know how that goes. 

A little pre-cooked help can’t hurt

Another option is to rely on pitch deck templates. Since pitch decks are our signature dish, we’ve got plenty of different samples you can try. 

We recommend looking into the best pitch deck examples from successful startups. What allowed Airbnb, Uber, and Facebook to raise exemplary rounds can be a helpful starting point for you. See how they put data and design together to remarkable success.  

Present the makers behind your magic

Whatever you end up choosing to make your slides look great, your team slide should be a beautiful-looking combination that highlights just how great your team is. Think of a chef coming out to a dining hall. It isn’t just any occasion. It should be exceptional and reassuring about what you’ve got in front of you. It’s a touch that seals a deal. Team slides should be no different than meeting sous-chefs, leading chefs, and the entire team behind the scenes in a busy and famous kitchen. 

The above is essential. And the reason why that’s so is funding, which is the underlying reason why pitch decks exist. Investors need to see that you’ve got just the perfect team to excel at anything and everything that comes your way, from market and business challenges to unexpected opportunities. Fundamentally, they need to know you can value any room for innovation and profitability where others might delay and that you can put down fires whenever they arise. It’s trusting your kitchen and ensuring they’ve got the best shot at a return on investment (ROI) before they lay eggs in your basket. 

Enough with the culinary analogies? Then, just think about polishing your team slide and making it stellar. Feature everyone’s achievements and the strength in their backgrounds. Give special attention to this slide to make it trust-worthy and compelling. 

Consider your readers’ context

Also, while we all love a pleasant and relaxing 5-star Michelin restaurant experience, plenty of investors will eat your slow-cooked meal on their way somewhere. They’re likely to process it in more of a train ride, in-between meetings kind of to-go burrito experience. And that typically means a quick scan over a mobile phone rather than a focused read on a big computer screen. VC’s “only spend less than 4 minutes viewing a full deck.

Prepare for that. And doing so means making sure your slides’ most valuable information is easily located and readable. Your valuables, in this sense, refer to financial details, your company summaries, your key solution and problem, and much more crucial information.  

Moreover, ensure your slides are equally functional and visible on mobile. Actually try it out, too. Open different phones and browsers to see how it looks. As you work on your design, tweak accordingly to ensure your branding comes across beautifully. 

Ensure you don’t send a PPT, PDF, or any document in other formats that are unreadable or difficult to view or access. The same applies to links that are broken. Those can result in no second chance to pitch a particular investor. Putting some time into this is worth the work. 

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VCs will go straight to figures

Remember when we said including some slides over others is a choice to make carefully? The financial slide is one of those on which you can find yourself walking on eggshells. 

Not including financials is justifiable in specific scenarios, especially if your deck is public. Also, that applies if there are governing laws or events that forbid you from doing so. And there can be many other reasons you wouldn’t want to disclose your company’s financial details. Maybe you don’t even have sturdy financial data to share, yet. 

However, bear in mind research that shows viewers will spend most of their already limited time on them if you include them. So that’s all the more reason for that slide to just rock their boat. 

Considering what to serve for an entrée?

Akin to any dining experience, pitches also need good flow, from the start of a presentation to its dessert at the end as a final experience. You can even think about a presentation’s structure the way you would a 5-course menu. Doing so might significantly improve your overall ability to navigate a pitch deck flawlessly. 

We recommend taking as long as you need to come up with a pitch deck hook to get your audience’s attention. Yet, that’s more on the verbal side, like the script a waiter might need to greet consumers. On the actual content side, your entrée can easily be a substantial dish on its own. Think of the problem you’re tackling as a possibility to start a pitch. Or make of your value proposition your opening slide. These can certainly work, and there’s no exact need to have your contact information or your business name or credentials take that first spot. 

Being creative with your inclusions

We invite you to find the mix from our abundant sources of information to craft a pitch deck that suits your precise company needs. Use them to make the best of your branding, one that reveals your culture and speaks of your business in a way you feel will compel investors. You can mix and match just like you would toppings and flavors at an ice-cream shop. In the end, the combination with which you come up should fully speak of yourself. 

Yet, to do so in a way that benefits your business, know that the more you add to your slides, the more statistics you need to share to compensate. A 24 slide series A pitch deck, for example, will need 3x more statistical references than an 18 slide seed deck. The particular stages of a startup are also to be considered. Yet, we’d need to expand on those throughout an entirely different article. 

We’ll leave you with the best recipe to make a pitch deck for now. Have fun!
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CREATE YOUR PITCH DECK