Pitch Decks
by Micah
I was having a discussion with a friend about her pitch deck (she is raising a seed round. This wont work as much in later rounds). I wrote an extended email about what my personal pitch deck strategy was and I figured other people might find interesting. So, here you go:
Every deck should tell a story:
- This is who I am
- This is the problem
- This is why it matters to me
- This is how I am going to fix it
- This is how Im going to make money by fixing it
- This is how you are going to make money by investing in me
- This is how much I need
- Summary
- Thank you
- Take a bow
- Take high fives from everyone
(Ok, the last couple are filler)Every deck has two choices:
- Heavy on words (means you are relying on the deck to tell the story)
- Heavy on pictures (means you are relying on the deck to support the story you tell)
That choice is stylistic. Im a talker, we used pictures. Other folks arent, they use words. Both get funded.Every investor has a “tell”Just like in poker, every investor has a tell that indicates individual points of interest or excitement, when you tell the story, have three or four short “adds” in your pocket to pull out when the investor gets excited.Every investor will not let you get through the deck linearly.He will ask questions. Make sure you have slides that answer them. what are the top ten most likely questions. Know the answers before the question is asked. Make slides or points in slides that speak directly to the questions.Order your slides to force questions that the NEXT slide answers.Every investor kinda knows going in if they are potentially going to invest or not.If you sit down and its clear that the investor isnt going to invest, then your goal is for him to get excited enough about what you are doing to recommend you to a friend that he thinks will invest.Finally, the golden rule…Shut the fuck up. If you want to say “one more thing,” you have already said one thing too many.Damn, Im going to cut and paste this into a blog post…yay me!micah