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What Makes a Good Pitch Deck?

If you are a startup you quickly realize how much you may need some help with funding. Finding investors who will contribute to your business is a great way to boost your business and get more people involved. In order to gain investors, it’s a good idea to have a good pitch deck prepared. A pitch deck is basically a powerpoint presentation that you will prepare and explain to potential investors when you have gotten a meeting with them. The presentation will describe your startup and all of the details to gain investor interest and potentially gaining funding. 

Structure

Simplicity:
The powerpoint itself should be kept very simple. Don’t make your audience have to think too much or figure out what the slides mean. Investors don’t want to have to decode your business. They’re simply there to see if your startup interests them, and decide whether they want in. Keep the slides simple and do most of the explaining yourself when speaking about and describing the presentation.

Length:
Keep the presentation concise and straight to the point. You will most likely not need more than 6-10 slides in total, and no more than 3-5 bullet points in the slides. Not every slide has to have bullet points. Too many slides with bullet points will start to feel repetitive and might lose the audience’s interest. Guy Kawaski, a venture capitalist says he’s tired of hearing hundreds of entrepreneurs whose “pitches are crap.” He has created a rule that he believes will guarantee your pitch stay concise, relevant and interesting. He created the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. Kawaski says, “a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points.”

Be Compelling:
This is your opportunity to gain the interest of people who can help fund and expand your business, so you have to awe them. Be compelling and use a lot of images. Visuals help captivate your audience and maintain their interest, not only in your presentation, but your startup as well. Remember, Don’t pack too much information into your slides. Most of the information should be coming from you explaining your startup and your presentation. Keep the presentation simple!  

Tell A Story

Your pitch deck will be a lot like short papers from school. They have to explain your point, use sources, have transitions, have an introduction and a conclusion. This is very similar to what you’ll be doing with your pitch deck.

Flow:
Make sure your presentation flows throughout the entire duration. Find ways to keep the audience intrigued and do not bore them with repetitive looking slides. Include visuals, stay enthusiastic and keep that audience interested with a good flow. Connect your slides in transitional ways to help maintain the flow of your presentation. This will help keep everything in order so that your presentation doesn’t confuse anyone. It will also help the audience in understanding the process of your startup. This helps the audience avoid over thinking or losing interest in your startup.

Sources:
A good paper uses sources to back up your points and help with credibility. A good pitch should do the same thing. Give examples. Answer the question “why?”  Why should the investor fund your startup? Why is your startup a good idea? How can you prove that this is a good idea? This helps with credibility and makes you look professional while offering valid points as to why your startup is a good one to invest in.

Story:
Tell your story. Tell the story of your business. Explain who you are and what your business is. Describe how the business is going to layout and how it’s going to make great changes.  

Practice Makes Perfect

Practice Your Pitch
Practice the whole pitch deck before you go face-to-face with investors. Practice in front of friends to get comfortable with it. Saying things aloud usually help more with noticing mistakes than just rereading something. So present your pitch deck to people you’re more familiar with before you take it to the big guns.

Analyze Feedback:
One of the best things about practicing your pitch deck is that you’ll get tons of feedback. Feedback will help you tweak your pitch and improve it to better intrigue the audience. Don’t just take the feedback, analyze it. Consider the feedback given to you first, and then you can pick and choose what you want to keep, change, or discard.   Pitch, get feedback, rewrite, repeat. Until you’re confident with the results.

Memorize Pitch Deck

Be Prepared:
Practicing your presentation will help with memorizing your pitch deck before you go to the big guns. This is important to make you prepared for anything that may happen during your pitch deck. You may be asked questions that could throw you off, but if you practice and memorize your pitch deck, it will help improve your performance under pressure. You will be better prepared and this will help keep you calm and ready for anything.

Memorizing Slides:
Memorizing the slides is incredibly helpful for when you go up in front of investors. Whenever you are asked a question, you will be able to return quickly and smoothly to the relevant slides. This ease to slides will keep your audience interested because you look like you know what you’re doing and like you are beyond prepared and eager to begin your business.

Confidence

Last but definitely not least, be confident! This is probably the most important tip of all. Confidence attracts people, not only to you, but to whatever you will be presenting. If you practiced and memorized your slide, you will be ready and this will help with your confidence on the day of your meeting. Make sure to smile and be excited for your startup. If your audience sees you eager and excited it will make them excited for it as well. Your positive attitude contributes tremendously to the compelling pitch deck. Show pride in your product, business, company, etc. If your audience sees that you are delighted by your startup, and your confidence is radiating, they will get the impression that this could be a potentially great thing. Hopefully, these 5 tips have been helpful and can assist you in being prepared to go up in front of your potential investors. Want an awesome pitch deck to be designed? Reach us at hi (at) crisptalks.com

Wish to read more about pitch decks? Check this informative article from Slidebean

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Rachna Ghiya

Rachna Ghiya is the founder of CrispTalks & believe that every story is worth telling. She likes reading, watching romcoms, testing & trying new tools and traveling to new places. Connect with her on LinkedIn: https://goo.gl/PW4w4X