By Stephen Walsh
When it comes to building your own business there are many obstacles that must be navigated on your way towards success. But one of the biggest pain points all founders feel once they enter the world of entrepreneurship is how to successfully fundraise while simultaneously continuing to build out your businesses. While there is no single recipe for success, a major part of raising capital is how well you can pitch your startup. To truly be successful at pitching, you need to first master how to create a great pitch deck.
The pitch deck is one of the strongest weapons in a founder’s arsenal. It is the presentation that entrepreneurs put together when seeking a round of financing from investors that can easily express what makes them stand out from the rest of their competitors. It is recommended that you create two separate versions of your pitch deck. The reason for this is simple – you want one version with a lot of text and information that will be shared with people via email and the other version will be one to present to investors in person with more visuals. Both are incredibly valuable, but the second one is instrumental to your company’s future success.
How to build a great pitch deck:
In essence, the three keys to powerful pitch decks that get funded are:
- Clear and simple
- Compelling
- Easy to act on
Below are essentially the slides that you want to include inside your presentation:
- Problem
- Solution
- Market
- Product
- Traction
- Team
- Competition
- Financials
- Amount being raised
Interestingly enough, on average investors spend less than 4 minutes reviewing a pitch deck. This means that keeping things clear, concise, and compelling is paramount. Of all the different sections of pitch decks, investors spend the most amount of time reviewing the slides concerning financials, the team, and their competition. Today we will be covering the first three sections of how to build a great pitch deck – Problem, Solution and Market.
1. Problem
The slide covering the problem is where you explain to your potential investors the exact pain point you plan to solve with your startup. The bigger the problem and the easier your solution is at addressing it, the better. The key here is finding ideal investors who can connect with the specific problem you are dealing with. Either they have experienced it themselves, their background allows for them to fully understand it, or they can clearly tell that this solution will bring them a great return on their investment.
2. Solution
Your solution needs to be as concise and clear as possible, but also show that this is something that can scale to address the entire market you are trying to break into. Explain in clear terms why your company is ideally suited to take on this endeavor, and why now is the ideal time to finally address this issue.
3. Market
This section is where you want to express just how great an opportunity this is that you are presenting to investors. It is essential that you provide graphs that outline your growth up to this current stage, and your projections for the future. Investors need to be able to quantify the upside potential of their investment in a matter of seconds.
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Learning how to build a great pitch deck is the first step in a long battle towards securing capital for your business. However, perfecting both your deck and your pitch is paramount to a business’ success as running out of runway is one of the leading causes for startup failures. Like with most things in life, practice makes perfect. Be sure to maximize the amount of shots you are taking with investors to increase your chances of success.
If you’re looking to maximize the amount of connections you make with investors you should create a profile on Peachscore! Peachscore is an AI based platform designed to help connect startups to their ideal investors. By analyzing each company, Peachscore provides a breakdown of the positive and risky signals of a business and assigns them a score they can then use to showcase their company to our investor network. Not only can you make connections and raise funds on Peachscore using your profile, but you can also secure strategic partnerships and even early customers through the same method.
If you would like to learn more please check out our website at Peachscore.com and sign up today to get started!