The most common question I get from founders is how to make a good pitch deck. But the answer is always the same: Make your company interesting and tell a story about it! There are tons of great resources out there on how to design an effective, persuasive presentation. And as long as you’ve got some basic slides, you can put together something that will generate interest in what you’re doing and why people should care.
1) Too much text.
The first thing we often see at startup pitches is too much text crammed onto one slide or more than one slide for every two sentences spoken by the presenter. It’s hard to know where to look at this point because usually all these words don’t mean anything yet if they ever will. The same goes for pictures where you have a lot of information crammed into one slide which just makes the audience scan your presentation deck and trust me they won’t read between the lines. These days I’m surprised if I see a pitch presentation that’s only 3-5 slides long, but it wasn’t always this way. In fact pitching with a single slide or even no slides at all was quite popular back in the early days of the Internet.
2) Not justifying your numbers.
Numbers are strong language and you’re better off stating them as facts without giving too much context because most funding decisions happen on gut feel and things like that. Speaking about numbers, a lot of founders make a huge mistake by not justifying their numbers. They throw out some big numbers and hope the investors will be wowed enough to put in money, but it doesn’t work that way. This is especially important if you’re dealing with investors who are looking for quick returns on investment or if you’re dealing with people from the outside of the technology industry.
3) Too little information.
The problem with some pitches is that they aren’t very informative. They’re more like a string of ideas than an organized presentation about specific things. You don’t know where you are or why you would care so it’s hard to stay interested in what you’re doing. If you don’t know what to make of your startup, or how it stands out from all the other teams out there, chances are an investor won’t either.
4) Not sharing a competitive landscape.
We’ve seen a few companies go into pitch meetings without clear knowledge about who their competitors are and they couldn’t explain how they fit into the market. You should also highlight what makes your company unique and outstanding compared to these competitors and why you’re going to win.
5) Too many numbers.
We’ve seen a few companies do exactly that, try to impress us with too much data and irrelevant facts instead of focusing on the core message. Everyone can slip up once in a while, but you should try to ensure that all the information being delivered is relevant for the current topic. Always keep in mind why investors are there and ask yourself if they would find the things you’ve shared interesting or helpful when making investment decisions.
6) Not using good design software.
Some startups try to design their pitch deck on PowerPoint and it doesn’t work well. First of all there’s the look and feel which you can change with some better graphics or fonts, but also scaling things like charts and images. That’s why we recommend startups to use Venngage instead of PowerPoint.
Venngage is an online graphic editing platform that provides a wide range of pitch deck templates for everyone. All you need to do is create your free Venngage account, browse through their templates, choose the best sales deck template, customize the pitch deck design to your liking, and download. To give you an idea, here are some pitch deck examples from their collection.
Venngage
7) Not including enough structure.
We’re seeing a lot of presentation decks that have an excellent story but they just don’t give investors enough information to understand where the company is going and what milestones it must achieve in order for them to get a return on their investment. This means that you should divide your presentation into two parts. The first part should be devoted to the ‘present day’ telling them what’s happening right now, but with an emphasis on product development and future plans. The second part is where you tell them about how all of this is enabling them to achieve their financial goals.
8) Not doing enough customer development.
Let me share a few words from one of my colleagues. If you don’t do customer development before doing a pitch, chances are you won’t get very far with investors. One important part of our work at Invi is to ensure that companies really understand all their customers’ needs before the product even exists and this also applies to pitching your startup to potential investors. If you can’t tell me who your customer is and what the problem is, it’s hard to see how you could solve it with a new product or service.
9) The founder gets too nervous.
We’ve seen this happen a few times where founders get very nervous before their pitch starts. They start fiddling with their presentation, shuffling through the pages and just generally looking nervous. If you’re an experienced public speaker this shouldn’t be a problem, but if not it could certainly scare off potential investors.
10) Not working on your elevator pitch.
Many first-time entrepreneurs fail because they don’t work out what their value proposition is and how to communicate this in a short, concise and memorable way. There’s nothing wrong with long descriptive presentations if you do it early on when trying to get people to understand what you’re doing. But for investors an elevator pitch should not take more than 60 seconds and should be focused on what makes your company unique (and interesting) compared to competitors. Pitch decks are an essential part of the process when trying to secure funding for a new project or business. You want your pitch deck to be thorough but not too long, flashy without being distracting and informative while still providing enough information that investors can make an informed decision about whether they should invest in you. If you’re ready to be innovative and unique on your next presentation, start creating pitch decks with Venngage today!
