Welcome to our new blog. We’re going to focus on making it a blog by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs. If you are seeking seed funding for your startup, hopefully, you’ve gotten to the right place, with our goal of you leaving with what you were looking for, and more.

So many ideas, so little time. Or maybe you have just one brilliant idea and want to see your vision develop into something that will save the world, or a small part of it.

You have your story, know your strengths, who your fellow co-founders are (if you have any) and want to get it out into the real and virtual worlds; to raise seed funding.

How do you get from your idea to the realization of your vision?

The most common, effective and accepted way is via a pitch deck. Let’s begin by covering some basics:

The Pitch Deck: What Is It?

A pitch deck typically consists of 10-20 slides that you custom tailor for investors based on the company’s strengths. It provides a company summary, your business plan and how you see your vision. It has quite a few uses, from trying to arrange a meeting with an investor, to a stage presentation or as an email pitch. As a rule, each investor deck should be tailored to the company’s strengths.

As a seasoned veteran of the pitch deck presentation, I strongly believe that you need to tell your story, what your idea is, who it can benefit and why. There is too much to go into in one post, so let me share my 5 pillars of a great pitch deck.

1. Flawless Communication

Your pitch must contain as few words as possible. But those words, everyone needs to hit the mark in your audience. English and punctuation must be flawless and every word must count. If you don’t take the time to mind your grammar, then the potential investor might decide not to mind you.

2. Design, Design, Design

Remember, you are trying to say as much as you can with less. Less words take less time. Average VCs see about 5,000 Pitch Decks a year. Design it with the VC in mind. Research pitch decks of successful companies tied to your space. Take elements of those. Use white space. Don’t overdesign.

3. Keep it simple

Infographics are a terrific way to convey numbers and stats. They help you keep it simple. Say, for example you want to communicate to your potential investor how a new law by the FDA just opened up a whole new market, a market that your product addresses and solves.As an entrepreneur you need to define all your building blocks and how to cover them in your presentation.Below is a selection of building blocks that you can arrange in your own way. I am ordering them as I would place them with a bit of background on each.

“Add something about making an unforgettable impression – It could be an image, a phrase, a word – something that is totally unique to your startup. It can be an interesting fact – for example, if it’s a startup dealing with beds – “87% of adults in the US don’t sleep well. Well, they should. It can be something emotional. If it’s a headphone company for example: “We bring the love of music back to people”. –Keren Kay of Innovesta.co

Customer

Who is your target customer?



Problem

What is your target’s problem?

Market

Talk about the size of the market, their eagerness for a solution. You can discuss the competition. Stress how you are different.

Solution

Talk briefly about how your product alleviates the solution.

Product

Talk about how you built a product that does this. How easy it is to use. How your product has solved a solution that is cost effective, practical.

Plan

Talk about how you are going to get your product delivered to your customer. What channels? What challenges lie ahead?

Go to Market (G2M) Strategy

How do you plan on bringing your product to market? Which regions will you focus on? Will you resell your product through authorized partners? How will you go about onboarding customers? At what cost? What is your target LTV?

Team

Talk about your background. MBA? PHd? What schools? Your successes? What makes your team shine? Your failures and what you learnt from them that have gotten you to where you are now.

Startup Development

Talk about your successes, where you are now, where do you want to be going? These are just building blocks to use. Sequence them as needed to maintain a flow.

Financial Model

By this time, your pitch deck effectively lets the investors in on your dream and how you envision getting there. Now, it’s time for the financials. What does the revenue model look like? What are your margins going to look like? How fast can you grow it? How much will you need now and in the future?

The Exit

Down the road, staying positive, your business is growing. Take a look around. Think about who your buyers may be. What do they look for? Build a persona of your potential buyers. Who out there would be interested in what you built? How much would they be willing to pay? What kind of growth must your company see for it to get them interested?

4. Your CTA: The Ask

What makes a CTA successful is one that asks for help while at the same time welcoming investors to get involved to help you build it.Your story should be told using building blocks to flow. Talk about current fund-raising efforts and weave it into a story that shows how your solution solves a customer problem.Some other slides you may consider are press your product has secured and user testimonials. Case studies are powerful.This is a great time to put up some graphics with numbers, such as the size of the total market, the added market and the percentage of the added market you gain access to. You want to WOW them. Don’t forget. You only have a few minutes to pique their interest.

5. Pitch Presentation

There are quite a few ways to pitch your deck, nowadays, including email and all the digital ways, but when you get to pitching in person to one or to a crowd on a demo day, the deck becomes less important than the presenter. Presenters need to be at the top of their game. How they present their deck can make or break any chance of securing that seed round.

Feel free to take some inspiration from these pitch decks below. Click on the images to go to the deck.

We hope to see you back here soon. Feel free to leave comments and share this post.