Pitch Deck Structure
Remember that the average viewing time for the investment deck is 3,20 minutes. Be concise, and try not to use professional or industry terminology. Not always your deck will be reviewed by the domain experts, but even if it will be reviewed by such an expert, remember that investment decisions in the VC are made on the investment committee. And GP/MP or assistant will have to make an investment memorandum from your deck. And they will have to work on simplifying your deck so other partners would vote to invest in your startup. Respect their time and raise your chances by being short and simple.
Section Title
Few recommendations:
1. Most of the time your deck will be reviewed by using the phone. So make sure that there is no need to zoom each part of the text. Try using a larger font.
2. Fewer pictures. Only if they help to show the way your product works.
3. Each thesis should contain a maximum of 2-3 sentences. Fewer words.
4. Highlight key bullets and metrics. So by reading only them investors could understand what is all about. The suggested structure is a unified form that includes most of the investors' wishes. Also, that structure could be transformed for different situations. E.g. Slide with the team is put at the end of the pitch, as you need to prove to the investor with all slides before, that he sees in front of him The team that will succeed in building the product. But if you have teammates with The names or they worked in leading companies in your sector, then you can shift the Team slide at the beginning of your deck. It will help to build a trust hook.
Structure of the pitch in 15 slides:
1. Cover
Simple. No contacts.
2. Brief
One-pager with main key points of the whole pitch.
3. Problem
Before describing problems please make sure that you’ve got proofs of customers' pains and problems by doing customer interviews and market research.
4. Solution
Please describe only solutions that addressed particular market pains and customers' problems highlighted in the previous slide and make sure to notice how your solutions will help in solving them.
5. Product
Description of the product and how it works.
6. Demo
Use cases or case studies. Very good way of showing how the products works, you can find in the AirBnB first deck. Product and Demo slides could be merged.
7. Features & Benefits
Not a necessary slide, all features could be pointed in the competitive comparison slide, but you can describe how your customers will benefit by using your product with a help of particular features.
8. Business model
Describe how you plan to earn money, show monetization, subscription plans, commissions, etc. Include your unit economics, especially CAC/LTV metrics. Remember that for early-stage startups such metric must be at least 1/6, otherwise, in later stages, your unit economics will stop working. That means that your company will become not profitable in terms that in time CAC is only growing.
9. Traction
Proof that the company can make money/ on later stages proof that company gained the product-market fit. Includes revenue size, MRR/ARR would be great to show breakdowns by countries or customers, also customer excitement, feedbacks, waiting list, pilots, LoI agreements, etc. Try to show you progress for at least 3 to 6 months.
10. Go-To-Market
The go-to-market strategy is built as a funnel, from customers who are the cheapest or even free in terms of the acquisition and the fastest in the terms of contract sign time early adopters, which max capacity could be 2,5% of companies' market size. Then medium-sized customers and in the end the most expensive as with such customers the terms of contract sign time period is much longer. Sales and marketing activities for each ICP during these iterations are should be prescribed there too. In addition, you have to specify the land expansion strategy. In which country the team will start, and which markets it is going to scale to. In that way, you could show that you know for sure to whom and how you are selling, and you know your market.
11. Market size
TAM is a measure of what the market size would be if a startup potentially took all 100%, show the math on the slide. Market size = number of customers X average product price. Then you narrow the funnel, SAM market share taking into account the competitive and buying characteristics of your customers. SOM market share that the company can take based on its strategy in the foreseeable future, usually 1-3 years.
12. Competitors
VCs would like to see your killer feature or unfair advantage, how you can solve a customer pain 10 times better than competitors. Meaning that you can disrupt the market. Don't use an axes comparison way, instead, use a comparison table with a list of your TOP 3-5 competitors and a list of your TOP 3-5 advantages. Also, you may use slack model to build your positioning over competitors, see more here
13. Team
Highlight founders and core-team members with a short description of their experience. And make a breakdown and show who is full-time in the company and who is part-time.
14. Fundraising
How much money are you going to raise, on what terms? Be specific, ranges in numbers are unacceptable, you will only show that you don't know your market, you don't have any fundraising strategy, and you don't know how to build a business.
15. Financials
Give more details about how investments will be used, what milestones the team will reach, and how much the team will grow the company by reaching these milestones in specific metrics. Your ideal runway should be 12-18 months, it will help founders to dilute their equities less often.
All forecasts should be made on that landscape. E.g. We will use $200k to scale the sales team. Why? We will be able to process 3 times more customers which will gain us the growth in MRR from $20k to $60k.