Recently, I have been helping some startups with seed funding raise and business development. I noticed most of the founders have been rightly so spending their time to build teams, polish products and services, and get product/market fit with customers. They have very limited time to produce a proper pitch deck, and sometimes even have no idea about how to develop a deck to get investors’ attention.
Here’s what I would recommend to prepare a basic pitch deck in pre-seed/seed round. Please keep in mind that different investors have different preferences about the deck. However, fundamental principles are the same in my view.
· 15–20 pages of Power Point. Less is more.
· The structure of the deck:
√ Cover page: Logo, Mission or Vision.
√ One page of key points of the whole deck is highly recommended.
Including:
1. One compelling sentence to indicate what problems your startup can solve.
2. The reasons why your team standout.
3. The competitive advantages of your startup.
4. The amount of capital to raise and the roadmap with funding.
√ Identify the problem
√ What is your solution? Product or service you are offering.
It would be better if investors see the problem-solution part in the first 4 to 5 pages.
√ What is your traction?
1. Go to market strategy
2. Competition analysis: Competitive advantages of your startups’ business models.
√ Roadmap of your startup: Goal/Time
√ Introduction of core founding team
√ Highlights of key metrics; growth outlook of 12–18 months runaway
1. Graphs and numbers are better than tables and words.
2. Detailed financial forecast is unnecessary at this stage, because it is always wrong.
√ Funding target and use of funding
1. Pre-seed round: to raise $100,000-$750,000.
2. Seed round: to raise $1m-$3m in general, sometimes $2m–$5m.
√ Contact details, and intros to the web/app if applicable
Note that each stage of funding for startups requires a different set of focus
points, metrics and milestones. The later the stage of funding is, the more data and evidence is needed for raising capital. There is no ‘one perfect pitch deck’ for all startups. Understand your audience, demonstrate your depth of thoughts and your clarity of communication.
Good Luck!
