Steal This Seed-Stage Pitch Deck and Get Funded

The goal of a pitch deck is not to make every investor say yes.

The goal is to get the right investor to say yes. In the speed dating world of startup/investor relationships finding the right match is vital to new business longevity.

Investors are always looking for reasons to not invest. You should also be looking for reasons to not take money from the wrong source.

A good pitch will cause an investor to understand your idea, believe in your ability to execute it, and think they will make an outsized return on their investment in a reasonable amount of time. A great pitch will signal to the investor that you have a great opportunity and that they might not be the right fit.

This is not easy to do.

The competition is fierce, especially in the seed stage. Investors are flooded with dozens of pitches a week. They quickly have to sort through startups and make decisions on who gets seriously considered for funding.

These decisions are not based on gut feeling or how much they ‘connect’ with the idea. Most investors have templates and systems in place to sort the deluge of deals they see on a weekly basis.

One of the major players in how most investors sort opportunities is the pitch deck.

Fortunately, creating a pitch deck that slots into an investor’s system is becoming increasingly formulaic. In the past 2 years, I have worked closely in the investor space and have seen hundreds of pitch decks.

I have found there is no silver bullet template when it comes to your deck. However, this is a good thing. Your pitch deck should be a reflection of both your business and the kind of investor you hope to land. This is one of the main reasons it is so tough to find a good template. There is no company exactly like yours, thus there is no perfect pitch deck out there yet for you.

With this in mind, I have created a loose outline that hits many of the vital aspects of a solid deck.

Part One (A great first impression)

Clarity wins. Visuals, flow, and viewer experience should all take a back seat to direct and obvious answers to the questions every investor is asking.

Above all, these first three slides have to answer these three questions:

• Who is your customer?
• What pain are they experiencing?
• How are you solving that pain?

Doing this effectively is earlier said than done. Here is a great example of doing this well in a presentation’s intro.

Slide 1 (The high-level flyover)

The main purpose of this slide is to communicate the gist of your company as efficiently as possible.

Investors looking through dozens of pitch decks will only remember the ones that they can easily understand. If they can not explain what you do to a college within the first minute of looking at your pitch deck, you’ve already lost.

Your slide should show off some branding, maybe a visual to help them picture your industry or target audience, and a mission statement that clearly defines your business.

This slide needs crystal clear language above all else.

Notice what is not on this slide:

• Exposition about the team
• Meaningless marketing material
• An irrelevant background image
• Multiple fonts
• Clutter

After casually viewing this slide, an investor should know what you are solving, why you solving it, and how it will improve the lives of the user or customer.

Leave it at that.

If this is all they have time for, you can rest assured knowing they got the most important parts.

Slide 2 (Use data to dig deeper)

You just told the investor what the problem is. Now prove that the problem is real using quantifiable data in your next slide.

When it comes to proving your problem, leave no room for assumptions. Investors intentionally look for reasons to not invest in your startup. Oftentimes, that reason is an ill-defined problem that creates confusion. This hesitation is easily cured through the use of publicly available data that proves your statements.

Without numbers to back up what you are fixing, investors will begin to question the rest of your deck. How are you supposed to know the real size of the market without a clearly defined data-backed problem to solve?

Stick to the important stuff and wrap it all up with a statement that shows how solving this problem will definitively improve the lives of the people using the product or service.

Slide 3 (The solution)

This slide is often left out. Excluding it from your deck causes a huge problem for investors. After looking at a deck, an investor should never need to do more research in order to figure out what the actual product or service is.

Without a clear solution side, investors believe that a startup does not have a clear grasp of its product or service. They may have a general idea, but they have not verbalized that idea well enough to capture the attention of outsiders. This is a huge problem.

A good solution slide puts these apprehensions to rest by clearly:

• Describing the product or service as a direct solution to the problem outlined
• Doing so in a way that is easy to grasp but shows sophistication
• Leaving the reader hungry for more details about the product

The solution slide is the last slide in the intro of your presentation. Many investors will not get past this point in your deck. That is only okay because based on these slides alone, investors can clearly understand there is a pain that needs solving and you have a clear and effective solution.

Hopefully, they are convinced enough at this point to dig into the market, financial, and team-related reasons why this is a great investment. If not, they will still be able to clearly communicate your idea to peers.

Part Two (Addressing all doubts)

They are hooked. They understand what you solving and want to hear more. Now it’s time to prove that your solution will work.

How this is most effectively done varies based on the startup. However, the outline below is representative of some of the best doubt-addressing sections I have ever come across.

Generally, this is formatted in a way that moves from object data sharing that proves your solution is great and then slips into more subjective territory as the section concludes. The later parts might include things like team chemistry and personal connections that could prove to be a benefit.

When diving into this section of the presentation it’s important to:

• Put your strongest assets and data points first.
• Do not abandon the style of the first section.
• Never use anything that you are scared of answering questions about.

Slide 4 (MVP)

You just finished telling the investor how you are going to solve this big bad problem. Now show them.

During an in-person presentation, this slide is commonly replaced by a quick live demo of the product or a walkthrough of the service. However, as in-person pitches are becoming increasingly rare for the first meeting, you will most likely be sending a copy of your pitch deck to investors before you get the chance to actually speak with them. For this reason, it is important to include a full demo of your product or service, linked in the pitch deck.

Ideally, you use this slide as a high-level overview of your actual product or service, with specific examples of how the customer is going to use it. By also including the demo, you allow investors to dig deeper if they would like without forcing them to if they want to breeze past this slide.

For physical products, pictures are great but a tour of the website, storefront idea, and customer journey is just as important.

This slide helps calm doubts by answering the following questions:

• Does this solution actually solve the problem outlined earlier?
• How does the customer actually interact with this product or service?
• Does this look like something people would actually be comfortable using?

By covering the answers, you have gotten one step further in an investor being comfortable with discussing an investment.

Slides 5–6 (Actionable Customer Personas)

In recent years, customer personas have fallen out of the normal pitch deck rotation. I think this creates a bit of an issue. A lack of personas tells investors that total addressable marketing data, go-to-market strategy, and thus financial projections, are more assumptions than data-driven goals based on customer research.

Give the investor an idea of who specifically needs the project. Use things like age, location, favorite brands, personal goals, and even personality traits to make your persona as real as possible.

This also opens the door to possible connections that the investors may have in this space. If they have a clear idea of who you are targeting there is a much higher chance of them being confident in introducing you to valuable contacts.

Good personas set the table for the rest of the data you want to present. That data becomes more and more relevant when investors know that it is based on a tangible idea of who your ideal customer is. It also shows a deep understanding of your customer and gives some more context to how you decided on your current marketing stack.

You may want several different personas, depending on the business.

In this example, I have two personas. One is the primary user of the product, and one is the primary decision-maker in the purchase of the product. Both of these are paramount to the success of the venture, and highlighting them should be a must.

Slide 7 (Total Addressable Market)

As a seed-stage startup, it may seem impossible to build out concrete financial projections and 10-year growth expectations ext. In some ways it is. However, there are ways to build assumptions that actually carry some weight. These early-stage assumptions are built off the back of your Total Addressable Market, Served Available Market, and Target Market.

Each of these can be found using data that already exists, without the need for any crazy guesses.

The Total Addressable Market (TAM) is easy enough to find. The example above it is a simple matter of finding how many students in your age range, have ADHD and may be looking for a solution.

Sites like Statista can help greatly in finding data that can be easily referenced in your appendices.

Slide 8 (Go-to-Market)

Your go-to-market strategy should hit a few points in order to properly alleviate investor doubts.

• You have a plan

This should briefly show that you are more than just a great product. You have a competitive advantage because you have a complete and thoughtful marketing plan. This plan should also be scalable based on the size of capital injection you may receive.

• When you are funded, you are ready to put the money to work

This plan of yours is on the launch pad ready to go.

Doing this effectively shows investors how their money will be spent, why you are spending it on those things, and what your projected outcomes are for that money.

As a steed stage, this may be tough to pull off, much of the financial research is very subjective. However having an idea of what the next step is, will make changing the plan a conscious decision, instead of giving the impression that investment will just go towards whatever is most important at the time.

After finding those numbers, things become a little less logical. Now you have to decide what percentage of that group you think you can reach with your marketing. To begin, you need to start eliminating parts of that market based on obvious things like location restraints, language barriers, and so on.

The size of the market you believe you can capture is ideally based on your current history. If it has cost $10 to recruit a new customer, you can use that data to scale up to a critical mass. However, if you are pre-revenue as most seed stage startups are, you may have to look too similar companies to find those numbers.

Some good questions to ask are:

• What other organizations are solving similar problems?
• How have they managed to capture their market share?
• How much has capturing that market share cost?
• What aspects of their model can you replicate?

Answering these should give you some idea of what your customer acquisition cost could be, but is not at all concrete. Resaerch goes in the appendices.

Slide 9 (Financial flyover)

Seed stage financial projections are tricky. It is not possible for you to be accurate without some revenue history.

For this reason, I recommend keeping the formula of calculation as simple as possible. In order to loosely project financials, you need three things:

• Percentage of your TAM year over year that you can reasonably capture based on your research
• Overall expenses that are scaled to your size as you grow
• Availability of future capital
• By no means will this give you any sort of foolproof projections but by using a formula like this, you can remove some of the ever-present subjectivity.

This is an incredibly basic way to project financials and for a seed round, that is okay. Be open about how your projections were calculated. There is no greater red flag than a founding team that does not know how their numbers are calculated, and why they used that method.

An easy way to stand out from the competition is to deemphasize precise financials in your pitch deck. Investors know that early-stage companies always have rose-tinted glasses when it comes to their projections. Although having these projections are still important, having the self-awareness to know that they will change and are highly subjective, will act as a refreshing splash of cold water in the endless sea of too-good-to-be-true hokey stick curves.

The calculations and research should not be front and center. Most of this stuff should go in the appendices, only addressed if asked about directly (which they probably will be). What actually goes on the slide is the high-level view of your results of this research.

Part Three (The Ask and the Gaps)

Almost no one does this and it’s a tragedy. Startups that are consumed with coming across as perfect miss the opportunity for vital connection and advice. This is the place where you weed out investors that can only provide capital. Especially in the early stages things like connections, advice, and expertise can be just as influential as funding. The gaps slide can help you determine if investors can provide what you need to get to the next step.

I go into more detail about adding the ‘Gaps’ slide in this article.

Slide 10 (Gaps)

What often gets overlooked is that investors can provide these things even if they don’t invest. However, they will never provide what your startup needs unless they are well informed on your gaps.

This Gaps and Ask section should mirror your initial slides but instead of solving your customer’s problem, you are teeing up investors to solve your problems.

Show where you are, where you are going, and how (with their help) you can get there. Often the only gap provided is the capital, but every investor worth their salt knows that your startup needs more than just cash. A good fit between you and an investor can be more easily established by showing how their unique offering compliments your gaps.

The gap slide accomplished this by:

• Being ultra-specific on what is needed
• Showing self-awareness of needs
• Propose a solution to the gaps

Slide 11 (Desired Capital Breakdown)

This slide is designed to give insight into what kind of money you are raising and why you have chosen that path. It shows investors that you are not just picking a number in hopes of raising money but are instead calculating the healthiest possible mix of money in order to grow effectively.

It can also give insight into where you plan to be in the future, helping investors get a better understanding of the desired trajectory.

Again, the goal is not to get every investor to say yes, but instead to get the right investor to say yes.

Part Four (Odds and Ends)

This section can be mixed and matched as needed. Sometimes a more streamlined deck will resonate better with larger more competitive VCs while smaller angel groups may prefer a more personal touch.

These slides exist to convey why you are perfect for this venture. The numbers work, the plan is in place, and the people assembled are the best possible team to turn the goal into reality. These are often mixed into the meat of the presentation, but I always prefer to see them after the main ask.

Slide 12 (Team)

The team slide should hit roles, personality, and passion. Show why you are well equipped, care deeply, and work well together. It can also be important to point out what each member’s commitment level is to the project. If only one member is full-time it can be important for investors as they will be curious who their main touchpoint will be in the future.

This slide can also include when you plan on adding more teammates and what the roles will be. Use this as an opportunity to show that you have a healthy and established company culture that can scale with your growth.

Slide 13 (Praise/Traction)

This is just a nice way to wrap things. If you are presenting live, this will display at the end of the presentation during Q&A. Leaving customer quotes helps create the idea that your business is already somewhat external, even if you have no revenue yet. It shows that you are creating buzz, talking to real people, and are aware enough to listen and record their feedback.

Bonus Round (Stuff to Leave Out)

• The Business Model Canvas

The BMC is a great way to organize your business and iterate on it in the early stages. However, it does not help peak investors’ interest.

• Competition

This should go in the appendices, not your main presentation. The only exception to this is if you are stepping into a highly competitive space and need to address directly why you are different.

Normally this should be self-evident. If you are proposing a problem well enough, it can be assumed that there is no one else on the market solving it in the way you are.

• Details

Any in-depth research, financial projections, and business plan should be reflected on your pitch deck, not pasted on. Having these in the appendices will also help greatly with your ability to answer questions well.

• Story

If you have a particularly motivating story revolving around the conception of your business, tell the story, but don’t include it in your pitch deck. If you end up sending your pitch deck, and the first half is bogged down by a significant amount of reading, you may lose investors before they have a chance to dive into the important stuff.

Conclusion

There is no perfect, one size fits all pitch deck. The formula is taken from here or anywhere else will need you to reconstruct it based on your business. That is a good thing. A pitch deck is not just for investors, it’s also for you. It is a representation of the hard work and progress you have made so far and is an important milestone for any early-stage company.

Remember that the right investor saying yes is the goal. Not all money is created equal and by using your own filters, give yourself permission to say no to investors who do not align well with your goals.

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