Business Tips: Writing a Pitch Deck

By Lauren Sparling

Writing a pitch deck is a crucial skill that all entrepreneurs should learn. As you grow your business, figure out how you plan to get funding from investors to keep your business on track with its goals.

The main goal behind your pitch deck is to raise money for your business. You need to describe your business to investors and show them what makes you different and why you deserve their funding.

While you can add many different slides to your pitch deck, these are the 10 you should always include.

1. Title page

The title page is the first impression of your company to your potential investors. Add the company title, logo, and a tagline that explains your business.

The color scheme and fonts of your entire presentation are just as important as what you write. It determines the atmosphere of your company and the subsequent presentation. The fonts should be easy to read and everything should be consistent throughout. Changing the schedule for each slide is confusing to the viewer and doesn’t help establish an identity for your business.

Source: Airbnb, Launch Rock

2. Problem slide

Before you introduce how your business works, you want to explain the problem your business solves or the gap in the market it fills.

For example, Dropbox started its problem slide by describing how difficult it is to share files from different computers and work on files together as a team. They presented a common problem that many people could relate to before showing how their company can solve it.

Source: Dropbox

3. Solution

Now that you’ve successfully identified a problem for your audience, it’s time to introduce your company. Describe your product or service and how it addresses these issues. You can even have a demo or photos to give your audience the full experience. Make sure that your product can solve all the problems mentioned in the previous slide. If not, edit your problem slide to make it more relevant to your company’s skills.

Source: Airbnb

4. Target market

You want to tell your investors how likely they are to get involved in your business. You should have research showing how many people are in your addressable market and how many of them you have captured so far. If you’re just starting your business and haven’t captured a slice of the market yet, you can show your competitors’ market share for comparison or describe which part of the market you’d like to target first.

Source: Airbnb

5. Business model

Knowing your company’s business model is also important for any entrepreneur. You must be able to explain to investors how your company intends to make money. You need to know how much your company charges for your product or service, how many pricing plans it has, and what the company’s projected revenue is.

Source: Airbnb

6. Team

Now it’s time to introduce your team and show what experience you all have. This provides credibility to your business and shows why your potential investors should trust you with their money. For example, your chief accounting officer should have finance experience and your creative director should have experience managing campaigns. You don’t have to introduce every person who works for you or with you, just the key players like founders or CFOs.

Source: Square

7. Milestones

In this step you show what your company has achieved so far and what progress you have made. You don’t want your investors to think you just started this business yesterday and trust them to work out the rest of your business plan for you. Important things to mention might include money raised, beta launches, public launches, active users, new features, and other things your company may have accomplished. You can display this information in a timeline, graph, or other format.

Source: Buffer

8. Finance

Your financial slide is one of the most important slides in your pitch deck. Investors will spend a lot of time looking at how you’ve spent your money so far and your projected expenses and income over the next three to five years. Your projections for the next few years may not turn out quite as you thought, but they should at least be reasonable, not overly optimistic or pessimistic.

Source: Enlive

9. Competition

Now is a good time to show what makes your business different from other companies offering similar products or services. You can compare users and growth and make sure to mention any competitive advantages your company has over others. Creating a positioning chart like the one shown below can show how unique your business is.

Source: Airbnb, Dropbox

10. Call to action

This is the part of the pitch deck that people often forget: the call-to-action.

You set up your business for your investors, show them there is a problem and you have a solution, so now is the time to ask for money. You have to be willing to tell the public how much you need and what you specifically need it for. It can be helpful to have a list of everything you want to spend the money on, including equipment, marketing, or product development. Your question should be reasonable and you should be able to explain how this money will help your business reach the next milestone.

Source: Basic templates

Writing your pitch deck and planning your company’s future can be time-consuming, but the reward is worth it. Securing an investor can be the key to making your small business the next big thing.