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Pitch ​

A startup pitch is NOT a sales pitch!

Pitch the opportunity, the market, the team, and why you can’t easily leap from what you are to what it should be, without investment. Refer to sales as some traction, not evidence, showing you how and why you need a lot more capital to go from where you are to 15x as substantial.

If your pitch deck gets leaked, is actually an awesome thing. You might as well have a fantastic Pitch Deck and be prepared for a leak.

“The goal of a pitch is to turn VCs into believers. If you get only one thing right, nail the narrative.” — Tommy Leep, Founding Partner, Jetstream.

Pitch Deck ​

Pitch Deck is one of the key tool to get in touch with Investors, and other interested parties, especially when you are raising funds.

It’s a common misconception that you need to cram everything — all the details about what makes your idea unique — into your pitch deck. Instead, you’ve got to build your deck with one goal in mind: Grab the investors’ attention, and fast.

Yair Reem does a good job of explaining how to make the most ideal Pitch Deck with his article — Five Steps to Nail Your Pitch Deck (archive).

There’s only one way to get from the first meeting to the second one: Your pitch deck has got to tell a compelling and authentic story.

The first way of storytelling is to start with you and your customers. A good story has all the elements of a Hollywood blockbuster movie: drama, excitement, vulnerability, and triumph.

As Simon Senek says, “Find Your Why”.

“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe.”

The other method of storytelling is what Andy Raskin popularized - focus the story around the customer.

This is what Andy calls the “Old Game,” and the message is basically that change is imminent and will impact every one of us. Those who will not adapt will disappear. But if you do adapt, then you reach a promised land of greater performance and success.

No matter which approach you take to tell the story (usually it is a mix) remember, your story isn’t about what products can do, but what people can do with those products, how it affects them.

Counterintuitive as it may be, the goal of your pitch deck is not to raise money. Rather, you want your pitch deck to spark interest in your company and score you a second meeting with the investor (where investors really start to listen and engage).

A beautifully designed slide with part of the data is much more effective than an ugly slide with all of the data.

  1. Find Your Story
  2. Give your story colors
  3. Production
  4. Make your slides unique
  5. Finalize and dry-run

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References ​