Earlier, I described what seems to be a perfect pitch deck according to Guy Kawasaki, a venture investor and marketing expert. Now I would like to draw your attention to the fact that not all information should be shared with everyone and become publicly available.
There are three types of pitch decks that you, as a startup founder, can share with different target audiences. To understand why we have three pitch decks, let’s look at the groups of people with whom you communicate while building your concept.
‟There are three types of pitch decks that you, as a startup founder, can share with different audiences”
Pitch Deck for Investors – the most important audience
Investors are quite a picky audience. They can consider your business as a tool for making money despite the fact that you have only 1 minute or less in their Inbox. That’s the time you have to make an initial offering to them.
You show this audience everything you have right now and how bold your plans are for the future.
And indeed, this audience is very important, because they are the ones who feed you with money and try to believe in you, your team, and your product or service conceived by the startup.
In other words, you are literally making an initial sale to this group of people. These are actually your first customers – you are selling them your goal, which should bring a crowd of users to your brand-new business.
Of course, you send them your major pitch deck.
Pitch Deck for Potential Partners and Customers
This is another important audience. They are using and paying for your product.
If you work in the B2B market, then the larger your clients, the lower your entry point should be.
For example, if you offer an electronic document management system application, then you should first target customers, i.e. the actual regular employees who will use your product on a daily basis, and give them some kind of demo or detailed description of the product’s future usage. In the future, they will become your solicitors before their managers.
‟The larger your clients, the lower your entry point should be”
While targeting next on the managers of these regular employees, supplying them with the explanation of the effectiveness of your product at your fingertips and backing up the confirmation of economic benefits with numbers in order to draw their attention to where exactly the “candy”, you make yourself to be practically doomed to success. Managers don’t need all the technical and other details. To make a decision they are looking into numbers.
As you may have noticed, two versions of the pitch deck are mentioned here: detailed functionality presentation and economic benefit, but only one of them will be a must-have – the one that is focused on regular employees in our example.
To this audience, you send the second version of your pitch deck.
Pitch Deck for Eager to Know Ahead of Time
This audience normally asks to send them information upfront to have an ability to dig into the topic, and perhaps scrutinize some details to have some point of view before the in-person meeting or online call.
Send them a shareable sneak-pick pitch deck. The pitch deck is a truncated version of the major one. Some people call it a send-out pitch. You should use it if someone is asking to get into the topic before your live pitch to arouse their interest.
If before the onset of COVID-19 people went to pitch days to speak face to face with a conventional board of investors, today this is increasingly happening on a remote-first basis. Today technologies make it possible.
Of course, initially, everyone send their applications with presentations over email. And this Day will be introduced as a kind of show. Some investors even straightforwardly call it Startup Battle Day, Pitch Battle Day, or something like that. That is to say, in fact, a startup must pass through a meat grinder to earn its place under the sun.
Sure thing it’s not just such a frolic. Investors want to see that they give their money not so much to those who can do something while having money, but to those who are capable without… and the investor’s money would be an accelerator of their results.
If you don’t know yet, during the selection process of those startup projects that should pass to The Pitch Day, 90% of pitch decks are being thrown into the trash since they failed to convey the value to the decision makers…
On The Pitch Day itself, the startup is given, at best, 15 minutes for the presentation, of which it is customary to allocate no more than five minutes for the question-answer session. So, a 10-minute one-to-one intro with investors is your real time to shine.
”a 10-minute one-to-one intro with investors is your real time to shine“
And if your pitch deck doesn’t reveal a similar value as Guy Kawasaki’s perfect pitch, then I have some bad news for you…
However, let’s get back to our main topic.
This shared sneak-pick pitch deck should serve as an intriguing alternative short version that doesn’t have to contain all the information. You should drop some text in the slides. After all, during the live presentation, you will be attending in person, and if you send it, the pitch decks will be reviewed without your presence… and your comments.
I believe it’s clearly understandable, that the best solution is not to share a pitch deck before your presentation, but not everything always goes according to plan… or rather, at least something always goes wrong.
Also, as an option, it makes sense to think about a one-page presentation or some summary.
The pitch deck itself should be sent in PDF format – the most convenient format that can be read on any device.
Another option is to create an interactive one-pager. Moreover, this will only work to your advantage: people love interactivity and respond much better to it since it attracts attention. You should understand the interactive one-pager as a short landing page.
Bear in mind that it is necessary to post a minimum amount of information with no distracting details: keep it no more than 2 screens, or the longest – 3 screens in some cases. It will also be valid to supplement the page with a short video launching with a click of a button.
Here are examples of builders for one-pagers:
- Elementor WordPress Plugin – to build an interactive one-pager with a no-code Elementor solution
- Wix – Similar to Elementor with the Wix no-code website builder
- Storydoc – Create sales and marketing interactive one-pagers
- Squarespace – Yet another website builder useful for creating one-pagers
Let’s look at what information to include in our pitch decks.
| Pitch Deck Slides | Investor | Customer | Sneak-peak | One-pager |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. The Vision and Value Proposition | ✅ Mandatory | ✅ Mandatory | ✅ Mandatory | ✅ Mandatory |
| 2. The Challenge Your Startup Solves | ✅ Mandatory | ✅ Mandatory | ✅ Mandatory | ✅ Mandatory |
| 3. Primary Target Market | ✅ Mandatory | ❌ Not Needed | ❌ Not Needed | ❌ Not Needed |
| 4. Describe Proposed Solution | ✅ Mandatory | ✅ Mandatory | ✅ Mandatory | ✅ Mandatory |
| 5. Reveal Your Business Model | ✅ Mandatory | ❌ Not Needed | ❌ Not Needed | ❌ Not Needed |
| 6. Planned Roadmap and Milestones | ✅ Mandatory | 🟢 Desired | 🤏 Short | 🟢 Desired |
| 7. Marketing Plan | ✅ Mandatory | ❌ Not Needed | ❌ Not Needed | ❌ Not Needed |
| 8. Show Your Management Team | ✅ Mandatory | ❌ Not Needed | 🔘 Optional | ❌ Not Needed |
| 9. Financial projections and key metrics | ✅ Mandatory | ❌ Not Needed | 🔘 Optional | ❌ Not Needed |
| 10. Competitive Market Analysis | ✅ Mandatory | 📊 Comparison table | ❌ Not Needed | 🔘 Optional 🤏 Short |
| 11. Current status, accomplishments to date, timeline, and use of funds. | ✅ Mandatory | ❌ Not Needed | ❌ Not Needed | ❌ Not Needed |
Takeaways
- Get prepared for the Investors’ meetings
- Create 3 must-have pitch decks: investors pitch deck, customers pitch deck, and shareable sneak-peak pitch deck
- Make pitch decks PDF for easier reading across devices
- Create an interactive one-pagers
- Add a short video for your presentation
Happy pitching and prospering!