Tag Archives: Pitch Deck Preparation

Introduction

A start-up pitch deck is a concise summary that provides an overview of your business plan, products, services, and growing success to potential investors or clients. It is often used to convey your vision, value proposition, market opportunity, and essential company characteristics to prospective investors, associates, or stakeholders A start-up pitch deck aims to fascinate and persuade your audience to spark curiosity and support your business idea. A well-designed start-up pitch deck normally comprises several slides covering various elements of your company.

Crafting a compelling startup pitch deck is undeniably one of the most challenging tasks for entrepreneurs. While the overarching objective is to secure funding, the primary aim of the initial presentation is to convince potential investors to extend an invitation for a subsequent meeting. Planning carefully and structuring the components of your start-up pitch deck to convey a compelling story are essential to developing that relationship. Since it’s hard for many firms to stand out in the market due to the enthusiasm and the tough competition for funding, startups need to strengthen their fundraising techniques much more than before.

A start-up pitch deck’s narrative structure is comparable to that of a film trailer in that it sets up the key scenes while maintaining the viewer’s attention and enthusiasm. Start-up pitch decks can be delivered in person or emailed to prospective investors and clients. The most effective technique to make sure a possible partner has gone through all the slides in your start-up pitch deck is often to present it. Additionally, it offers you the chance to respond to any quick queries they may have.

Components of an Effective Start-up Pitch Deck

To effectively convey the value proposition, market opportunity, and development potential of a start-up, a pitch deck typically contains several essential components. Keep your start-up pitch deck brief, focused, and interesting. To hold the attention of your audience and make a lasting impression, each component should be presented simply and persuasively.

Components of an Effective Pitch Deck

Components of an Effective Pitch Deck

The following are crucial components to take into account when designing your start-up pitch deck:

Problem Statement

A pitch deck’s problem statement establishes the context for your company or project by identifying the problem or obstacle that your solution attempts to solve. Clearly state the issue or pain point that your start-up is attempting to solve. Describe the problem’s importance and its effects on your target market.

Solution

Describe the product or service you are offering to solve the issue. Explain how your startup will solve the cited issue and the ways your product or service meets the needs of your target market.

Unique Value Proposition

To stand out from other businesses, emphasize your start-up’s distinctive features, price, or market positioning. Express how you possess a competitive advantage.

Sales and Marketing Strategies

Explain your customer acquisition and marketing techniques. Describe your strategy for attracting and contacting your target market. Discuss your predicted growth trajectory, customer acquisition cost (CAC), and methods of marketing. Discuss probable difficulties and their solutions.

Achievements and Success

Highlight the significant accomplishments, landmarks, and engagement your startup has attained. Display important indicators like user growth, revenue, partnerships, and customer acquisition.

Team Introduction

Include a picture of your squad as a whole to start. As a result, a visual connection is made and your company becomes more personable. Elaborate on your founding group and significant players. Emphasize their background, skills, and experience that are pertinent.

Graphics and Style

Include images, charts, graphs, and other visual components to improve and aesthetically appeal your presentation. Make sure the layout is clear, unified, and simple to read.

Investment Ask

Your start-up pitch deck should end with a compelling call to action. Whatever you desire from your audience – an investment, a collaboration, or additional discussions – express it in clear terms. Include any prospective exits or liquidity events as well as the investment arrangements, such as equity or debt.

Benefits of a Well-Crafted Start-up Pitch Deck

When conveying their business ideas and looking for funding or partnerships, startups, and entrepreneurs can benefit from using pitch decks in several ways. It makes presentations clear and interesting, grabs audience interest, and raises the possibility of winning partnerships or funding.  Here are a few major advantages of a well-designed start-up pitch deck:

Benefits of Well-Crafted Pitch Deck

Benefits of Well-Crafted Pitch Deck

Concise Information:

It makes complicated information easier to understand for your audience by condensing it into simple slides. It offers a clear and short overview of your business endeavor, enabling you to articulate your mission, value proposition, and market potential.

Organized Presentation:

They navigate you through crucial elements like the problem statement, solution, market opportunity, and financial projections to make sure you address every important facet of your enterprise.

Graphical Representation:

You can concentrate on the most important elements of your company or project by using a pitch deck. You can successfully demonstrate your main ideas with the help of visual components like charts, graphs, and photographs in pitch decks.

Drawing Interest:

Potential investors or partners can be attracted by a visually stunning start-up pitch deck with an engaging tale. You can get their attention and leave a lasting impression by using eye-catching pictures, graphics, and clear messaging.

Demonstrating Market Potential:

You may show investors how market research, sales volume, market trends, and target markets can help your company grow and become more appealing.

Feedback and Refinement:

Stakeholder input and insights are obtained when your start-up pitch deck is shared. Your business model, value proposition, and presentation may benefit from this input, which may eventually increase your chances of success.

Magistral’s Start-up Pitch Deck Designing Services

Our team has worked on a variety of pitch decks over the years, some of which have been used to raise money for private equity funds, find co-investors, pitch real estate investments, and exit portfolio companies for incubators.

For a fundraising round to be successful, the entrepreneur’s whole business concept must be presented in the investor pitch. It should include all branding elements, such as colors and logos. Financial projections should include explicit descriptions of revenues, expenses, valuation, and marketing strategies, as well as estimations for client acquisition costs. Only then can the start-up pitch deck appeal to your target market, which is made up of angel investors or VC funds. There are usually some recurring elements in the start-up pitch deck that help it succeed on the roadshow.

Magistral Consulting has supported the fund-raising activities of numerous enterprises, including Private Equity, Venture Capital, Investment Banks, and Asset Management companies.

For our clients’ fundraising endeavors, some of the services that we provide are:

-Create Logos and Websites

-Start-up pitch decks

-Develop Project Plans

-Industry reports

-Financial Modeling

About Magistral Consulting

Magistral Consulting has helped multiple funds and companies in outsourcing operations activities. It has service offerings for Private Equity, Venture Capital, Family Offices, Investment Banks, Asset Managers, Hedge Funds, Financial Consultants, Real Estate, REITs, RE funds, Corporates, and Portfolio companies. Its functional expertise is around Deal origination, Deal Execution, Due Diligence, Financial Modelling, Portfolio Management, and Equity Research.

For setting up an appointment with a Magistral representative: visit www.magistralconsulting.com/contact

About the Author

The article is authored by the Marketing Department of Magistral Consulting. For any business inquiries, you can reach out to  prabhash.choudhary@magistralconsulting.com

Over the years our team has worked on multiple pitch decks, some raising funds for a Private Equity fund, some looking for co-investors, some pitching a real estate investment while others for incubators trying to exit a portfolio company.

Recently the demand for pitch deck outsourcing has gone up due to more sophisticated demands from angel investors and VC firms for a robust business plan. Also, pitch deck design requirements have also gone up by several notches. A potential investor judges the business potential of a startup from the PowerPoint Presentation or the pitch presentation that details the business, its target audience, clients, its social media presence, marketing collateral, customer acquisition strategy, digital marketing strategy, and several other operational ideas about the upcoming startup. A pitch deck that explains the business idea well gets multiple investors. A pitch deck template with attractive graphic design that also explains the business model well will get the attention of angel investors. A successful pitch deck explains the value proposition, details out the financial model, talks about all the market segments, that the small business is trying to reach out. Investor pitch should be the entrepreneur‘s complete idea of the business for a successful fundraising round. It should have all the branding aspects in terms of colors, logos, etc. Financial projection should clearly spell out revenues, costs, valuation, and marketing plans with calculations around customer acquisition cost and strategy. It’s then only that the pitch deck will resonate with your target audience which is angel investors or VC funds.

Almost, always there are some consistent characteristics of the pitch deck that eventually pulls it off on the road-show. Here are these characteristics of the winning pitch deck:

1. Number of Slides: The number of slides for an investment pitch deck is ideally is 10-12. It can go as high as 20, but anything over that is overkill to raise money. A pitch that we designed only on 5 slides, for real-estate investment, was used to raise as much as 10 Million USD in co-investments

2. The flow of Presentation: Information has to flow like a stream of water. You introduce a subject, just to tease the reader and before an obvious question, your next slide is sitting there, answering it. Slides are as engaging as a story-book. Typical example: Start with a universal problem that everyone acknowledges, detail the current ways of solving the problem, go onto propose how all existing solutions are ineffective, present your solution that is different from everything else out there, give business case for your solution, your funding requirements, what can investors expect and finally closing it with the team profile and their accomplishments. Everything flows one after the other like an engaging storybook

3. Structure within a slide: All tables and structures used consistently follow the MECE principle. MECE stands for Mutually Exclusive and Collectively Exhaustive. A combination of any number of bullet points on a slide has to be MECE. All bullet points combined should exhaustively cover all aspects of a subject and at the same time, no two bullet points should convey anything similar

4. Brand logo and color consistency: Rainbow of colors look good on a book that carries nursery rhymes, but for something that is meant for an Investment Banking crowd, it needs to be soberer. Limited colors on slides which specifically need to be derived from the brand logo, shows the professionalism of the presenter. Loud colors can be used for investment themes related to B2C but for anything B2B, hues need to be tapered down

5. The structure across the slides: If something is repeating again and again on multiple slides, like fund returns of different funds on different slides, the corresponding data needs to be at the exact same place on every slide. It’s like while you quickly move from one slide to another, tables should not dance from its place. The eye of the recipient gets trained to see specific data at a specific place on every slide

6. Less the text, better: For everything that can replace a text is welcome. A picture says a thousand words and one should use info-graphic or a picture to convey rather than writing a thousand words on slides

7. Back-up Material: Although fewer slides are there on a pitch deck, every number that is used on the slide should have a detailed back-up ready to be opened in case of a query. A 5 slides Pitch Deck is usually preceded by 30-40 page business case or a project plan. Another excel carrying P&L, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow projections almost always follow. Financial Modeling is done for more complex investment plans

8. Team Bio: It’s the team that usually gets funding. Their credentials and experience are almost always highlighted in the pitch deck. It needs to be made sure that pictures of all partners are there, preferably in similar professional outlook, clicked at similar zooms, preferably in professional or no background

9. Simplifying the content: We work on multiple concepts that are very “Sciency” and “Academic”, like a core tech, topics that are purely academic, a scientific breakthrough or global epidemic. Material that is available on the topic is good for pursuing a doctorate but the idea is to simplify all these core concepts to the level that is easily understood by investors and in the least amount of time.

There may be several other things that might be important for a pitch deck in a niche area or a specific situation, but almost all the winning pitch decks in our experience have these common characteristics.

Magistral (www.magistralconsultig.com) has worked with multiple firms like Private Equity, Venture Capital, Investment Banks, and Asset Management companies in supporting their fund-raising efforts. We have prepared logos, website and website content, pitch decks, project plans, industry reports and financial modeling that support the fund-raising efforts of our clients.

The author is the CEO of Magistral Consulting and can be reached at Prabhash.choudhary@magistralconsulting.com for any queries or work samples.

 

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