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How To Build A Winning Pitch Deck

Posted by Early Growth

May 18, 2017 | 4-minute read (790 words)

What happens when you sit down two highly skilled finance pros who have worked with many of the leading startups nationwide?

Well we found out in this informative and well laid out step by step video to what it takes to communicate the growth and impact of your company to potential investors. We got them talking about the art of laying out pitch decks. They break down the crucial questions you need to answer in putting it all together. Check out one of our most popular videos as we talk with CFOs Alaa Ismail and Sirk Roh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTSTnFqKaUk&feature=youtu.be

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Takeaways:

Perspective

“The main thing here is you think about what the goal is, the goal is to communicate a message. To make it exciting, to make it sellable, and really to take it to the next step which is that you're going to be presenting a pitch deck in front of investors.

What you want is to realize the pitch deck itself is not actually going to sell the investment, you're going to sell the investment and there's going to be due diligence. You just want it to be strong enough, or for them to be excited, and for them to take the next step which is to do additional calls and follow along in discussions with you about an investment.”

Starting Off

“The first slide that you typically have in your pitch deck, and I think we've all heard of the elevator pitch, will reiterate it. If somebody asks you “what it is your company, what exactly are you trying to do?” You're not going to get into a discussion about the details of your product or your business model.

You're going to give just a brief snapshot that kind of encapsulates your mission statement. And that's really how you should start. Perhaps a page with your logo on it, anything you know kind of eye-catching and then just a brief sentence or statement of what your company will do or what you're planning to do.”

Goal

“It's really meant to spur a conversation, and having that somebody get your pitch deck before may accelerate that discussion. Really the successful pitches happen verbally, not so much on the slides.”

TAM, SAM & SOM

“You want to start getting into the money aspects. What is the market that you're going to be addressing?

So typically, that starts with TAM. The total available market. So, if you're making jeans for example, your total available market will be the jean market. You're trying to address your SAM, serviceable addressable market, which is really the actual market that you could reach.

Then from the addressable market, really who are you going to service at least in the short term?

Maybe you're going to be addressing the US market arm as your serviceable addressable market but you really can't reach them right away, so what can we obtain? What is the short-term vision SAM (Serviceable Obtainable Market) of the market that we're going to address?”

Business Model

“This is where we explain how we're going to make money right? So first, on the technology side we should be talking about that. Where we are in the process and second how far along the way we are. But ultimately the technology is there for a reason why, which is for us to sell it, market it, turn it into a lot of people.

We have to ask ourselves okay what is our model? And this is where we start doing more of a bottoms-up approach to marry the serviceable obtainable market with what we're going to do to actually hit those, to address that market.

Looking at questions like what is our channel of sales entity? Is it going to be partnership based, is it going to be an internet advertising base? Is there going to be word of mouth, is it going to be social media driven?”

Timeline

:

1:05 Companies worked with

2:40 Pitch Deck Overview

7:15 Logo, Tagline and Pitch

10:25 The Problem: What Problem are you trying to solve?

15: 37 Your Solution: How is your company going to fix this problem?

21:18 Your Team: Why Your team is the right team

27:20 What is the Market Opportunity? TAM, SAM & SOM

39:45 Business Model addressing money, product & customer acquisition

44:40 Traction to Date: Metrics Matter

47:35 Why your company is special

54:55 Financials: Tell your story with numbers

1:02:25 Investing details: Call to action!

1:04:25 Pitch Tips

1:07:18 Contact info for moderators

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Ideation

How To Build A Winning Pitch Deck

Takeaways:

Perspective

Starting Off

Goal

TAM, SAM & SOM

Business Model

Timeline

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