How to Create an Investor Ready Pitch Deck: The Ultimate Guide

When starting a business, or even many years in, one of the more painstaking tasks to go through when looking for funding is to build your Investor Ready Pitch Deck.

A well-crafted pitch deck is your ‘business card’ to investors. It should showcase your company’s uniqueness and convey the story of why investors should invest in you, and not in the hundreds of other opportunities they get to see.

Your pitch deck should be easily readable, while answering 99% of the reader’s questions in a 5 to 10 minute read. It should also support you and help you shine during your in-person presentations to investors.

Following this guide, you will be able to produce a professionally structured, beautifully visualized pitch deck that excites investors about your business.

What is a Investor Ready Pitch Deck?

A pitch deck is a presentation that provides an overview of your company business plan. It is a powerful tool that helps you effectively communicate your vision, value proposition and business opportunity to potential investors, clients, partners, or employees.

As an entrepreneur, one of the essential skills you need to master is the art of pitching your business. A well-structured and visually appealing pitch deck can significantly increase your chances of securing the support, funding, or partnership you need to take your business to the next level.

Why do you need a pitch deck?

Your pitch deck is your entry point to start conversations with investors. Typically, your pitch deck is the first document that you share with potential investors when you want them to consider entrusting you with their capital. All businesses need a pitch deck when fundraising, for several reasons:

1. The first thing investors ask for. The moment you start speaking to an investor about your business, they will ask you for your pitch deck. So, if you are raising funds, there is no way around it. You need a pitch deck!
2. Captivating and concise communication. Time is precious, especially when you’re pitching your business to busy investors or potential partners. A pitch deck allows you to distill the essence of your business into a visually engaging and concise format.
3. Structured storytelling. Humans are wired to respond to stories. A pitch deck provides a structured framework for storytelling, allowing you to take your audience on a journey. Use each slide to build a narrative that highlights the problem you are solving, presents your solution, demonstrates high market potential, and confirms that your team is the right team for the job. A well-structured pitch deck can leave a lasting impression and make your message more memorable and compelling.
4. Establishing credibility and trust. Investors and potential partners need to have confidence in your ability to execute your business successfully. By presenting a clear and well-supported strategy, financial projections, and a deep expertise and understanding of the business, you can instill trust and confidence in your potential stakeholders.
5. Helps you think through the important aspects of your business. A pitch deck allows you to think through your business in a structured way. You will identify the opportunities and risks and create a clear plan to capture opportunities and mitigate risks before they become problems.

Ingredients of a top-notch pitch deck

A pitch deck can be as detailed or concise as required, depending on the business’s needs at the time. Often, you may have several versions of your pitch, depending on the audience, the length of your presentation, or the stage of your conversation. We will get to several versions of your pitch a bit later.

A strong pitch should typically include the following 13 sections:

1. Summary
2. Problem your company is solving
3. Your solution
4. Products and services description
5. Market analysis
6. Competitor analysis
7. Why now?
8. Marketing and sales plan
9. Traction
10. Roadmap
11. Team
12. The Ask
13. Financials

1. Summary

Your executive summary is vital to your pitch, providing the audience with a snapshot of what you plan to accomplish. Depending on the length of your pitch, the executive summary can range from just one paragraph to a full page.

If you decide to go with a short, one paragraph summary, describe your company offering, the target customer, the problem you are solving and your competitive advantage. Here is an example.

Modeliks is a business planning SaaS software that helps startups and SMEs to plan, fundraise and manage their business. A fully guided financial planning solution, investor ready pitch and business plan templates, and one click management reporting tools allow ANYONE to create a professional business plan and track the performance of their business, 10 times faster and 100 times cheaper.

If you decide to go with a more comprehensive summary, then:

• Keep it concise! Provide a crisp overview of the important points of your pitch. The problem that your company solves, the solution, the target customer, your competitive edge, the market size and key financials. Avoid getting into too much detail at this stage; instead, focus on providing the key bits of information that you would talk about if you had 60 seconds to present your plan with the aim to spark the reader’s interest to learn more.
• Make it stand out! Many readers will not even get to the details of your pitch unless your executive summary manages to captivate them and makes them believe that they are onto something BIG here. Make it interesting by including information that brings out that you have identified a major opportunity and that are best placed to capture it. And please avoid fluffy wording.
• Make it stand alone! If the reader reads only the executive summary, they should know what your business is about and be excited by the opportunity to come onboard.

2. The problem your company is solving

Explain the key problems that your target customers are facing and that your business solves. The problems demonstrate the necessity of your product or service in the market.

The problems should be concise (one to three problems), easy for the audience to understand and big enough for the audience to care.  If you can: (1) quantify the problems with numbers, (2) write them in a way that the audience can connect with the problems on a personal level and (3) show that someone important in your field has also identified these important problems.

The ideal response from your audience should be: “Yes, these are real and big problems, and if solved, the customer will switch to using your product or service”. Here is the Modeliks example.

3. Your Solution

Describe your solution to the problem in simple words. Your solution should be closely linked to the problems you had identified. Keep it simple for the audience to understand it and think to themselves: “Yes, this solution really solves those big problems.” If you are not getting this reaction from readers, rewrite it.

Here is the Modeliks Example.

4. Products and Services descriptions

This section should provide a detailed description of the products or services the business offers. It should include features, benefits, pricing and distribution channels. Don’t be shy with explaining the uniqueness and value proposition in some detail, and qualify the reasons for your customers loving your product or service. In some cases, you already explained your product in the solution slide. If so, you can skip this slide.

5. Market Analysis

Build a visual representation of the market, and how much of your market you plan to capture.

Define your (1) target customers and their needs and wants (2) how many customers are there in your target geography and market segment, (3) how much money they spend on similar products annually (market size) and (4) how much will the market grow in the next 5 years. The more stats and data you have from relevant and reputable sources like statistics bureaus or academic research, the better. Quote your research and give credit where credit is due!

To start, consider your product or service. What need does it fill? Who would be most likely to use it? Once you have a good idea of your target customer, you can research their demographics (age, location, gender, etc.), lifestyle choices, and buying habits.

There are many ways to gather this information. You can conduct surveys or interviews with people in your target market, look at data from similar businesses, or use online resources.

Investors like to see that lots of people experience the problems that you are solving. This gives them an idea of the revenue potential for your business and the size of the opportunity.

Here is the Modeliks example.

6. Competition Analysis

This section provides an analysis of the competitive landscape in your sector. You should identify the main competitors, their strengths and weaknesses, and their market share. It should also provide insights into how the business will compete and differentiate itself.

You should convince your audience of two things:

1) That you know your competitors as well as you know your product and customer, and

2) that your solution is different and better than theirs.

This is best done by identifying the critical success factors for your business, or the key criteria that customers consider when making a purchasing decision, and then comparing your business to your main competitors on those factors.

Again, visualize your position against the competition. You can achieve this through:

1. A table showing the critical success factors for your business (or your key features) with green checkmarks, while your competitors only serve some of these and have several lines with orange or red Xs;
2. a 2×2 matrix visual, compares you to your competition along two axes (i.e. product quality and pricing). Choose the two axes in a way that your company is positioned on the higher end of both criteria, which makes you visually stand out.

Here is the Modeliks example.

Knowing your competition is as important as knowing your product and your customer. It’s simply impossible to convince investors that you will succeed if you don’t know your competition. Also, do not mention ‘we don’t have competition because we are unique’ – in such case, you are missing the indirect competition that in one way or the other already addresses your customer’s needs.

7. Why now?

Use this slide to show that now is the right time to be in this business. Your idea can be great, but if the time is not right, there is a higher risk of failure. For example, a subscription business idea could have been great even 20 years ago, but there was no cloud infrastructure to support such business.

In this slide, you want to show specific market trends that confirm the need for your product in the market. In addition to an existing need, if the trends show expected rapid market growth, then you have hit the jackpot.  Market trends could include changes in consumer behavior, emerging technologies, regulatory shifts or market growth projections.

Below is the Modeliks example.  It shows that 5 years ago, very few companies were ready to use SaaS business planning software. Just 5 years later, the majority of companies are looking to switch from standard spreadsheet and word tools to SaaS business planning software. This is a shift in user behavior that confirms both the customer need and rapid growth in the market for SaaS business planning software.

8. Marketing Strategy

Use your market and competitive analysis to craft a marketing strategy that will help you reach your target market. How will you communicate with your target market? What channels and media will you use? What message will you communicate?

Explain to your investors how are you going to advertise and sell your product to your target customer.

We recommend using one of three frameworks for describing your marketing strategy:

1. Elaborate your plan by a marketing channel;
2. Detail your plan along the customer journey, from awareness creation, to buying your product, to converting them into your brand ambassadors; or
3. The classical approach, describe your marketing plan along the 4P’s (Product plan, Promotional activities, Pricing strategy and Place or distribution channels).

Whichever framework you decide to use, make sure that you include the activities you will perform to attract customers and the key performance indicators (KPIs) that you measure in order to evaluate the success of your marketing strategy.

Here is the Modeliks example.

9. Traction

The best way to convince investors to believe in you is to show them a record of success. Use this slide to prove, beyond doubt, that your customers confirm that you have a great product that they love using. 

For existing companies, this is quite easy. Include quantitative information about the recent performance of your company showing fast growth in your revenues, number of customers, customer satisfaction scores, customer reviews, profits, repeat usage by customers, engaged and growing followers on social media, etc.

If you are a startup that has not launched yet, creating the traction slide is much more difficult, but just as important. You don’t have past revenue or customer data, so what you can use for the traction slide are contracts or letters of interest from potential customers, quotes from potential customers, survey results, endorsements from experts in your field, results of beta testing, results of technical tests vs competition, etc. Getting any of this information is not always easy, but it is worth the effort.

10. Roadmap

The roadmap shows the most important milestones your company has achieved in the past and the planned major milestones going forward. Use the roadmap to show how efficient your company has been in delivering major milestones and the direction you are going towards in the future.

11. Team

The team slide is one of the 3 most important slides in your pitch deck, especially for startup businesses. Investors invest in the team first and then in the idea. Even if investors believe that you have a billion-dollar idea, you still must convince them that you and your team have the right skills and experience to make the business successful. Here is your chance to showcase your relevant experience and success. For each core team member, you should mention the relevant companies and positions they have held and the number of years of relevant experience. Make sure your core team covers the key areas of business:  management, technical skills and marketing and sales capabilities and have a unique edge to compete in the space.

12. Your Ask

Describe your ask for funding on a single slide. It’s crucial to clearly communicate the following messages:

• the funding amount required
• the specific purpose for which the funds will be used
• the main goals you plan to achieve with this funding
• highlight the potential return on investment for the investors
• convey urgency and the high interest from other investors.

Here is an example.

13. Financials

Your financial plan is a key component of your story. Investors want to see that you are ambitious and that you plan to make them a lot of money with their investment. Startups are risky investments, so investors expect high returns. The earlier the stage of the company, the higher expected returns. At the same time, if your financial plans are clearly unrealistic, you will turn off some investors. So, find a balance between ambitious and possible financial numbers.  

Include Revenue, Revenue growth, EBITDA or Net Income, EBITDA margin or Net Income margin and Free Cash Flow as key financial numbers. You can also include some operational numbers like the number of clients. More detailed financial information like Profit and Loss Statement, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow Statement would go in the appendix.

If your business has been operational for some time, include the same data for the previous 1 to 3 years.

Use charts, where you can, to show the key financial information. Tables are boring, if there are too many of them.

Here is an example.

Appendix

This section includes additional information that supports the pitch and your story, such as market research, legal documents, and resumes of key personnel, detailed financial information.

Do’s and don’ts of a pitch deck

Here are some Do’s and Don’ts to keep in mind as you develop your kick-ass pitch deck:

Do’s

• Do Keep it Concise : Keep your pitch deck concise and focused. Use clear and succinct language to convey your message effectively. Avoid excessive text and unnecessary details that may dilute your key points.
• Do Tell a Compelling Story : Craft a compelling narrative that engages your audience from the beginning. Connect emotionally with your audience by highlighting the problem, presenting your solution, and showcasing the potential impact of your business. A well-structured and captivating story can make your pitch deck memorable.
• Do Highlight the Market Opportunity : Clearly articulate the size and potential of your target market. Demonstrate a deep understanding of the market landscape, trends, and customer needs. Show how your business is uniquely positioned to seize the market opportunity and generate significant growth.
• Do Showcase Your Competitive Advantage : Differentiate yourself from competitors by highlighting your unique selling points. Clearly articulate what sets your business apart and why customers will choose your product or service. Showcase any patents, proprietary technology, strategic partnerships, or exclusive market access that give you a competitive edge.
• Do Provide Clear Financial Projections : Back up your business strategy with realistic and well-supported financial projections. Demonstrate a solid understanding of revenue streams, cost structure, and scalability. Use key metrics and milestones to showcase your progress and growth potential.
• Do get feedback from your peers – this can be an invaluable step to gauge whether you are covering all important topics, whether you have done a good job explaining intricacies of your business and whether you bring across the investor story in a powerful way.
• Do try our Modeliks Pitch Editor to make your pitch stand out, to let the expertly crafted storylines and visuals guide you!

Don’ts

• Don’t Overload with Information : Avoid overwhelming your audience with excessive information on each slide. Keep it simple and focused on the key messages. Use visuals, charts, and bullet points to convey information efficiently.
• Don’t Neglect Design and Visual Appeal : Design matters. Invest time in creating a visually appealing pitch deck that reflects your brand and grabs attention. Use high-quality images, consistent fonts, and a well-balanced layout. Avoid cluttered slides, garish colors, and unprofessional design choices.
• Don’t Rely Solely on Text : Avoid relying solely on text-heavy slides. Engage your audience with visuals, graphics, and images that support your message. Use charts, graphs, and diagrams to present data in a visually compelling and digestible format.
• Don’t Forget About Your Audience : Tailor your pitch deck to the specific needs and interests of your audience. Research your audience beforehand to understand their background, preferences, and investment criteria. Address their pain points and emphasize how your business can provide value and address their needs.
• Don’t Neglect Practice and Rehearsal : Delivering a great pitch goes beyond the slides. Practice your presentation, refine your delivery, and anticipate potential questions or objections. Rehearse your pitch deck multiple times to ensure a smooth and confident presentation that resonates with your audience.

Versions of pitch decks (Investor Ready Pitch Deck)

In your journey to raising funds, you will likely require several versions of your pitch deck, depending on the stage of the conversation with, or what level of detail you want to share with a specific investor.

This sounds like a complicated thing to do, but do not worry – you will be able to re-purpose the work you have done with the sections and slides above into neat packages that meet any audience’s expectations.

We suggest the following versions of your deck:

1. Teaser : 1-page executive summary, which often is the first document you share with your potential investors. You want to mention all your business details as well as the high-level ask (eg – We are raising a seed-round of $2m);
2. Intro pitch : 10 pager with your exec summary as well as the most crucial sections of your pitch, including the problem, solution, the team, and high-level financial forecast plus your ask to investors. This pitch version can also be used for short presentations of 10-20 minutes!
3. Main pitch : 10-20 page pitch deck with all business slides including detailed marketing, sales and operations plan. You want to use this version for longer presentations or to send to investors once they request more information;
4. Full pitch including financial details : Main Pitch plus Financials! Include all your business plan forecasts, reports on historical actual performance. You want to share these details only with investors at advanced stages or once you have an NDA (non-disclosure-agreement) signed, as you are showing most of your business secrets.

The above list is by no means exhaustive, you can twist and tweak this as you require. Make sure to build your pitch upfront with all required sections, to make the task of creating new versions a walk in the park!

Final Thoughts

Creating a great pitch deck is a crucial step for any entrepreneur seeking funding for their business. It requires a careful balance between creativity, clarity, and substance. A well-crafted pitch deck can be a powerful tool to present your business, showcase your competitive edge, and inspire potential investors.

However, it’s important to remember that a pitch deck is only one part of the funding process. Investors are also interested in the entrepreneur behind the business, their track record, and their vision for the future. Therefore, entrepreneurs should not neglect other critical aspects such as building relationships with investors, developing a solid business plan, and cultivating a strong team. In summary, while a pitch deck is important, it’s only one piece of the puzzle.

To start your journey of building your impactful pitch deck, sign up for Modeliks’ Free Trial today !