Over the years I’ve seen hundreds of investor slide decks from entrepreneurs. Some good, some bad, and some all of over the place. When pitching investors, it’s best to keep the visual slides simple (no more than 10 words per slide) and to provide a separate set of leave-behind slides that have more information. Investors want to engage and have a dialogue, so focus on the conversation and not just pitching.
Now, with an overview on the slides, the next topic is what to include for investors. Larry Cheng, a Managing Partner of Volition Capital, offers up The 10 Slide Company Pitch Deck:
- The Problem Statement
- How You Solve the Problem
- The Customer
- The Value to the Customer
- Actual Use Cases
- The Product
- Competitive Position
- Financial Overview
- Other Key Metrics
- Management Team
Ryan Spoon, a classmate of mine from Duke and now SVP of Digital Products at ESPN, recommends 10-15 slides in his post How to Create an Early Stage Pitch Deck:
- The Big Idea
- Why you?
- The current problem
- Your solution. Why now?
- Traction & validation
- What’s the future?
- The ask
Making investor slides should be fun and straightforward. Entrepreneurs love selling the vision and slides help establish the arc of the story.
What else? What are some other thoughts on entrepreneur slides for investors?
