How To Make a Pitch Deck That Actually Works

How to Make a Pitch Deck That Sells Your Startup

There are pitch decks that peo­ple see — then five min­utes lat­er, peo­ple for­get about them. Then there are cap­ti­vat­ing pitch decks that actu­al­ly earn you new part­ners and raise mon­ey. Find out how to make a pre­sen­ta­tion with a start­up pitch deck tem­plate that real­ly sells your brand.

So what exact­ly is a start­up pitch deck tem­plate? It’s a brief pre­sen­ta­tion that gives your audi­ence a sum­ma­ry of your busi­ness plan. You’ll use it both online and dur­ing face to face meet­ings with cus­tomers, part­ners, or investors.

A start­up pitch deck tem­plate is a per­sua­sive way to present your brand. It’s made up of a dozen or so slides that explain in as few words as pos­si­ble what your brand does, why, and how. It fea­tures stats and mar­ket research.

When it comes to a start­up pitch deck tem­plate, there’s a proven recipe for mak­ing it work. It’s a recipe that most suc­cess­ful brands are fol­low­ing.

In this arti­cle, we’ll run you through the basics, and then we’ll focus on the details for every slide. This way, noth­ing about your pitch deck will be left to chance.

Here’s how to make a pitch deck that peo­ple will engage with.

Some Rules When Making a Pitch Deck

There are some com­mon denom­i­na­tors that make a pitch deck great. They…

• Tell a sto­ry that engages peo­ple emo­tion­al­ly
• Use one idea per slide — they don’t cram slides with infor­ma­tion
• Are per­sua­sive rather than salesy

When you choose your start­up pitch deck tem­plate, remem­ber that a pitch deck isn’t an ad. It doesn’t tell peo­ple how awe­some your brand is; instead, it just shows them why they should care.

Anoth­er thing your start­up pitch deck tem­plate should have is head­ings or titles for each slide. A head­ing like Prod­uct Roadmap or Mar­ket Pen­e­tra­tion will help your audi­ence fig­ure out at once what your slide is about.

Mistakes to Avoid When Making a Pitch Deck

A start­up pitch deck tem­plate needs to be easy to digest. Any­thing that clut­ters your start­up pitch deck tem­plate is bad. Cul­prits include too many bul­let points, too many slides, too many stats, and too many graph­ics.

Cus­tomers, investors, and oth­er entre­pre­neurs all have short atten­tion spans. That’s why Guy Kawasa­ki rec­om­mends you use no more than 10 slides for a start­up pitch deck tem­plate.

He also says you shouldn’t use fonts small­er than size 30. This size isn’t only easy to read but it also lim­its how much con­tent you can fit into your start­up pitch deck tem­plate, to pre­vent infor­ma­tion cram­ming.

Before we talk about how to make a start­up pitch deck tem­plate from the first slide to the last, con­sid­er one more thing. Will you be using it online, in face to face meet­ings, or both?

If both, your pre­sen­ta­tion may end up on a large screen, which means you’ll need a high-res­o­lu­tion, high-qual­i­ty start­up pitch deck tem­plate. You will also want to make sure you tai­lor the slide length of your deck depend­ing on the audi­ence, in some cas­es it may be appro­pri­ate to go over 10 slides but you gen­er­al­ly nev­er want to go over 20.

Startup Pitch Deck Template Slide #1 — Introduction

Every start­up pitch deck tem­plate needs a short and effec­tive intro­duc­tion. Answer two sim­ple but impor­tant ques­tions:

• Who are you? (Your brand)
• Why are you here?

Keep in mind that “Why are you here?” is dif­fer­ent from “What are you offer­ing?” Not every­thing you do should appear on your start­up pitch deck. Know your audi­ence. Know their prob­lem and the fea­ture or ser­vice they’re inter­est­ed in.

The best way to answer the ques­tions above is with a short slo­gan or call to action that also works as a sum­ma­ry of your busi­ness. Every start­up pitch deck tem­plate needs this.

Here’s a great exam­ple from AirBnB

Startup Pitch Deck Template Slide #2 — The Problem

What is the prob­lem that your start­up is try­ing to solve? The prob­lem needs to be paint­ed as the ene­my or “vil­lain” of your entire pitch. Why should I care about this vil­lain being stopped? What is the poten­tial harm or threat that it pos­es to my life?

Back to the AirBnB start­up pitch deck…

The second slide nails down the problem that most travelers are facing: Hotels leave you disconnected from the city and No easy way exists to book a room with a local or become a host.

Your start­up pitch deck tem­plate needs some­thing sim­i­lar — a clear­ly stat­ed prob­lem that becomes a hook for your audi­ence.

At this point, they should be ask­ing them­selves “Can this prob­lem real­ly be solved?” “How will this brand do it?”

Which takes us to the next slide.

Startup Pitch Deck Template Slide #3 – The Solution

In this slide, you’re fea­tur­ing a solu­tion. You’ve iden­ti­fied the prob­lem and high­light­ed the ben­e­fits of address­ing it. Now it’s time to get to the point.

How does your prod­uct or ser­vice solve the prob­lem you’ve talked about ear­li­er? Your start­up pitch deck tem­plate needs a slide that presents your prod­uct or ser­vice.

That said, resist the temp­ta­tion to explain the solu­tion in too much detail. That’s not what your start­up pitch deck tem­plate is for. Prospects who want more infor­ma­tion can be direct­ed to your web­site.

Learn from the AirBnB start­up pitch deck tem­plate. The Prod­uct slide fea­tures just sev­en words and three screen­shots of their ser­vice in action. Yet they explain in the sim­plest way pos­si­ble how the site works.

The goal of this slide is to woo and excite your audi­ence to the point where they can’t wait to hear what you say next.

Startup Pitch Deck Template Slide #4 — The Team

Investors invest in peo­ple. Not the idea, the size of the mar­ket, or the prod­uct. Investors bet on your team’s abil­i­ty to exe­cute on the idea pre­sent­ed. With a good team, exe­cu­tion risk is mit­i­gat­ed and investors can feel more com­fort­able that you will be able to respond quick­ly and adapt to the chang­ing needs of the mar­ket.

Essen­tial­ly, this slide should answer the ques­tion of “Why your team is qual­i­fied and the right team to solve this prob­lem?”

From expe­ri­ence, it seems to work best when intro­duced right after pre­sent­ing your prod­uct as the solu­tion to the prob­lem you’re solv­ing. This lets the audi­ence learn about your qual­i­fy­ing back­ground and make the con­nec­tion that you are indeed the per­fect set of peo­ple to solve this prob­lem.

Although AirBnb did not include a team slide in their deck, it is high­ly rec­om­mend­ed to do so because the team dynam­ic is the most impor­tant suc­cess fac­tor in the eyes of many investors. 

Startup Pitch Deck Template Slide #5 — Total Addressable Market

How many poten­tial cus­tomers does your brand have? You have to be able to mea­sure the poten­tial of your busi­ness. The sim­plest way to do this is to look at the total address­able mar­ket for your prod­uct.

If you’re launch­ing a local prod­uct, focus on the local audi­ence. Your num­bers will come off the mark if you’re using nation­al or glob­al num­bers for a local ser­vice. A rather sim­ple way to approach this is to look at the total rev­enue that your clos­est com­peti­tors in your mar­ket made last year. This will give you a good proxy for the size of the pie you are com­pet­ing for.

Speak­ing of pie, it real­ly helps to use graphs and pie charts on this slide of your start­up pitch deck tem­plate to make it more engag­ing. How­ev­er, be cau­tious to use sim­ple charts and graphs. Don’t give them too many num­bers. Three to four facts at most are enough. 

Startup Pitch Deck Template Slide #6 — Competitive Advantage

Does your start­up pitch deck tem­plate real­ly need to fea­ture your com­peti­tors? You bet it does. And you know why? It helps your audi­ence see your place and under­stand­ing of the cur­rent state of the mar­ket.

Most peo­ple who view your pitch deck know already about the oth­er brands in your mar­ket. So you’re not real­ly send­ing them over to them.

If con­sumers were hap­py with your com­peti­tors, they’d be too busy using their ser­vices to view your pitch deck.

Com­peti­tors also help to val­i­date your mar­ket. Investors will feel more at ease act­ing on your pitch deck if they know oth­er brands are mak­ing mon­ey sell­ing sim­i­lar prod­ucts or ser­vices.

Just don’t for­get to point out why you are bet­ter than all of your com­peti­tors — this is your chance to tell the audi­ence why they are doing it wrong and why you’re going to crush them.

Startup Pitch Deck Template Slide #7 — Why Now

This is a very cru­cial slide because it encour­ages your audi­ence to take action. Why should we care right now? What’s going to make me real­ly feel com­pelled that we need to do some­thing about this today?

Make your audi­ence feel like this is a lim­it­ed oppor­tu­ni­ty that won’t be around for­ev­er because of some exter­nal threat. Elon Musk does a great job of this in his pitch of the Tes­la Pow­er Wall below.

Startup Pitch Deck Template Slide #8 — Market Penetration

Now that you’ve paint­ed a rel­a­tive­ly full pic­ture of the prob­lem you’re solv­ing, your unique solu­tion, and why we need to act now, it’s time to talk about how you’re going to get there.

The mar­ket pen­e­tra­tion slide is there to talk about your user acqui­si­tion traf­fic chan­nels and fun­nels. Are you going to gain mar­ket share through unique part­ner­ships, influ­encer mar­ket­ing, social media, or just paid ads?

By the end of this slide, your audi­ence should be con­vinced that you’ve curat­ed an ele­gant­ly thought out strate­gic plan on how you are going to grow and acquire cus­tomers.

Startup Pitch Deck Template Slide #9 — Business Model

Yup, you need to sneak your busi­ness mod­el into your start­up pitch deck tem­plate. In fact, this is one of the most impor­tant slides. Like the say­ing goes “If it don’t make mon­ey, it don’t make sense”.

At the very least, you need to explain how your solu­tion will bring you mon­ey. You should be able to demon­strate a clear path to rev­enue that is not depen­dant on hav­ing a large user base. Long gone are the schools of thought that you “just have to build a com­mu­ni­ty and the mon­ey will come”. These days, investors are expect­ing com­pa­nies to gen­er­ate rev­enue with­in the first 365 days of receiv­ing fund­ing.

Ide­al­ly, you also want to include a fore­cast­ed pro­jec­tion of rev­enues. Even if they are just pro­jec­tions, they help peo­ple get a bet­ter sense of what you’re aim­ing for.

Startup Pitch Deck Template Slide #10 — Call to Action / Contact

What do you want investors to do at the end of your pitch deck? Call you for more infor­ma­tion? Vis­it your web­site? Down­load a case study or report?

This is one of the last chances you have to leave an impres­sion on your audi­ence. Give them an easy way to get in touch with you by leav­ing your email address and web­site.

The Bottom Line

Now you know how to make a pitch deck. But what if you don’t have the time, nar­ra­tive, or design skills to build one from scratch? Well, you don’t real­ly have to.

There’s a short­er, sim­pler route open to star­tups. You can always use a ready-made start­up pitch deck tem­plate. With this, you can add to it images, graphs, and cus­tom text. It pret­ty much allows you full cus­tomiza­tion over any­thing you want.

You don’t have to wor­ry about mak­ing it beau­ti­ful because it’s already beau­ti­ful. You just have to make it rel­e­vant.

A ready-made tem­plate is a sim­ple way to make sure you get into your pitch deck all the impor­tant slides. To sum it up, a proven and effi­cient struc­ture for you pitch deck is:

1. Prob­lem
2. Solu­tion
3. Team
4. Address­able Mar­ket
5. Com­pet­i­tive Advan­tage
6. Why Now
7. Prod­uct Demo
8. Mar­ket Pen­e­tra­tion
9. Busi­ness Mod­el
10. Finan­cial Pro­jec­tions

At Swift­ly Dig­i­tal, we’re a Los Ange­les based tech­nol­o­gy and social media agency that loves to cre­ate beau­ti­ful pitch decks that have col­lec­tive­ly raised over $500,000. Need a start­up pitch deck tem­plate for your start­up? We’re hap­py to help. Get in touch with us to learn more.

Also pub­lished on Medi­um.