Creating a Pitch Deck: 5 Do’s and Don’ts

Your pitch deck is your first impression to your investors and can make or break your ability to raise funds for your business. With so much on the line, it is well worth investing your time and energy into making it right!

Below, we have outlined five do’s and don’ts for creating your pitch deck to investors:

Do: Make it visually appealing

The purpose of a pitch deck is to grab the investors attention and convince them that your business is worth the investment. As a result, how the pitch deck looks is very important.

It’s crucial that you try to make the pitch deck as visually appealing as possible to catch the investor’s eye and convey professionalism. You can do this through the use of graphics, fonts, text and colour.

Use engaging graphics where it makes sense – after all, a picture is worth a thousand words! Additionally, use simple fonts so that your audience can easily read your text. Through the use of consistent colour schemes, you are able to showcase your business’s personality to potential investors. Lastly, simplicity is your friend and blank spaces on slides are okay because it ensures that your slides are not too busy and overwhelming.

Don’t: Bury your slides in text

When trying to convey a lot of information, people tend to put too much text on their slides. However, no one wants to read a boring pitch deck filled with slides of text. When slides are too text heavy, the viewer tends to lose interest and when they lose interest in the slide deck, you lose your chances of receiving their investment. As a general rule, there should be no more than 3 sentences on each slide.

Do: Demonstrate where your funds will be allocated

Investors want to know where their funds are going and they want to be confident that they will generate a sufficient return from their investment. Therefore, it’s important that you are being transparent in terms of where their funds will be allocated. Be as specific as you can. The more in depth that you break down the allocation of funds, the more confident that investors will be to invest in your business.

Don’t: Include confidential information

In some instances, your business may have proprietary secrets that you cannot share with investors. In sharing this confidential information, you may run the risk of information getting shared with your competitors or sharing information to the public that might severely influence your competitive edge. While you should not be sharing confidential information in your slide deck, it can also be detrimental to make investors sign non-disclosure agreements before viewing your slide deck. In doing so, this shrinks the pool of potential investors and therefore, reduces the chance of you receiving funds. If you are unable to share specific information, disclose this in your pitch deck.

Do: Tailor your presentation to different audiences

Behind every investor is a unique person with their own experiences, knowledge, abilities and skills. Therefore, each investor will connect with your business differently. Each time you present to different investors, you should be editing your slide deck slightly to cater to that specific investor and their experiences and level of market knowledge. Do your research on who you will be presenting to and tailor your slide deck specifically to your audience.

Don’t: Use buzzwords and jargon

Above all, investors need to understand your pitch deck and what you are trying to convey. Sometimes, entrepreneurs tend to incorporate buzzwords into their slide decks in hopes that the presentation will come across as more engaging – but this actually does the opposite. By using jargon or buzzwords that investors don’t understand, investors may become frustrated and shift their attention elsewhere. In addition to buzzwords, you should also avoid using acronyms and abbreviations. Use language that the average venture capitalist would reasonably understand.

Do: Tell a story

Don’t: Use more than 15-20 slides

Investors are busy and only have a limited amount of time to view your slide deck. Research shows that if business owners do not present their deck to investors, the average amount of time that investors go through pitch decks is three minutes and 40 seconds. Therefore, the key is to keep your slide deck short and sweet. You need to include all the relevant information without overwhelming the reader. Ultimately, if the slide deck is too many slides, this can kill your chances of raising funds because investors will not want to view the slide deck and therefore will not invest. Pitch decks that 15-20 slides can include all of the necessary information, yet is also short enough that the investor will not lose interest.

Do: Create an appendix

Your business’s financial health is a huge deciding factor for whether investors will invest. Therefore, you must disclose your financial information. This information could be financial metrics from previous fiscal periods and future projections for upcoming fiscal periods. While it is necessary to include financial information in your pitch deck, you will want to avoid overwhelming your viewer with confusing calculations. To demonstrate your company’s financials, put down simple values on the pitch deck and create an appendix that demonstrates how you calculated that number. For example, you could have one slide on the pitch deck titled “financials” where you write down your revenue projection for the upcoming year. In your appendix, you would show the breakdown of how you calculated that revenue value. This allows you to still include the necessary information without confusing the viewer.

Don’t: Overestimate your projections

The main goal of pitching to investors is to convince them to invest in your business. As a result, you often want to present your business in the best light that you can. Specifically, you want to convince your investors that your business is financially healthy. This can lead many entrepreneurs to over exaggerate financial metrics and projections. However, being untruthful about your financials to investors can be very damaging. Many investors have an extensive financial background and can easily pinpoint when projections seem inaccurate. This damages your relationship with the potential investors and can lead your business to gain a bad reputation.

By following these do’s and don’ts, we are confident you will be able to create a professional and engaging pitch deck for investors.

For more personalized help raising funds, Contact our team of experts today!