How to write a Pitch-deck

As a Startup Founder, imagine you are on stage to set fire on the hearts of your Angel Investors and VCs, suddenly the system crashes and you realize that the system possessed the only copy of your presentation, what will you do in next 3 minutes?

Introduction

It seems to be dreadful nightmare, but this has actually happened with woman from Chennai at the Investor meet. Naturally, first and foremost reaction was fear reflecting on face, however she calmed herself the next minute, overcome her fear and bounced back with one to one interaction with Investors demonstrating her product for the rest of 3 minutes.

Though she did not score on funding, but left long lasting footprint in the minds of investors. Talking about routine cases, many people are not aware how to make a pitch deck having penetrating effect, which clearly spells out the motive behind the startup.

What is a Pitch-deck

Pitch-deck the name itself speaks out loud, deck enabling pitch to potential investors and incubation centers. It is not just a presentation, it covers your complete story as who you are and how are you connected with your vision which you intend to sell to every stakeholder. In layman language, story behind the idea of your startup marks beginning of pitch-deck followed by

1. Business Model,
2. Secret Sauce,
3. People behind the startup.

Now People behind startup means not only Founders or Co-founders but profile of whole team specifying their commitments and how long is their association with the Startup. For Example, a Startup having all part-time employees would be least preferred by Investors holding a viewpoint that if execution team cannot invest time in startup then why should we invest money?

Tips for creating Elevator Pitch-deck

On suitable platform, first impression is the last impression, if you are able to master the art of delivering entire pitch in first 30-40 second. Sounds cool but what are fundas? How do you squeeze the Orange to get its essence in the form of of orange juice. Here’s a challenge for Co-founders out there, have a look at content of Elevator Pitch and try a mock with your concept.

For Example, if you are into business of providing some unique service like providing data fetched through APIs, it could be as follows:

For…..

Our Website Finanvo.in is for Corporates, Firms, Banks and Venture Capitalists, who are into business of analysis of financial data of corporates being public document provided by Ministry of Corporate Affairs at nominal cost for publishing research reports or carry out due Diligence.

Who struggle with….

People who struggle with engaging manpower and other resources to download manually such data entering captcha every time to download a single file within short span of 3 hours only, can overcome this hustle by this platform which downloads multiple files and serves it into an organized platter in single click.

Our…….

Our Platform not only offers historical data of a corporate instantly through API but also customized reports on corporate data which are enabled by Artificial Intelligencein a fraction of second

Offers…….

Our Platform stores this data for 7 days as against 3 hours offered by government site for downloading data and saves huge amount of time and manpower which would have been wasted had this process carried manually for huge number of companies.

Better than……

ZaubaCorp and Probe also provide corporate data but we provide much more additional features such as Directors GST Number and Verified Contact details being our USP in the market.

Making Customers feel…..

Our happy and contented Customers feel Value for service and remain loyal to us as they come back again.

Critical Elements of a Pitch-deck

Money not Goal, just enabler

Being in Startup Ecosystem, fund raising should not be taken for granted. Fraudulent intentions can succeed in short run but sustainable businesses only stand out in long run. At Ideation stage of startup, generally Friends and Family support are most economical and viable.

Startup Founder must be able to identify stage where infusion of money is required and it should be clear in his mind the purpose for which funds raised shall be put to use because money is not the ultimate goal, its is just goal enabler.

Rather than projecting near 5 years, one should be clear regarding composition of Cash Expenditure after raising funds. For Example, 40% to be allocated to Product Development, 30% to Marketing and rest would be either re-invested or reserved for future plan of action.

Iterative Pitch-deck

Pitch-deck is not a one time process as you can observe early days of successful businesses were quite different from their maturity days. Following are few examples:

This business took their current shape gradually and did face struggle in initial days. So, its quite normal if you get 10-15 rejections on your first Pitch-deck, but it is rightly said that Perseverance Pays! So never let yourself down, and keep on moving forward.