A Pitch Deck

Template
Why You Need a Pitch Deck and What
to Include in Yours
A worked example of the 10-14 slides that comprise a
typical investor pitch deck and why you need a pitch deck
in the first place. Plus what you should include in your
deck to increase your chances of getting funded.

TL;DR version? If you don't care about all the context and
slide-by-slide tips and recommendations below, just click
here to view the basic template on Slideshare.

Posted May 7, 2015 by Malcolm Lewis

Contents
• Why do you need a pitch deck?
• What do investors want to see?
• What should you include?
• How much content do you need?
• Cover Slide
• Summary Slide
• Problem Slide
• Solution Slide
• Product Slide
• Business Model Slide
• Market Opportunity Slide
• Competition Slide
• Growth Strategy Slide
• Traction Slide
• Financials Slide
• Team Slide
• Funding Slide
• Your Elevator Pitch
• Comments
Click the ↥ icon any time to return to this Contents list.

Why Do You Need a Pitch Deck?

Entrepreneurs don’t tell their friends they have a great
idea for a business. They say they have a great idea for a
product. But investors don’t invest in products, they invest
in businesses. So you need to sell them on your business,
not your product. Who will buy your product and what
makes yours the best? How much can you make selling
your product? How will you acquire and retain customers
profitably and at scale? These are all questions related to
your business.
A pitch deck is a visual summary of your business. So you
need a pitch deck because investors invest in businesses,
and a pitch deck is the fastest, easiest way for you to
explain your business to them. That doesn’t mean you
have to write a business plan before you build your pitch
deck, but it does mean you’ll have to think through every
aspect of your business in order to create a great pitch
deck.
Once you have a solid pitch deck (and elevator pitch to
match) you're ready to secure meetings with investors. A
popular approach is to find people you know who are
willing to make warm introductions to investors they
know. You will ask these people to email your elevator
pitch to investors along with a link to your pitch deck. Your
hope is that some of those investors will like your elevator
pitch enough to spend 3-4 minutes skimming through
your deck and then, if they like your deck, request a
meeting.

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What Do Investors Want

to See in Your Pitch Deck?
To answer this question you need to understand what
investors are trying to accomplish when they read or listen
to your pitch deck. But before we get into that, let's pause
for a second to consider what you're up against.

Here's some recent data from Andreessen Horowitz

(a16z), one of the hottest VC firms in Silicon Valley right
now. Each year, 3,000 startups approach a16z with a
warm intro from someone the firm knows. A16z invests in
15 of those 3,000 startups. Which means they say "yes" to
one in every 200 pitches, and "no" to the other 199. So the
odds are against investors saying yes to your pitch. But
don't despair. Approximately 4,400 startups did get
funding in 2014 so it can be done.

So what do you think investors are looking for in those

one-in-200 odds-defying pitches? Here’s a clue: they are
investors. So, like any investor, they are evaluating your
pitch in two areas:
1 Return: The potential return (aka upside) on an
 investment in your business
2 Risk: The risks that might prevent them from getting that
return on their investment
An investor's job is to find businesses that offer the highest
return on investment with the least risk. Your job is to
convince them that your business offers a greater return,
with less risk, than all the other businesses they are
looking at.
Regarding return, remember that most investors are
looking for at least a 10-20x return on their investment in a
business. (And in their dreams, they are hoping you will be
the next Google or Facebook or Uber and drive a 1,000x
return.) So you need to convince them that you can grow
your valuation at least 10-20x from its current baseline.

Setting tech bubble valuations aside, business valuations

are typically driven by revenue and profit multiples, so you
need to show how your product will dominate a huge
market and generate the revenue and profit growth
required to drive a 10-20x increase in the value of your
business.
Regarding risk, understand that when investors read or
listen to your pitch deck they are trying to assess your
investment risk in three key areas:
1 Market Risk: Are you addressing a large, growing
market?
2 Product Risk: Can you build a compelling product with
sustainable competitive advantages?
3 Execution Risk (aka Team Risk): Can your team
acquire and retain new customers profitably, at scale,
and transform your opportunity into a substantial long-
 term business?
Market failure is usually driven by a product in search of a
market that doesn’t exist (“the dogs don’t like your dog
food”) or is too small to be interesting to investors (i.e.
there’s not enough potential revenue to generate the 10-
20x return they want). Startups led by engineers can often
fall into this trap.

Product failure is typically driven by a product that is not

useful, not usable, or simply not competitive.

Execution failure is generally driven by some combination

of inexperienced leadership, ineffective sales and
marketing, and poor financial management.

Note that some initial traction (e.g. several months of

accelerating customer adoption and revenue growth) can
go a long way toward minimizing market, product and
execution risk for many investors. It will certainly greatly
increase your chances of getting funded. More on traction
later.

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What Should You

Include in Your Pitch Deck?
Now let’s take a look at what you should include in your
deck and why. First, remember that your pitch deck is a
visual summary of your business. So it needs to address
every aspect of your business that you might include in a
 business plan.
There are many opinions on exactly what 10-14 slides
should be included in a pitch deck, and in what sequence.
For the sake of argument we’ll use the slide titles and
sequence (flow) I use in a sample pitch deck I have
created for my pitch deck coaching business. I'll use
screenshots from the current version of this deck to
illustrate some of the information you should consider
including on each slide of your deck.

Before we get into details, here's the outline:

1 Cover: Announce your big idea. The one thing you do
better than anyone else. You have 10 seconds to set
the hook with your audience.
2 Summary: Summarize the highlights of your
business/investment opportunity as a teaser for
what's to come later in your pitch.
3 Problem: The problem you solve, who you solve it for,
and the reasons why your target customer/users are
frustrated with current solutions.
4 Solution: How you solve the problem and the benefits of
your solution.
5 Product: Your product and how it works in three simple
steps.
6 Business Model: How you make money.
7 Market Opportunity: How much money you could make
if you dominate your target market.
8 Competition: Your competitors and why your product is
better than theirs.
9 Growth Strategy: How you will acquire and retain
customers, profitably, at scale, and keep your product
 competitive.
10 Traction: Tangible proof that your customers love
your product and are happy to pay for it.
11 Financials: Your current best guess of how much
money you will make in the next 3-5 years.
12 Team: The team that has the experience and
expertise to transform your opportunity into a large,
profitable business.
13 Funding: How much money you need and what you
will do with it.
14 Summary: Summarize the highlights of your
business/investment opportunity as a closer.
15 Appendix: Not mandatory, but feel free to include a
few slides with positive press mentions, happy
customer quotes, a summary of your technology
stack, your detailed financial model, etc.
Note that you can find these slides on Slideshare if you
want to see the entire deck without my notes.

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How Much Content

Do You Need on Each Slide?
Note that you'll need two version of your pitch deck. The
read me version and the listen to me version. Many
investors will want to see your deck before they agree to
meet you. This means your "read me" version needs more
detail so it can stand alone. Your "listen to me" version is
the one you use when you can present in person. You
need fewer details on your listen-to-me deck slides
 because you replace them with speaking points. This
ensures that investors spend more time listening to you
and less time reading your slides. Think Steve Jobs, the
Zen master of the "listen to me" pitch.

You can find some great examples of founders giving

their "listen to me" pitches on the various incubator
websites. Just remember that these decks are their "listen
to me" versions. In case it's not obvious, start with your
"read me" version and then edit out the detail as required
to create your "listen to me" version.

Tip: It's easy to get writer's block when creating your deck.
For that reason, I recommend that you start your deck in
Excel, not PowerPoint. Create two columns. One for the
slide title and one for the slide content. This technique will
force you to initially focus on the words you need to tell
your story. It's also much easier to scan the various slides
of your pitch deck in this format and make sure they all
work together to tell your story. Enhancing those words
with images and other graphical elements comes later.

Now let's start looking at what you should include in each

slide of your deck starting with your cover slide.

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Cover Slide
 Use this slide to introduce your big idea. Your goal is to
grab the investor's attention in the first 10 seconds so you
have their attention for the next 20 minutes. Describe what
you do in a simple declarative statement. Eg: “Mint is a
quick and easy way to track your spending online.” Or use
a well-known company as a comparison. Eg: DogVacay is
“AirBnB for dogs.”
Include a statement of the primary benefit for your primary
customer/user if you like. And add a simple image if it
reinforces your big idea without distraction.
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Summary Slide

Summarize the highlights of your business opportunity

 before you go any further. There's no reason to make
investors wait until the end of your presentation. In fact,
without this summary they might not bother reading or
listening through to the end at all. Why not give them
something to look forward to instead? Remember, they
are looking for investments that provide maximum return
with minimum risk. So make sure you emphasize the
upside potential of your business opportunity and explain
how you have minimized market, product and execution
risk.

Nothing says "fundable" like traction. It provides instant

validation of your business and gives you instant
credibility. With traction, investors will assume everything
you say is probably true. Without traction, investors will
assume everything you say is probably not true. Or at
least unproven. So if you have any traction make sure you
highlight it right here.

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Problem Slide
 Explain the problem you solve (or the unmet need you
address) in simple terms that any investor can understand.
Identify the people who are dealing with this problem.
These are your target customers and users. (Users use.
Customers pay. For example, people searching for golf
clubs on Google are Google users. Golf equipment
companies that advertise on Google are Google
customers.)
How painful is the problem? Is it a must-solve problem or
a nice-to-solve problem? Is it the number one problem for
your target customers and users, or a minor irritation?
How do your target customers and users solve this
problem today? Manually? Or with some older generation
technology? And what are the issues with these current
solutions (your competitors) that create the opportunity for
a new solution like yours? Is your problem obvious? If not,
what proof do you have that it exists?

Note that your Problem slide is the setup for your Solution
slide and, later, your Competition slide.

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Solution Slide
 In your Problem slide you should have explained, or at
least hinted at, how your target customers and users have
been solving their problem before you came along. And
you should have discussed or listed the issues (your target
customers' frustrations) with those current solutions.

Now it's time to describe your solution. Again, use simple

language. What is it? An app? A website? A device? What
 does it do? And what are the major benefits of your
solution for each of your target customers and users?
Ideally, those benefits are derived from features that
address the issues with current solutions that you
identified earlier. So if current solutions are slow,
expensive and difficult to use then what is your solution?
Hopefully easier to use, faster and less expensive. That of
course begs the next question, which is by how much?
How much easier to use? How much faster? How much
cheaper? Enough for your target customers and users to
care?

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Product Slide
 In your Solution slide you described the "what" and "why"
of your product. What it is, what it does and why your
target customers and users will care enough to stop using
current solutions and switch to your solution. Now you
need to make your product more tangible to investors.
One simple way to do that is to explain the "how."

Because it's simple, I like to show how a product works in

three easy steps. Remember to show your product user
experience for each customer and user identified in your
Problem slide. Note that you don't need to do a demo
here. Screenshots (or video) are fine and have the
additional benefit of never crashing in front of investors.
And they work great for investors who are skimming
through your deck while standing alone in line at
Starbucks.

Your Product slide is also a great place to highlight any

technology patents you might have been granted or have
in the works. If your patents are really important, and will
prevent competitors from copying critical aspects of your
solution (think Overture's patent on pay-per-click
advertising), then you might even want to add a dedicated
Technology slide. Regardless, describe your patents
briefly, explain where they fit into your solution (are they
core or peripheral?) and mention their filing status.

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Business Model Slide

 Now it's time to explain how you make money. Keep it
simple. Focus on the primary revenue model you will
actually use to monetize your customers rather than a
laundry list of potential revenue streams. Investors
generally prefer active revenue streams (customers
paying for the use of a product or service) to passive
revenue streams (eg: advertising or affiliate revenues)
unless the passive revenue stream is attached to a very
 sticky free product like Google or Facebook. Investors
generally like recurring revenue streams like monthly or
annual subscriptions.

If possible, provide some proof that your target customers

are willing to pay your price. A growing base of paying
customers would be ideal proof. But a quote from a
prospect is better than nothing if you have not yet
launched.

Your Business Model slide should segue nicely into your

Market Opportunity slide where you'll show how much
money you could make if you dominate your target
market. Your pricing model will drive the bottom up version
of your Market Opportunity slide.

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Market Opportunity Slide

Your market is the collection of people who will pay you to
use your product or service. Many investors like to see
both a top-down and a bottom-up analysis. I think the
bottom up analysis is generally more credible. If you only
pick one version, I suggest you choose bottom up.

A typical top-down analysis shows the following three

market sizes. Be sure to reference the most credible
 sources available for your top down market sizing
numbers. I suggest you don't use global numbers unless
you expect to be a global business within your first few
years. Include growth rate (CAGR) data if you can.
Investors would rather invest in a market that is growing
versus a market that is stagnant or shrinking.
1 Total Addressable Market (TAM): All the people who
could use your product or service. eg: All auto detail
customers in the US.
2 Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM): The subset of
your TAM who are likely to use a product like your
current product. eg: All mobile auto detail customers
in the US.
3 Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM): The subset of
your SAM that you can reasonably obtain in the next
3-5 years. Aka your realistic market share. eg: 10-
20% of all mobile auto detail customers in the US.
Be sure to reference any external forces, such as new
technologies or new legislation, that could accelerate the
growth of your market or extend its life. This helps
investors answer the "why now" question.

A bottom up analysis uses simple math to size your

market opportunity. How many people could buy your
product each year? And how much would they pay? This
analysis lays out your two basic assumptions for investors:
1) The number of customers (or customer transactions);
and 2) The average price paid per customer (or
transaction) per year for your product. Hopefully investors
will agree that your assumptions are reasonable. I prefer
to round big numbers to make them easier to process and
 remember.

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Competition Slide
 This is where many pitch decks fall short. Your
Competition slide is critical for most investors and yet
many startups do a very poor job of differentiating their
product/solution. Remember that investors are looking to
minimize both market risk and product risk. It's easy to
identify a large, growing market, but much harder to build
a product that is so much better than current solutions that
the majority of your target customers and users will switch
 from those current solutions to your product.

Don't make the mistake of saying you have no

competitors. You will lose credibility fast. A market with no
competitors suggests to investors that your market doesn't
exist or is too small to be worth pursuing. You must
identify your competitors and you must provide at least 1-2
reasons why your product is better than them.

Bear in mind that you will typically have both direct and
indirect competitors. Be sure to identify both. Google, for
example, competes directly with Microsoft (Bing), Yahoo,
Facebook and other providers of online advertising. They
also compete indirectly with TV, radio, print and other
providers of offline advertising.

Of course, if you are pioneering a new technology, your

competition might only be the old manual way of doing
things. For example, before Uber we all had to call a cab
company for our 5am ride to the airport and then pray that
they would actually show up.

You have a couple of options regarding the layout of your

Competition slide. The first is the classic "Gartner Magic
Quadrant" inspired 2x2 competitive landscape chart used
in the Gleamr example below. Here you will identify the
two most important points of differentiation between you
and your competitors and construct your chart accordingly.
In the example below we are saying that Gleamr's on-
demand app for mobile auto detailers is more convenient
and less expensive than other options available to busy
 consumers looking for a mobile auto detail in a hurry.
A second option is the competitive matrix/grid. This is the
classic "we have it, they don't" grid. With this option you
will list important solution feature/benefits down the left
side of you grid and then list yourself and your competitors
across the top of the grid. Note that "important" is defined
by what your target customers consider important, not
you. So with 5 feature/benefits and yourself plus 3 major
competitors you would end up with a 5x4 grid. Hopefully
your solution will be the only one that checks the box for
all 5 feature/benefits that drive your target customers'
purchase decisions.

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Growth Strategy Slide

 This slide addresses execution risk. Investors want to be
convinced that you know how to transform a competitive
product for a large, growing market into a substantial,
sustainable business. Any successful business executes
well on these three operational activities:
1 Customer Acquisition: How do your Sales and
Marketing teams create awareness and generate
demand for your product to acquire new customers?
2 Customer Retention: How does your Customer Service
team keep your existing customers happy so you
don't lose them to your competitors?
3 Product Innovation: How does your Product
Development team keep enhancing and extending
your solution so that it remains competitive?
There are three very important numbers (key metrics) you
need to explain to investors to demonstrate that you have
a viable business that can scale. You need to acquire
empirical data for these three numbers as quickly as
possible. They are:
1 Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC): What's your total
fully loaded cost to acquire a paying customer? Eg:
$100.
2 Lifetime Value of Customer (LTV): How much will a
customer pay you before you lose them? Eg:
$100/mo x 48 months = $4,800
3 Payback Period: How long does it take for a customer to
cover their acquisition cost? Eg: $100/$100/mo = 1
month using the example above.
Being able to generate an LTV that is a strong multiple of
your CAC is a basic prerequisite for a profitable business.
Of course, you'll also need to cover your cost of revenue
and other operating expenses, such as product
development and customer service, to be profitable.

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Traction Slide
 This is one of the most important slides in your deck. It
addresses all three aspects of risk that investors are
looking to minimize as they evaluate you as an investment
opportunity, namely market risk, product risk and
execution risk. By definition, if you are acquiring
customers, there must be a market for your product, you
must have a competitive product, and you have
demonstrated enough operational expertise to
successfully market and sell your product to at least some
of the customers in your market. The only questions that
remain at that point are can you replicate your initial
success at scale and can you keep your product
competitive as you grow.

Assuming you can acquire customers profitably, or at least

show a trend of declining acquisition costs to demonstrate
a path to profitability, you switch from asking investors to
fund a proof of concept (with lots of market and product
risk) to asking them to fund growth (which is mostly
execution risk).

Traction is measured by acquisition, engagement,

retention and revenue numbers you should identify to
investors as your key metrics. These are the numbers you
use to manage your business and measure success.
Traction metrics might include customer acquisition costs
(CAC), lifetime value of customer (LTV), total number of
paying customers, monthly active users (MAUs), monthly
recurring revenue (MRR), average revenue per user
(ARPU), monthly churn rate and so on.

When using key metrics to illustrate traction, be sure to

highlight trends and rates of change. An ideal scenario for
investors, for example, might be customer and revenue
doubling monthly coupled with declining customer
acquisition costs.

If you haven't yet launched your product, then consider

using this slide to instead identify major milestones for
 product, key hires, funding, etc. Even if you don't have
traction, I would always identify your key metrics. It tells
investors you understand the mechanics of your business
and the levers you will need to pull in order to make it
successful. When discussing key metrics I like to include
revenue drivers. More on this on the Financials slide
coming next.

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Financials Slide
Your Financials slide is your current best guess projection
of revenue, costs and expenses over the next 3 years.
The numbers themselves aren't that important as long as
they are not so small that they are not interesting to
investors and so large that they are completely
unbelievable. My advice is to get them into the right
ballpark and highlight your key assumptions in the model,
such as your revenue drivers and the amount of money
 you will spend on key operations such as marketing,
sales, product development and customer service.
Investors can then decide for themselves if they think your
assumptions are reasonable.

I like to include cumulative EBIT (Earnings Before Interest

and Tax) so that investors can see how much money you
will burn before you stop losing money and become
profitable. I also suggest you include percentages
alongside your numbers to save investors having to do
math in their head for things like gross margin and sales
and marketing as a percent of revenue. Most investors
have a good idea, based on experience, of how revenue
should be reinvested into each operation in order to grow
a startup business to critical mass.

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Team Slide
 Your Team slide is another critical slide that often gets
insufficient attention in the pitch decks I have seen. It
speaks to execution risk. Investors want to know that the
team has significant experience and expertise in as many
of the following areas as possible:
1 Similar Startups: Eg: Founders or early/key employees
in a similar startup. Bonus points for a startup that
became a market leader and/or achieved a successful
 exit.
2 Similar Technology: Eg: Built a similar product for
another company or startup.
3 Similar Markets: Eg: Successfully marketed and sold
products into the company's current target market.
At a minimum, your team should include a business exec
(who owns/drives the company and product visions) and a
technology exec (who owns/drives product delivery).
Investors also like to see brand name startups on a team
member's resume. And they also like to see team
members who have worked together before, ideally for
another startup, especially if that startup was successful.

Note that your Team slide should include every important

member of your extended team. This should include
founders, key employees, advisors and investors (if any).
Creating an advisory board is a very simple way to add
industry expertise to your "team" and is something that I
strongly recommend For example, being able to drop a
line like "We have the CMO of the largest real estate
brokerage in the world on our advisory board" really
boosts your credibility if your are focusing on a real estate
opportunity. A second and equally important benefit of
advisors is that they can quickly help you refine your
business and product vision themselves and connect you
to people they know who can do the same. You can also
use advisors to add significant technology and startup
experience and expertise to your team.

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 Funding Slide

And so we come to the ask slide. By now you should have

clearly identified a large growing market, described (or
launched) a competitive product that should be poised to
dominate your market, and convinced the investor that you
have what it takes to execute against your opportunity. In
other words, you should have left them with an impression
of huge upside potential with nominal market, product and
execution risk.

Now it's time to ask for the money. I like to tie the ask back
to the financial model on your Financials slide. In my
example below, Gleamr is asking for the $2M they need to
execute Year 1 of their financial plan. The plan identifies
very clearly what traction (users, customers and revenue)
the investor should expect and how much of their money
Gleamr will allocate to Sales & Marketing, Customer
Support and Product Development.

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Summary Slide (Again)

Since you'll want to leave a slide up while you answer
questions, I suggest you have a second copy of your
Summary slide at hand to end on a high note.

So that's the end of our discussion of what to include in

your pitch deck. Before I finish, I'd like to wrap things up
with a quick discussion of elevators pitches.

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Why You Also Need an Elevator

Pitch
Your elevator pitch is a written summary of your pitch deck
that an investor can skim in 30 seconds or less. It's also
something you or someone you trust can forward to an
investor to pique their interest. Most investors will not even
bother to read or listen to your pitch deck unless you have
caught their attention with a crisp, compelling elevator
pitch. Of course, your elevator pitch is simply a summary
of the content in your pitch deck and is easy to produce
once your pitch deck is complete. Here's an elevator pitch
template for you to use along with sample content using
the Gleamr example from the pitch deck above.

Elevator Pitch Template

[ Your company name ] is [ your solution ] for [ your target
customers/users ]. We help [ your customers/users ] [
solve this problem with these benefits ].

We’re initially targeting [ your market ]. We make our

money by [ your business model ]. We acquire customers
by [ your customer acquisition strategy ]. Our Lifetime
Value of Customer (LTV) is [ your multiple ] of our
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC).

We have [ your team advantage ], [ your technology

advantage ]. [ Your traction statement ].

We're seeking [ your desired funding ] to [ your primary

use of funds raised ].

Elevator Pitch Example

Gleamr is “Uber for mobile auto details.” We help
consumers get an affordable, professional auto detail
wherever they are, whenever they want. And we help
mobile auto detailers spend less time chasing customers
 and more time detailing cars.

We’re initially targeting the $12B US market for mobile

auto details. We make our money by collecting a 15%
transaction fee from auto detailers. We acquire customers
primarily through online marketing and we currently get a
5x return on our customer acquisition cost.

We have an experienced team with deep domain

expertise, patent pending technology and a significant first
mover advantage. In our first six months we’ve signed up
1,600 detailers and 16,000 consumers. We’re currently
making $162K a month and doubling users and revenue
every month.

We're seeking $2M in Series A funding which will get us to

$48M in sales.