By Daria Yaniieva, Investment Director at Sigma Software Labs
Pitch decks are concise presentations that help investors and clients understand more about your business, including products, services, goals, and strategies. Let’s look at the types of pitch decks and their primary objectives.
What is a pitch deck?
Business begins with communication, including with investors, the team, the founders, customers, and other stakeholders. To do this effectively, you need a short presentation that summarizes information about your product. This is called a pitch deck.
A short pitch deck gives your target audience a quick overview of the project and its projections. They are always created for a specific target audience or event. Remember this when making a new presentation.
There are various types of pitch decks, including investor decks, which have distinct differences. With hundreds of projects going through Sigma Software Labs’ venture wing, but only 15 in the portfolio, we understand investor presentations well. Additionally, the application process for the Lab’s accelerator requires a pitch deck as a mandatory field. This is a standard format for applications to accelerators and investors, so preparation is crucial.
Here are some tips and tricks:
- Marketing Presentation: Aim to inform potential customers about the benefits of your product with a focus on numbers and profits.
- Competitive Presentation: Tailor this type of presentation for competitions, making it short, attention-grabbing, and visually appealing from the start.
- Elevator Pitch: Designed to quickly demonstrate an idea to an investor in a limited time, so prepare a concise and relevant presentation.
Investment presentations are intended to show the investor the details and help raise funds.
The main goal of a pitch is to impress upon the investor that your project is a good one to invest in. This presentation does not involve education like the previous marketing deck; you must not overcome all obstacles in the first 30 seconds.
You can use any presentation structure to help you get what you want. But if you want to be more confident and address common investor questions in advance when filling out the form, you could follow the common pitch deck structure including several necessary blocks.:
ONE LINER AS A MIST
The first slide should follow the classic rule that says it should have a title and one line of text describing the essence of your startup. In particular, the common advice is to make it no longer than 7 words and make it as unique as possible. If your one-liner is simply adaptable to any other company, it’s not a good idea. So better try again and make this phrase clear and thrilling, so anyone will more likely understand in detail what will you talk about on the next slides.
Sometimes you could meet a one-liner as “Soft to simplify your life”. Is it true? Maybe. Do you understand what kind of software we are talking about? Not at all.
Instead, the team could improve it towards this format:
Making a soft to simplify your life
“An AI-driven solution to optimize your schedule” describes basic principles and provides an understanding of life areas that could be simplified with the particular software.
VISION/VALUE PROPOSITION
The second slide’s main idea is to explain what you do to the audience. This single line of text should grab the attention and make them understand the essence of your product.
Solving Real Problems with Our Product
Briefly describe the problem you want to solve with your product. Explain what you do very clearly, in as few words as possible, to describe the specific benefits you provide. On this slide, you need to tell a story about real people who will use your service. This will convince your customers to buy and investors to invest because there is an issue that can be solved with this solution, and this includes marketing opportunities.
SOLUTION
This slide should disclose how you want to solve the problem mentioned above and which AI algorithms will be applied. In simple words, describe the steps you will take to achieve your goal.
PRODUCT
Dive deeper into the product, and explain to the investor what kind of process you want to launch since only you are an expert in this solution. Present screenshots of your product to demonstrate the UX design, or provide a demo version as a video.
TRACTION / VALIDATION
A slide with your progress on the way to validating your idea. It doesn’t have to be any insights, but there should be precise numbers and information about product validation. Use more data that can prove your progress toward success.
❗ People often ignore this part of the pitch deck and put a simple picture without accurate data. Thus, your pitch deck will not have any effects because the investor does not understand where you are now and what results you have.
MARKET OPPORTUNITY
Tell investors about the market your Startup will cover, and clarify what it is and how much money you can make with your product.
Here are some key indicators that will help you create the perfect offer:
- TAM (Total Addressable/Available Market) is an extensive market of users that your Startup can reach.
- SAM (Serviceable Addressable Market) is a slightly smaller market of potential users than the previous one, designed for a specific segmented audience, for example, residents of Africa or any other country.
- SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market) – the target audience of this market is reduced due to all the limits of your Startup, not only the regional boundaries of the target audience you are focusing on but also the limits of your Startup.
❗ Many startups make the same mistake, counting on a worldwide audience. This vision automatically discourages investors from understanding the product. Because if you make a product for everyone, you make it for no one.
The best thing you can add to the next slide is a portrait of your ideal user. Imagine someone who is a 100% match for your startup and add information about them.
COMPETITION
Put the indicators by which we will talk about your projects at the level of competitive information on this slide. This can be a comparative table of business models, product goals, or main functions, making a simple overview of the product compared to competitors, which will emphasize the differences between you and those already on the market.
BUSINESS MODEL
Include two leading indicators of the business model – price and costs. How do you plan to monetize the business? Secondly, what are your revenue streams, i.e., how will you charge your customers?
Here are some of the main types of money transfers:
- Freemium
- Subscription
- Marketplace
- Affiliate
- Franchise
ROADMAP
This slide combines fundraising, a plan for using investment funds, stages of tracking results, and a cost structure. The cost structure should be predetermined, for example, 15% for the team, 30% for marketing or paid materials, and plans for the next round.
FUNDRAISING
Explain to the investor where you are now and what funds you need to raise to achieve results. Define the conditions for attracting investments, which may be safer, a convertible loan, or something similar.
TEAM
You don’t have to go into detail but share some brief information about them. You can also discuss partners and their involvement in your Startup on this slide.
FINAL SLIDE
Put here your contacts, preferably embedded in a code.
So, the goal of the pitch deck for investors is to end the conversation and make a decision here during the demo. Any other iteration will not simplify the process. If you realize that the investor needs to understand the products from the investment pitch deck, there is a small chance he will visit your website.
