2. 2
The purpose of a pitch is to stimulate interest, not to cover every aspect of
your startup and bludgeon your audience into submission. Your objective is
to generate enough interest to get a second meeting.
Thus, the recommended number of slides for a pitch is ten. This impossible
low number forces you to concentrate on the absolute essentials. You can
add a few more, but you should never exceed fifteen slides—the more slides
you need, the less compelling your idea.
Upon Commencement
3. 3
1. Title, Purpose of Organization
2. Problem and Opportunity
3. Value Proposition (Solution)
4. Underlying Magic (Technology, Secret Sauce)
5. Business Model
6. Go-To-Market Plan (Marketing and Sales Strategy)
7. Competitive Analysis (Competition / Partners)
8. Management Team (Management, Advisory Board, Experience)
9. Financial Projections and Key Metrics
10.Current Status, Accomplishments to Date, Timeline, and Use of Funds
The Ten Slides Are:
4. 4
Organization’s name; your name and title; and contact information (address,
e-mail, and cell phone number). The audience can read the slide—When this
slide is showing, you ask the three questions that set the stage and then
explain what your startup does. (A quick short line that describes who you
are.) Cut to the chase!
1. Title, Purpose of Organization
5. 5
Describe the pain that you’re alleviating. The goal is to get everyone buying
into the utility of your product. Avoid looking like a solution searching for a
problem. Minimize or eliminate citations of consulting studies about the
future size of the market.
If you’re not alleviating pain but enabling people to do things that they could
never do before, this is the time to paint a picture of the brave new world
that you’re offering.
2. Problem and Opportunity
6. 6
Explain how you alleviate this pain and the meaning that you make. Ensure
that the audience clearly understands what you sell and your value
proposition.
This is not the place for an in-depth technical explanation. Provide just the
gist of how you fix the pain—for example, “We are a discount travel Web site.
We have written software that searches all other travel sties and collates
their price quotes into one record.”
3. Value Proposition (Solution)
7. 7
Describe the technology, secret sauce, or magic behind your product or
service. The less text and more diagrams, schematics, and flowcharts on this
slide, the better. With this one slide, you must convince people that you have
a technically viable idea.
If you have an MVVVP*, working prototype, or demo, this is the time to
transition to it. If you're lucky, you'll never get to the rest of your slides. As
Glen Shires of Google said, "If a picture is worth a thousand words, a
prototype is worth ten thousand slides.“
*MVVVP: Minimum Viable Valuable Validating Product
4. Underlying Magic
8. 8
Explain how you make money: who pays you, your channels of distribution,
and your gross margin. Generally, a unique, untested business model is a
scary proposition. If you truly have a revolutionary business model, explain it
in terms of familiar ones. This is your opportunity to drop the names of the
organizations that are already using your product or service.
5. Business Model
9. 9
Explain how you are going to reach your customer and summarize your
marketing leverage points. Convince the audience that you have an effective
go-to-market strategy that won’t break the bank. (Resist the temptation to
use "go viral," because that's wishful thinking, not a strategy.)
6. Go-To-Market Plan
10. 10
Provide a complete view of the competitive landscape. Too much is better
than too little. Never dismiss your competition. Everyone—customers,
investors, and partners—wants to hear why you’re good, not why the
competition is bad.
7. Competitive Analysis
11. 11
Describe the key players of your management team, board of directors, and
board of advisors, as well as your major investors. It's okay if you have less
than a perfect team—if you were the co-founder of Cisco or YouTube, you
would not need to raise money.
You only have to show that your education and work experience are relevant
to the market you're going after. All startups, have holes—what’s truly
important is whether you understand that there are holes and are willing to
fix them.
8. Management Team
12. 12
Provide a three-to-five-year forecast containing not only dollars but also key
metrics, such as number of customers and conversion rate. Do a bottom-up
forecast. Take into account long sales cycles and seasonality. Making people
understand the underlying assumptions of your forecast is as important as
the numbers you’ve fabricated.
You need to do no more than a Cash Flow Statement containing the first 3
quarters of your company (and maybe a detailed month to month of the first
couple). If you want you can give the next year as a whole, but after that
don’t do any more after that, its impossible and people know it. Just make a
well thought out cash flow statement.
9. Financial Projections and Key Metrics
13. 13
Explain the current status of your product or service, what the near future
looks like, and how you’ll use the money that you’re trying to raise. Share
the details of your positive momentum and traction. Then use this slide to
close with a bias toward action.
10. Current Status, Accomplishments to Date,
Timeline, and Use of Funds
14. 14
No entrepreneur knows when, how, or if she will achieve liquidity, and yet many
insist on including a slide that says, "There are two liquidity options: an IPO or an
acquisition." If an investor asks about your exit strategy, it usually indicates he's
clueless. If you answer with these two options, you have a lot in common.
The only time you should include a slide about liquidity is when you can list at least
three acquirers whom the investor has never heard of—this shows that you know
the industry. By contract, saying that Google, or the Google of your industry, will
buy you will make all but dumbest investors laugh at you.
In addition to your ten slides, you can have more that go into greater detail about
your technology, marketing, current customers, and other key strategies. It's good
to have these done in advance in case you're asked for a more in-depth explanation.
However, don't use them unless you're asked about their subject matter.
A word about liquidity:
15. 15
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