How to Create a Compelling Pitch Deck for Fundraising

Just like you, big-name brands once had to create a pitch deck at the beginning of their journey. Now that we live in a completely digitalized world, we can access and study and access all those pitch deck ideas for a healthy dose of inspiration. 

A pitch deck is a brief presentation that provides clients and potential investors with an overview of your business plan, services, products, and growth potential.

As an early-stage entrepreneur, you probably know this: your company or idea needs financing. This financing often comes from external sources – i.e., people who aren’t family or friends. This means you will be responsible for addressing your ideas to potential shareholders and shareholders in a way that gets them excited and compels them to invest in your business. In other words, you will need a compelling pitch deck. 

What is a Pitch Deck? 

Typically, a pitch deck is a 10-20 slide presentation deck that’s meant to give a short summary of your business, your plan, and your business vision. It serves multiple purposes, from presenting in front of a stage to getting a meeting with a new investor, and each one of them should follow a different structure. 

For example, a demo day presentation has to be very visual and contain very little text. The presentation is going to be seen from afar, and you will be doing most of the talk. A pitch deck, on the other hand, is also a presentation that’s completely self-explanatory. It should cover the key points of your business plan, the services, and products you offer, high-level financial estimations, and funding needs. That said, a pitch work that’s meant for fundraising should work well on its own as a visual document, but it will largely be used as a tool to tell the story of your business. 

While every business is different, there are several formats that work for most businesses and are more likely to generate interest from potential investors. Usually, a pitch deck for fundraising should include:  

1. Value Proposition and Vision 

This is where you provide a quick overview of your business and the value that you provide to your customers. You can imagine these slides as short tweets – tweets where you keep it short and simple, not more than 140 characters. 

It’s ordinary for tech businesses to make their own value proposition a comparison to another popular tech company. While this may work well and fine enough, be careful to make sure your comparison is relevant and you’re not just using big names to signify growth potential. The business model you’re advocating has to truly resemble the model of the company you’re referencing.  

2. The issue 

Every business idea must solve some kind of problem in the world. Use this presentation to talk about the issue you’re trying to solve in the market, but don’t spend too much time on the competitive landscape since you will have a chance to do that later on. 

Create and tell a relatable story when you’re describing the problem. Use accessible slides and ensure you rearrange PDF files according to your needs. The more realistic and relatable the problem is, the more your shareholder will understand your business and your goals.  

3. Target audience and opportunity 

This slide should help expand on who your ideal audience is and how many of them are there. If you can find relatable data, shareholders will want to know how much businesses or people currently spend in the market to get a sense of the total market size. That’s where you explain the scope and the scale of the issue you’re trying to solve. 

To make more business sense, you’ll want to divide your market into sectors that will address different markets and perhaps different types of product offerings. Be careful with this step, though. While it’s tempting to define your market as large as possible, investors will often want to see a business with a very detailed and accessible market. The more realistic you are, the more compelling your pitch will be. 

4. The Solution

The solution is a part of your presentation deck that describes your service or product. Here’s where you will demonstrate how customers can use the product and how it addresses the problem that you outlined on slide two. 

You will be tempted to skip to the solution part at the beginning of pitch decks but try to resist the temptation. The whole point of a pitch deck is to build up the tension and describe how bad it is for lots of people, then you describe how your service or product is coming to the rescue to solve that problem. 

Most business owners are too focused on their service or product instead, they need to be focused on their audience and the problems they face. 

5. Business or revenue model

It’s important for investors to know how you make your money. How do you charge, and who pays for the bills? For online businesses, for example, advertisers pay the invoices instead of users, so it’s crucial to flesh out the details here 

Investors will also expect your financial forecast and income statements for at least three years. But, if you’re creating a pitch deck, try to limit yourself to charts that show sales, total customers, total expenses, and profits. Be ready to discuss basic assumptions that you’ve made to reach your sales goals and what your main expense drivers are. Ultimately, these forecasts must be rational and backed by solid data to ensure a successful fundraising pitch deck.