A well-prepared pitch deck is THE most important document in your early stage startup journey. Which is why we’ve asked a real expert on pitch deck construction and design for a few of his tricks. Kim Kreutz is a freelance consultant for pitch and investor decks and part-time Head of Design at our alumni startup Valuedesk. In this article, he shows you some of his personal tricks for making the perfect pitch deck and provides you with step by step instructions.
A simple fact: potential investors spend only 40 to 60 seconds on your pitch deck. That’s the time you have for getting to the point and avoiding visual irritations. In my article, I’ll show how to do exactly that – get to the point.
People like to introduce me as specialist and mentor for pitch deck design. When I mentor founders, or speak at a workshop, I only spend very little time on design. In truth, most of my work revolves around structure and contents. At the end of such sessions, there’s design involved but, to be honest, only as a second step.
Simple rule of thumb: validated content, such as KPIs and other data, always beats well-designed content.
Design helps making content simple to process and to consume – especially if you want to communicate really complex information. With regard to your pitch deck audience, that’s an aspect you should not underestimate.
Every slide of a pitch deck should be structured in a way that makes the recipient hungry for the next slide so that they don’t become bored when scrolling through your deck.
What Emphasis Should You Create In Your Early Stage Pitch Deck?
The first thing I do when I get to know a startup and talk to them about their pitch deck, I check which stage the company’s in – idea stage, pre-seed, seed, series A and so on. Everyone of these phases requires its own particular pitch deck. In early stage pitch decks, it’s quite clear that there’s still experience missing and the numbers aren’t quite there yet. These are the gaps that must be identified, prioritized, and filled in step by step.- Are claims supported with useful data (e.g., market statistics) or being derived realistically? (e.g., through KPIs of competitors).
- Where is the causality between what’s already been done and what’s being planned? (e.g., between traction and ask?)?
- What are absolute focus slides?
- expectations and performance
- challenges and solutions
- failures and learnings
Once the audience starts to read the slides or ponder their contents, the risk to lose their attention increases.
In most cases, you need a sending deck as a follow-up maneuver. As the name implies, these kind of pitch decks are sent via mail. Usually, you first build the sending deck and then the showcase deck for your presentation afterwards.
How Should Your Pitch Deck Be Structured?
When you structure your pitch deck, there are different approaches for ordering the information. In the USA, there’s a tendency to put the startup team slide at the very beginning. At Vertical.vc in Helsinki, I learned to put the team slide closer to the end, in the vicinity of the Ask. Putting your team front and center might create the impression that your idea is too weak. In reality, it’s a matter of personal preference, or how confident you feel as a founder 🙂 – also, the slide order highly depends on the pitch deck’s purpose. In any case, the team slide is one of the three core slides in every pitch deck, whether it’s at the beginning or at the end. The following set of slides I’ve seen routinely used during my time in Helsinki and Berlin. It has proven reliable for me and the founders I’ve mentored. The set comprises four blocks with three thematically interconnected slides each. Let’s go through the set slide by slide.1. Pitch Deck Cover
The cover or front slide of your pitch deck has a function that you should not underestimate. People receiving pitch decks must often browse through dozens of decks every day. So, it should be obvious that a well-designed cover helps to create a positive first impression. Apart from design questions, some formal information like name of the recipient (if known), sender (including contact data), and the type of the pitch deck should not be left out. With regard to the company name and logo, you should keep in mind that the name alone often does not allow to draw any conclusions about the specific business or industry sector your startup is engaged in. Which is why it’s useful to add a meaningful sub-headline, such as high level concept, X for Y, or a claim. Some examples:- Aliens (movie) – “Jaws in space”
- YouTube – “Flickr for video”
- Glassdoor – ““Tripadvisor for jobs”
- Airbnb – “eBay for space”
- Celonis – “process mining”
Design Tip
I like to work with key visuals or with bold highlight colors in the background. The cover design should clearly set it apart from to the content slides.
2. Your Pitch Deck’s Executive Summary
When you are preparing a sending deck, it’s useful to place a summary or executive summary right at the start. The summary slides functions like the back cover text of a book and often decides whether your pitch deck is actually read or rather put aside. It’s very simple, the recipients often do not have the time, and probably not the inclination, to go through all of the presentation. I recommend using three thematic blocks as the core structure of your summary.- Situation – A short deep dive into the market.
- Complication – Which problems do providers and customers have to face and what are the worst consequences?
- Solution – How does your startup solve the problem?; Through technology, expertise, business model …
Design Tip
When using three blocks, it stands to reason to use three columns. I prefer pure text to bullet points for this. If it fits, you can alternatively use text combined with bullet points as boilerplate. The bullets should be coherent in all columns, however (at least for sections Complication and Solution).
3. Problem, Solution, Product of Your Pitch Deck
The Problem
The problem slide is important for a stage pitch audience but also for all recipients who are not as deeply involved in the affected market that they immediately can contextualize the problem and understand its implications. Simply put, the slide is about pointing out the pain points and their consequences. In case of startups working in B2B, the problems are most often not obvious to outsiders since the startup is working in an absolute niche market. It’s different for B2C, where people experience the problems in their daily lives and understand the implications far easier. In any case, I recommend using two blocks:- Problem description: You can either tell a self-contained story or split the problem into a maximum of three individual problems.
- Tangible numbers: provide numbers and facts, such as 100 million affected users, 30% relevance, 2 billion euros in damages anually etc.
Design Tip
When arguments, KPIs, or numbers are used, never list more than three each. Also, if you use English in your pitch deck, you should proofread numbers, spelling, and units of measurements.
The Solution
Now for the solution which should follow up on the problems you have described before. It makes little sense to make claims about these huge problems but solve completely different ones in your solution slide. Sounds far-fetched, but that’s what I have seen in many decks. A solution is easily recognizable by a lack of interface, by the fact that it approaches a problem at its heart, and, ideally, works in various verticals. The last aspect is a deciding point for many investors since it might mean that the business can be scaled onto other “markets” with relative ease. Consequently, the potential increases massively, even if the original market segment seems small at the start. Often, startups launch in a decently sized vertical where they have specialized expertise or advantages through regional contacts. Posssible solutions are:- technologies (AI, machine learning, …)
- marketplaces
- services
Design Tip
Usually, solutions aren’t single components, like a screw, but interconnected modules. Often, it’s helpful to create an infographic detailling the most important modules and processes.
To increase attention, I would place these graphics on multiple slides (2-3). That way, even complex contents can be conveyed comprehensively.
The Product
The solution demonstrated how the problem is being solved. The product now shows how the users experience the product application. This is about showing the product in action: What are the core features that make the product new and unique? The features are shown by using simple and representative product pictures (e.g., screenshots). If available, testimonials and statements from partners can be placed here.Design Tip
Less is more – you should boil the number of features down to the magical 3. An excess of features isn’t better, it just overloads the product overview. Besides, there is hardly ever a product with 10 completely equivalent features which must be mentioned. If you cannot agree upon a set of features than at least visually highlight three of the presented features.
Fewer details – if you use real screenshots, there often tiny details visible which are funcationally important but don’t contribute to the overall understanding. I would either remove those elements from view or just re-create the screenshot in a simplified version. If possible, I would always use real images, even if you combine them with mocked-up images. That way, you create the impression that you product is tangible and available.
4, Market, Timing, USP, and Competition In Your Pitch Deck
The Market
In my opinion, there are three decisive aspects that you should keep in mind when designing the market slide.Market Size
One of the important evaluation criteria for a new business idea is the size of the market. This defines whether an investment is profitable or at which amount the investment becomes profitable – if at all. Every startup must conduct research into the market size including its evaluation must be done carefully and early on. This is very first watershed moment for the business idea. There’s an established model for establishing market size for startups: the market categories TAM, SAM, and SOMTAM – Total Adressable (or Available) Market
TAM includes the full, globally available market seen from the view of a monopolist. The TAM shows what theoretically is possible if you discount all barriers. For startups, the TAM doesn’t have any great importance, especially in their early stages.SAM – Serviceable Adressable Market or Served Available Market
The SAM value describes the market share which can be serviced with the current offer and business model. At the same time, the value answers the question which customers will use the proffered solution in the end. In a B2B context, you have to determine the number of potential target customers here. SAM is an important factor for investors, since it demonstrates the medium-term potential of your business idea. For you as a founder, the SAM is important because it defines your target group. The more precise you can define the SAM, the more efficient you will target your target audience.SOM – Service Obtainable Market or Share of Market
The SOM is the share of the SAM that can be adressed on short notice. The term “low-hanging fruit” is often used in this context which means nothing else but that you should go for customers with a low access threshold in the early stages of your startup. Especially in the B2B sector, personal connections or being part of an existing network (e.g., other entrepreneurs you met at an Accelerator) is really helpful. Consequently, the SOM is a good indicator for the kind of revenue you can achieve in the first stage of your growth. To precisely calculate the SOM, the following aspects must be factored in:- Who exactly are you trying to reach and what’s your value proposition?
- Who can be reached with the resources that you have at your disposal in the early stages?
- What is the setup of the local competition?
- What are your own capacities and resources?
Design Tip
TAM, SAM and SOM are often visualized by circles that decrease in size, in accordance with market size. Instead of circles, I like to use case-related analogies, especially for stage pitches: In case of a beverage supply company, the image of a bottle was used where the different segments were portrayed as different filling levels and in different colors. In general, market slides have several numbers and pieces of information, meaning that TAM, SAM, and SOM should always be shown successively and synchronous to the storyline.
Another aspect that must be kept in mind is the correct calculation of the market size. There’s a calculatory mistake that occurs with tragic frequency: the revenue of potential customers is taken as the market size – which, of course, is complete nonsense. The correct size is derived from multiplying the number of potential customers with the annual revenue that can be generated through the startup’s own efforts.
Market Potential
Apart from the size of the market, every investor is interested in the market’s dynamics, e.g., in which phase or the condition the market currently is in. A huge TAM might imply that the market is already established and no longer grows dynamically. In turn, this might imply that market shares can only be pain-stakingly wrestled from competitors with large financial effort – in contrast to a fast-growing market, where there’s a permanent influx of new customers. Noteworth market activity in terms of investments or mergers & acquisitions can also be good indicator for the potential of a market. There are different options to indicate market growth. Depending on how much data is available, a look into recent years can portray market trends, but also a look into the future using well-respected sources (business institutes, consulting agencies …) can be helpful in that regard.Why Now? The Right Timing
Timing is everything. Launching either too soon or too late can be the main reason why a great business idea fails or why a startup fails to reach the next level. Many innovations we take for granted today have a long history and were well ahead of their time but not very successful at that moment. How much external factors can radically accelerate innovations, offers, and services can be seen at the example of the first COVID lockdown (in Germany and worldwide); or expected in case of cannabis legalization. So, to hit the right timing you need to look for events that happen in the vicinity of the market and might have an impact on existing conditions. These observations should definitely be part of your market potential evaluation. Hugely successful players such as YouTube, AirBnB, or Uber are perfect examples for how good timing is the foundation for a company to become a unicorn (check out Bill Gross’ Ted Talk on the topic of perfect timing on YouTube). A method that might help to analyze whether your startup fits the big picture and can utilize its potential is the PESTEL Analysis (or the shortened version: PEST/STEP Analysis).The USP
The USP, unique selling point, is THE crucial factor that decides whether a potential customer will take up your offer in the end – or rather your competitor’s. Possible USPs are most often not as obvious to identify as you might think. Finding a USP requires to dive deep into the needs of the customers and develop an intricate understanding for the processes that drive these needs. Many early stage startups struggle with setting themselves apart from the competition. They don’t do it strongly enough and misunderstand that a USP is often the result of a process and hard work. It used to be easier in the past; you just needed an engineer, an invention, and a patent. The use of a product or a service can be split into 3 levels: A. The basic use refers to what your target customers can expect from a certain type of product.- the detergent makes my clothing clean
- the car gets me from A to B
- the pullover keeps me warm
- the detergent leads to longer fragrance
- the car has an electric motor
- the pullover is made from sustainable materials
- the detergent can really remove all stains
- the car has a new type of battery that lasts twice as long as competitor’s products
- the pullover is made from patented fibers that can change pattern and color.
- pricing
- quality
- time-saving
- sustainability
- innovation
- simplification
- exclusivity
- features
- flexibility
- social proof
- …
The Competition
Let’s start with the bad news: I don’t know any good method to improve the design of the competition slide. It is primarily about providing a general overview of your competitors and highlight differences in terms of services and market structure:- Which weaknesses have you identified? What are you doing better?
- Are there supply gaps that might be useful to seize?
- Is the market old enough and ready to be shaken up by your innovation?
- Coordinate System This version is easily explained – almost all startups who use a coordinate systems to represent the competition situation look the same. Their own startup is in the upper right and all other competitors are somewhere below to the left. Since this version is quite common it’s decently viable for a stage pitch. It’s doubtful, however, that it contributes to a deeper understanding of the market.
- Benchmark This version is also easily explained since the startup in question gets a “Yes” almost everywhere in the feature charts and the competition receives a lot of “Nos”. For a stage situation, this version is rather unsuited since there’s a lot of text to read. It might work in a send deck but only if the points directly relate to the previously stated arguments from the Problem and Solution slides.
- Segmente In this version, the competition situation is concisely represented in segments where every competitor is assigned specific but easily processable characteristics. For the stage, it’s enough to find a suitable icon/symbol/picture for every segment and use one descriptive sentence. For a send deck, you can again use a text block combined with bullet points. This method is also well-suited to a stage pitch, since it can be embedded in a short story block and it enables you to convey information with the appropriate depth.
5. B-Model, Traction and Financials In Your Pitch Deck
The B-Model
The most common way to design the slide on the business model is by showing feature & service packages. There’s always a free test version with rudimentary features, a moderately priced beginner version, and an enterprise edition with a price on request. There are, of course, other types of versions, like customer-based costs. We know the model well from a customer perspective when we are looking for mobile service or web hosting providers. However, a price tag doesn’t really represent a business model. Especially not in early stage startups where the pricing hasn’t even been properly validated. A good B Model slide should provide the audience with a concise overview of all important stakeholders, their relationship among each other, the service (or product) that is being bought, the payer, the user, the type of revenue stream, and possible external costs which are required to maintain the startup’s offer. Which is also the kind of information you need when you create a business model canvas, by the way. A solid or maybe even innovative B Model can give you a competitive edge.Design Tip
I’ve had good experiences with using a process map for representing the B Model. The core offer that is being paid for is at the center of the map. At this point, you should also clarify how the money is earned: recurring revenue through a subscription model (MRR), transaction-based revenue or on-demand, one-time payments, or a combination of each.
On the startup side of the map, the stakeholders that you need to be able to provide the offer should be listed. These can also be external companies whose services must be acquired. On the customers side, there are usually the users, meaning direct users and payers – in a B2B context, these are rarely the same persons. As always, the slide should be structured with several sub-slides.
Traction (Achievements)
For investments, the traction slide is another important focus slide. This slide features relevant metrics that are supposed to strengthen all the predictions and assumptions you are currently making. Usually these are: number of paying customers, revenue, and growth figures. The traction slide can also show at which point your startup currently is – at the Problem-Solution-Fit, or already going for the Product-Market Fit, or even further on. Many early stage startups unfortunately don’t have paying customers yet and accordingly no revenue. In such cases, I often re-name the slide to “achievements“ and include alternative milestones for the next planned steps: number of customer calls/meetings/presentations, LOIs and pilots, or even number of users/downloads, activity, retention rate.Design Tip
This slide exclusively deals with KPIs. Consequently, you ideally should work with (three) columns, large numbers, and large font sizes.
The Financials
In contrast to business plans or the stage . you don’t need 3 or 5 projections in the early phase of your startup. If there is relevant revenue you should place that information prominently on the slide, preferably in rising curves or bars. Important reference figures are acquisition costs, the so-called CAC (customer acquisition cost) and Lifetime Value (LTV). In simple terms: How much do I need to invest into acquiring an indvidual customer (CAC) and how long are they going to remain customers (LTV) and what am I going to achieve in that period? I’m not a trained business administrator but the relationship between CAC and LTV is roughly a clear indicator how profitable a business model is going to be and what can be expected in terms of required investment. If you just started with customer acquisition you are, of course, missing first-hand experience. For the CAC, you can fairly quickly develop an instinct for how much effort you will require per customer. The LTV is a bit more difficult. Let’s take B2B customers as an example – often these relationships are set for 5 to 10 years. General, you can get information on real values that are common for the market in question through research. If you additionally combine these findings with your competitor’s prices you get a rough estimation in which range the CAC and LTV will be. If you use external numbers on the slide you should definitely mention that. In the first rounds of financing you often have a well-stocked sales funnel. You have structured your sales process and you are already on the verge of progressing towards a deal/pilot with potential customers. The funnel is a great addition to the financials slide. Include the prospective customer’s logos and the amount of customers in the corresponding stages. The sales funnel is directly connected to the CAC since it includes all acquisition activities. You should definitely state how much time the completion of the funnel will take.Design Tip
Vertical funnel or horizontal funnel? That mostly depends on the number of funnel stages. In general, companies and logos are best displayed in a vertical funnel. If you prefer to work horizontally, I personally would just display the truncated upper part of the funnel.
6. Team, Ask, and Call To Action
The Team
It’s all about execution. The team slide is another – if not THE – most important focus slide in your pitch deck. Why? A great startup team can execute a mediocre idea successfully while a bad team can ruin the best ideas. How do you shows that you are one of the greats? Sure, if you’re a serial founder with several exits or someone who has had key positions in other startup, that’s no problem. The good news: Everyone has started somewhere with their startup career. Having faith in the strength of your team is at the end a matter of trust – and that’s something you built step by step. So, what do you put on the slide? First, you should show that all key positions are occupied and the occupants have the expertise for the area they’re responsible for. Logo dropping from past employers, a doctoral degree, or interesting projects that you’ve worked on should be listed just as projects where’ve you already collaborated in the past; everything that might indicate that you make a powerful team. If key positions in your team are still open you should mention that accordingly. Maybe include the hint that you are looking for or already talking to candidates.The Ask
The good thing about the ask or about the investment slide is the fact that you already have found and provided answers to many relevant questions about your startup. The investment is just the next logical step. This is the icing on the cake. Two things are important for this slide – how much money do you want and how do you intend to use the investment? What do you want to achieve? To answer the question “how much money do you want”, you should calculate with precision. If you ask too little you might be able to close the round faster but running out of money too soon won’t help you either and doesn’t inspire trust. Asking for too much is also frowned upon by investors since you aren’t supposed to grow comfortable with the investment. Define a reasonable period of time for which the investment must last. Everything under 9 months will result in stressful tension because common knowledge indicates that you need at least 6 months to close a complete investment round. If you define a period of less than 9 months, you will need to raise money again rather quickly which might distract from important operative duties. But it’s not unsusual to define a certain range in investments. If you do that, you should incorporate flexible positions and goals in relation to the investment range. Next to the size of investment, the split is important. In the early stages the largest share of the investment money is needed for product development, a certain share is needed for sales and/or marketing, and a small share for operative costs (rent, broadband, tax advisor …). This is easy to represent with a pie chart. Since this is about your investor’s money you should always state what concrete goals that you want to use the investment for. These can be milestones of product development, but also revenues, customers, or headcount. Often, a timeline graphic is used to convey that information – which is however more of a visual complication. For the stage, three to four icons and headlines are succificient.Design Tip
I like to use tickets which are labelled with the respective ticket size. If investors already have agreed to invest, the ticket is already torn off – this creates a FOMO effect. Relating the size of the investment to the size of the ticket is already a clear indicator what kind of investors you want to address.
The Call To Action
At the end of your presentation you should include two elements on the last slide.- While you for the most part of yor presentation try to portray your startup and your situation as realistcally as possible, you can share some of your visions on the last slide. What are your long-term goals? What do you and your team want to achieve? Feel free to be bold, but don’t exaggerate.
- After the presentation is before the next meeting. You should seize the opportunity to offer a follow-up action and try to stay in the lead.
- investment deck
- date for a demonstration
- additional details for pilot customers
- parternships
- networking
- job offers
- …
Pitch Deck Slide Structure
1. Fonts and Font Size
It’s important to prioritize information on your slide and define a reading order accordingly. The tools for this purpose are fonts, font sizes, font weights, and colors.- Primary information like headlines – 70-100 pt
- Secondary information like descriptions – 40-60 pt
- Marginal text like sources and citations – 30-34pt
2. The Grid
Using a grid is the easiest way to apply a basic structure to every slide. The grid ensures that headlines and recurring elements always appear at the same position and that elements don’t “jump” positions when you change slides. Even a mis-alignment by a few pixel creates irritation. Also, there’s a pre-defined stage space and margins that remain unsued. The stage space is 80 x 80 pixels so that you can create layouts with 1,2, or 3 columns.3. Mistakes to Avoid
There are a few rules that you must adhere to.At Live Pitches
Don’t put any text on the slide that you are going to use in your oral presentation, not even bullet points. Once the audience starts reading your slides, there’s a huge risk that you lose their attention.Legibility
Keep in mind that in a stage context projectors are used. Your slides should consequently have enough contrast, the font size should be large enough, and the font weight not too thin.General
Do NOT use animations. I’ve seen too many pitches where videos, animations, or other fancy effects simply didn’t work out at all. If you believe you need these kind of special effects, you probably have far more important problems you should take care of. Don’t cheat! Stick to the truth, always. Sooner or later, it will get out that you lied and your reputation in the startup community, which is really not that large, will be almost irreparably ruined.
About the Author
Kim Kreutz is a freelance consultant specialized in pitch and investor decks, Head of Design at our alumni startup Valuedesk, and workshop speaker for the pitch training in our Education Programs.Ready for the perfect pitch deck?
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