It must be daunting to be a start-up founder not least because these days the resources available to help budding entrepreneurs are limitless. There are blogs by intrepid VC and angel investors, articles published by tech-focussed media; there are talks, podcasts and office hours where seasoned investors help entrepreneurs with advice, speed-dating style.
If you are a founder about to embark on a fundraising journey (a cliché but really it is a journey: challenging, enervating and ultimately, if the stars align, rewarding), I want to offer some practical advice.
I’ve come across plenty of online tips in terms of contents of an investor presentation. Medha Agarwal has summarised 10 essential components of a fundraising pitch deck. Ultimately, it all depends on the stage of your business but the ingredients suggested here are the right ones. My only additional advice would be that you must ensure your deck tells a story. The slides should flow well. Even if you are sending out your deck rather than presenting it in person, try to read the presentation aloud and see whether its narrative flows. If it doesn’t, make it as consistent and engaging as possible.
My own practical tip is this: hire a graphic designer.
At Silvergate Investments, we get several pitches each week. I am seriously impressed with the presentation quality of the decks I receive. Some of them are works of art! I came to believe that regardless of the content, the visual presentation is incredibly important. This is because – for better or for worse – we tend to judge the book by its cover, so it’s essential to make a good first impression. The design of your deck is also important because you are competing for investor attention with other opportunities. If other entrepreneurs looking for capital send me outstanding looking decks, you need to do the same. Trust me, home-made Powerpoint presentations with busy slides and inconsistent fonts look really bad in comparison to professionally designed decks.
I asked entrepreneurs who sent me some of the best-in-class pitch decks to refer the designers they had used to help tell their growth stories. Jess Hook, the founder of non-alcoholic wine Outfox, worked with a freelance designer Hannah Bloomfield. Her pitch was beautifully designed, convincing and demonstrated a big vision, as well as attention to detail.
If you are a founder about to embark on a fundraising journey (a cliché but really it is a journey: challenging, enervating and ultimately, if the stars align, rewarding), I want to offer some practical advice.
I’ve come across plenty of online tips in terms of contents of an investor presentation. Medha Agarwal has summarised 10 essential components of a fundraising pitch deck. Ultimately, it all depends on the stage of your business but the ingredients suggested here are the right ones. My only additional advice would be that you must ensure your deck tells a story. The slides should flow well. Even if you are sending out your deck rather than presenting it in person, try to read the presentation aloud and see whether its narrative flows. If it doesn’t, make it as consistent and engaging as possible.
My own practical tip is this: hire a graphic designer.
At Silvergate Investments, we get several pitches each week. I am seriously impressed with the presentation quality of the decks I receive. Some of them are works of art! I came to believe that regardless of the content, the visual presentation is incredibly important. This is because – for better or for worse – we tend to judge the book by its cover, so it’s essential to make a good first impression. The design of your deck is also important because you are competing for investor attention with other opportunities. If other entrepreneurs looking for capital send me outstanding looking decks, you need to do the same. Trust me, home-made Powerpoint presentations with busy slides and inconsistent fonts look really bad in comparison to professionally designed decks.
I asked entrepreneurs who sent me some of the best-in-class pitch decks to refer the designers they had used to help tell their growth stories. Jess Hook, the founder of non-alcoholic wine Outfox, worked with a freelance designer Hannah Bloomfield. Her pitch was beautifully designed, convincing and demonstrated a big vision, as well as attention to detail.
The founder of Niche Tea startup, Amanda Miles Ricketts, sent me a deck with gorgeous images of her tea which signalled "premium" and "luxury". She worked with John Gilsenan of IWANT design agency.
The pitch deck by Yang Liu for her business Just Wears, a male underwear line, was fun and playful, reflecting the brand perfectly. Yang used Adobe's InDesign software to create the deck herself(!).
The founders of a HealthTech start-up Heally, based in New York, worked with Ariel Kohan of Pitchdeck XYZ. I learned that the US was ahead of the game with agencies specialising in pitch deck services and showcasing presentations which had helped to raise millions of dollars in funding.
Diana Greenhaulgh, co-founder of MyBespokeRoom, an online interior design marketplace for consumers and SAAS for designers, had a chuckle when I asked her if she had used a designer for her great deck. "We live and breathe design, Jana, of course I created the deck myself!". She used Canva, a freemium online publishing tool (and now a $2.5bn company), to help visualise her fundraising story.
These insights apply to the corporate world beyond start-ups too. I bet investment banks and corporates still use dull and busy looking powerpoint slides... If you are putting together a presentation for a new project or a change in strategy, it would really pay to invest in design. Just as when we are listening to a speaker and take in her attire, posture, mannerisms and tone of voice before we digest the contents of her speech - the style, colours and typography of your presentations make the first impression before we pay attention to words and figures.
As for the founders who often find that they don't get a meeting and the only pitch they get to present to a VC is the deck they sent across by email, it literally pays to put your best foot forward.
As for the founders who often find that they don't get a meeting and the only pitch they get to present to a VC is the deck they sent across by email, it literally pays to put your best foot forward.
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