Raising Your Institutional Round: Chapter 6
This is the 6th chapter of my upcoming book, “Move the Needle Anyway(s): Raising Your Institutional Round.” There are a total of 16 chapters. The book is currently with the publishers, however, I wanted to start sharing the content in a form of a series of blog posts so the startup ecosystem can benefit immediately. I hope you enjoy :)
Chapter 6: Create The Deck
The next asset you need is a 15 to 20-slide introductory pitch deck about your company. Numerous founders refuse or don’t even want to use a deck. However, just because that’s how you want to do things, doesn’t mean it will help your process. Many investors will require a deck. It’s part of the game. You need to give to get. Yes, they will likely share your deck around (unless you have an NDA), download, screenshot, and or use it to collect data about the startup ecosystem—it is their job to and it is also part of what makes the startup ecosystem so special; everyone learns from everyone. Here are the main things you want to cover as part of your short-form deck—notice the similarities between the structure of a pitch deck and the memo you crafted in Chapter 5.
Market
Traction
Problem
Product (Solution)
Differentiation
Team
Growth Forecast
Produce this deck using your memo as guidance:
Distinguish between what content goes on a slide and what content is part of a talk-track—this will help you reduce unnecessarily wordy slides. I see this common mistake all the time, especially with deeply technical founders. Instead of leading with the narrative in their deck, they try to squeeze all their nuanced talk points on a slide.
What is the main thing I want the investor to understand on this specific slide? For example, is it that the market is huge? Great. Then the title of the slide can be “$XBn Market Size,” and you don’t necessarily need to unpack the calculations that helped you arrive at this number. A slide isn’t meant to do complex or in-depth explaining. It is meant to help a new investor understand your opportunity in the simplest, most compelling terms possible so you can secure a first meeting with them, and unpack your opportunity in more detail during subsequent interactions.
You will also produce a more comprehensive version of your deck that can include more details about the product, technology, and the go-to-market motion—you might have this deck handy for the second meeting and deeper diligence meetings. If you have created more in-depth slides that you believe will be helpful at some stage of the process, create an appendix section as part of a separate long-form pitch deck. This will come in handy when you create and share the data room with investors.
If you update minor things in the deck as your fundraising process is underway, that’s ok. I suggest performing version control by using a digital solution like DocSend. This allows you to update the deck without having to send a new deck to anyone who is in process. Furthermore, you can see who is reviewing your deck, how long they spend on your deck, and on what slides.