In a few words, a pitch deck provides insight into a business to potential investors. It includes information regarding the business plan, the product or service offered by its competition, and the team backing the idea. 

It’s not just a presentation, and you don’t need to be more impressive outside what the project offers. An effective pitch deck is straightforward, coherent, and easy to digest. Although, there is some information that you must include (which we will see later).

A pitch deck should grab the interest of potential investors. It won’t close up an agreement, but it will lead to open talks between your team and investors. 

If they ask for additional information about your business idea, you will make a big step toward catching their interest. 

While everything revolves around getting more money for your business, the true purpose of a pitch deck is going to the next step before secure funding.

Businesses are different, but they all follow a particular path before deviating from their own business model. The same goes for pitch decks.

You won’t use the same style for a naturist shop and a car manufacturer. But you can follow the same steps for the initial pitch deck, be more creative, and fit your style with your business idea.

It’s the first thing that the investors will see in your presentation deck. 

With the Title slide, you will set the mood and style for the rest of the pitch deck. And don’t write more information here than just your business name, company logo, and maybe a tagline or some note. Keep it simple. 

In the Introduction Slide, you will state a quick overview to set up your proposition and the business values. 

A few sentences should suffice. Think about it like you are “tweeting” about your company. If your overview can fit a tweet, then you are fine. 

Some companies compare themselves to other big names, so investors have a better understanding of your business idea. 

The problem with this is that your business model has to be compared with good taste. Otherwise, it would mean you were using a high-profile company or figure to desperately grab attention.

Properly presenting the problem is the very first step for your pitch presentation. Where the title and introduction slides are more of a formality, this is where you start to build up your story.

In this slide, you want to ensure that you communicate the target’s problem effectively. If your pitch deck fails here, you will be in an uphill battle for the rest of the presentation.

Try and tell a relatable story when defining the problem. Don’t waste time and space on the competitive landscape (you’ll have a moment for this later). The more real it looks, the more your investors will get your business goals and objectives. 

With the problem stated, time to go into the following slide: the solution. This is where you explain what’s a your product or service about.. 

State the main features of your product, but focus more on the benefits rather than on the features themselves. It’s not about promoting your product here. It’s about how you can solve the problem.

You may be tempted to add more slides to cover the whole idea of your product. But only do it if it is really necessary. Always try to be simple. Investors should be able to understand it quickly. 

Use pictures and stories to describe your solution. Always “show, no tell.” And another way you can do this is by combining both the problem and the solution in the slides. 

You presented the problem and your solution on the pitch deck. Now, is there a target audience that needs your product? Your answer will be “Yes,” and proceed with this slide.

Here is where you introduce the market opportunity of your product to your investors. Do research, identify market trends, and find data about the scope of the problem and how many people are in this market. 

If it makes sense, you can divide your market into segments that you will address with different marketing strategies and, maybe, different product offerings (like introducing different plans of a subscription service). 

It’s tempting to define your target market as “as big as possible.” However, investors are more willing to see that you aim for a specific and reachable market. It will make your pitch more relatable and real.

You have a problem and a solution. You know who has this problem and how to solve it. But now you need to state how these people will pay for your solution. Time to state the business model. 

Maybe it is not the users who will pay your bills. For some businesses, advertisers are their main source of income. You need to flesh out every detail of how you will get revenue.

In this pitch deck slide, you can reference your competition and discuss how your pricing fits in the market to expand on your key points.

There is competition everywhere. Even if you are opening an entirely new market, people are using an alternative solution until someone else provides something better.

In this slide, you will describe how you fit in the competitive landscape and what differentiates you from any other option. State why the investors should trust you and not any other company that is in the same market.

Describe what your advantages are over them, what makes you unique, and why customers should choose you.

You didn’t start just with this pitch deck. Probably your business was running for a while before all of this. 

This slide will highlight all the achievements and milestones that you have reached. If you were gaining traction recently, state it here with graphs that are easy to understand for any investor. 

They will want to see some proof of success that would earn confidence in your project and reduce any sort of doubt that could cloud their minds.

You also want to use this slide as a roadmap for your project. You will present all the future milestones to achieve and act as a guide for all the plans that are already set up for your business. And, if you didn’t have any milestone reach, you can just jump to this section.

Outline your marketing plan in this slide. You should detail the key tactics you want to use to get your customers' attention and put your product in front of them.

You must show a solid grasp of how you will reach your target market and what sales channels you plan to use. 

This could be one of the toughest challenges for any startup, as it can be hard to get your product known, even if what you are selling could be the best in the world.

If your sales process differs from your competitors, you should highlight that to your investors.

Time to present your team. Describe who everyone is and why they are suitable for the job. 

Introduce them presenting their successful past experiences, their role and responsibilities, and what expertise they bring to the project. 

If there are positions missing, highlight the key members, any critical position that needs to be filled, and why that position is significant for the company to grow. 

Investors will expect an insight into your estimates and sales forecast. Show them your financial projections for the next years to ensure you have everything already planned out. 

But remember, this is a pitch deck. So don’t just throw them your detailed spreadsheets. Use strong data visualization like a graph or a pie chart, demonstrating estimated total customers, expenses, and profits.

Don’t throw just any number that seems reasonable. Be prepared to justify why you think your estimation is correct. If you can explain your projection based on the traction you already have or compare it with an already established company, it will be very useful for your presentation.

Why do you want money? It’s the final question you must ask. You won’t raise funds with your pitch deck and presentation only, but remember that it is about getting investors interested in your business and convincing them to invest in you.

With this slide, the most important thing you should clarify is why you need X amount of investment and how you will use that money. 

If you already have some investors in your project, you should talk to those other investors about the ones who are aboard and why they should join.

You should show your key partnerships to raise confidence in your project.

Dedicate a slide to state who you partner with and why and how they helped each other. 

Some businesses have key partnerships which are crucial for their success. These may include intellectual property licensing from a university or a distribution partner who will be responsible for the distribution of your product. 

Another slide that you can add is “Exit Strategy.” This will show that you ensure something in return to your investors. 

You should outline your potential acquirers if you manage to grow your company and be successful. Going public is another viable strategy for some startups, while other businesses are more inclined to be bought by a more prominent player in the market.

If you have any opportunity to “show and tell, " like a demo or prototype of your product, use it. It’s beneficial to show your investors how your product actually works and what it does.

Now that you know which steps to follow, you could use some additional advice to improve your presentation and avoid any big mistakes that could arise in the early version of your pitch deck.

It’s important to establish a “personality” for your brand, something that will clearly identify your business. It helps to demonstrate that you value creativity and design.

But don’t be too overwhelming. You should keep it simple. And if you don’t have a defined identity, stick to the basics. 

Choose a two or three-color palette that conveys your brand. Visuals and colors communicate meanings and messages without words. It can influence how they will be perceived and interpret the brand. 

About wording, try to be simple too and straightforward. Don’t fall on making detailed bullet points. Keep on stating only the relevant information. 

Try to use large and bold fonts, and limit the number of words on each slide. And use images whenever appropriate. It will help your storytelling and build an emotional attachment to your ideas.

People don’t have much time for anything. They will not read a long, dense paragraph about your product, even if it is really good. So, you should make it easy for them to catch your talking points immediately.

This a helpful way to highlight and emphasize your key information, in contrast to just writing it down. Use different colors to differentiate each point in the graph. 

Also, try using icons. They are useful for identifying categories or classifications while it reduces text overall. 

In tandem with the previous point, when you will compare your project against your competitors, it’s recommended to use XY charts. These charts' objective is to show that your offering fits a unique space compared to its competitors.

It’s a useful positioning tool that gives X and Y axes different attributes depending on the product or service and positions your competitors’ logos according to the attributes established.

Using two metric points, you show off how well your product is against the competition.

Sometimes, investors will only look at the people behind the project. Because of that, you should introduce yourself and the team with high levels of professionalism. And the photograph is a big part of demonstrating your team's expertise.

In the pitch deck, state clearly each member's motivations, experiences, expertise, role in the short and long term, responsibilities, and goals for the business.

Choose imagery that reflects the activity of the business. You can use any sort of image, from stock photos to something more elaborated. 

Even as background images, they contribute to establishing the brand personality. Also, they can be used to differentiate sections in your pitch deck and give your audience a break from just reading text. After all, the pitch deck is mainly a visual document.

An additional recommendation is to try to fill the whole slide with the image to avoid having white space. And save it as a PDF document so that formatting, imagery, and fonts remain intact.

You have an idea of what to do on how to make your pitch deck. But you don’t have much time to learn new presentation software from the beginning, and you need to plan the pitch deck now. 

Don’t worry, as plenty of templates are available on the internet. Each one has a pre-established idea, where you just need to introduce your data, your texts, and any sort of imagery that you may need (logos, icons, graphs). 

But, you will need a program to open these templates and modify them however you like properly. Microsoft PowerPoint is one of the most reliable software in the market and is well known for being suitable for creating pitch decks. 

You will set up any PowerPoint presentation easily with these pitch deck templates, and if you need a key to get Microsoft PowerPoint, you can visit RoyalCDKeys and buy one at a low price, which comes with the whole Office 2021 package.

This covers the basics. As the name suggests, there is nothing fancy, but it doesn’t need to be. 

It gives you 11 slides which you can modify, with a graph and a chart, in black and white. We recommend changing this style to something more vibrant, but you can download and use this template as a guide.

With 18 slides, this template is a bit more complex than the previous one as it uses more graphs and charts to visualize the data. 

It comes with a more colorful charm, and if you have a business based on nature or environmental stuff, you have less job to do, as it comes with images revolving around this theme. 

It is more complete overall, and you can get download it also from the Microsoft website and even check it on your web browser. 

Raising the bar a little bit, this template revolves around IT products or services. But you can also take advantage of their many use of graphs for your purpose.

If you like this template, you can get a preview and download it from Slidemodel. There are many other templates that you can see on its website.

Establishing a solid pitch deck will attract key investors for your business and help you reach your funding goals. If you make a lasting impression on them, you already make the right step toward the next meeting with those who are interested.

Keep it simple and straightforward. Use visual aids like graphs and charts, use highly contrasting backgrounds in your slide to make it easy to read, and focus on the main points of the business.