There’s been a distinct trend in pitch decks recently, and I should know as I review tons of them for TechCrunch+. Pitch decks include fewer slides with less information, but getting across the right message is the name of the game.
Reading between the lines of DocSend’s most recent report about VC activity in 2023, it becomes clear that getting to the point — and staying on message — is the way to catch an investor’s attention.
“Pre-seed founders have responded to the investor pullback by creating shorter decks. They are rearranging the opening slides in ways I hadn’t seen before,” Justin Izzo, research lead at DocSend, told TechCrunch+.
Founders are ditching the narratives around purpose, problem and solutions. “Instead, they are heading right into the ‘why now,’ here’s our product, and here’s how we’re going to monetize that product. It makes for very abrupt reading — I’m used to a little bit more narrativization — but pre-seed founders these days know that investors aren’t spending much time on the decks.”
Founders are actually sending 16% more decks than they did this time last year, which means VCs have a lot to read through. Investors want to get the info they need to make an early decision on whether to spend more time with a company.
From 2022 to 2023, VCs spent almost 20% less time (2 minutes 12 seconds now, compared to 2 minutes 42 seconds a year ago) reviewing pitch decks. If you’ve got 2 minutes of their time, make it count. How much does this matter? Data from DocSend indicates that 40% of successful pre-seed teams had shorter-than-average decks; 65% of unsuccessful teams had decks with more slides than average.
Founders have to be ruthless, both with the number of slides in a deck and the number of words on each slide. From 2022, the average slide deck took a nosedive from 19 slides to 16. That means you have to be very intentional about what to include:
Introduction: Present your company’s name, logo and a captivating tagline or image that gives an immediate sense of what your startup does. It also helps to hint at the size of the round you are hoping to raise.
Mission: I like to start pitches with a mission slide or a summary slide that pulls people in. Good storytelling is layered: Give the 60,000-foot view first; then point your searchlight at different aspects of the business that help getting deeper understanding as you go along.
Problem statement: Highlight the significant market problem or pain point your product or service addresses.
Solution: Showcase your product or service and explain how it effectively solves the stated problem. The solution slide should be strategic and ideally shouldn’t change for the duration of your company’s existence.
Product (maybe as a demo): Provide screenshots, a short video or a live demonstration of your product in action, emphasizing its unique features. Most founders spend too much time on their product story, so keep it simple, and trust investors to ask questions if they need to.
Value proposition: Who is experiencing the problem you’re trying to solve, and what value do you give them? For some companies, this is pretty straightforward, while others may have to get a little more creative about what the value props are.
Market opportunity: Quantify the size of the market you’re targeting and how much of it you plan to capture. Be clear that you know what your metrics are, and try to measure the right thing.
Business model: Explain how your company makes money, including details on pricing, sales and distribution strategies. It may also make sense to include the cost of goods sold (COGS) or the costs associated with delivering your service, if that’s meaningful. Oh, and don’t be tempted to have 20 business models; you laugh, but I’ve seen that, too.
Go-to-market strategy: Describe your plan for acquiring customers and achieving market penetration. What is your beachhead market? Where do you go next? How do you carve off slices of the market where you have an outsized opportunity?
Traction: Provide evidence of momentum such as user numbers, revenue, partnerships or any significant milestones achieved. Avoid vanity metrics, and if you don’t have revenue, use traction to explain how you’ve de-risked your business.
Competitive landscape: Identify your main competitors and explain your startup’s differentiators and competitive advantages.
Financial projections: Show a snapshot of past financials (if available) and future projections, emphasizing revenue growth and profitability. I like to leave the spreadsheets in spreadsheets, and summarize the growth and milestones in the form of an operating plan.
Team: The team slide is arguably your most important slide. If you have extraordinary founder/market fit, this should probably be one of your first slides. Highlight key team members, their backgrounds, and why they’re uniquely qualified to execute on this opportunity.
Funding ask: State how much funding you’re seeking and what type of investment (e.g., equity, convertible note). It can also be helpful to summarize how much you’ve raised to date, and who led or participated in those rounds. You can often combine this with the use of funds slide.
Use of funds: Provide a breakdown of how you plan to allocate the raised capital (e.g., product development, marketing, hiring). Most founders get this slide wrong. Don’t be tempted to express this as percentages. Also remember that most investors don’t care about how long your runway is, nearly as much as they care what milestones you are aiming to hit along the way.
Thank you + Q/A + contact info: It’s often a good idea to include a slide that summarizes some of the key points you want to convey. Leaving a good last impression is helpful.
Note that you don’t need to have these slides in any particular order: Lead with what is most unique or special about your company, then go from there, led by the narrative arc of your fundraising story.