Entrepreneurship: Pitching Your Idea – The 10 Significant Slides
Pitching your idea to investors is one of the most nerve wrecking things you will encounter in bringing your business idea to life. There will be many thoughts going through your mind at the time: Will they like your idea? Will they like you? If you can’t successfully pitch your idea to investors, you won’t get funding. Which means you likely won’t be able to see your great idea flourish into a great business.
However nerve-wrecking pitching your idea to investors may be, there are steps you can take to be well-prepared.
Know Your Purpose and Objective When Pitching Your Idea
The purpose of your pitch is to create interest in your idea and get your investors to be just as excited about it. However, you are not there to simply entertain them and that is why your objective should be very clear. Lets say your objective is to get a second meeting, now it is up to you to use your limited time in front of the investors to stimulate interest in your idea and have your investors consider it a worthy investment. Your pitch should be easy to follow, interesting, and relatively short. Which is why you really only need ten slides. In fact, “the more slides you need, the less compelling your idea.”
The 10 Significant Slides: Pitching Your Idea
- Your Company’s Name and Purpose:
- In this slide, you need to define your business in a single declarative sentence.
- Problem or Opportunity:
- In this slide, you need to describe the pain you are alleviating or the pleasure you are providing. As well as outline how the customer addresses the issue today.
- Your Solution or Value Proposition:
- In this slide, you need to explain the value of the pain you are alleviating or the pleasure your are providing; how it makes your customer’s life better; cases in which it can be used.
- Your Product or Prototype of Your Product:
- In this slide, you need to display the product line-up. This includes functionality, features, and intellectual property. And if you have a prototype, this is the time to show it.
- Why Now:
- In this slide, show the historical evolution of the category your products lies within, and the recent trends that make your solution possible.
- Business Model:
- In this slide, you need to describe who has your money in their pocket and how you will get it into yours. Talk about your revenue model, pricing strategy, sales and distribution model, as well as your customer list.
- Market Plan:
- In this slide, you need to describe your customers, and how you will reach your customers without spending excessively.
- Competitive Analysis:
- In this slide, you need to provide a complete and detailed view of the competitive landscape. You also need to list your competitors as well as the competitive advantages of both you and your competitors.
- Your Management Team:
- In this slide, you need to describe the key players of your management team. This includes, board of directors, board of advisors, and major investors.
- Financial Projections and Key Metrics:
- In this slide, you need to provide a 3-year forecast containing not only revenues and profits but also your key metrics such as: number of customers and conversion rate.
Before pitching your idea, it is very beneficial to research your audience and learn more about who you will be pitching to. This way you can better design your elevator pitch and slides to capture their interest. Instead of memorizing lines and sounding overly rehearsed it is better to leave room for improvising so your pitch seems more tailormade and natural to your specific audience. During your pitch, you need to project expertise and confidence and a good way to do this is through story-telling. Stories not only make your pitch more interesting but they also make it easier to follow the motivation and purpose behind what you are doing. By having a compelling story, you are better able to create interest and thus improve your chances with the investors.
