When pitching for anything, the goal is to convince others to support your project. To accomplish this the pitch deck must ‘work’ the audience – here’s what you need to do.

Having been on the receiving end of hundreds of pitches I can attest that there is a good and a bad way to preparing and presenting a ‘pitch’. Let’s deconstruct a deck.

What the Deck Should Include and In What Order

Any great deck should not be more than 18 slides and they should be in a specific order.

Slide 1: The Cover Slide – Who you are and what will your company do.

Slide 2: The Problem Slide – What are you going to solve and why?

Slide 3: The Problem Slide 2 – What are the pain points for current users of similar products in the marketplace?

Slide 4: The Solution Slide – How do you take away the ‘pain’?

Slide 5: The Traction Slide – [If your deck had only one slide this would be it.] What users will subscribe to your new solution and how are you going to reach them?

Slide 6: Growing Predictability & Sustainability Slide – The majority of funding deals fall apart in due diligence. This is where you attach numbers to your solution and make sure those numbers are realistic.

Slide 7: Competition Slide – Who, where, and how successful is your competition and what is your competitive advantage?

Slide 8: Customer Acquisition Slide – Which vehicles are you going to use to obtain customers and extend your market-reach?

Slide 9: The Retention Slide – How do you keep customers and, most importantly, keep them coming back?

Slide 10: The Customer Slide – How are you going to compound the growth from existing customers?

Slide 11: The Market Expansion Slide – What is your ‘go-to-market’ and launch strategy?

Slide 12: The Team Slide – Who is on your Team. What is their expertise and how does this apply to the company’s success?

Slide 13: The Investment Partners Slide – How do you intend to use the funding? What will be the spend rate and efficiency use cases?

Slide 14: Product Road-map Slide – What is the journey for the product? When will it hit the market and how will it be delivered?

Slide 15: Closing Slide – Wrap it up. Highlight the strong points and reiterate the problem and your solution.

The clarity of your ‘story’ is of particular significance. The above 15 slide pitch deck provides you a benchmark to work with. Your deck’s configuration and logical progression is very important.  Drawing-in your audience and fulfilling their requisites is your mission. Startups should have two decks. One for oral presentations and one that can be emailed. The email version will have more slides due to the fact that more explanation is required as you are not presenting. Make sure you follow the order of the slides regardless.

Good luck with your Pitch.