2.4 – Presentations and Pitches
A CEO or founder has a couple of core responsibilities, one of which is communicating the company’s strategy and vision–externally to investors and internally to the team. Another responsibility involves selling to clients, recruiting team members, and wooing investors to raise capital.
These responsibilities boil down to selling, communicating, and pitching.
The topics of this module include:
- Elements of an effective pitch deck
- Best practices for creating a compelling presentation
- Elements of a sales pitch vs. an investment pitch
By the end of this module, you will be able to:
- Outline the key elements of an effective pitch deck
- Identify best practices for creating a compelling presentation
- Create a pitch deck
Section A: Elements of a Good Pitch Deck
Best practices related to pitch decks can apply to any presentation regardless of audience, including presentations to customer prospects, to potential and existing team members, or to investors.
Please note: Don’t focus on creating too many marketing materials to support your pitch deck. At the beginning, focus on developing some lean marketing material and defining roles; don’t waste time overthinking elements that will probably evolve over time such as:
- Job titles – It’s important to know who’s responsible for what activities, but the actual job titles aren’t important at this stage.
- Logo – A logo really isn’t needed until you start to find users for your minimal viable product.
- Website – Get a Square Space, Wix, or WordPress splash page up quickly for minimal cost and effort.
10-20-30 & Simplicity Rules
Venture Capitalist, Author and early Apple employee Guy Kawasaki has a simple rule for a good pitch deck, the 10/20/30 rule. This means:
- 10 pages
- 20 minutes
- 30 point – use nothing smaller than 30 point font size
Here is a modified breakdown of the slide order based on Guy Kawasaki’s template:
- Problem – The best approach is to frame your problem as a story: who has this problem or why this is a problem. Investors love a narrative because it’s more captivating and helps create empathy for the customer and the problem.
- Your solution – What is unique about your solution? Why is this the right time for this solution? What has changed that others before you missed?
- Business model – How do you charge for your product or service? How much does it cost to acquire a customer? How much revenue is generated from a customer after acquiring them?
- Customer acquisition strategy – What does your marketing or sales strategy look like? What channel will you use to acquire customers? How much will this cost? How long is the sales cycle?
- Traction – What have you achieved so far? What does your sales funnel look like? What customer validation do you have? Have you run any experiments and yielded any results so far?
- Team – What domain expertise, industry experience, or special knowledge of this problem or solution gives you a competitive advantage?
- Co