A pitch deck allows businesses to deliver complex visions, business ideas, or business plans in an engaging and easily consumable manner. Thus, employing pitch deck best practices should be one of the first things you do to ensure a successful pitch deck.
So, what are these best practices for creating a pitch deck? Here is a guide on how successful companies mastered the art of best practices to ensure success in their decks.
The Importance of a Strong Pitch Deck
A strong pitch deck includes a well-balanced visual presentation summarizing your company, product, or idea. Its main goal is to generate excitement or interest in your company that may lead to successive meetings or possible investment discussions.
A good design pitch deck serves as a tool for businesses to either raise capital or get strategic partners. It ensures that investors, managers, and prospective customers see the value of your business, ensuring they are highly likely to support you.
How Airbnb Nailed Their Pitch Deck?
Airbnb created one of the best pitch decks in the business world. It managed to master how to effectively use the elements of a strong pitch deck, where the deck’s success is seen on the $600,000 Sequoia Capital and more than 10 million views.
In this pitch deck, there were about 14 slides comprising
- The title
- Problem
- Solution
- Market validation
- Market size
- Product
- Business model
- Adoption strategy
- Competition
- Competitive advantage
- Team
- Press
- User testimonials
- Financials
Airbnb focused on being engaging in its pitch deck. Furthermore, one of the primary ways that it nailed its pitch deck is by using visuals to tell a compelling brand story. This company presented information in a colorful and fun way. Also, it used little text and prioritized the customer and market problems. The company highlighted the customer problems and proceeded to create an engaging story to capture the investors’ minds.
In addition, Airbnb’s deck is concise and does not overwhelm the target audience with menial details of every feature and technology. Instead, it got straight to the point by showcasing facts about the booking process, market needs, and the number of trips people often take in a year. Therefore, some of the primary things to learn from Airbnb’s pitch deck is to keep it short, structured, and simple.
The Pitch Deck That Helped Uber Take Off?
Uber’s first pitch deck in 2008 is often used as a classic example of pitch deck best practices. It comprised 25 PowerPoint slides that facilitated an initial $200,000 investment. This initial investment played a crucial role in Uber’s success today.
Some of the best practices used by Uber to ensure that its pitch deck became a success includes the following:
- Focused on ideas instead of the design: Uber’s pitch deck is not overly decorative but instead focuses on essential bullet points and graphics. Its main goal is to remove unnecessary distractions from the point the company wishes to put forward. In addition, Uber used a black-and-white design in its pitch deck. By keeping it simple, Uber ensured that it drove the point home.
- Concise: Uber’s first pitch deck did not comprise too many details about the company. Instead, the founders were very concise in their pitch. The primary goal behind a concise pitch deck is to cover fragments of the company and not everything. It keeps investors interested to know more, thus offering a chance to begin a conversation.
- Painted a bigger picture: The presentation from Uber consisted of 25 slides, presenting a comprehensive perspective on the future and showcasing an impressive vision. In the present times, a majority of knowledgeable investors tend to opt for investments in innovative ventures that hold the potential for future prosperity. As a result, it becomes crucial to present pragmatic projections in the pitch decks.
Common Themes Among Successful Pitch Decks
Some of the most successful pitch decks share a variety of common themes, including:
Straightforwardness
Successful decks do not overwhelm investors with significant information about the company. Instead, they comprise only fragmented details, which are clearly explained in infographic content and bullet points, which is more appealing.
Design-focused
Most successful decks focus on the type of design they use. As you can see from above, Uber focused on black-and-white design, while Airbnb focused on a colorful design. An excellent design is one of the first things that can capture the mind of investors. Thus, make sure your pitch deck design is intriguing.
Tells a compelling story
These successful decks tell a compelling story, which is essential in getting funding. They clearly point out the unique selling points of their business by clearly staking the market problem and the solution they solve.
In Conclusion
An effective application of the best elements of a strong pitch deck can facilitate a pitch deck’s success. This effective application comprises the use of best practices, including being concise, relevant, simple, and design-focused.
Have you ever designed a pitch deck? If yes, what elements of the design did you prioritize?
