During the lockdown, you probably have thought of many great ideas for business startups. Ideas just flow in and out of your head including the detailed ways on how you are going to handle the business as a whole – run the operations, market your products/services, handle customer feedback, and more. But once the rush of excitement fades, you are hit with the dilemma of how to financially back up your plan.

You can always fund your business plan with your own money from your pocket. But if you have little to no savings, it may not be the option for you. Another is by having investors financially back up your business startup.

Securing a set of investors to listen to you isn’t the endgame. The goal here: to make them invest in you. How? Start by showing them a pitch deck!

How to wow your investors with your pitch deck?

Let’s be honest, investors always want a return on their investment. That’s why your pitch deck should have more than just your rambling startup ideas. It should have data that would convince them of their guaranteed ROI.

In this article, we will give you tips on how to create a startup pitch deck that would wow any investors.

Create an amazing presentation

Prepare a well-thought-of presentation. Investors would likely tune in to your business ideas if they can see it. And what’s more, they can follow through your operating process, marketing strategies, and financial plans.

Prepare simple yet informative PowerPoint slide decks for your investors. Remember this: investors are interested to know how they can get a return on their investment.

Don’t go overboard with the design. Chances are the decks will be too crowded and the worst part – investors might lose their interest.

Keep it simple! Use PowerPoint templates to keep everything uniformed so it can be visually appealing. That way, investors can keep their attention on you and your points.

Business Overview

A good business pitch deck should start with a concise overview of what your business is all about. It should include your logo, tagline, and contact information. Being the first slide, it should catch your investors’ attention.

Investors will immediately gauge on knowledge of your plans. The goal here is to describe your business opportunity and layout a business strategy to achieve your goals.

The Problem

Next, start laying the groundwork for why your investors should care about and most importantly invest in your plan. It should include the problems that you are solving in the marketplace. This will engage your investors right out of the gate.

It will also help if you know something about your investors. Do some research about them. This way, you can tailor-fit your story to them.

Provide an emphatic story

Once the problem has been established, provide the investors with how the problems look like in real life through an example or story. This would take the problem out of the hypothetical and show investors what the stakes are.

Your pitch would probably be the first time the potential investors are learning about your ideas. By using a story, this allows them to understand how your business works more quickly and how it affects consumers in the real world. To build a great story around your business you must have good advisors, coaches and story tellers in your circles. Sujit Lalwani, has been guiding several startups to build great stories and deliver powerful messages via their ideas and plans.

Instead of talking about your business potential and how great your product is, talk about how your business impacts the real-world and your would-be consumers.

Enumerate the solution

Now’s the time to showcase your points. Here is where you will connect all the dots that you have just pointed out in the previous slides. Show to the investors why your startup business is the best solution to the problems you have just identified.

Don’t forget to include the following points:

• Describe to the investors your product/service
• Explain to the investors how it works and what it does
• Show how your product/service perfectly fits in the marketplace
• Show any proof of concepts like a prototype of your product or process flow of your service
  
  

Identify your target market

Let’s face it, not everyone will be your target market. Although that is what every business aims for, it’s not gonna happen anytime soon.

Be honest and realistic in identifying your target market to your investors. Tell your investors who you’re making the product for – the right demographics. Once you have identified the right target market, it will help you map out a more effective strategy for your business plan.

Your revenue and financial projections

This is the slide that the investors will care about the most. It should importantly emphasize three points. First, how much funds will you be needing? Second, how much money are you going to make? Lastly, how fast can you bring the cash in?

Let’s say the investors are very impressed with your business ideas and are looking forward to investing in you. You must be very clear and precise about how much money you will be needing to push through with your business ideas. Once you get this wrong, your investors might have the impression that you will be spending money more than you will make.



How will you make money? Provide a projection of revenue to your audience in the next three to five years – preferably with a graph. It should detail the right pricing of your products/services and the revenue as you reach out to your target market. You must be able to back up your numbers by mentioning your assumptions. Guaranteed, you will see the investors taking out their smartphones or old-school calculators to make sure that your numbers make sense. Therefore, give them the right information so they will see that your calculations are accurate. Many a time, it is hard to arrive at the exact numbers in the financial projections and that is where the Business Plan software like LivePlan comes to the rescue as it takes you through a step-by-step process of creating the powerful Financial reports.

Additionally, investors will want to know about how fast you can make revenue, thus, the investors see a return on their investments. Create a realistic timeframe on when will you be able to see results (money-wise).

Marketing and sales strategy

You may be very profitable in your calculations but investors want to know what you are going to do to achieve such numbers. Present your marketing and sales strategy. How will you reach your target market and how are you going to sell to them? How are you going to advertise your products/services? If so, how much will it cost you?

Keep the momentum going by walking your investors through the activities that you have already planned out. Get in touch with brands like SIMUS that help strategize stronger and better, bring you great ideas to build your brand communications, sales strategies, growth hacking ideas and above all brand building. 

Competition in the market

There will always be competition. Unfortunately, you will have many competitors as you try to squeeze yourself into the market. As this is evident, investors will need to know how you are planning to stand out from your competitors.

Communicate your value proposition over your competitors through a competitive matrix format. List down your competitors on the left side of the page and features across the opposite top.



Ideally, it will show what your competitors lack in some key areas and will highlight your advantage over them.

Bring home the bacon! Convincing investors to invest in your startup business is unfortunately not a walk in the park. It takes more than willpower and courage to do so. But an amazing pitch deck that takes the investors’ breath away is a start. Most importantly, investors need to see that you believe in your ideals so they will believe it too!


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