Pitch Decking

As a mentor at 500 Startups and connector at VegasTech I get a lot of founders asking me how to get in or pitch to these incubators and funds. Before I can make any introductions or referrals, I need to play armchair VC myself. My reputation is on the line for any connection I make, so I need to see the deck first.

500Startups and VegasTechFund

The most common follow up question is, “Do you have any links or resources on how to build a good deck?” After making it clear that they should go ask google instead of me, I throw my own 2 cents into the ring:

Dear passionate entrepreneur,

You might want to start out with something like this:

  1. Logo & tagline
  2. _______ really sucks for _______ [industry, # of people, # of businesses]
  3. We are solving it this way: _______
  4. We are growing! _______ See?
  5. Oh, and yes, we are the best team to build it because _______
  6. We want you in to help us grow with connections to x, and/or money for y
  7. Thank you, we’d love to connect at [url, email, phone]

p.s.

  • No one cares about all the details, unless they ask you for all the details. If they ask you for all the details, that is a good thing. Have them ready to send back, but don’t put all that crap in your deck.
  • Don’t look crappy, or people will think you’re crappy. But, don’t make it look exponentially better than your product, or people will think you’re better at creating slides than building a company.
  • Confidence is awesome, but lying sucks.

YMMV,
TK


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2 responses to “Pitch Decking”

  1. Chris Pritchard Avatar

    This is really great info Thomas. Thanks for putting this is such a straight forward format. I just so happen to be working on my pitch deck, so this will come in very handy!

  2. Jay Soriano Avatar

    “Do you have any links or resources on how to build a good deck?”

    I fell in love with the DressRush pitch deck (http://investors.dressrush.com/), perhaps because I’m getting married!?
    Nonetheless, DressRush wrote a guide on how to replicate their deck here:

    http://dressrush.com/blog/post/12506021124/dressrush-online-pitch-deck

    Probably the route I’ll take when I’m seeking funding..

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