How to Avoid a Bad Pitch Deck
If you’ve been to enough pitch competitions and startup events, you’ve seen it before: an entrepreneur who is inspired and intelligent but struggles to deliver a cohesive and convincing business pitch. Why do good people sometimes deliver bad pitches? Often, the entrepreneur is sticking to the script of his or her pitch deck; however, the pitch deck is not organized in a way that sets the entrepreneur up for success.
I’m going to share a few common pitfalls of pitch deck design — particularly for hardware and technology-driven businesses — and how to avoid them. I’ll also share some resources on how to assemble your pitch deck. And while Clean Energy Trust focuses on supporting early-stage cleantech startups, this advice on pitch deck design is applicable to any sector.
Bad Pitch Deck vs. Good Pitch Deck
A bad pitch deck jumps right into the technical details.
A good pitch deck tells a story and starts by highlighting a problem.
A bad pitch deck talks in generalities about a macro challenge.
A good pitch deck clearly identifies a specific problem and how the business provides a solution. It is great to connect your business to a broader problem — the audience needs to know why they should care. That said, you also need to get specific: what is the particular problem your technology is solving for a particular customer? Sometimes startups beat around the bush here, because they have not yet figured out the answer to this question.
A bad pitch deck devotes a lot of real estate to explaining the technical details of the company’s technology.
A good pitch deck emphasizes the business opportunity, not the attributes of your technology. It communicates at a high level what the value proposition of your business is but doesn’t get too far into the weeds. You can stash technical details in your appendix — if relevant questions come up during a Q&A session, you can reference them at that point.
A bad pitch deck is too long.
A good pitch deck prioritizes quality over quantity. This will help you keep your pitch brief and on schedule, which has two benefits: it demonstrates to investors that you can succinctly communicate your ideas, and it leaves time for the audience to ask questions.
A bad pitch deck assumes the same information should be delivered in every setting.
A good pitch deck starts with understanding the audience the entrepreneur is addressing. What do they know about your business? How much sector-specific context does the group have? Should this be a pitch presentation at all? After all, not every situation requires a pitch deck; sometimes, it is better to have a conversation and understand the motivations of the stakeholders you are speaking with, and then talk about how you can specifically address their challenges.
How to make your pitch deck a good one
Developing a good pitch deck can be difficult, but thankfully there are great resources that exist to help. Check out our blog post How to Get the Series A Pitch Deck Right for tips on how to assemble your pitch deck.
Here’s a quick excerpt from that blog post that outlines what should be in your deck:
Generally speaking, decks should more or less have the content and flow of this outline:
Title/Intro: Include a “tagline” and use the opportunity to set the context for your audience
Problem: Lay out the issue at hand and current solutions, before talking about yours
Solution: Focus on the value prop of your solution, not your technology attributes
Results: Show customer traction (include quotes), successful pilots, current revenue
Market opportunity: Identify bottoms-up TAM (Total Addressable Market), showing the problem is worth solving for
Competitive landscape: Differentiate on strategy, not each attribute of your technology
Business model: Highlight sales channels and customer acquisition approach
Milestones & next steps: Explain what you will accomplish with the investor’s money
Team: Take the opportunity to highlight the mix of skills on the team and where are the gaps
Round details: Set stage for timing, size of raise, status of round, etc.
Another good resource for what to include in your pitch deck is this blog post from technology entrepreneur Michael Wolfe.
When you sit down to develop your pitch deck, keep in mind that you are not just sharing information, you’re telling a story about a big problem that exists about how you can solve it. Also, don’t despair if these recommendations seem foreign to you. Assembling a great pitch deck and delivering a strong pitch are not innate abilities — they are skills that must be learned and practiced. The resources noted above are a good starting point but are just the tip of the iceberg — good luck as you develop a great pitch deck for your business!
Interested in working with Clean Energy Trust? Put your knowledge of developing good pitch decks to use and apply for investment from Clean Energy Trust’s 501vc® Seed Fund, which invests $100k — $300k in early-stage cleantech startups in the Mid-Continent region of the United States. Apply before January 17, 2020 to make the Winter 2020 Investment Cycle: https://www.cleanenergytrust.org/apply/
