As a seasoned entrepreneur with a history of securing millions in venture capital, I’ve seen countless pitches and identified recurring pitfalls. There’s an abundance of advice out there, but what matters is understanding and applying it effectively. The guidance I offer here is derived from a veteran venture capitalist and a long-term board member of one of my startups. It’s straightforward, proven advice.
When preparing your pitch, whether it’s a slide deck, a PDF, or a brief Zoom presentation, mastering these 10 points is crucial. They may seem basic, but their strategic order and integration into your narrative are often overlooked by founders overwhelmed by excessive, sometimes irrelevant advice.
The following talking points are to answer the single most important question in the minds of your investors: How will they make money?
It is amazing how many pitches forget this and jump straight to what is being built. Speak to your audience.
1. Title Slide: Define Your Business
With investors inundated with pitches, a concise title slide helps quickly categorize your business, whether it’s in cloud computing, AI, or another domain. This clarity sets the stage for your narrative.
So use that title slide to put a few words that help frame what you do — this may be your tagline (though judging by some of the taglines I’ve seen, you may be better off deviating and using something with more clarity). Net, net don’t waste your Title slide; use it to begin the framing of your story.
2. Your Credibility: Why You Started the Company
Begin with your personal story — why did you start this company? This isn’t about your team (that comes later); it’s about you. For early-stage startups, your personal story and vision are what catch an investor’s attention. Share your motivations and what you aim to achieve.
For most early-stage startups, you don’t really have a track record (either yourself or for the startup that you are fundraising for) — so investors need some reasons to pay attention to you and your vision for what is to come.
You will be surprised how people start paying attention to you once they know a little about who you are.
3. The Problem: Define and Dramatize
What is the problem or challenge that you are targeting? Dramatize it in simple terms — perhaps that means by describing the impact on consumers, even when it is an enterprise challenge.
Describe what’s at stake. What happens if the problem isn’t solved?
4. How much money is there to be made? Market Opportunity
So, having set up the challenge, it’s time to communicate how big the problem is. How you do this will determine how much attention you get in the next several minutes; it also speaks to “How much money I will make” from the investor’s perspective.
Highlight the market’s size and potential profit. This isn’t just about market sizing (TAM, SAM, SOM); it’s about painting a vivid picture of the lucrative opportunity awaiting the investors.
5. How are people solving this challenge today? Competitive Landscape
Next comes the section on how people are trying to solve the problem today. They may be spending money on incomplete solutions or adjacent solutions, or doing it manually, or just plain ignoring it. By describing the competitive landscape, you shape your story by showing where the weak points in the market are and how ultimately, your solution wil deliver the greatest benefits. Do not skip this section, and include it early.
Understanding the competitive landscape is crucial for positioning your solution as superior and more beneficial.
6. What’s your solution, and why’s it different?
You may have noticed that only now are we talking about what you are building, but we have laid the groundwork for people to pay attention to you as the founder and to pay attention to the sector.
Now, describe what your product in its ultimate form will deliver how it will fill the gaps in the market and knock out the competition. The human brain is often not great at absorbing lots of information — give it the differences or comparisons, and it fares much better.
I often start off this section with “Imagine…” Imagine if you could solve this problem for everyone, at a fraction of the cost….
7. What is your Business Model?
Now that you have described your solution and framed it with other competitive options, it’s time to describe how you will make money — this should cover the phases of your product — short-term, medium-term, and long term to show how you will achieve the full revenue run rates.
8. Go-to-Market (GTM) Strategy
Having described your Business Model, the question is, what is your Go To Market plan now, and how does it evolve in the future?
Note: A go-to-market plan that only involves sending money to Google and Meta for advertising is not going to be looked at favourably. Everyone knows that ads are part of the GTM strategy, but if it’s the only thing, without any hacks or any other unique advantages to leverage, it just means investors’ money is going to Google and Meta.
9. The Team — Who is helping you?
Describe your team — the team may be people you’ve hired or contracted, or it may include your Advisors. The key here is to show that you have the ability to execute. If you are a technical founder, people will look to your team/cofounder/advisors to provide business expertise and vice versa.
On this slide, you should be emphasizing which companies people formerly worked at or what expertise they bring to the table versus just listing their job title.
For Advisors, ideally, you will recruit different advisors at different points in your company’s lifecycle. Initially, people who will be a lightning rod for funding — make sure they are funding you, too. Later, as you go to market, your Advisors should represent credibility to your future customers.
10. What is the ask?
Don’t forget to state what you are looking for — and for what the money will be used for.
Note: It’s ok to have core functions like Marketing listed here — it’s essential, but if you say, we will hire a marketing person to figure out how to get to market, investors will frown at this. The expectation is always that the founding team can step up to multiple roles and can then augment existing capabilities through hiring.
Finally, confidence and authenticity are key. Embrace your unique journey and story. When these elements are combined with the above points, you’re set to deliver a compelling and persuasive pitch.
Good luck! Remember, successful fundraising is as much about how you present your story as the content of the story itself.
To make it easy to answer any questions, I have created a custom GPT Fundraising Master Chatbot, which you can interact with to clarify anything you have read in this article.