pitch, seedObviously, there’s no silver bullet here, but here’s the result of my research so far about pitch deck structures and tips. (Seed round pitch)
Is there something missing ? Some way to improve further ?
Title slide : name, logo, one liner (in my case : digital protection for paper document)
Quote : 3 famous people that liked my project and what they said : one business man, one journalist, one field expert
Why the current market suck, in my case : security printing uses middle age old technologies, literally
What’s a disruptive innovation (believe it or not, most Chinese VCs don’t know the concept !) : slide not needed for Silicon Valley VCs I guess
Explanation of my technology : What it can do, not how it does it
Business model : including why they would want to pay and what happens if they don’t (anti piracy strategy)
Comparison with other traditional security printing techniques : a 2D graph, with cheap (up) / expensive (down) on one axis, less secure (left) / more secure (right). I put my tech on the top right.
Presentation of other digital security printing techniques : competitors with a similar technology
Why we do better than the competitors : 4 key points were we are better
Traction : logos of big companies that signed up for our beta
Market size : total market and target accessible market
Revenues forecast : 0 the first two years, 25 million usd after 5 years. This slide includes how much I raise
Team slide : Y combinator style, with beautiful pictures and only the 3-4 key points (not one point per person, only the points that matters, some persons have no points, some have 2)
Thanks slide with an inspiring quote
Bonus tech slide for the techies that want to dig into the how of the technology
In the whole ppt I have no text under a size of 32 pt
I write “2014©company name Strictly confidential” in tiny prints on the bottom of every pages (to keep the patentability of my tech)
There’s a sensible flow there. You could trim it to 6-10 slides, but you already know that. So I’m going to focus on how to build in a bit more tip to the bullet, silver or otherwise.
As far as I can see, there’s only one slide that really matters from the investor’s point of view. That’s slide 7. If you truly have higher security at lower cost, I’m listening. If not, then I’m only interested if I have a portfolio gap.
So as you know, you need to have in the top of your mind ten times the content on the slides, focused on the questions you want to answer and the questions you mustn’t duck. That is going to mean testing this claim to destruction from three angles.
First, you need to demonstrate that it’s important. Every industry has a backlog of innovation that can increase quality and decrease cost. So you have to show not just that you have something better than the competition, but that you are creating new market space where the competition can’t go.
Second, you need to find every other potential challenger who aspires to be in your quadrant. Because if you’ve demonstrated that the incumbents aren’t going to be the playmakers, you’ve moved the focus of questioning. So you need to line up every potential and actual player, and know how you’re going to partner with, outpace or outflank them.
Third, and last, you need to build an evidence bundle of why it’s demonstrably true. What are the tests and objective measures, who are the people outside your team who are staking their reputations, who are the customers who are saying what they’ll do that’s totally new, as soon as you deliver the solution on top of the technology you’ve shown them?
As I say, most of this work isn’t to make new slides or change old ones, it’s to make you stand out under questioning. But some of it will need to slip in. So for instance, I really don’t care who “likes your project” (slide 2). Lots of famous people like liking projects: it costs nothing. But if you’ve got someone in your corner who’s really, really challenged you, that’s golden.
Similarly I don’t care there’s a thing called disruptive innovation. But if there’s a sector that owns a market and is holding its customers back from doing new things that don’t make sense to the suppliers, and you’ve a bunch of those customers in tow, you have my undivided attention.
Good luck! I’m looking forward to a new wave of security printing!
Late answer, but fwiw Sequoia pitch deck is kind of the standard template. They've got good resources as well that are relevant to pitches.
I also like the format of Howard Love's pitch deck.
Overall I'd suggest following the trend and not try to be too unique as VCs look for specific information. All slides aren't as important, but having them shows due diligence (in the pitch you may only spend 20s on some).
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