This video focuses on how to deliver a successful pitch deck presentation during a Demo Day, highlighting the importance of a strong presentation for attracting investors. It covers strategies for engaging investors during the short presentation and networking sessions that follow.
What this video covers
Demo Day is a very big deal for startup founders, especially those that are going through accelerators and through incubator programs. In today’s video, we’re really going to be breaking it down for you with all the insights, with all the step-by-step processes to make it happen in a really big way. So with that being said, let’s get into it.
When you go to Y Combinator, you’re seeing at least 1,000 investors that are watching every single minute of your presentation, which is going to be anywhere between five to ten minutes.
They also leave some networking time so that after all the presentations, they leave the opportunity for the investors to meet the founders on a more personalized networking type of environment. And demo days are the combination of a three-to-four-month process where essentially the accelerator program has helped you on the product, on the way that you’re looking at things, or your story, or maybe thinking about the team and how you’re going to be assembling that rockstar team of individuals, and the 18 to 24-month plan in terms of the execution that you have in front of you.
You need to do your research so that you’re going after the investors that are most inclined to actually make an investment in your business because here’s the thing: the amount of time that you’re investing on others is going to be time that you’re taking away from really investing on the people that are most likely to invest in your business.
Know your competitors. There could be competition as part of that batch, as part of the people that are going to be presenting that day. So, again, you want to speak with the organization and maybe try to see the way that they’re going to be handling their own presentation. You want to go out there and make sure that you are seen as the clear winner because, in many instances, they may not be direct competitors, but they may be indirect competitors, and they’re going to be competing for that money.
You want to tweak and tailor your pitch deck. Here, typically, you’re looking at 15 to 20 slides, but you also want to make sure that there’s not a lot of text and that you also have the visuals in there so that they can actually connect with you, connect with you on what you’re saying, on the way that you’re describing it.
Now, you’re always going to be having the short pitch deck version and the long pitch deck version. The short is the one that you would be using at a demo day where it’s all about visuals and then connecting with you.
And, by the way, you can use the pitch deck template below on the link that you will see under this video where there are founders all over the world using it to raise millions. So, don’t start from scratch. Grab that template and get in motion.
You want to also get comfortable with the setting. You want to know where you’re going to be pitching, in front of who, who’s going to be there, what’s going to be the arrangement. The more visibility that you have, the better, so that you know what kind of room you’re heading into.
Rehearsing is everything. You want to rehearse, rehearse, and rehearse. What exactly is going to be your narrative? And how that narrative is going to come in parallel with the slides as you’re going from one slide to another. But the thing is that you want to sound authentic. You don’t want to sound like a robot because people don’t connect with robots.
And as I said earlier in the video, they all want to connect with you, and that’s why they’re placing the investments. So, come across authentic; let them see that you’re actually doing this, you’re breathing this, you’re living this. This is your life, and that passion is going to come across. It’s going to get them contagious, and you’re going to be able to touch them, move them, and inspire them, so they actually end up becoming investors.
