The team slide is one of the most important slides in a pitch deck. Investors spend a significant amount of time on this slide to assess the background and expertise of the founders and their ability to lead the company.
What this video covers
What’s the most important slide in your pitch deck? Some investors may think it’s the financials. Some investors think it’s probably the problem or the solution. But the team has to be one of the most important slides. In fact, there are studies that were conducted that determined that investors, on average, spend 2 minutes, 41 seconds per presentation, and out of those 2 minutes, 41 seconds, the two slides that they spend the most amount of time on are the financials and also the team. So the team is a critical component of it because it’s going to allow for the investor to know what kind of background, what kind of expertise, and how well those founders or that team are going to be able to steer the ship into the right path, into the right journey.
When it comes to understanding what the investor is going to look for when they’re looking at the team, when they’re looking at maybe making an investment, doing the due diligence, or reviewing your slide, they want to come across two things: 1) The ability to execute because as they say, “5% is the idea; 95% is the execution.” They want to know that over the course of time, whatever promises that you and your team are making, you’re actually delivering over the course of time. So, that’s for the ability of execution.
When it comes to the commitment, you want people that are going to be sticking around for the long run. One of the things that you can do and that you can convey is essentially that you’ve put together a plan or an equity incentive plan where you are rewarding your employees over the course of the long run in the event that certain milestones or perhaps a certain period of time that they stick around.
When it comes to the capabilities, in terms of the capabilities, the investor is going to want to know what is the domain expertise that you have and that your team has and for how long have you been involved in this space, in this segment? What have you done in the past? Perhaps when you’re there looking at your team, they’re going to want to know what other companies have they been at?
Who is going to count as part of the team on the pitch deck? Here, you’re going to have three key areas. You’re going to have on one end, the cofounders. You’re going to have the executives, and you’re going to have the advisors, and perhaps members of the board of directors, obviously, depending on your stage and in which lifecycle you are in, in the execution of the business.
The cofounders are who created this business, whether it was you or whether it was you and your partners. Basically, this is what you’re going to be outlining.
Now, the executives, essentially what you want to do is, you want to include the C-suite. You want to avoid including your intern or including this person that just started as a super junior because it’s, as we said, all about the expertise and the authority that you have in the space.
On the advisors, you do not want to put the executives and then also the advisors in one single slide because that could be overwhelming. So break it out where you have the executives and the founders on one slide and then the advisors or the board members on another slide.
- Now, the other thing is the commitment. When you’re, for example, putting in your team slides, make sure that you can put your hands on the fire that those individuals are going to be sticking around for at least six months or more. Otherwise, what you’re doing is you’re adding more concerns rather than removing concerns. Remember that in fundraising, it’s all about removing concerns because the concerns that you’re going to encounter are what separate you and the money. That’s why you want to remove those concerns, and you do not want to add more.
