This video explains how to effectively present financials within a pitch deck, especially for startups without revenue. It highlights the importance of the financial slide to investors and offers guidance on tackling this crucial aspect positively.
What this video covers
The financials are supercritical. When you’re raising money, it is without a doubt one of the things that the investor is going to zoom in on the most. In today’s video, we’re going to be walking you step-by-step to how to address it, how to tackle it and really do it on a positive note and come out strong. So with that being said, let’s get into it.
The financials always have a very important place in the pitch deck. Typically, you’re going to be putting them toward the end of the presentation. But, remember, there are studies that have determined that investors, on average, spend 2:41 reviewing a pitch deck.
By the way, you can use the pitch deck template below, which founders are using all over the world to raise millions. But here’s the thing, out of those 2 minutes and 41 seconds that investors spend on every presentation, the one slide where they spend the most amount of time is the financials page.
Here’s the thing: we don’t know where we’re going to be tomorrow because things change rapidly, and, obviously, you may not have revenue – your company does not have revenue today. But the investor wants to know how you’re going to be able to monetize tomorrow, in the future? That’s why it is very important to really give them an understanding that you’ve done your homework, that you have a good grasp on the numbers, and that you know when money would come in and money would go out. Having those numbers in place really makes a difference.
Again, on the pitch deck, the last thing that you want is to just take a screenshot and just copy/paste it in your presentation. Be more diligent. Create a nice summarized version of that with a beautiful graph and very nicely designed, so that it is easier for them to digest because the investors don’t want to read; they don’t want to spend time; they want to skim through the presentation. For that reason, you want to make it stupid simple for them so that they’re able to get it right away.
When we’re talking about what financials to show, ultimately, this is like everything. There are going to be some investors that are going to expect that you show them up to three-year projections or maybe historicals. Then other people may want up to five years.
Those types of numbers are going to give them an understanding of how to benchmark you against other players in the market. Then, also, how they can potentially multiple the outcome with a potential investment either on the business or ultimately on their investment because they’re going to be doing their numbers to estimate what potential returns they can make out of investing in your business. For this, ultimately, you want to make it easier for them. You want to give it in a way in which they can digest it easily.
This is not unnormal or the type of thing that doesn’t happen. It happens all the time, startups that don’t have revenue during the early stages. Obviously, you’re not going to be focusing as much on the way that you would engineer those numbers if you were a little bit farther along on the execution of your business.
Most of your numbers are going to be projections, so just keep it simple and go straight to the point.
There are other metrics that you can rely on when you are pitching investors, and perhaps you don’t have those revenue numbers. One of them is the market size – if the market is big enough, and investors want the market to be
billion-plus so that it justifies the risk that they’re encountering by investing in your business, and that needs to be big enough.
Now, the other thing that you could also talk about is the customer acquisition. You can talk about the cost. You can talk about the channels that you’re using, the distribution that you have access to.
Financials are incredibly important. You ultimately want to nail it on the financials.
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