What makes a successful pitch deck, including its structure, length, and content. It also covers common reasons why some pitch decks fail.
What makes a successful pitch deck, including its structure, length, and content. It also covers common reasons why some pitch decks fail.
hello everyone this is alejandro crematis and today we're going to be talking about interesting facts and data around pitch sticks [Music] so before we get started make sure that you hit that subscribe button and this way you will never miss out on any of the videos that we roll out every week so are you ready to raise capital pitch sticks are really the ultimate the ultimate document that investors are going to look to review so essentially in today's video we're going to be talking about the different facts the different data what goes in successful pitch sticks what goes in pitch decks that fail and perhaps you can use that data and those facts to compile better your slides and to optimize for those chances of being successful and getting that money in so without further ado let's get into it so before anything let's talk about what pit sticks are so a pit stick is ultimately the form
of presentation that investors are going to expect in order to really review and understand your business and to consider a potential investment now those pitch sticks they are between 15 to 25 slides in terms of length and they are essentially slides that combine images that combine text and that follow a certain flow and structure like cover problem solution and so forth in order for them to get what you're up to so that's pretty much it now the pitch decks typically you would put them into a google drive or into a dropbox and then essentially you grab that link and that link you share with the investors so that they can review the slides in a very easy and concise way so there is over a thousand pit sticks being created every day i mean to give you an idea that's a crazy amount because venture capital firms they only invest in 1 500 companies every year so think about the amount of
pit sticks that are being created and only the small amount of companies that end up receiving an investment a first-time investment from those venture capital firms so it's almost none so again really standing out putting a compelling story it's going to be absolutely everything to capture the attention and to move touch and inspire with your story these investors so 10 slides those are essentially what are going to determine for you to get money so you don't need to go like the the lengthy route just create 10 slides you know you can put there the cover the back cover so maybe it can get you up to 15 but essentially those 10 slides where you're covering the essence of the story you really need to nail it the others the other slides that you may add on top of those 10 could be to dress it up to create a nice wrapper around the story and your packaging and positioning but again you need
to be very clear very concise and have a very nice balance between the images and the text that you're adding as part of the pitch stick in terms of font size the best font size is 30 points this is why you have people like guy kawasaki that are recommending and again you want to follow this direction because you want to have a nice font size here in terms of size because the investor ultimately is going to be skimming through the presentation they're going to be reviewing super fast so you want to allow them to go and read super fast your pit stick and they don't have the time to go word by word like super slowly so make it easy for them to review your document super fast typically investors only spend two minutes and 41 seconds per presentation that's it so that's why when i say that investors are really skimming through your presentation they actually are skimming to the presentation
so you only have two minutes and 41 seconds that's it that's the amount of time that is going to determine whether you are or you are not going to get that introductory meeting to be able to sit down and pitch them what you're up to so typically investors only invest in one percent of the pitches that they receive so to give you an idea in venture capital firms they probably are going to see 400 pitches and out of those 400 pitches they would only invest in one out of those companies that's it so it's a very small chance and for that reason not only you want to make sure that you're putting all that packaging and that pit stick in a very powerful way but you also need to make sure that you get a nice warm introduction that is going to push your pit stick to get in front of the person and the decision maker so that you are getting closer to getting that money so 100 is the number of
pitches that you're gonna be delivering in order to just get one single investor that's pretty much it so the odds are against you it's a numbers game and you need to pitch as many investors as you can and obviously as many investors that are related to your business because if you are in fintech you're not going to go and pitch an investor in healthcare they have nothing to do with your space so you need to optimize the chances you need to optimize your time and for that reason you need to only go after investors that have a desire in opportunities like the one that you have 12 weeks that's the average amount of time that it takes to close a seat round of financing that's it and that's from beginning all the way to close now if it's taking more than 12 weeks to really close the run of financing then something may be fundamentally wrong whether with your business with your story with
what you're pitching and that's the reason why you may want to close it up and if you don't have the money by then then you need to just go back to the drawing board and reflect back on what have been some of the concerns that you have been hearing from investors and perhaps tweak and redo whatever you need to do in your story so that you can perhaps go back at it again in a little bit of time so investors spend the most amount of time on the team on the financials and then also on the competition those are the three most important slides and according to data the one the the ones where the investor spends you know really like most of the time reviewing so again the team you want to make sure that people are able to understand why they should invest in you and your team members versus investing in another team here you want to make sure that you're putting front and center the
capabilities the expertise the skill set and perhaps some of the accomplishments that you've done in the past as individuals that coming together it makes this thing incredibly powerful on the financials instead of perhaps putting a screenshot from your financial model you want to break it down you want to add beautiful graphs please like spend the extra time maybe the extra money get a freelancer to help with the design so that investors can digest very easily how money is coming in how money is coming out that's going to come a super long way and then on the competition you want to create like in a in a matrix type of thing with y-axis x-axis and yourself on the top right and then everyone else across the different quadrants and essentially don't leave anyone of your market out because then people are going to think that you're trying to hide some of those competitors so that's why you
want to put everyone out there that is competing directly or indirectly against you in a way where people can see it can acknowledge it and appreciate where you're at and what makes you different from everyone else only 58 percent of pitch sticks that are successful include financials now this is a crazy stat because you got to remember that financials are essentially the slight or the slides that investors spend the most amount of time on reviewing so the the fact that only a small percentage not a hundred percent of them include them that means that if you were to just include the financials that's going to be putting you far ahead of everyone else and remember that as an entrepreneur you are going after the same dollars as other entrepreneurs once that money is invested that's it that's it because a fund especially a venture capital firm is not going to be investing in competing
business so you want to be able to optimize your chances so that you can get that money quicker than potentially a competitor that that also wants to pitch that same venture capital firm so again try to have the financials put them in a way that they can appreciate them that they can digest them super easily and that's going to be giving you a nice edge when it comes to securing potentially the money so 20 minutes that's the amount of time that it should take you to deliver your presentation so if you are being asked asked if you are being invited to present your your your pit stick you gotta allocate at least 20 minutes so that's going to be if you have like 20 slides about a minute or so per slide there's going to be some slides where you're going to be spending most amount of time versus others that not so much time again the three most important slides as we said is going to be the
team it's going to be…