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33 Legendary Startup Pitch Decks and What You Can Learn From Them [+10 Free Templates]

A startup pitch deck is a brief presentation that provides investors with an overview of your new business and/or startup idea through presentation slides.

It usually focuses on showcasing your product, sharing your business model, giving a look into your monetization strategy, and introducing your team.

A startup pitch deck is an essential fundraising tool for successful startups, whether you’re looking to raise funding from $50,000, $500,000, or $50 million. However, an investor pitch deck is just one of the best pitch decks and examples we will share below.

Despite the brevity of the successful startup pitch decks, which usually run for 10 slides or less, creating a pitch deck that wins investment is not an easy task.

What Does a Successful Startup Pitch Deck Cover?

A great pitch deck covers key points through visuals and bullet points and usually has a competition slide, a problem slide, and a solution slide to explain your offering and the market.

Additionally, a business model slide and a team slide (if your business is developed enough to present these) can turn a good deck into a great startup pitch deck.

Don’t forget, a simple pitch deck is a good pitch deck—and you’re about to learn how to nail it.

In This Legendary Startup Pitch Deck Article You Will Find:

• Examples of 33 successful pitch decks
• Takeaways that you can apply when creating your own startup pitch deck
• Editable templates of 10 pitch decks that you can use for free

Looking for a winning pitch deck template ASAP to present in front of potential investors?   Try our free template created in collaboration with HighSpark – an agency that has helped more than 500 startups raise cumulatively over $80 million in funding. 

Here is the list of 33 of the best startup pitch deck examples that we will go through:

• ZenPayRoll (Now Gusto)
• Wealthsimple
• AppVirality
• Shape Integrated Software
• Ooomf (now Crew)
• Sequoia Capital

These startup pitch deck examples were created by top brands in tech. At the time, they were all small startups (seed stage companies) looking to raise money or venture capital through potential investors and grow their businesses. Sound familiar?!

We hope that their business idea and investor pitch decks will inspire you (and of course, potential investors).

If you are more of a visual learner than a reader type, you can watch a video summary of the first 10 startup pitch deck examples mentioned in this blog post:

Alternatively, if you’re ready to create your own pitch deck, we’ve added some startup pitch deck examples and pitch deck templates to the bottom of this article. You can go straight to them by clicking here . Or get access to Piktochart’s online design tool by signing up for a free account and choosing a presentation template to get started easily.

From behemoths like Facebook and YouTube to superstars like Buffer, together these startups have raised millions of dollars and are now worth billions!

It’s time to see how they did it.

33 Legendary Startup Pitch Deck Examples

1. facebook pitch deck.

Here’s a fun fact: Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist, and entrepreneur, was the first outside investor in Facebook back in 2004. That’s when Mark Zuckerberg first set out to turn his dorm room project into a lasting business. Zuckerberg received $500,000 from Peter Thiel.

Facebook’s pitch deck was more of a media kit  of sorts. It was containing the company’s value proposition, key metrics, and marketing services that were used to sell ads to potential clients.

Favorite takeaway : The focus of the startup pitch deck was based on solid numbers such as user engagement, traffic, and growth trajectory.

2. Airbnb pitch deck

Airbnb is a platform that allows people to list, find, and rent lodging.

This company is one of the greatest startup success stories of our time.

The now famous Airbnb pitch deck has become one of the best pitch decks for inspiring entrepreneurs around the world.

Favorite takeaway: The intro. It’s all about hooking your audience. You need to describe your business using as few words as possible. Imagine telling a 5-year-old what your business is about. If you can’t do that, it’s time to put some time into nailing it down.

3. Buffer pitch deck

Buffer is a social media scheduling platform that helps you schedule content for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.

The almighty startup pitch deck that helped Buffer to raise half a million dollars gained popularity by becoming one of the first pitch decks openly shared online. The founder decided to put it up to help other startups to raise funds.

Favorite takeaway: Similar to Facebook, the deck was based on solid numbers from Buffer’s users (e.g., 800 users, $150,000 annual revenue run rate, etc.)

4. Square pitch deck

Square is a company that allows merchants to accept mobile credit card payments via a dongle.

Favorite takeaway : Social proof! It doesn’t hurt to promote the management team if they’ve been with Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, PayPal, and more. It shows that your management team’s experience is an armor to the company. This detailed startup pitch deck outlines Square’s business model and a simple financial model that portrays its annual revenue and five-year growth rate.

5. LinkedIn pitch deck

Founded in 2002, LinkedIn is the top business-oriented social networking platform.

The company’s pitch talks a great deal about company values, the power of networking, and how it’s different from other social networks out there.

Favorite takeaway : The deck also provides an extensive analogy to showcase to investors what LinkedIn is. For example, it talks about “Web 1.0” vs. “Web 2.0”: Alta Vista was “Search 1.0”, and Google was “Search 2.0”. The deck talks about how LinkedIn is “Networking for Businesses 2.0”.

6. Mint pitch deck

Mint is a personal financial services tool that helps people track their spending and find ways to save money.

This startup pitch deck example was used in a competition and was never used for raising money, but it’s still a powerful deck that startups can learn from.

Favorite takeaway : This simple deck provides a clear value proposition to customers and investors. The creators of this deck also understood that one of the key concerns of an investor is the exit mechanism of his or her investments. I love how the deck highlights a number of exit strategy options.

7. MapMe pitch deck

MapMe allows users to create universally accessible (i.e., on smartphones, tablets, and computers) maps of anywhere they want with no coding required.

This startup deck was used to raise $1 million in seed funding.

Social proof almost always works. The deck showed that the startup had over 20,000 unique visitors, 18,000 monthly alerts, and12 minutes average sessions on the site.

Favorite takeaway : The pitch deck has fewer than 13 slides but provides investors with knowledge of the traction the site got going viral on social media and its go-to-market strategy.

8. LaunchRock pitch deck

LaunchRock allows users to create landing pages and quickly get their startups known through social media, even before the launch of their full site.

Favorite takeaway : As a more creatively designed pitch deck example, this pitch deck had only 15 slides but showed how the product works and the different ways it can be used. They also utilize an analogy similar to what LinkedIn had in their decks.

9. Mixpanel pitch deck

Mixpanel is an advanced analytics platform for mobile and the web. They not only measure page views but also analyze the actions people take. This is the series-B startup pitch deck for Mixpanel that helped them raise over $65 million.

Favorite takeaway : This pitch deck example started off with a problem: people guessing their analytics. It followed up by providing its solution to that problem and, ultimately, its competitive advantage. One of the best pitch decks, this is a great example of showing the problem and solution.

10. Moz pitch deck

Moz started out as an SEO company but has pivoted to support marketers across all inbound marketing strategies.

This is the series-B startup pitch deck for Moz which they used to raise over $18 million. If you’re an established startup, this is a great example of an investor pitch deck, and you can follow this guide. The pitch deck is packed with information about the company since it was founded five years prior to this pitch.

Favorite takeaway : Because the company had already been in operation for five years, they were able to present an accurate estimated revenue, revenue run rate, average customer lifetime value, cost of paid acquisition, etc.

11. Buzzfeed pitch deck

We all have a love-and-hate relationship with Buzzfeed, don’t we? I’m sure you’ve stumbled on their pages or watched their videos before. As of today, BuzzFeed has managed to raise over $240 million in investor capital (another great example of an investor pitch deck).

Favorite takeaway : SOCIAL PROOF! It doesn’t hurt to start a pitch deck with big numbers the company has, like the millions of users visiting the website on a monthly basis and quotations from large organizations such as CNN.

12. YouTube pitch deck

YouTube was acquired by Google in 2006 for $1.6 billion. Like Facebook, this company doesn’t require any introduction. Unfortunately, this is not the original deck. This is YouTube’s pitch deck to Sequoia Capital (one of the most established VC investors who’s often regarded as one of the industry’s best), which was released through a legal proceeding.

Favorite takeaway : The company wanted to be the primary outlet for video content, and it succeeded in doing just that. It goes to show that if you know what your product can do, are able to show its potential, and build on the momentum gained through early investments to create that, then you can achieve its potential. If you’re aiming to build an investor pitch deck to land a VC like Sequoia Capital, this presentation slide deck is a great template for you!

13. Manpacks pitch deck

Manpacks is a platform that delivers men’s essentials such as underwear, razors, grooming, and other products.

The company raised $500,000 with this pitch deck.

Favorite takeaway : This deck stands out! They clearly understand who they are, and they stayed that way throughout the entire presentation. The startup pitch deck is filled with a fun tone that helps explain the product well.

14. Foursquare pitch deck

Foursquare is a mobile platform that helps you find the best places to go in your area.

Favorite takeaway : This pitch deck does a great job using screenshots of social proof that the app already has from its users sharing tweets of them being the ‘mayor’ of a particular area.

15. Flowtab pitch deck

Flowtab was an app that allowed people to order drinks quickly at a crowded bar. Despite shutting down, the founders still made an effort to help other startups.

Favorite takeaway : Simplicity. This pitch deck example does well explaining critical information like the problem, the solution, their business model, and traction. You can’t really go wrong with this pitch deck.

16. Dwolla pitch deck

Dwolla is a payment solution that allows users to send, receive, and request funds from other users. This 18-slide startup pitch deck landed the company $16.5 million.

Favorite takeaway : Most startups are founded because of a problem they faced, but not many people tell their story well through their pitch decks. In their slide deck, Dwolla shared a great story of how the founder paid $50,000 a year in credit card fees and then created a solution for never doing it again.

17. ZenPayRoll  (Now Gusto) pitch deck

Gusto (previously ZenPayroll) is a cloud-based solution tool for small businesses to pay employees.

The company raised $6 million with this pitch deck.

Favorite takeaway : This isn’t just a startup pitch deck. It is a template that you can use and replicate easily by filling in the blanks.

18. Bliss pitch deck

Bliss provides metrics for coders and allows them to collaborate easily.

The company raised over $400,000 using Angel List.

Favorite takeaway : The pitch deck was well composed with a clear understanding of the product and the investors they were pitching to. This is one of the best pitch decks to use if you know your target market.

19. Adpushup pitch deck

Adpushup allows companies to maximize ad revenues through advanced A/B testing. They raised more than $632,000 in investments.

Favorite takeaway : This slide deck proves that going back to the basics works. This pitch deck has basic principles like a great introduction, an outline of problems, potential solutions, market opportunities, products, case studies, milestones, traction, and a future plan.

20. Wealthsimple pitch deck

Wealthsimple is Canada’s first online investment manager. They raised more than $2 million in seed funding with this slide deck.

Favorite takeaway : The startup pitch deck is sweet and short but effective. Our favorite part is the transformation of the industry, which is laid out in a table format.

21. AppVirality pitch deck

AppVirality allows app developers to grow their platforms using growth method techniques proven by other startups.

Favorite takeaway : Our favorite takeaway is how the flow of the pitch deck goes through the problem, the proven solution, and how it works within their app to their target market in multiple slides.

22. Shape Integrated Software pitch deck

Shape Integrated Software is budget management software that helps PPC analysts manage various budgets across different channels.

Favorite takeaway : When you have the traction to back your startup, use it. Shape clearly took advantage of it and presented it clearly in their pitch deck.

23. Podozi pitch deck

Podozi is an online e-commerce platform based in Nigeria.

Favorite takeaway : Most startup pitch decks work well when they’re short and sweet, in multiple slides, like Podozi’s. The best takeaway is the working partnership with large brands that this platform already has.

24. Fittr pitch deck

Fittr is a platform that designs custom workouts tailored to equipment, access, time management, and goals.

Favorite takeaway : As a user of this platform, we love the investment goals and the purpose of what the company is planning to use it for.

25. Swipes pitch deck

Swipes is a task manager app to help its users increase their productivity.

Favorite takeaway : One of their pages used social proof of quotations from The Next Web and Lifehacker. You can’t go wrong with that.

26. Canvas pitch deck

Canvas replaces paper-based processes with affordable and easy-to-use mobile apps and forms. They raised $9 million with these decks.

Favorite takeaway :  Instead of saying what they do, the second slide in their pitch deck shows how their startup helps businesses. No words are needed.

27. Ooomf  (now Crew) pitch deck

Crew (formerly Ooomf & then PickCrew) is a freelancer marketplace that connects mobile and web developers with projects or work. This deck was used to raise over $2 million dollars.

Favorite takeaway : Well-designed with an easy-to-understand flow.

28. Cubeit pitch deck

Cubeit is a mobile application that allows users to aggregate content from anywhere. Cubeit used this 13-slide deck to raise seed funding before they even had a finished product.

Favorite takeaway : A strong introduction will get investors to pay attention. Their deck starts out with a clear message, which was that “owning more devices doesn’t make your life easier”. I can’t help but pay attention to how this company will help.

29.  Castle pitch deck

Castle was a startup that let rental owners put their properties on autopilot. This was the deck Castle used to raise $270,000 for their startup.

Favorite takeaway : Great design and easy to digest.

30.  Sequoia Capital pitch deck

Sequoia Capital is one of the leading investment firms in Silicon Valley. This deck is a template they recommend following.

Favorite takeaway : It’s like having the keys to the kingdom. You don’t have to guess what this investment giant is looking for. They tell you straight away.

31. Uber pitch deck

When Uber hit the scene, they fundamentally reimagined urban transportation. Their pitch deck tells this audacious story perfectly. Simple yet impactful, it illustrates the problem of expensive taxis and car services, then introduces Uber as the affordable, tech-driven solution.

They use stark data points to highlight the financial opportunity, a vital touch for potential investors.

As you create your pitch, remember Uber’s two key strengths: painting a clear problem-solution scenario and using compelling data to underscore their market potential. This strategy not only shows understanding of their market but also communicates their transformative vision effectively.

Favorite takeaway : The deck is clean and minimalist. The flow is easy to follow, and you get a clear idea of what’s the problem they’re trying to solve, and how they solve it.

32. WeWork pitch deck

WeWork’s pitch deck beautifully encapsulates its community-driven approach to shared workspaces.

They use visually appealing slides that mirror their innovative, modern brand. Their pitch deck deftly articulates the benefits of shared workspaces in today’s economy, setting the stage for their unique value proposition.

Favorite takeaway : what we do, who we do it for, why we do it; the deck walks you through their company vision with smart visuals and copy. We loved how they generated urgency by highlighting how co-working spaces were a fast-growing trend and investors could miss out on a profitable investment if they didn’t act quickly.

33. MatterMark pitch deck

MatterMark’s pitch deck is a testament to the power of storytelling. utilizing clean visuals to aid comprehension and coupled with succinct copy to keep the narrative engaging. The 30-slide deck earned the platform $6.5 million in seed A funding.

Favorite takeaway : Strong visual storytelling through the use of charts and graphs. In just a few moments, you can see where the majority of their revenue comes from compared to their other revenue streams.

Summary of Pitch Deck Template Takeaways

To sum up, a strong startup pitch deck not only serves to reinforce your brand to the target audience or investors, but shows your business plan and unique offering through the slides presented; using a problem slide, a solution slide, and a traction slide including concise bullet points. 

The best startup pitch deck also shows off your company’s personality, through the inclusion of a team slide or similar in the next few slides, to be presented after your business plan is clearly outlined.

As your company grows, you’ll probably start thinking about the next stage of growth. You can use these successful pitch decks can as the foundation to make an investor deck for your next round of financing.

Look at the takeaways from these startup pitch decks as a guide to help you in your quest to raise funds and venture capital for your own startup for an investment round.

Here are some of the key takeaways from our pitch deck examples:

• Pitch decks don’t have to be formal or beautiful.
• A great pitch deck will provide an impactful intro or slogan.
• Keep your deck short (less than 20 pages).
• Use analogies to back up the points that you’re making.

After going through so many startup pitch deck examples, we recommend that to make your pitch presentation stand out you should:

• Start with a strong intro/vision.
• Show problems and offer solutions.
• Identify market opportunities.
• Showcase products/services clearly.
• Digest your business model
• Highlight financials
• Add social proof/case studies.
• Differentiate from competition.
• Show an experienced management team.

Designing a strong pitch deck could turn your business idea into a reality after convincing investors to provide support financial support to your project.

If you’re looking for additional information, DocSend shared lessons  they got learning from 200 startups who raised $360 million from their first pitch deck.

10 Pitch Deck Templates for You to Try

The following pitch decks are free templates available in Piktochart that you can use. This makes it easy to work on your slides without having to worry about design. We took care of that for you.

If you don’t have an account yet, just sign up for a free Piktochart account here and then click on one of the templates below.

To learn how the online pitch deck creator works, watch this on-demand demo .

1. Investment Pitch Deck Template With HighSpark

2. Finance Pitch Deck Template

3. Business Pitch Deck Template

4. Startup Pitch Deck Examples

5. Tech Pitch Deck Examples

6. Business Keynote Template 

7. Product Pitch Deck Template

8. Product Pitch Deck Template

9. App Product Presentation Template

10. Product Website Pitch Deck Template

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How to Create a Startup Pitch Deck Presentation

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single startup in possession of a good idea, must be in want of investors . OK, this is not the original quotation by Jane Austen, but this one is more up-to-date. If you are a young startup, more than often you will need a financial supporter. In this respect, pitch decks are perfect for gaining investors.

But, what is a pitch deck?

It is a type of presentation to attract the attention of investors who support your project or product. A pitch deck is, therefore, the ideal type of oral exposition to present your startup , from its inner workings to new projects. Moreover, pitch deck presentations are short, concise, visually attractive, and clear.

If you have more doubts about this topic, you can visit this other article on how to create a good business pitch deck . 

Now you may be wondering, how do I get the ideal pitch deck presentation for my startup ? How do I achieve all the previously mentioned characteristics? Don't worry! Slidesgo is always ready to give you a hand and we are going to provide you with some tips to create your startup's presentation, as well as, show you some examples of this type of presentation. Here we go! 

Tips to create a startup presentation

15 tips to create an amazing pitch deck for your startup, examples of startups presentation templates.

To begin with, the key to the success of these oral presentations lies in conveying ideas with simplicity . In other words, brevity and conciseness are your allies, since the time during which a person pays attention is quite limited. So don't bore your audience!

First things first . A stunning first impression is always an invitation to consider your proposal. Remember to use attention-grabbers at the beginning of your presentation, like personal stories or jokes. Create a powerful introduction about yourself and the company, dress the part, and be prepared for any sort of question!

As we said, it is a guarantee of success that a presentation is visually attractive and, at the same time, simple and clear. If the design is also professional and in line with the values of your startup, even better. You can try including illustrations, images, and other types of resources related to your business area (music, fashion...).

It is important to remember that looks (or an attractive bunch of slides) are not everything. You need to touch your investors, emotionally speaking, and allow them to observe the most human side of your startup . Tell them about the members of your team, and add pictures so they can see other human beings. And if you could hire a professional photographer to take those pictures, the better!

In consonance with what we said before, explain a little bit about the story of your startup. It is important to show your achievements and to highlight your successes. Make them understand that you are a winner!

Focusing on the pitch deck, there are certain sections that should be in this type of presentation to make it a success.

• Introduction , our company, and our team: it is of paramount importance that you introduce your team and your company to the financial supporters. It is key to talk about the skills and expertise of your members in order to grow and manage a successful startup.
• Problem and solution : customers have a need that only your product can satisfy. Talk here about your unique selling proposition, that is, how your startup is going to solve the problems of your future customers.
• A SWOT analysis : a study to assess your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
• Them vs. us, competitors : if you want investors to trust you, you need to show them your competitors and that you are better than them.
• Product overview and demo : in one of the slides you can include a preview of what the product will be with a video or a simulation. If the preview alone attracts attention... imagine what your startup will achieve with the finished product!
• Your plans : tell your supporters about your price plans and how they adjust to the competitive market.
• Traction : not all beginnings are easy and knowing where you've come from and where you're going will spark the interest of investors. You can help yourself with resources such as timelines.
• Case study : explore a phenomenon related to your product in a real-life context.
• Reviews : people love your product. To prove so, add the results of your surveys and include some good reviews of what your clients are saying about you!
• Awards : remember, you, your team, and your company are winners. Let your awards speak for you.
• Market size : How does your product fit in the market? In this section, prove that there is a place for your startup in the market and that, therefore, investors will more than recoup their contribution.
• Target :  who is your target audience? You need to define them: add age, demographic data, gender, socio-cultural and economic levels…
• Business model : provide an explanation behind the rationale of your startup. Explain how your startup works at the operational level and the ways in which it makes money.
• Timing and projected growth : talk about the future steps of your company and how much it will grow. Use a timeline to show the future and evolution of your company. Include your next steps and their projected growth. How do you see your company within 5-10 years? In the same fashion, you can also show the milestones achieved by your startup and the company roadmap.
• Investment : obviously, you need to specify the amount of money you need for your project, how you are going to use it, and how valuable it is for the growth and success of the company, so make this point clear. Show specific data about sales, clients, benefits, and expert insights. This information will make them realize that it is a good idea to invest in your company.

We have used the Retail Startup Pitch Deck presentation as an example of an explanation. Do you want to use it to present your startup? Just download it and customize it in a simple way! 

We have provided you with the theory and what you need to know to create your startup presentation. To illustrate how it can be applied in real cases, we are going to show you some examples of startup presentation templates . 

Tech Startup

If the foundations of your startup are based on technology, this design will be the right one to present it or to announce the new product you are working on. It includes gradients in blue-green, almost reaching a purple tone, a shade very much associated with the technological world! Its geometric illustrations will also help to contextualize the theme of your startup and your presentation. 

Music App Pitch Deck

With music, you can express everything that words can't. A project about a new music app is sure to be a hit! How about presenting it with this slideshow specifically created for a pitch deck about it? It has all the necessary sections to make investors go for your product. Take a look! 

Video Game Pitch Deck

Video games are on the agenda of the day! And this template fits perfectly with this theme. It offers a very technological style, as shown by its gradient backgrounds. This slide is for the case study, one of the sections of a pitch deck. Show how your product is the solution to a need in the market! 

Now it's time to make your pitch deck for your startup. You can find many templates in addition to the ones we have shown you, in our pitch deck section or in the special section dedicated to startups . Together, with your content and our templates, investors will undoubtedly choose your product. 

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23 Best Startup Pitch Deck Examples: Famous in Tech (For 2024)

Are you pitching your startup idea or raising more money for your business?

Presenting a startup pitch deck can be a tough experience. I t can make you very nervous and can even feel traumatic. Imagine exposing yourself in front of a group of strangers who either know a little or not at all about your company.

Aside from introducing yourself and your company, you also need to present a lot of things.  The problem is—you don’t have enough time when you're presenting a pitch. That's why you need the best pitch deck design that'll help you explain even the most complex topics. 

Quantity of slides is important. However, you also want a PPT deck design that lets you present with clarity. Investor decks are shared in person and through email. They may be sent before or as a follow-up after pitching to VCs. So, the right design is critical for the best pitch decks. With the right PPT pitch deck design, you’ll be able to:

• Explain your most complex ideas.
• Show investors how your brand will become a leader in the industry.
• Share the story of how your company came to be.

Let's explore some pitch deck examples that'll help you find the  right pitch deck for your needs. You're on your way to creating the best pitch decks.

Jump to content in this section:

• Concord Business Plans
• SEOmoz Pitch Deck
• Facebook Pitch Deck
• Airbnb Pitch Deck
• Uber Pitch Deck
• Mint Pitch Deck
• Buffer Pitch Deck
• Front Pitch Deck
• Sequoia Capital Pitch Deck Template
• Copper Cow Coffee Pitch Deck
• Kickfolio Pitch Deck
• Reflect Pitch Deck
• Lexop Pitch Deck
• Mixpanel Pitch Deck
• Yalochat Pitch Deck
• Crema Pitch Deck
• Mattermark Pitch Deck
• Dwolla Pitch Deck
• Foursquare Pitch Deck
• Intercom Pitch Deck
• iCrowdU Pitch Deck
• Ooomf Pitch Deck

23 of the Best Startup Pitch Deck Examples (To Learn From for 2024)

If you're not sure how to begin, we can help. We will teach you how to make a pitch deck. We'll show you the important parts and give examples of successful startup decks.

Let's see 23 of the best pitch decks of all time on SlideShare. Here we go!

1. Concord Business Plans

Concord Business Plans specializes in designing business plans and pitch decks. These best startup pitch decks have raised more than $2.5 Billion for their clients. Each slide features a branded color scheme, icons, and white space. This makes the slides easy to understand and read.

2. SEOmoz Pitch Deck

SEOmoz Pitch Deck makes excellent use of charts and graphs to illustrate data. This startup pitch deck uses different colors for each statistic. On top of color, they also use illustrations throughout the startup pitch deck. That’s one example of using color and illustration to make even the best pitch decks more interesting and less intimidating. 

3. Facebook Pitch Deck

Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin created Facebook as a social network for universities. When they first tried to pitch the idea to potential investors, they didn’t have a clear business plan. You can't create a startup pitch deck that lacks a single focus.

They used the information they already had. This included their customer base, user engagement, and growth numbers. It's an example of a successful startup pitch deck for certain!

4. Airbnb Pitch Deck

The Airbnb company pitch deck is also one of the most searched for. This company is not only one of the biggest today, but it has also created a new niche in the travel and hotel industry.

Looking at the Airbnb startup pitch deck, you can learn a lot from it. But one of the principles that stands out is their use of the rule of three . You can see it in how they present the problem, the solution, the facts, the business model, and more:

Why the rule of three for startup pitch decks?

It’s simple, memorable and clean.

5. Uber Pitch Deck

Uber’s pitch deck was far from impressive. What caught the investor’s attention was the solution they provided. They were able to articulate the problem in a few short sentences using everyday words. After presenting the pain point, they presented their no-nonsense solution. 

6. Mint Pitch Deck

Mint , a personal financial services tool, has a simple pitch deck but the investors were drawn to it. First of all, it presented what value it can give to their users and partners. Second, they also understand that by putting their money in, each investor is exposed to different levels of risk. 

They put their investors’ minds to rest by creating some exit mechanisms to their investments.

7. Buffer Pitch Deck

Buffer is one of the top social media scheduling platforms. It allows you to schedule your content on Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, and LinkedIn. What makes this pitch deck popular is the presentation of solid facts and numbers. The presentation also covers their achievements. This includes their user count, yearly earnings, and app connections.

This allows investors to see something important. They are not investing in a failing company. Instead, they are supporting one that grows steadily over time.

8. Front Pitch Deck

It's important to clearly present the problem and solution in your pitch deck. This will grab the attention of potential investors. Front  not only did that, but they were able to create a simple visual without overloading the information. 

They were able to distill each problem into a single phrase making it catchy and memorable. They used a similar approach in their startup presentation. They showed a solution and explained its value.

9. Sequoia Capital Pitch Deck Template

Sequoia Capital is one of the leading VC firms in Silicon Valley. Looking at the pitch deck they recommend, it gives a clue to any startup what they're looking for. They recommend going straight to the point:

• what your company is all about
• the problem you see and the solution you offer
• your competition
• your product
• your business model 

Putting all this information in your pitch deck shows that you've done your research and are committed to success.

10. Copper Cow Coffee Pitch Deck

Copper Cow Coffee provides special Vietnamese coffee with 100% eco-friendly pour over technology. Their company pitch deck grabs attention with a few important words. They clearly explained the business potential and growth opportunities for the company.

11. Kickfolio Pitch Deck

Showing the growth and metrics of your company is something to be proud of. Thus, it makes sense if you highlight them to show your prospective investors how much you’ve grown. Kickfolio understood this so instead of using small graphs; it presented charts and numbers in each startup pitch deck slide. Why hide your metrics when you all worked hard to achieve what your company has?

12. Reflect Pitch Deck

Reflect is a mental health startup, has nailed what a killer pitch deck looks like—minimal yet all the information is there. Aiming to be a leader in mental healthcare that uses data-driven matching, they were able to reflect that by using facts and data in their pitch presentation example.  The data presented was straightforward and easy to follow.

13. Lexop Pitch Deck

Lexop is a startup offering certified, trackable emails with instant legal proof-of-delivery. Their startup pitch deck begins with crucial information and ends by introducing the team. By showing the managers and advisors, they create transparency and authority.

14. Mixpanel Pitch Deck

Mixpanel’s approach is simple. They know exactly who their target audience is. They understand what their audience needs. They've also come up with a practical solution to meet those needs. Their target is people who have no clue what their analytics are.

15. Yalochat Pitch Deck

Pitch decks are, in one way or another, like infographics—present facts and figures and pair them with graphic icons. The result is an engaging and informative piece of content. Yalochat used this approach, and the result is a fancy startup pitch deck, but the value is still there. Plus, the color palette they used has made the figures and information even more interesting.

16. Crema Pitch Deck

Whether you're creating a design or offering your service, being consistent is gives you a huge advantage. The design team behind Crema’s pitch deck understood this. They've created a solid and consistent background in their presentation. Even though they used different images, they were all connected and had the same message and feel. Even the color and pattern all add to the cohesiveness of their theme resulting in a best startup pitch deck you can’t easily ignore.

17. Mattermark Pitch Deck

An effective product, service, or pitch deck must understand what the target audience wants. Mattermark was aware of this. They used the problems their prospects faced when designing their pitch deck layout. One issue they presented was disorganized SaaS reporting. To show this, they used screenshots as examples. After that, they offered their solution by bringing all the data in one place.

18. Dwolla Pitch Deck

Dwolla’s startup pitch deck banked on stories. They understood the power of stories and how they could move emotions. 

Here, they share Dwolla 's beginning. The audience can see that the company understands their problem. It also shows that the product was created to help them solve their problem the way it helped the developer.

19. Foursquare Pitch Deck

Foursquare was one of the first businesses to use gamification and it shines in their companey pitch deck. 

Although the pitch has a lot of text, it includes graphics and illustrations. These help demonstrate how their points and badges engage people and keep them interested.

20. Intercom Pitch Deck

Intercom focused on their strong team, early traction made it very clear what they needed. Also, you may notice that their deck was simple but nicely designed. 

This approach gave them an advantage over the typical presentations investors see daily.

Key Takeaway: Pay attention to the design of your pitch deck. Use your brand’s colors and fonts and incorporate plenty of white space into each slide.

21. BuzzFeed

BuzzFeed's startup pitch deck is an excellent example of using bold colors and bullet point lists. This makes the content easy to understand and digest. The end slide also has an effective call to action that’s easy to remember.

22. iCrowdU Pitch Deck

iCrowdU has a simple design with plenty of charts, screenshots, and other visuals to back up the data presented. They use a branded color scheme and bullet points to make the text easy to read. 

23. Ooomf Pitch Deck

Ooomf may have an unusual name but their pitch deck helped them secure 2 million dollars in funding. The company pitch deck itself has a simple and clean design that lets your audience focus on your presentation. 

Save Time With the Best Pitch Deck Templates

Let's talk about the advantages of using a pitch deck template before we explore our examples. The best startup pitch decks truly affect on your success.

If you're starting to create a pitch deck, you could spend hours designing it yourself. Or use one of the beautifully designed pitch deck templates available on Envato Elements. With a single monthly fee, you'll have access to thousands of Keynote and PPT presentation templates . These templates can help you land your next investment round.

Want to see more startup presentations? Here's another example of an excellent template for creating a pitch deck:

Designs like this are for you to use to create the best pitch decks. Now let's move on to looking at our startup pitch deck examples.

5 Best Pitch Deck Templates From Envato Elements - (For 2024)

To save time and ensure a standout design for your pitch deck, start with a professionally designed template. Take a look at some of the best pitch deck PowerPoint templates available on Envato Elements: 

1. Pitch Deck PowerPoint

The first best pitch deck template on our list has a simple and minimal design. You’ll find plenty of infographic elements as well as charts and slides to present important data about your company. The best startup pitch deck contains 40 unique slides designed in standard and widescreen resolution.

2. Pitch Deck Presentation

This pitch deck presentation comes with image placeholders. So, you can easily replace and add your own. This best pitch deck template has a modern design and comes with 50 slides designed in widescreen format. It’s also easy to customize thanks to premade color schemes.

3. Pitch Deck PowerPoint Presentation

If you’re looking for a more colorful design, this pitch presentation example will come in handy. It comes in a light and dark version and contains 150 unique slides based on master slides. You’ll also find plenty of infographic elements to add more visual appeal to your pitch presentation.

4. Business Pitch Deck PowerPoint

This pitch deck template includes 120 creative slides and 30 icon slides. These additions enhance the visual appeal of your pitch presentation. The template was designed in widescreen format. It also includes 50 premade color schemes for easy customization. 

5. Pitch Deck PowerPoint Presentation Template

If you like a more minimalist and simple style, this business pitch presentation exampleis a great choice. It's got 30 unique slides in full HD resolution. The template is fully customizable. It also comes with plenty of icons, charts, and infographic elements. 

5 Quick Tips to Making Great Pitch Decks for 2024

Creating your business pitch deck doesn’t have to be stressful. These tips will help take your worries away and help you focus on what you'll put inside your pitch deck. Take a look at these five tips and win your audience with an awesome PPT pitch deck.

1. Include Your Vision and Value Proposition

An effective pitch deck begins with your company's vision and the value you can offer to potential customers. It doesn’t have to be a complex explanation, but more like a short tweet or a one-sentence overview. Make it short and sweet.

You can also add your value proposition to show your uniqueness in comparison to other companies. For example, Uber presented their value proposition as the “ NetJets of Car Services ."

2. Present the Problem

We’ve said it earlier in the article, and we'll say it again—a successful product always solves a problem. Thus, you shouldn't fail to mention that on your pitch deck. Aside from talking about the problem, you should also talk about who has that kind of problem. Back your claims with facts and figures.

You can do what Dwolla did too. Share your story of starting the company to solve a problem the founder faced. The more you make the problem more relatable, the more you'll attract investors to your pitch.

3. Offer a Solution

If you pinpoint the problem but can't present a viable solution, your pitch deck is nothing. You've got to articulate your solution in your pitch. You can use the solution as a continuation of your story. Talk about your product and how it can solve the problem you mentioned. Your product is the hero that'll save the day and solve the problem at hand, just like what Mattermark did in our earlier example.

4. Explain Your Business Model

So, you've got a product that'll solve a particular problem, but how can it make money? Who pays the bills? In addition to these points, you can discuss how your prices compare to similar products in the market.

5. Showcase Your Team

Similar to the Buzzfeed pitch deck, featuring the people in your company adds credibility to your presentation.

Include their skills, experiences, successes, and expertise. It shows investors what each of the members contribute and why they're a critical part of the company.

5 Top Startup Pitch Deck Trends for 2024

We’ve looked at some of the best pitch decks ever made. And you’ve seen pitch deck examples from Envato Elements that you can use to build your own startup pitch deck.

But there’s one more thing to consider: the latest trends. The best investor pitch deck designs in 2024 use modern styles to connect with audiences. Here are five top startup presentation trends:

1. Mockups for Digital Services

Any tech firm deserves a compelling startup pitch deck. Even if you’re not in the tech sphere, chances are you've got a website, app, or social media. 

Don’t just talk about your digital presence. Show it off, with the best startup presentation device mockups. These are 3D models of laptops, smartphones, tablets, and more. Drop in screenshots of your app or site, and you’re all set. They set your investor pitch deck apart in 2024.

2. Powerful Starts With Memorable Titles

Ever heard someone say, “ it’s the start that counts? ” That’s never more true than in your startup pitch deck. You need to capture attention immediately, and the title slide is the best place to do it.

A compelling title serves as a clear, compelling introduction to your message. Remember, you’re seeking investment in you and your ideas. Make a great first impression. Learn how with our full title slide tutorial for PowerPoint:

3. Timelines to Capture Momentum

The best pitch deck examples track two things: past performance and future growth . In 2024, a startup presentation should include timelines to capture these key points.

A timeline is a visual way to show the passage of time. Timelines transform your growth journey into beautiful, easy-to-read illustrations. Try them now.

4. Structured Organizational Charts

When investors see a startup presentation, they want to know who they’re investing in. Photos go a long way, but it pays to show how your company structure fits together.

2024’s best pitch decks often feature crisp organizational charts. These show how your team fits and works together. They help clearly define roles and explain your value offering. 

To learn how to build organizational charts, check out our complete PPT tutorial:

5. Compelling Illustrations

There’s nothing worse than a text-heavy pitch deck. You need to keep things concise and to the point. A great way to do that is by using plenty of illustrations.

These may include photographs, or infographics. Infographics combine information with graphics to create powerful illustrations. They’re popular in 2024 investor pitch deck designs, and they should be part of yours.

More Easy-to-Use Top PowerPoint Template Downloads

You know now that a template is the best way to create a startup presentation. So, why not see more designs with the best PowerPoint layouts included?

Check out more of the best PowerPoint templates we've featured. Many of them are customizable to create the best pitch decks with less work than ever. 

Download one of these templates, make a few customizations, and you'll be ready to present your investor pitch deck.

Common PowerPoint Questions Answered (FAQ)

If you’re thinking about using PowerPoint for your investor pitch deck, you may have a few questions. Here are answers to give of the most common questions people ask about PowerPoint:

1. How Do I Start Using PowerPoint?

It’s easy! PowerPoint is a great option for users of every skill level. Just because you’re not a presentation expert doesn’t mean you can’t build a stunning startup pitch deck. 

A great option is to use premium pitch deck templates  like those found at Envato Elements. These templates work well for users of any skill level. All you’re doing is filling in the blanks with your own content. You enjoy professional styling, without having to create it yourself. 

So, jump in and check out PowerPoint’s robust features today!

2. Can I Work With a Team in PowerPoint?

Yes! PowerPoint offers several great ways to collaborate with a global team. An easy option is to save your file in Microsoft’s OneDrive cloud sharing service. From there, you can click Share and send a link to people all over the world. It’s the perfect way to work together to build an amazing startup presentation for 2024. 

Learn more here:

3. How Do I Add Photos to PowerPoint?

Easily. PowerPoint has a full suite of features that help you import and work with your own photos. In a few clicks, you can customize images to fit your needs.

Plus, premium templates often include drag-and-drop placeholders. Simply release your photo over the slide. Your startup presentation will soon fill with images. 

Learn more about photos in PPT here:

4. Can I Share PowerPoint Slides on Zoom?

Definitely. Zoom and other video-conferencing platforms have exploded in popularity recently. You might even find yourself presenting your startup pitch deck examples virtually.

Apps like Zoom make it easy to share PPT startup presentation decks with the world. Just test things out first. Learn all about that process here:

5. What Font(s) Should I Use in PowerPoint?

Two rules of thumb apply here: clarity and readability. You may be sharing with audiences in large rooms, for example. Choose a simple font that’s easy to see and understand.

A great resource is the Font library on Envato Elements. As a member, you've got unlimited downloads of thousands of custom fonts . Browse through the collection today!

Then, turn to our full PPT font tutorial for your next startup presentation:

Learn More About Making Great Pitch Decks for 2024

There are a lot of other elements you can add to make your pitch deck engaging and interesting. Check out these resources:

Get a Powerful, Professional PPT Design for Your Startup Pitch Deck Now

Aside from the elements we mentioned, make your pitch deck stand out even more by creating a story. It makes your pitch deck not only powerful, but cohesive from start to finish.

If you're ready to get started with your pitch deck, check these  PowerPoint presentation templates on Envato Elements.

Editorial Note: This article was originally published in April of 2019. It's been comprehensively updated with help from Brenda Barron,   Andrew Childress, and Daniel Strongin .

12 Startup Pitch Deck Examples [+ Template]

A great startup pitch deck is an integral part of launching a business. This deck is presented to prospective investors to convince them to invest and help you grow your startup . The trick to having the best pitch deck possible is to include enough information to explain your goals and methodology without losing your audience’s interest.

Pitch decks are usually in PowerPoint, Apple Keynote, or Google Slides to make them easier to present to potential investors. However, the deck can also have an alternative format like a Word document or even a video. For inspiration, let’s go through some successful startup pitch deck examples and discuss what they got right. 

Pitch Deck Basics

There are some overarching characteristics that make for a great pitch deck. While we’ll go through what a deck typically includes and some relevant business pitch examples, you can pick and choose certain elements as long as your startup pitch deck has the following basic qualities:

• Design-forward: Customers expect a better experience with your product and that’s achieved through better UX and graphic design. Show your team’s design chops with thoughtful deck design and mock-ups.
• Comprehensive: Be prepared to answer any questions from potential investors. Your slides should cover enough so if they check back for reminders after the presentation, they’ll find the most important information.
• Engaging: A startup pitch deck inevitably includes some boring elements. Your job is to keep it exciting and break up information-heavy slides with features like illustrations and block quotes.
• Straightforward: It’s easy to get caught up with sharing every detail, but it’s more important that your potential investors understand your pitch. For more complicated slides and ideas, pare down your pitch to make it easier to understand.

1. Problem Slide

Your pitch deck should open with a key problem — this is the whole justification for your business and why consumers will find it valuable. A common structure for this slide is to bullet pain points and create a story your potential investors can relate to.

The problem slide is the basis for your presentation. Creating a relatable story makes for an engaging presentation that’s easy to follow and understand.

Uber Example

Why it works : Although it’s not the most visually engaging, Uber’s business pitch example clearly explains how Uber solves key issues with traditional cabs. Uber’s deck is broken down into multiple slides to deliver all the necessary information without overwhelming the audience.

2. Solution slide

After presenting the problem, you should follow up directly with a solution. An effective solution slide structure covers current industry solutions and identifies the gaps your startup fills. This slide has a general overview of any proprietary technology, covers basic product features, and includes relevant interface mock-ups to show investors what your product will do for consumers.

Intercom Example

Why it works : Intercom’s solution slide is simple but effective. While some extra design could elevate this slide, the bullet points are easy to understand and effectively explain Intercom’s unique selling proposition (USP) in the SaaS market.

3. Market validation slide

Market validation is especially important to investors because it shows proof that there are people who will purchase your product. This slide should include any relevant statistics for current sales if your startup has launched or competitors’ sales if it hasn’t. Don’t forget to cover basic information about your target market, their purchasing power, and their habits in your industry. This slide is especially important if your prospective investors aren’t familiar with your product or industry.

LinkedIn Example

Why it work s: At 37 pages, LinkedIn’s pitch deck is longer than we’d recommend.  But what it lacks in brevity it makes up for with powerful market validation using clear data from top competitors. It also breaks down barriers to growth and revenue for these competitors and shows how LinkedIn would improve their models.

4. Market size slide

Market size goes hand in hand with market validation. Once you’ve confirmed your target market has enough purchasing power, you need to justify your product’s longevity.

Focus on continued sales. The two most common elements to ensure your startup brings in long-term revenue are:

• A very large market
• A business model built for continuous purchases (e.g., subscription models)

Facebook Example

Why it works: Facebook is the poster child for successful startups. Its market size slides effectively communicate how Facebook’s initial launches succeeded and justify further growth. The slides with market statistics about college students also explain clearly how Facebook will create revenue.

5. Product slide

The product slide is your chance to nail your pitch and sell your vision to investors. This slide should center your value proposition. A popular strategy for this section is to pose a few questions about your industry and show how your product is the answer. Take the time to craft this slide carefully, polishing it up from the copy to design details.

Dropbox Example

Why it works: Dropbox’s product slides are effective because they show how Dropbox truly innovates over other file sharing services. They justify why now is the time to launch and why consumers will choose Dropbox over competitors.

6. Business model slide

The business model slide covers how the startup will run and launch its product for sustainable growth. This section can compare your startup to other businesses or use internal data if the product has launched.

Moz Example

Why it works : While some of these slides can look busy, Moz’s business model was ahead of its time by calling out why organic marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) have untapped potential. This deck does a good job of explaining the business model to investors who might not be SEO savvy.

But wait...there's more!

7. market adoption slide.

It’s important to show some proof that your target market has interest in purchasing your product, especially if there are other competitors in the market. This is a lot easier if your product has already launched because you can include sales data. If your startup is pre-launch, showing potential market adoption can be tricky. In this case, you can use social proof from similar competitors. If you do this, it’s also important to note how your product differs from these competitors, especially if you can resolve a customer’s complaint. If possible, include case studies in the market adoption slide. These show proof that you can use investments to increase the reach of your startup.

Buffer Example

Why it works : Buffer’s market adoption slides show social proof through key statistics outlining Buffer’s success so far. With an extremely high profit margin and growth rate for their user base, Buffer shows off why their product will offer a larger ROI for potential investors.

8. Competition slide

Many investors look at your competition to help contextualize your startup. If an investor has little or no experience in your vertical, showing competitors they’re familiar with gives them real examples of success. This slide should cover the following topics related to your competition:

• Revenue data
• What competitors do well
• What competitors don’t do well
• How your startup bridges product gaps

Mint Example

Why it works : Mint’s competitor slides are effective because they show current competitors along with future projections for these competitors. This slide effectively shows how Mint creates more value for customers over time and uses competitors as inspiration in their defensive strategy.

9. Team slide

A team slide helps investors get to know the minds behind your startup. Include information about founders, leadership, and top existing investors to show why your team is qualified to launch this startup. Any evidence of past successes with your leadership, consultants, or investors is important to include, as it shows new investors that you have relevant experience to launch your startup. If there’s any relevant history about your startup, such as a higher ROI than expected for a former investor, be sure to include this in your pitch deck.

Contently Example

Why it works : While Contently’s team slide has a lot of information, it’s all relevant to potential investors. In addition to founders and investors, Contently includes top employees, proprietary technology, advisors, and the amount they’ve raised so far. This, along with their financial model slide, show potential investors that Contently will make good use of their investment and even make them some profit.

10. Press slide

The press section of your startup pitch deck is a great opportunity to show off any buzz and get your investors excited about your business. Focus on positive reviews or attention related to your product. Stay away from negative press unless you can show you’ve changed those negative opinions. Make sure to keep these slides focused and succinct. It’s easy to get caught up in showing off product buzz, but press slides should always demonstrate potential for a more widespread product adoption.

Snapchat example

Why it works : Snapchat was in a unique position at the time this deck was created, as its press slide has strong social proof. Snapchat calls out popular users, including press and media sources, that are already using the app. The wide variety of users, including household names like MTV, shows how Snapchat is a well-known social media platform.

11. Testimonial slide

Testimonials give investors insight into what existing customers really think about your product. Testimonials can also shed light on the public perception of your product, especially compared to competitors.

Seventy-two percent of consumers only take action after reading positive reviews. You can use this logic with your potential investors, too.

Positive testimonials show that your customers have brand loyalty and that users are satisfied with the product and customer service. This section of the startup pitch deck is only possible for startups that have launched their product.

AirBnB Example

Why it works : Not every pitch deck includes testimonials, especially if the startup hasn’t launched, but it makes sense to include feedback for Airbnb. Showcasing new users makes this slide simple yet effective. It could also benefit from including average Airbnb ratings for stronger evidence of positive reception.

12. Financial model slide

The financial model slide shows how your product creates revenue. For example, if your product is a subscription-based service, has premium features, or other horizontal integration, you’ll explain that model on these slides. Potential investors should walk away from your presentation knowing exactly how your startup creates revenue and understand any plans to ensure a steady stream of income.

Shopify Example

Why it works : Shopify offers a great pitch deck example of when breaking some pitch norms can work in your favor. Although it’s nearly 30 slides, the entire deck is informative and engaging. The financial model slides work well because they show how Shopify and its past investors turned a profit. Not only do they explain their current financial model, but Shopify also covers their plans for future growth to reassure investors they’ll make a profit, too.

What should you avoid putting in a startup pitch deck?

The best pitch deck is completely tailored to your startup. While there’s no hard-and-fast rule about what you shouldn’t include, make sure everything you’re presenting is relevant to potential investors. 

How do I present my startup pitch deck to investors?

It’s almost always better to present a pitch deck live to investors. Designate one member of your leadership team, ideally a founder, to present your deck to investors. 

Following a script can come across as disingenuous, but using notes is OK, so get lots of practice in before you present to investors.

What should a startup pitch deck include?

A typical startup pitch deck template includes the following slides:

• Market validation
• Market size
• Business model
• Market adoption
• Competition
• Testimonials
• Financial model

However, every pitch deck is different, so your final pitch might skip some of these topics or use multiple slides to expand on certain sections.

Built to scale with HubSpot for Startups

It takes some time to put together a startup pitch deck that works, but once you’ve nailed your presentation, you can reuse it for multiple pitches with just a few tweaks to update any data or statistics. HubSpot for Startups helps you track marketing and sales data to make this process easier. New investors can rest easy knowing you’ve got the support of HubSpot’s powerful CRM at your fingertips.

Get the pitch deck template

The Only 10 Slides You Need in Your Startup Pitch

Every startup needs a compelling pitch to attract investors — and capital. With a beautifully designed and intentional presentation, you can showcase the best aspects of your startup to help you secure the funding you need.

But what should you include in your presentation? And how do you design it to stand out? Guy Kawasaki has a famous startup pitch deck formula we’d love to share with you.

Guy Kawasaki’s approach to pitching

Guy Kawasaki is a Chief Evangelist, the person who promotes or advocates for a brand on a large scale. You may recognize his name, as he’s been the Chief Evangelist of Apple and currently serves as Chief Evangelist of Canva. As an evangelist, Guy’s main priority is to spread the good news about the products a brand creates.

That is exactly what he wants to help you do with your pitch: essentially act as the evangelist for your brand so investors can’t help but buy in.

When it comes to presentations, Guy also has a rule: 10-20-30. Whether you are trying to make a sale, raise capital, or develop a partnership, you should keep your pitch to ten slides, present for no longer than twenty minutes, and use a font of at least thirty points.

This philosophy has worked for Guy, who has helped grow some of the biggest brands in the world!

The 10-20-30 rule

Let’s break down Guy’s 10-20-30 rule so you can see exactly what you need in your startup pitch deck to really make the most out of your presentation:

Ten slides.  

You only need ten slides to convey your business concept, goals, financial requirements, current business position, and achievements. We’ll dig into which slides down below. According to Guy, it’s important to keep the slides to only ten because this is how you boil down the most important and impactful information — without creating a boring presentation that investors have seen a thousand times over.

Twenty minutes.  

Technical issues happen all the time, delaying the start of a meeting. People show up late, again delaying start time. Keep your message to twenty minutes to ensure you cover the basics even if your window of time gets cut short. Plus, when you get the presentation to twenty minutes, you give yourself plenty of time to dazzle your audience during post-presentation discussion.

Thirty-point font.  

Many presenters crowd their slides with unnecessary words typed out in ten-point font and then read the slides verbatim, making for a boring presentation. Avoid this common mistake by using a thirty-point font on each of your slides; this will allow you to convey important ideas while still engaging with your audience.

Now that you have the 10-20-30 rule down, let’s talk about what actually goes into your startup pitch presentation.

The Guy Kawasaki pitch deck: Which slides to include?

As you now know, Guy recommends keeping your presentation to just ten slides. This might seem like a low number, especially if you’re asking for a ton of money from investors. The key, though, is to use this small slide real estate to your advantage. Below, we’ll share some tips to help you make the most of these ten slides.

The title slide

The title slide is critical because it sets the tone for your entire presentation and provides the first impression of your business. The “title” slide is an obvious but impactful template to use for this one because it is clean, looks professional, and allows you to include essential information like your company’s name and contact information. 

For users of our presentation software , consider putting a spin on the title slide, with our headline or image and photo grid slides. Guy’s pitch deck also uses the title slide as a contact slide, so don’t be afraid to include your info here.

The problem/opportunity slide

Every business should solve a problem or improve customers’ lives in some way. Use this slide to clearly state the problem and how your business works to fix it. You can provide statistics with Beautiful.ai’s data slide or employ the numbered list or bulleted list slide to highlight all the issues that your business exists to fix. You could also use the image slide to tell the story of how your business came to be in a visually dynamic way.

The value proposition 

It is a no-brainer that you should discuss the value of your business, but common startup pitch decks overlook it! Don’t skip it. Ask yourself: What customer pain points do you fix? How do you serve your customers? What makes your business different? Use this slide to tell investors exactly why they should invest. The simplicity of our headline slide gives you the freedom to clearly state your value proposition, without crowding the slide with too much information. Want to make it visual? Add an impactful image or chart to the slide.

The underlying magic 

The investors know your unique value proposition by now, but what’s the real special sauce? What can only your team bring to life? To really score here, avoid over-relying on text. Instead, use this opportunity to show what you can do. A video slide taking the audience through your process works well here, as does a flowchart slide or a prototype, mockup, or demo.

Business model  

So, what is your plan? Any investor will want to know. Use a data slide, funnel slide , target slide , or hub and spoke slide to show your audience the different stages of your plan in a visually appealing way. You can also use a table slide or waterfall chart slide to demonstrate projected results and value over time.

Go-to market plan

It is essential to tell investors how you plan to attract new customers, as well as compete in your space. How will you launch your product/offer and start selling it? This shows your investors you know how to make this thing work, so use the right slide to showcase it. You can use the hub and spoke slide or process diagram slide to demonstrate the different elements of your strategy.

Competitive analysis 

Let your audience know that you get what the competition is doing. Use an XY plot , line chart or area chart slide to identify your performance patterns compared to those of your competitors. This is also a great opportunity to demonstrate your achievements by highlighting companies that have had the pleasure of working with you using a logo grid slide.

Management team 

Potential investors want to know about the key players on your team. Use the team slide or about us slide to help them understand your biggest asset: your people.

Financial projections and key metrics 

Be upfront: What would potential investors be getting into if they invested? Focus on a three-year, bottom-up focused forecast. Use the data comparison slide or area chart slide to demonstrate and discuss your projected growth over the years.

Current status, accomplishments, timeline, and use of funds 

The future is important, but so is the present. Use this slide to address your current business situation, what the immediate future holds, and your plans for any capital raised right now. The timeline or process slides can help you effectively communicate exciting next steps for your business. This is also a slide where you need to really think about how to condense information into what’s most important. Your investors will be at the tail-end of their 20-minute presentation, and you want to make sure you go out with a bang.

Make your startup pitch deck pitch-worthy

When you’re getting ready to pitch your startup to investors, you’re going to want a presentation that stands out. Guy Kawasaki’s 10-20-30 rule will help you make sure the most important information is clearly presented… but what about the design?

With Beautiful.ai, we’ll make sure that your presentation is dynamic, streamlined, and (most importantly) easy to design. Put your best foot forward and get the funding you need to succeed with Beautiful.ai. We have startup pitch decks and successful pitch decks from brands like Netflix, AirBnB, and more to help you get inspired.

Beautiful.AI Team

Beautiful is an AI-powered presentation tool that makes it fast and easy for anyone to build clean, modern and professionally designed slides that they can be proud of.

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Startup Pitch Decks: 30+ Best Examples & Templates

Eric Melillo

Updated: March 23, 2024

The Importance of a Great Startup Pitch

Key elements of a successful pitch deck:, analyzing seed stage pitch decks: moz, crew, and uber:, dissecting series a pitch decks: mixpanel, buzzfeed, and front, exploring series b pitch decks: mixpanel, buzzfeed, and moz, evaluating series c pitch decks: dropbox, buffer, and facebook, unveiling angel investor pitch decks: foursquare and contently, case study: the airbnb pitch deck, showcase of legendary startup pitch deck examples:, try these pitch deck templates for your next presentation:, insights and tips for creating an impactful startup pitch.

Ever wondered how some startups attract venture capital investors like bees to honey? The secret lies in a well-crafted Startup Pitch Deck. As startups’ main instrument to convince venture capitalists of their business idea, a compelling pitch deck can be your golden ticket to funding and mentorship.

Drawing from the experience and insights of successful entrepreneurs in the venture capital industry, this blog post unpacks the elements of a persuasive pitch deck for pitching a business idea. Here, we’ll examine case studies of renowned companies, like Airbnb and Uber, whose pitch decks, designed with careful attention to presentation template design tips, have won over investors and secured them a place in the big leagues.

This post is more than a guide; it’s a tool to empower you to create an impactful Startup Pitch Deck. By the end, you’ll know how to construct a pitch deck that clearly communicates your business model, aligns with investor expectations, and, most importantly, tells a captivating story about your startup. So, let’s get started on your path to investment success with pitching and title slide design tips for seed funding using a presentation template.

A great startup pitch, also known as an investor presentation, is the key to unlocking funding and partnerships for small businesses. It has the power to make or break the success of securing capital and propelling growth. The investor deck or presentation slide deck plays a crucial role in effectively pitching your business.

Creating Excitement and Generating Interest

First impressions matter when seeking seed funding. A well-crafted startup pitch, using a presentation template, has the ability to create excitement and generate interest among potential investors or partners. By presenting a clear value proposition that highlights the unique aspects of your brand, you can capture their attention from the get-go. The key takeaway is to secure the necessary capital for your business.

Investors are constantly on the lookout for startups with high growth potential. They want to see big numbers, promising valuations, and a strong vision for future success. A persuasive pitch that demonstrates these elements can significantly increase your chances of securing funding. By showcasing your market research, competitive analysis, and financial projections in an engaging manner using a presentation template, you can paint a picture of opportunity that investors won’t be able to resist. The key takeaway is to present compelling figures that highlight the potential capital gains.

Standing Out from Competitors

In today’s competitive landscape, it is crucial for startups to have a standout product and presentation template in order to secure capital and partnerships. The key takeaway is that your business pitch needs to be memorable and distinct to leave a lasting impression on potential investors.

One way to create a great pitch deck is by highlighting your unique value proposition in your professional pitch deck. What sets your startup apart in your investor presentation? Is it innovative technology? A disruptive business model? Exceptional industry expertise? Whatever it may be, emphasize what makes your venture special and explain why it matters in the market. The key takeaway is to showcase these unique aspects in your pitch deck.

Storytelling plays a vital role in capturing attention during a pitch presentation. Instead of bombarding investors with dry facts and figures, weave together a narrative that showcases your passion for solving a problem or meeting an unmet need. By connecting emotionally with your audience through storytelling techniques, you can make your pitch more relatable and memorable. The key takeaway is to use storytelling in your slide deck to engage investors. Incorporate slides that highlight the details of your narrative to create a lasting impact.

Demonstrating Potential for Growth

Investors are looking to put their money into startups that have the potential for significant growth . A great startup pitch should effectively communicate this potential by showcasing your market opportunity, scalability, revenue projections, and key takeaway. Use a compelling presentation template to highlight your product and idea.

Presenting a great business pitch deck is crucial for a successful pitch deck presentation. Highlighting the size of the market and its growth rate can help investors understand the opportunity at hand. Back up your claims with credible statistics and industry research to demonstrate that you have done your homework. By presenting a compelling case for growth, you can instill confidence in potential investors and increase their willingness to invest in your startup.

Furthermore, when creating your professional pitch deck, it is crucial to emphasize how your business model aligns with long-term sustainability and profitability. Investors want to see a clear path to monetization and return on investment in your startup pitch deck examples. Outline your revenue streams, customer acquisition strategies, and plans for scaling operations in your pitch deck presentation. By demonstrating a well-thought-out roadmap for growth, you can alleviate concerns about the viability of your business. The key takeaway is to showcase a comprehensive plan for success in your pitch deck.

A successful presentation template for a pitch deck is the backbone of any startup’s efforts to raise funds for their product. It serves as a powerful tool to communicate your business idea , attract investors, and secure funding. To create an impactful pitch deck, there are several key elements that you should include, such as well-designed slides.

Problem Statement :

The problem statement is the foundation of your presentation template. It clearly defines the pain point or challenge that your product or service aims to solve. By highlighting a compelling problem, you capture the attention of investors who are looking for innovative solutions. Use concise language to describe the problem and emphasize its significance in the market. The key takeaway is to focus on the idea and design.

Following the problem statement in your business pitch or investor presentation, outline your unique solution. Explain how your product or service addresses the identified problem and why it stands out from existing alternatives. Clearly articulate the value proposition and benefits that your solution brings to customers. Use visuals such as infographics or diagrams from a presentation template to illustrate how your solution works and its potential impact. Design is key in effectively conveying your message.

Market Analysis:

Investors want to understand the market potential and viability of your startup. Conduct thorough research on industry trends, market size, target audience demographics, and growth projections. Provide data-driven insights that demonstrate a clear understanding of your target market’s needs and preferences. When preparing your business pitch, make sure to include these key takeaways in your presentation template and original pitch deck.

Competition Analysis:

Including competitors in your pitch deck presentation template demonstrates to investors that you have thoroughly analyzed the competitive landscape. Identify both direct and indirect competitors, assess their strengths and weaknesses, and clearly explain how your product differentiates from them. Highlight any competitive advantages or barriers to entry that give you an edge in capturing market share. The key takeaway is to showcase your understanding of the competitive landscape and position your product effectively.

Business Model:

Explain how your startup generates revenue by presenting a well-defined business model in the original pitch deck. Describe pricing strategies, revenue streams, customer acquisition channels, and any partnerships or collaborations that contribute to monetization efforts. Investors need clarity on how you plan to make money and sustain growth over time. Use our pitch deck template to effectively convey your product and key takeaway.

Team Overview:

Investors invest not only in ideas but also in the people behind those ideas. Introduce your team members, their roles, and relevant experience using a presentation template. Highlight key achievements or expertise that demonstrate your company’s capability to execute the business plan successfully. Showcase a diverse and complementary skill set within your team using a pitch deck template.

Financial Projections:

Provide realistic financial projections in your investor presentation or investor deck that demonstrate the scalability and profitability of your startup. Include key metrics such as revenue forecasts, projected expenses, growth rates, and anticipated milestones. Use charts or graphs from a presentation template or pitch deck template to visually represent the financial data for better comprehension.

Ask/Next Steps:

Conclude your pitch deck by clearly stating the key takeaway from your presentation template. Clearly outline what you are seeking from investors and the next steps in the funding process for your product or idea. This could include the amount of funding you are looking for, potential use of funds, and any specific terms or conditions you may have. Make it easy for investors to understand how they can get involved and move forward with your startup.

Moz’s seed stage presentation slides were a masterclass in showcasing their expertise in SEO. The slides not only highlighted their knowledge of search engine optimization trends but also presented data-driven insights that left investors impressed. The key takeaway from their pitch deck was their ability to make the numbers speak for themselves, effectively conveying their idea.

In their presentation, Moz highlighted their key takeaway: unique tools for marketers. By showcasing these tools in their slides, they effectively captured the attention of potential investors who saw the revenue growth potential. The idea of using their products resonated with them.

Furthermore, the key takeaway from Moz’s presentation was their inclusion of crucial details about their target market and competitive advantage. They made it clear in their original pitch deck why they stood out from the competition and why investors should believe in their ability to succeed. Highlighting the team’s expertise in the industry helped build trust and credibility among potential backers for their product.

All these elements combined made Moz’s presentation a success story. It played a pivotal role in securing the funding required for their initial growth and expansion plans. Investors saw the potential in Moz’s idea to SEO and recognized that they had something special to offer. The key takeaway from their slide deck was clear.

Crew’s seed stage presentation deck had one clear focus: connecting freelancers with businesses seeking design and development services. Their idea was to tap into the market opportunity and showcase it to potential investors. The key takeaway from their pitch was the template they used to convey their vision.

To capture attention right from the start, Crew showcased the demand for quality freelancers in the industry through compelling statistics and case studies in their original pitch deck. They painted a vivid picture of why businesses needed access to top-notch talent and how Crew could provide exactly that in their investor presentation. The key takeaway was the importance of their investor deck in highlighting the value proposition of their platform.

The presentation pitch deck also emphasized Crew’s key takeaway and idea. They made it crystal clear what set them apart from other platforms by highlighting features like seamless collaboration tools or efficient project management systems. This helped build confidence among potential investors that Crew had what it takes to succeed in terms of valuation.

But perhaps one of the most significant strengths of Crew’s presentation was the inclusion of successful case studies. By showcasing real-world examples, they provided social proof of their ability to help businesses achieve their goals. This undoubtedly played a crucial role in securing early-stage funding from investors for their growth and development plans. The key takeaway was that their idea worked.

Uber’s seed stage presentation pitch deck was nothing short of revolutionary. It presented a disruptive idea of transforming transportation through technology, capturing the imagination of investors who were ready to embrace change. The key takeaway from the presentation was the innovative vision, which was effectively conveyed through each slide.

Right from the start, Uber outlined the market opportunity in their original pitch deck by highlighting the pain points in traditional taxi services. The presentation made it clear that these services were outdated and inefficient, emphasizing the idea of disruption. Investors couldn’t help but see the potential for scalability in such an untapped market, which was the key takeaway.

The presentation, or pitch deck, then delved into showcasing Uber’s innovative business model. They highlighted key aspects like their driver-partner network and user experience features that set them apart from traditional transportation options. By painting a vivid picture of how their platform worked, they made it easy for investors to visualize its success and understand its valuation.

Uber’s presentation, including their key takeaway, played a pivotal role in attracting investors who recognized their innovative idea and valuation potential. The combination of a compelling vision, solid market analysis, and an innovative business model made it hard to resist investing in this groundbreaking startup.

Mixpanel: Revolutionizing Analytics for Businesses

Mixpanel’s Series A presentation slide deck was a game-changer in the world of analytics. They captivated investors with their powerful platform idea that helps businesses track user behavior like never before. With an emphasis on key metrics, Mixpanel demonstrated their ability to drive customer engagement and retention rates to new heights, making their valuation soar.

The key takeaway from the presentation was how Mixpanel’s analytics tool raised the bar compared to traditional methods. By showcasing a clear competitive advantage on each slide, they convinced investors that they were the go-to solution for data-driven insights. This unique selling point played a crucial role in securing their Series A funding.

BuzzFeed: The Viral Content Phenomenon

BuzzFeed’s Series A pitch deck showcased their unparalleled approach to content creation and distribution. The key takeaway? Their secret sauce of creating viral content that resonates with millennial audiences like no other media company can. Investors were immediately drawn to the idea of capturing the attention of this highly sought-after demographic.

The investor’s key takeaway from the pitch deck was the idea that BuzzFeed could monetize their massive reach through advertising partnerships, generating substantial profits. This captivating slide showcased their revenue generation strategies, leading to significant investment during the Series A stage.

Front: Revolutionizing Team Communication with Email

Front’s Series A pitch deck centered around their idea for a collaborative email platform designed specifically for teams. They highlighted how their key takeaway, the innovative solution, streamlined communication processes and boosted productivity through shared inboxes. This resonated with investors who understood the challenges faced by teams dealing with overflowing email threads and miscommunication. The slide presentation effectively conveyed Front’s unique proposition.

To provide social proof of their success, Front showcased notable customers who had already embraced their platform in their pitch deck. This served as a powerful endorsement and solidified Front’s credibility among potential investors. The key takeaway is that this strategy helped Front secure Series A funding, allowing them to continue developing their groundbreaking email platform. The slide featuring notable customers was instrumental in achieving this milestone.

Mixpanel’s Series B pitch deck was all about expanding their analytics platform to new markets. They wanted to show potential investors that they had a solid plan for growth and were ready to take on the challenge. One of the key points they highlighted was their success in customer acquisition and retention through case studies, including a compelling slide showcasing their achievements.

They showcased how their analytics platform had helped various companies improve their user engagement and drive revenue growth. By presenting real-life examples of how Mixpanel had made a positive impact on businesses, they were able to demonstrate the value of their product in their investor deck.

Another important aspect of Mixpanel’s pitch deck was its focus on enterprise clients. They highlighted the potential revenue growth that could come from catering to larger companies. This showed investors that Mixpanel had a clear strategy for scaling up and capturing a significant portion of the market share. The pitch deck included a compelling slide emphasizing their commitment to serving enterprise clients.

The compelling nature of Mixpanel’s pitch deck, with its impressive slide presentation, led to significant investment at the Series B stage. Investors saw the potential in their analytics platform and recognized the value it could bring to businesses across different industries.

BuzzFeed’s Series B pitch deck had a different emphasis compared to Mixpanel. Their main goal was international expansion and diversification of content offerings. They wanted investors to see that they were not just focused on one market but had plans to reach audiences globally. The pitch deck included a slide highlighting their plans for international expansion and another slide showcasing their diverse content offerings.

To support this objective, BuzzFeed showcased their ability to engage global audiences with localized content strategies in their original pitch deck. They presented examples from their investor deck of how they had successfully adapted their content for different regions, ensuring relevance and resonance with diverse cultures. These examples demonstrate the effectiveness of their pitch deck template.

Monetization plans through branded content partnerships were also included in BuzzFeed’s pitch deck . This demonstrated that they had thought about generating revenue beyond traditional advertising models. By partnering with brands for sponsored content, BuzzFeed aimed to create mutually beneficial relationships while driving financial growth.

BuzzFeed’s compelling pitch attracted substantial investment at the Series B stage because it showed investors that they had a clear plan for international expansion and revenue diversification. Their ability to engage audiences across the globe and their innovative monetization strategies made them an attractive investment opportunity.

Moz’s Series B pitch deck revolved around scaling their SEO software suite for enterprise customers. They wanted to show investors that they had identified a market opportunity and were ready to capitalize on it. To support this, they highlighted industry trends and the growing demand for SEO tools.

The investor deck presentation included data and statistics showcasing the importance of search engine optimization in today’s digital landscape. Moz aimed to position themselves as leaders in the industry by demonstrating their deep understanding of SEO and its impact on businesses. The original pitch deck served as a template for their presentation.

Moz also focused on highlighting their competitive advantage through their original pitch deck and pitch deck template. They showcased how their SEO software suite offered unique features that set them apart from competitors. By including testimonials from satisfied customers, they built credibility and trust with potential investors.

Moz successfully secured significant investment at the Series B stage based on their compelling pitch. Investors recognized the market potential for scalable SEO solutions, especially for enterprise clients. Moz’s focus on differentiation, market trends, and customer satisfaction played a crucial role in attracting investment.

Dropbox: Expanding Cloud Storage Services Globally

Dropbox’s Series C pitch deck was all about taking their cloud storage services to the next level. They wanted to show investors that they were ready to expand globally and dominate the market. And boy, did they have some impressive numbers to back it up!

The presentation kicked off with the original pitch deck, featuring jaw-dropping user growth metrics that left everyone in awe. They made it clear that there was a massive demand for their product and that people couldn’t get enough of it. Investors could practically see the dollar signs flashing before their eyes. This pitch deck template was truly impressive.

But it wasn’t just about the numbers. Dropbox knew that showcasing their collaboration with tech giants like Apple in their original pitch deck was key to their success. By aligning themselves with industry leaders, they demonstrated to investors that they were serious about making big moves in the market. Use our pitch deck template to create your own impressive presentation.

And guess what? Their efforts paid off! With an original pitch deck and investor deck, Dropbox successfully raised substantial funding at the Series C stage. With an irresistible combination of skyrocketing user growth, strategic partnerships, and a solid plan for global expansion, Dropbox used a pitch deck template to present their ideas to investors.

Buffer: Scaling Social Media Management

Buffer’s Series C pitch deck had one goal in mind: scaling their social media management platform like never before. They wanted investors to know that they were ready to take on the world of social media and make a lasting impact.

To prove their worth, Buffer showcased their revenue growth through subscription-based pricing models in their original pitch deck. They made it crystal clear that customers loved what they had to offer and were willing to pay for it on a recurring basis. Talk about a steady stream of income! Now, you can use this pitch deck template to create your own impressive presentation.

But Buffer didn’t stop there. They also highlighted something unique – their commitment to transparency and company culture in their original pitch deck. In an era where trust is everything, this pitch deck template was a smart move. By showing investors how transparent they were with customers and employees alike, Buffer built credibility and trustworthiness.

And you know what? Their efforts paid off big time. Buffer successfully secured significant investment at the Series C stage, proving that their original pitch deck and pitch deck template had what it takes to thrive in a competitive market.

Facebook: Expanding the Social Networking Empire

There’s no denying that Facebook is the king of the hill. And their early-stage Series C round was all about further expanding their empire and solidifying their dominance in the market with their original pitch deck. They used a pitch deck template to present their vision and secure funding.

Facebook’s pitch deck was packed with impressive user engagement metrics that left investors speechless. They made it clear that people couldn’t get enough of their platform and were spending countless hours scrolling through news feeds and connecting with friends. It was like they had cracked the code to human connection!

But it wasn’t just about user engagement. Facebook also showcased their advertising revenue potential and future growth strategies in their original pitch deck. They wanted investors to see the massive opportunity for monetization within their platform, using a pitch deck template. After all, where there are eyeballs, there are advertisers ready to pay top dollar.

And you know what? Investors couldn’t resist jumping on board the Facebook train. With an unbeatable combination of user engagement, advertising potential, and a clear vision for future growth, Facebook successfully raised substantial funding at the Series C stage with their original pitch deck. The pitch deck template was a key factor in attracting investors.

Foursquare: Revolutionizing Location-Based Social Networking

Foursquare’s angel investor pitch deck was a game-changer in showcasing their innovative location-based social networking platform. With the rise of smartphones and the increasing reliance on mobile apps, Foursquare recognized the potential for connecting people based on their physical location.

Their pitch deck highlighted user engagement metrics, providing compelling evidence of the platform’s popularity. By demonstrating impressive numbers of active users and check-ins, Foursquare effectively conveyed the potential for targeted advertising to reach a highly engaged audience.

One of the key strengths emphasized in their presentation was Foursquare’s original pitch deck, which showcased their unique value proposition in helping businesses connect with customers. By leveraging location data, Foursquare offered companies an opportunity to target specific demographics and tailor their marketing strategies accordingly using their pitch deck template. This ability to bridge the gap between online and offline experiences struck a chord with angel investors who saw immense potential in this approach.

Thanks to their well-crafted pitch deck , Foursquare successfully secured angel investment from renowned firms like Sequoia Capital. The combination of a compelling product vision, solid user engagement metrics, and a clear understanding of market demand made them an attractive investment opportunity.

Contently: Empowering Brands with Quality Content

Contently’s angel investor pitch deck focused on their content marketing platform that connects brands with freelance writers. They recognized the growing demand for quality content in an era where digital marketing has become increasingly important for companies looking to engage with their target audience.

In their presentation, Contently showcased successful case studies that demonstrated how they had helped various companies achieve remarkable results through effective content marketing campaigns. These examples not only validated the effectiveness of Contently’s platform but also instilled confidence in potential investors about its scalability. The original pitch deck used a pitch deck template to present these case studies.

The pitch deck also highlighted Contently’s revenue generation strategies, illustrating how they were able to monetize their business model effectively. By offering a range of subscription plans and additional services, Contently ensured a steady stream of income while providing value to their clients.

The persuasive nature of Contently’s pitch deck attracted angel investment from notable firms. This enabled them to further develop their platform, expand their network of freelance writers, and solidify their position as a leading player in the content marketing industry.

Both Foursquare and Contently serve as prime examples of how startups can effectively communicate their vision and value proposition through well-crafted angel investor pitch decks. These decks not only provide insights into the companies’ offerings but also demonstrate their potential for growth and profitability.

By showcasing user engagement metrics, successful case studies, unique value propositions, and revenue generation strategies, these startups successfully attracted angel investment. Their compelling pitches paved the way for future success, allowing them to raise capital and take their businesses to new heights.

In an ever-evolving startup landscape where competition is fierce and securing funding is crucial for growth, crafting an engaging pitch deck that captures investors’ attention is paramount. Foursquare and Contently’s experiences serve as inspiration for aspiring entrepreneurs looking to make a lasting impression on angel investors with their own startup pitch decks.

So whether you’re building the next groundbreaking platform like Foursquare or revolutionizing an industry with innovative solutions like Contently did for content marketing, remember that your pitch deck holds the power to unlock opportunities and propel your startup forward.

The Airbnb pitch deck is a prime example of a strong case in the startup world. It showcases how a simple idea can disrupt an entire industry and become a household name. Let’s delve into the details of this remarkable pitch deck that helped shape Airbnb’s success.

Outlining the Vision

The Airbnb pitch deck presented a clear vision for disrupting the travel industry by introducing a peer-to-peer home-sharing platform. By tapping into the unused space in people’s homes, they aimed to provide travelers with unique and affordable accommodations while creating an opportunity for homeowners to earn extra income. This innovative concept resonated with potential investors as it tackled both the market demand for affordable lodging options and the desire for personalized experiences.

Market Opportunity, Target Audience, and Competitive Analysis

To make a compelling case, Airbnb included detailed information about the market opportunity they identified in their original pitch deck. They highlighted statistics on the growing travel industry, emphasizing how their service could tap into this lucrative space. They outlined their target audience—travelers seeking authentic experiences and homeowners looking to monetize their properties. With the help of a pitch deck template, they were able to present their ideas effectively.

Furthermore, the pitch deck incorporated a competitive analysis that showcased Airbnb’s understanding of existing players in the market. By acknowledging competition from traditional hotels and other online booking platforms, they demonstrated awareness of potential challenges while also highlighting what set them apart—the unique value proposition of connecting travelers directly with local hosts.

Building Credibility through Traction and User Feedback

One crucial aspect that made Airbnb’s pitch deck stand out was its focus on early traction and user feedback. They provided data on their growth rate, showcasing how quickly they were gaining users within specific markets. This evidence of initial success helped build credibility among potential investors by demonstrating that there was already demand for their service.

Moreover, incorporating user feedback added another layer of authenticity to their pitch deck. By sharing testimonials from satisfied customers who had used Airbnb’s platform successfully, they created social proof that validated their business model. This approach not only instilled confidence in investors but also highlighted the positive impact Airbnb was making on the travel experiences of its users.

Securing Funding and Attracting Investors

Undoubtedly, Airbnb’s compelling pitch deck played a crucial role in securing initial funding and attracting investors. By presenting a well-researched market analysis, identifying target audience segments, and showcasing early traction, they painted an enticing picture of growth potential. The combination of disruptive innovation , solid market understanding, and early success made it difficult for investors to ignore the opportunity presented by Airbnb.

In fact, Guy Kawasaki, a renowned venture capitalist who reviewed thousands of pitch decks during his career, described Airbnb’s pitch deck as one of the best he had ever seen. This endorsement further emphasizes the effectiveness of their presentation in capturing investor interest and ultimately securing deals that propelled Airbnb to become a global leader in the travel industry.

Startups are known for their innovative ideas and disruptive potential. However, turning those ideas into reality requires one crucial element: funding. That’s where a well-crafted startup pitch deck comes into play.

Different Approaches to Pitching Ideas Effectively

There is no one-size-fits-all approach. Each example in this showcase demonstrates a different strategy or style that effectively conveys the unique value proposition of the company. By analyzing these pitch deck examples, entrepreneurs can gain valuable insights into crafting their own compelling presentations.

Let’s take a closer look at some great examples that showcase various approaches to pitching:

• Uber : Uber’s early pitch deck focused on highlighting the problem they aimed to solve – the difficulty of hailing a taxi in San Francisco. They used real-life stories and statistics to emphasize the demand for an alternative transportation solution. This approach helped investors understand the market need and potential scalability of their business model.
• Dropbox : Dropbox took a more visual approach with their pitch deck by incorporating screenshots and illustrations that demonstrated how their cloud storage platform worked seamlessly across devices. This visual storytelling not only made it easier for investors to grasp the product’s functionality but also showcased its simplicity and user-friendly interface.
• LinkedIn : LinkedIn’s pitch deck emphasized the professional networking aspect of their platform by showcasing testimonials from influential users who had already experienced success through connecting with others on the platform. By leveraging social proof, LinkedIn effectively conveyed credibility and demonstrated how their network could unlock opportunities for professionals worldwide.
• Buffer : Buffer’s pitch deck stood out by taking an educational approach to explain content marketing and social media management concepts while positioning their product as a solution. They used simple, engaging visuals and step-by-step explanations to help investors understand the value of their platform in a crowded market.

By showing these examples, we can see that there is no single formula for a successful pitch deck. Each startup tailored their approach to align with their unique value proposition and target audience. Entrepreneurs can draw inspiration from these examples and adapt strategies that resonate with their own business ideas.

Learning from Successful Startup Pitches

Analyzing legendary startup pitch deck examples offers valuable lessons on what works and what doesn’t. Here are key takeaways from studying these successful pitches:

• Clear problem statement : Each example showcased a clear identification of the problem they aimed to solve. By articulating the pain points experienced by potential customers, startups effectively conveyed the need for their product or service.
• Compelling storytelling : Successful pitch decks often include compelling narratives that engage investors emotionally. These stories help paint a picture of how the startup’s solution can transform lives or industries, making it easier for investors to connect with the vision.
• Market validation : Demonstrating market demand through data, testimonials, or case studies builds credibility and instills confidence in investors. Startups should provide evidence of traction, user engagement, or early adopter success stories to prove viability.
• Differentiation : To stand out in competitive markets, startups must clearly articulate their unique selling points and differentiate themselves from existing solutions or competitors. Highlighting what sets them apart helps create a compelling case for investment.
• Realistic financial projections : Pitch decks should include well-researched financial projections that showcase potential return on investment without appearing overly optimistic or unrealistic.

Remember, while studying these examples of original pitch decks is informative, it’s important not to simply copy the original pitch deck verbatim but rather adapt the strategies and techniques according to your own startup’s needs and goals.

If you’re looking to create an impactful startup pitch deck, you don’t have to start from scratch. There are plenty of ready-to-use templates available that can help you craft a compelling pitch deck that grabs attention and effectively communicates your business goals. Let’s explore some of the benefits of using pitch deck templates and how they can enhance your presentation.

Explore a Variety of Visually Appealing Designs

One of the advantages of using pitch deck templates is the wide range of visually appealing designs they offer. These templates are specifically designed to capture attention and make a lasting impression on your audience. With eye-catching graphics, modern layouts, and vibrant colors, these templates ensure that your pitch deck stands out from the crowd.

When choosing a template for your original pitch deck, consider the nature of your business and target audience. Look for designs that align with your brand image and convey professionalism while reflecting your unique style. Whether you prefer sleek and minimalist designs or bold and dynamic visuals, there’s a perfect template out there for you.

Customize Templates to Suit Your Business Needs

Pitch deck templates provide a structured format that serves as a solid foundation for your presentation. You can easily customize these templates to suit your specific business needs and goals. By tailoring the content, layout, and overall structure to match your startup’s unique value proposition, you can create a pitch deck that resonates with potential investors or partners.

Start by personalizing each slide with relevant information about your company’s background, product or service offering, market analysis, competitive advantage, financial projections, growth strategies, and original pitch deck. Remember to keep it concise yet informative – each slide should pack a punch while conveying key information effectively.

Benefit from Sample Pitch Deck Templates

If you’re new to creating pitch decks or need inspiration to kickstart your creative process, sample pitch deck templates are an excellent resource. These pre-designed templates provide real-life examples of successful startup pitch decks, giving you insights into what works and how to structure your own presentation.

By studying sample pitch deck templates, you can understand the flow of a compelling pitch deck and learn from industry best practices. Pay attention to the order of slides, the use of visuals, the balance between text and graphics, and how key messages are conveyed concisely. This knowledge will help you create a well-crafted pitch deck that effectively communicates your startup’s potential.

Make an Impact with Engaging Presentation Slides

Remember that your pitch deck is not just a collection of slides; it’s an opportunity to tell a captivating story about your startup. Each slide should contribute to the overall narrative and engage your audience throughout the presentation.

Start with a powerful title slide that grabs attention and sets the tone for your pitch. Follow it up with multiple slides that highlight different aspects of your business while maintaining a cohesive storyline. Use clear headings, bullet points, and concise statements to convey information effectively. Incorporate visually appealing graphics, charts, or infographics to support your key messages.

Consider using presentation template design tips such as contrasting colors for emphasis, consistent typography for readability, and strategic use of white space for visual clarity. The goal is to create a visually engaging slide deck that keeps investors focused on your ideas rather than getting lost in cluttered or confusing visuals.

Mastering the art of Startup Pitch Decks can indeed be a game-changer for your entrepreneurial venture. We’ve journeyed through the fundamental elements, explored legendary pitch decks like Airbnb’s, and highlighted the invaluable insights gained from them. Now, it’s your turn to captivate investors with a pitch deck that tells your startup’s unique story.

Seize the opportunity to make your startup’s value proposition irresistible. Build on the principles and examples we’ve dissected and craft your own pitch deck that’s clear, compelling, and investor-ready. Remember, your Startup Pitch Deck is more than just slides—it’s your chance to shine and secure the funding you need to make your startup dream a reality.

How long should my startup pitch deck be?

The optimal length for a startup pitch deck is usually around 10-15 slides. Keep it concise yet informative to maintain the audience’s attention.

Should I include my financial projections in the pitch deck?

It is important to provide investors with an overview of your financial projections in your original pitch deck. However, keep the details limited and focus on the key highlights.

Can I use visuals and graphics in my pitch deck?

Visuals can enhance the impact of your presentation and make it more engaging. Use charts, graphs, images, and diagrams to convey information effectively.

How should I tailor my pitch deck for different investor audiences?

Customize your pitch deck based on the interests and preferences of each investor audience. Highlight aspects that align with their investment criteria or industry focus.

Is it necessary to rehearse my pitch before presenting?

Practice is essential for delivering a confident and polished pitch. Rehearse multiple times to ensure smooth delivery and familiarity with your content.

Should I include testimonials or social proofs in my pitch deck?

Testimonials or social proofs can add credibility to your presentation. If you have positive feedback from customers or influential figures in your industry, consider including them.

Can I update my pitch deck as my startup progresses?

You should regularly update your pitch deck as your startup evolves. Keep it aligned with any new developments, achievements, or changes in strategy.

How can I make my pitch stand out from others?

To make your pitch stand out, focus on telling a compelling story that showcases the unique value proposition of your startup. Be authentic, passionate, and memorable.

What if investors ask challenging questions during the presentation?

Be prepared for challenging questions by thoroughly researching potential concerns about your business model or market. Answer confidently and transparently while highlighting mitigating factors.

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25+ Best Startup & Proposal Presentation Templates

Plan for growth with our startup and proposal PowerPoint templates. These tools provide a range of professional designs that can help you present your business proposals and startup plans in a compelling way.

Startup Plan Pitch Deck Template

This is a comprehensive and versatile pitch deck template that offers a wide range of useful slide designs for presenting your startup’s busines...

PPT Keynote Google Slides

Startup Proposal PowerPoint Template

Your presentations have to be simply perfect when presenting a startup to a group of investors. It could literally make or break your startup. This Po...

Business Proposal PowerPoint & Google Slides Template

This is a multipurpose business proposal template you can use to create all kinds of proposal presentations for agencies and brands. You can easily ed...

Launch Startup PowerPoint Template

If you’re working on a slideshow for a product launch, this PowerPoint template will come in handy. It comes with 30 slide layouts that are spec...

Business Proposal A4 PowerPoint Template

You can create a printable business proposal using this PowerPoint template. It comes with a vertical slide design in A4 size. It features a professio...

Sales Proposal PowerPoint Template

With this PowerPoint presentation, you can create professional slideshows for presenting your sales proposals. The template comes with some of the mos...

Website Proposal PowerPoint Template

If you’re a web designer or agency trying to convince a client to make a website, this PowerPoint template is a must-have for you. The template ...

Bontance Corporate PowerPoint Template

Bontance is a professional PowerPoint template designed with corporate brands and businesses in mind. This template features a set of clean and minima...

Proposal Space PowerPoint Proposal Template

You can use this PowerPoint template to design all kinds of proposal presentations for agencies, corporate brands, businesses, and more. The template ...

Lageday Project Proposal PowerPoint Template

Visuals take an important role in presenting an idea in an entertaining way. This PowerPoint template is designed to help you create more attractive p...

Yello Proposal PPTX & Google Slides Template

Another creative PowerPoint template that’s also compatible with Google Slides. This template is ideal for creative agencies and freelancers for...

Project Proposal Colorful PowerPoint Template

If you want to create a proposal presentation full of vibrant slides, this colorful PowerPoint template is for you. It includes 33 unique slide layout...

Serione – Business Proposal PowerPoint Template

Serione is an excellent business proposal PowerPoint template for startups looking to make an impression on potential investors. It comes with 36 mini...

CD Bussiness Proposal Presentation Template

Creating your project proposal and business strategy presentations will be quick and easy with this PowerPoint template. It comes with 30 unique slide...

Minimal PowerPoint Proposal Template

This minimal and elegant PowerPoint template is a fantastic choice for presenting a project proposal presentation. While the slides are pretty simple ...

Clark – Creative Business PowerPoint Template

This creative and colorful PowerPoint template is perfect for making slideshows for creative brands and businesses. It comes with a set of beautifully...

Minimal Business Proposal PowerPoint Template

This PowerPoint template is most suitable for creative agencies and small businesses. It comes with a set of creative slides that features a hand-craf...

REX Colorful Startup PowerPoint Template

A very bold and colorful PowerPoint template for designing startup presentations. This template lets you choose from 30 different slides to craft a st...

BizPro Clean PowerPoint Proposal Template

Whether you’re creating a proposal for a product, a project, or even proposing a new business strategy to your team, this template will help wit...

Down – Business PowerPoint Template

Down is a modern PowerPoint template designed for various business presentations. It includes a total of 39 slides that you can edit and resize to you...

Marketing Agency PowerPoint Template

With this template, you can design a PowerPoint slideshow with a minimalist design. It’s perfect for creating casual business proposals and pres...

STRIVE Creative Startup & Studio PowerPoint Template

This is a professional PowerPoint template you can use to design presentations for modern startups or studios. It includes 30 unique slides featuring ...

Project Proposal Pitch Deck PowerPoint Template

A simple and clean pitch deck template you can use to create different types of project proposals. The template comes with animated slides, editable v...

Business Proposal Pitch Deck Template

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Mobile App Proposal PowerPoint Template

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Wlop Modern Business Proposal Template PPTX

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Black Business Proposal PowerPoint Template

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Bhadrika Proposal PowerPoint Template

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Project Proposal & Pitch PowerPoint Template

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FAQs About Startup & Proposal Presentation Templates

What is a startup & proposal presentation template.

A Startup & Proposal Presentation Template is a pre-designed layout that can be used for showcasing your startup idea or business to potential investors, stakeholders, or clients. These templates come in various formats like PowerPoint, Google Slides, Keynote, etc., allowing you to present your business proposal in a comprehensive, organized, and visually appealing manner.

The template typically includes different sections that help you outline your business concept, strategy, market analysis, financial projections, etc. This saves significant time and effort as you don't have to create a presentation from scratch but can modify the template to suit your specific needs and preferences.

Why should I use a Startup & Proposal Presentation Template?

Using a Startup & Proposal Presentation Template can provide several benefits. First, it gives your presentation a professional look, building credibility and enhancing your audience's perception of your business idea or proposal. Second, it helps to structure your presentation logically and coherently, ensuring that you cover all essential aspects of your proposal and making it easier for your audience to understand your business objectives and strategies.

Furthermore, a good template can save you considerable time and effort, eliminating the need to design a presentation from scratch. It provides a standardized format that you can easily adapt to your needs, making it more efficient to prepare compelling presentations.

Can I Customize Startup & Proposal Presentation Templates?

Yes, Startup & Proposal Presentation Templates are fully customizable. You can edit the text, change the colors, fonts, and images, add your logo, adjust the layout, and make any other modifications to make the presentation align with your brand style and personal preferences. This level of customization allows you to create a unique and professional-looking presentation that truly represents your business idea or proposal.

The degree of customization might depend on the software you are using. Some templates may have limited customization capabilities, so it is essential to pick a template that allows for comprehensive modifications if you have specific design requirements.

Where can I find Startup & Proposal Presentation Templates?

Startup & Proposal Presentation Templates are available on many online platforms. These platforms offer a wide range of templates designed by professional graphic designers and targeted towards different types of business proposals and startup ideas. Among these are popular options like Envato Elements, TemplateMonster, Slides Carnival, and GraphicRiver. You can browse through their collections and choose the template that best suits your needs.

Moreover, tools like Microsoft PowerPoint, Google Slides, and Apple Keynote also provide in-built templates for business presentations. However, these might not be as specialized as those found on dedicated template platforms.

Do Startup & Proposal Presentation Templates require any special software?

Startup & Proposal Presentation Templates can be made in various software, most commonly Microsoft PowerPoint, Google Slides, or Apple Keynote. The type of software required will depend on the template format. For example, a PPTX template would require PowerPoint, while a KEY file would need Keynote. Most templates will specify which software they are compatible with, so you know what you need to edit them.

Some templates may also require certain plugins, font packs, or other additional resources, especially if they use certain advanced design elements. These requirements will be mentioned in the template's product details, so you need to ensure your system has these prerequisites before making a purchase.

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20+ Best Business PowerPoint Presentation Templates

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20+ best startup pitch deck powerpoint templates | slidesgobo.

A startup presentation is what you need to create to raise money for your business idea. A startup presentation is usually the first thing you create when starting a business. It’s what you show to potential investors or when you try to sell your business idea to a company or venture capitalist. A startup presentation slide aims to show that your business is viable and potentially profitable.

One of the most important points to keep in mind when initiating a startup presentation should be brief and concise. Investors don’t want to be listening to a long, drawn-out pitch. They want to quickly get a sense of what your business is about and if it’s something they want to invest in.

We’ll talk about some of the best startup pitch deck PowerPoint templates and some more viable presentation templates for startup companies through this article. You can use this collection of startup pitch presentations PPTs to efficiently make stunning presentation slides for your business . Use these slides to maximize productivity.

Table of Contents

Best Startup Pitch Deck PowerPoint Templates – Startup Presentation PPT Download

This is one of the most attractive and modern presentation templates you can get. It is available in a fully editable format, and each and every portion is editable. Several animations and transitions are available on all slides to provide your presentations with a beautiful look. Get this attractive presentation slide and impress your team.

Features: • There are 32 slides in the package. • There are five color variations on the template. • The infographics were handcrafted. • The slides are based on Master Slides. • All the graphics are adjustable.

Business Startup PowerPoint Template – Startup Business Plan PPT

This presentation template is very useful if you are operating a business or startup. Professional designers design this template so you can feel the professional touch. There are 300 creative slides in this template package with a high-quality 16×9 aspect ratio. It also has many more vector icons and so on. Use this template to engage your audience.

Startup Presentation – Simple Startup Presentation Template

This presentation can be used for companies, agencies, portfolios, and many other organizations as well. If you want to improve your company, this is the most recommended one. If you’re running a business, you may be expected to show a lot of information to the audience. Therefore, you should be ready to present the slides. By using these PPT layouts, you can save a lot of time. It has many unique features, such as:

• It has a collection of modern slides. • Aspect ratio 16:9. • Many attractive fonts are available. • All graphical elements are resizable. • Just drag and drop is enough to create slides.

Startup Pitch Deck Template Download – Startup Pitch Presentation PPT

There are countless PowerPoint templates readily available online. A business presentation does not just consist of slideshows, but it also needs to convey your strategies to your audience. It is really important that you choose a template that can suit your needs and will support you present them in the best possible way. You can easily create a startup business presentation template using these ready-to-use PowerPoint templates. Here you can add the content and other data you want. Have a look at these presentation slides.

• There are 16 slides. • More than 90 XML files are available. • There is a choice of light and dark versions. • There are many icon packs that are free. • All the slides are completely customizable.

Startup Pitch Deck Template – Startup Pitch Deck Template Free Download

This slide deck template for presentation is one of the best templates for your startup business. It defines information in a clear, concise manner. This template covers the problem, solution, team, and strategy. It is a must-have if you are trying to raise money for your startup and want to be taken seriously by investors. This template layout can be used for creative agencies, company profiles, corporate, and business. If you are in the early stages of the development of your business? If you want to raise money? Get noticed and get potential investors on board? Then this PPT slide design is for you.

• There are 30 slides in total.
• The slide elements are easily editable.
• There are a lot of interesting font styles are available.
• All the slide designs are based on the Master Slides.
• The slide layout consists of a picture placeholder.
• This template pack has a .PPTX, .PPT file, and a documentation file.

Best Startup Pitch Deck for Investors – Impressive Startup Investor Presentation PPT

A startup pitch deck for investors is a presentation by a startup to an angel investor, venture capitalist, or other potential investors. This startup investor presentation PPT should include key information about the startup company, such as the problem they are solving, its target market, its business model, its competitive landscape, and its financial projections as well. It usually includes information about the startup team, their experience, qualifications, and a slide about why the startup is seeking investment and how it will be used. A well-crafted startup pitch deck for investors can be a powerful tool for convincing investors to provide funding for a startup.

• 30+ unique and exciting slides.
• This template pack offers PowerPoint, Keynote, and Google Slides.
• It’s effortless to modify the slide components, and only a drag-and-drop is enough.
• You can edit and implement colors and shapes effortlessly.

“Jozeka” Investor Pitch Deck PowerPoint – Top Investor Pitch Deck Template

When it comes to seeking investment, first impressions are everything. Your investor pitch deck is your opportunity to make a strong and lasting impression on potential investors. The free PPT templates might be good enough to get your idea off the ground, but they have many limitations. If you’re looking for something with better design and more features, then I recommend checking out the premium template designs . The diverse range of features, such as color options and high-quality graphics, make this template an enticing choice for those looking to create their own business presentation. With the above template design, you can create a presentation that will grab the attention of shareholders and help you secure the funding you need to take your business to the next level.

• On this template, there is 60 slides total.
• There are two color choices available, light and dark.
• The slides are available in high-definition widescreen format.
• There is no need to seek any assistance from other editing software.

“Deck” Presentation Template – Best Investor Pitch Deck For Startup

A well-designed presentation template is essential for any startup looking to make a good impression on potential investors. A good presentation design can help to set your brand apart from the competition and make your pitch more memorable. When it comes to choosing a presentation template , First, make sure that the template is clean and professional-looking, choose a template that is easy to customize, and make sure the template is compatible with the software you’ll be using to present. This PowerPoint presentation template follows the above points. So you can confidently select this presentation.

• This PPT design consists of 40 unique slides.
• The PowerPoint presentation is built with Master Slides.
• Free attractive fonts are available here.

“Dashi Sales” Sales Dashboard Report Presentation – Best Template For Sales Presentation

Are you looking for a sales report presentation template? This template is the perfect way to present your sales data clearly and concisely. The template slides include a sales dashboard, sales report, and sales charts, all of which can be easily customized to suit your needs. With this template, you can quickly and easily create a professional sales report presentation to wow your audience. So why wait? Get started today and make your next sales presentation a success .

• Master Slides are used to create all of the template slides.
• This template package contains 30 premade colors.
• Both dark and light backgrounds are offered.
• All of the components you might want to add to a slide are fully editable.

Simple PowerPoint For Sales Presentation – Sales Presentation Strategies PowerPoint

Creating an effective sales presentation can be the key to closing a deal and achieving your sales goals. However, putting together a polished and professional-looking PowerPoint can be time-consuming. Fortunately, sales presentation PowerPoint templates are available that can help you save both time and effort. These templates come with pre-designed slides that you can simply drop your content into. In addition, they often include built-in features such as animation and transitions, making it easy to create an engaging and visually appealing presentation. Best of all, sales presentation PPT templates can be easily customized to fit your specific needs. So whether you’re looking to close a huge deal or simply impress potential clients, a sales presentation template design can give you the edge you need to succeed.

“Marketing Triumph” PowerPoint Template – Professional Marketing PowerPoint Templates

When it comes to making professional marketing PowerPoint templates , it is important to have a professional and engaging template. Many PowerPoint templates are available on the internet, but not all of them are created equally. This professional marketing PPT template should be designed with your target audience in mind. It is quite simple to read and understand while still being visually appealing. In addition, the template is very compatible, so you can easily edit and customize it to fit your needs. Using this template design will help to ensure that your presentation makes the right impression on your audience. So, if you’re looking to create the best marketing PowerPoint presentation, this is the top recommendation for you.

• A limitless selection of colors and a single click are all you need to change the color.
• There are 400 different slides on the slide deck.
• There are 51 colored themes to choose from.
• PPTX and PPT files are included.
• Clean, modern, and visually impressive PPT slides.

“Promote” Marketing PPT Presentation – Best Marketing PowerPoint Presentation Themes

Marketing PowerPoint presentation slides can provide your marketing team with a professional look that can help to engage potential clients. There are much different marketing PPT presentation themes available, so it is important to choose one that best fits your company’s image and message. Marketing presentation slides can include features such as company branding, industry-specific imagery, charts, and graphs. Using this marketing PowerPoint presentation design, you can create a consistent look for your marketing presentations that will help communicate your company’s message effectively.

Complete Marketing Strategy Presentation Template – Simple Marketing PPT Presentation Template

Marketing campaigns require a lot of care, planning, and execution in order to be successful. You need to have a clear vision for what you want to achieve and then develop a strategy for getting there. This marketing strategy presentation template will help you do just that. It’s got an awesome modern design, with great photo layouts and creative slides to show your plan. All graphics used in this presentation were created with full vector objects to allow for easy editable. This indicates that if you need to change an element’s color, size, or shape, you can do so without losing any quality. These features make this template ideal for both personal and commercial use. So whether you’re creating a presentation for work, this template will save you time and hassle.

Fully Customizable Business Plan PowerPoint Template – Multi Business PPT Templates

When it comes to making a business plan PowerPoint template, there are a few things to consider. First, the template should be fully customizable. This represents that you should be able to change the color scheme, add or remove slides, and generally make it your own. Second, the template should be professional and easy to read. This means avoiding gimmicky graphics and instead opting for clean, straightforward layouts. Finally, it should be easy to use. This shows that you should be able to quickly and easily insert your own data into the template without any trouble. This presentation slide will make a lasting impression with its clean and modern design. So don’t wait any longer; begin your business plan today with this stunning business PowerPoint template layout.

Best Business Strategy PowerPoint Template – Business Strategy PPT Template For Startup

Any successful business starts with a solid strategy. When it comes to startups, this is especially important because there is often a lot of competition and limited resources. This business strategy PowerPoint template is a clean and modern presentation template. It includes 152 creative slides optimally designed for business strategy presentations. The template is fully adjustable, so you can easily customize it to your brand colors and style. The slides are professionally designed with high-quality vector graphics. This ensures that your presentation will look sharp and crisp, even when shown on a large screen. It is very easy to use. Simply add your own content, and you’re ready to go! Whether you’re pitching a new business idea or presenting your company’s growth strategy, this is the perfect template for you.

Modern Business Plan PowerPoint Templates – User-Friendly Business PPT Slides

A business plan is an official document that outlines the goals and objectives of a business. It is typically used to track progress and measure success. A well-designed business plan PPT slide can be a valuable tool for communicating your ideas to potential investors, partners, and clients. It can help you to clearly articulate your vision, highlight key data points, and illustrate your potential for success. When used correctly, a business plan PPT template can be an invaluable tool for convincing others to get on board with your business venture.

Best Brand Guidelines PowerPoint Templates – Elegant PPT Branding Template

This PPT branding template is a clean and modern PowerPoint template that comes with 40 modern, unique slides, attractive color schemes, and several easy-to-edit features. This template design is perfect for creating a professional presentation that will wow your audience. All slides created by Master Slides , resizable vector graphics, and editable text placeholders are available. To match your brand guidelines, you can easily personalize the colors, fonts, and layout. With this template, you’ll be able to create a stunning presentation that reflects your brand’s unique personality.

Stunning Brand Guideline PowerPoint Template – Beautiful Brand Guidelines Template PPT

This brand-guideline PowerPoint template is a helpful tool for businesses to use when creating presentations. The template includes slide designs that are based on common branding standards. This ensures that your company’s branding will be consistent with that of other businesses around the world. The template contains a selection of special built-in features, including fonts, colors, and logos, that can be tailored to meet your corporation’s needs. In addition, this template design is easy to use and can be opened in any presentation software program. As a result, the brand guideline PPT template is an essential tool for businesses that want to create professional and consistent presentations.

Professional Brand Manual PowerPoint Presentation Template – Minimalist Brand Manual Presentation Layout

A brand manual is a document that outlines the specific standards and guidelines for using a company or organization’s brand identity. The manual typically covers topics such as logo usage, color palette, typography, and other design elements. It also usually includes information on how to apply the brand standards to various marketing materials, such as website design, print collateral, and social media posts. A well-designed PowerPoint template can be a great starting point for creating your brand manual. This brand manual PPT presentation design has been carefully created to help you get started. It includes all you need to get started, including an overview of branding, logo usage guidelines, and tips for maintaining brand consistency. Simply download the template, and customize it to fit your brand.

Elegant Startup Pitch Deck Template – Modern Startup Presentation For Investors PPT

A startup presentation deck is a presentation that entrepreneurs use to sell their business ideas to potential investors. The objective of a presentation is to convince investors to invest in your company. You need to be able to grab the attention of your potential investors and give them a clear, concise overview of what your business is and what it plans to achieve. A great way to do this is to create presentation slides. A pitch deck template is a visual presentation that outlines your business concept, strategy, and financials. It should be a persuasive tool that tells your story and makes your case for why people should invest in your company. Creating a PPT can be a daunting task, but there are plenty of great templates out there that can help you get started. With a short time and effort, you can put together a PowerPoint design that will help you close the deal. So if you’re looking to give your startup the best chance of success, be sure to check out this PPT template.

Ultimate PowerPoint Presentation for Startups – Energetic Presentation Template for Startup

Many startup companies face the same challenges when it comes to giving presentations. They may not have a lot of experience, and they may not have a lot of time. However, one tool can help to level the playing field: a presentation template. A well-designed PPT template can give confidence to an inexperienced presenter, and it can save a lot of time to create a new one. With so many benefits, it’s no wonder that more and more startups are turning to choosing presentation templates to give their businesses a boost. This well-designed PowerPoint presentation design can be a valuable tool for startup companies. It can help to pitch ideas to potential investors, attract new customers, and build brand awareness. This presentation should be clear and concise, with slides that are easy to read and understand. Additionally, they provide high-quality images and graphics that support the text.

“Creatifest” Startup Idea Presentation PPT – Startup Presentation PowerPoint Download

A PowerPoint presentation is often the first step in persuading potential investors to support a startup. The presentation allows the startup team to clearly articulate their business idea, explain the market opportunity, and outline the company’s goals. This professionally-designed template has everything you need to make a killer presentation, including slides for introducing your team, sharing your business model, showcasing your product, and more. Plus, it’s easy to alter with your own branding and messaging. So download it today and get started on making an impact.

Minimal Startup Business Plan PowerPoint Presentation – Corporate New Innovative Business Ideas PPT Slides

A business plan is fundamental for any startup business. However, developing a comprehensive and well-organized business plan can be a time-consuming and challenging task. For many entrepreneurs, a business plan PowerPoint presentation may be a more practical option. While it won’t provide all of the detailed information of a traditional business plan, a startup business plan PowerPoint template can still be an effective way to communicate your business concept and strategy to potential investors. The key is to focus on the essential elements of your business plan to present them in a clear and concise manner. With a little effort, you can create a powerful and professional-looking presentation that will help you get the financial support you need to get your business off the ground.

“Decacorn” Multipurpose Startup PowerPoint Presentation Template – Tech Startup Pitch Deck Template

A startup presentation template can help to streamline the process of creating a presentation for a new company. By providing a structure and framework for the content, a presentation template can help to ensure that all of the vital information is included. Moreover, this startup presentation template design can help to give the presentation a professional appearance and make it more likely to impress potential shareholders. Of course, creating a presentation from scratch can also be a time-consuming and daunting task. Although, with a little time and effort, a well-designed startup presentation PPT can help to make the process much easier and produce a high-quality result.

“Stuff” All in One Startup PowerPoint Template – Simple Startup Presentation PPT Designs

A great presentation is essential for a startup because it is often the first impression that a potential financier will have of the company. A well-crafted presentation can communicate the key points of the business in a clear and concise way, and it can also help to build credibility and trust. Furthermore, it can highlight the unique selling points of the startup and show why it is a good investment opportunity. When using this template, it can be possible to customize it to fit your specific business and brand. With a little effort, you can create a winning presentation that will help you get the financing and support you need to launch your business.

If you’re looking to start a business, it’s important to have a plan and present that plan in the most professional way possible. A well-made PowerPoint presentation can help convince your investors or partners that your idea is worth backing. When it comes time to create your presentation, be sure to use a high-quality startup PowerPoint template . With beautiful designs and easy customization options, these listed templates will help you make an impressive first impression on everyone who sees your pitch. So what are you waiting for? Start creating your perfect pitch today!

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Startup presentation templates.

A startup presentation template is a powerful tool to showcase your business idea to potential investors. It should be concise, persuasive, and informative. This document is used to demonstrate your startup's potential, how your product or service works, and what sets it apart from the competition.

The goal of a startup presentation is to convince potential investors that your business is worth investing in. Therefore, it must include information that clearly communicates the value of the proposed investment. In addition to presenting the core elements of your business plan, it should demonstrate your ability to execute those plans effectively.

What Makes a Great Startup Presentation?

An effective startup presentation should be engaging, informative, and entertaining. It should also have a clear message that is communicated with just the right amount of information to ensure that the audience understands it.

When creating a presentation, it's important to keep it simple. Too many ideas on one slide can be overwhelming and distract from the main message. Instead, focus on telling a compelling story through a combination of images and text.

Get ready to pitch with confidence, knowing that you have the perfect startup presentation to impress investors, partners, or potential customers. With over 120 startup presentation templates from some of the most successful venture-backed startups, you can easily customize yours to build a strong narrative and communicate your unique selling proposition. Each template includes easy-to-edit content blocks, making it simple for you to tailor each slide to your specific needs and deliver an impactful pitch in no time.

Use Slidebean Startup Presentation Builder and Templates

Slidebean makes creating presentations easy for startups. We believe that great design should be accessible to everyone. Simply choose one of our pre-designed startup presentation templates, and customize it to your liking. Our platform also allows you to create your own custom theme if none of ours suits your needs. Once you're done editing, just upload your files and start sharing them with investors, partners, or colleagues. We also offer design services if you need them.

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Blog Marketing How To Start a Presentation: 15 Ways to Set the Stage

How To Start a Presentation: 15 Ways to Set the Stage

Written by: Krystle Wong Jul 25, 2023

The opening moments of your presentation hold immense power – it’s your opportunity to make a lasting impression and captivate your audience. 

A strong presentation start acts as a beacon, cutting through the noise and instantly capturing the attention of your listeners. With so much content vying for their focus, a captivating opening ensures that your message stands out and resonates with your audience.

Whether you’re a startup business owner pitching a brilliant idea, a seasoned presenter delivering a persuasive talk or an expert sharing your experience, the start of your presentation can make all the difference. But don’t fret — I’ve got you covered with 15 electrifying ways to kickstart your presentation. 

The presentation introduction examples in this article cover everything from self-introduction to how to start a group presentation, building anticipation that leaves the audience eager to delve into the depths of your topic.

Click to jump ahead:

How to start a presentation introduction

15 ways to start a presentation and captivate your audience, common mistakes to avoid in the opening of a presentation, faqs on how to start a presentation, captivate the audience from the get-go.

Presentations can be scary, I know. But even if stage fright hits, you can always fall back on a simple strategy.

Just take a deep breath, introduce yourself and briefly explain the topic of your presentation.

To grab attention at the start, try this opening line: Hello everyone. I am so glad you could join me today. I’m very excited about today’s topic. I’m [Your Name] and I’ll be talking about [Presentation Topic]. Raise your hand if you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by [Challenge related to your topic]. Many of us might have faced challenges with [Challenge related to your topic]. Today, we’ll explore some strategies that’ll help us [Solution that you’re presenting].

Regardless of your mode of presentation , crafting an engaging introduction sets the stage for a memorable presentation.

Let’s dive into some key tips for how to start a presentation speech to help you nail the art of starting with a bang:

Understand your audience

The key to an engaging introduction is to know your audience inside out and give your audience what they want. Tailor your opening to resonate with their specific interests, needs and expectations. Consider what will captivate them and how you can make your presentation relevant to their lives or work.

Use a compelling hook

Grab the audience’s attention from the get-go with a compelling hook. Whether it’s a thought-provoking question, a surprising fact or a gripping story, a powerful opening will immediately pique their curiosity and keep them invested in what you have to say.

State your purpose

Be crystal clear about your subject matter and the purpose of your presentation. In just a few sentences, communicate the main objectives and the value your audience will gain from listening to you. Let them know upfront what to expect and they’ll be more likely to stay engaged throughout.

Introduce yourself and your team

Give a self introduction about who you are such as your job title to establish credibility and rapport with the audience.

Some creative ways to introduce yourself in a presentation would be by sharing a brief and engaging personal story that connects to your topic or the theme of your presentation. This approach instantly makes you relatable and captures the audience’s attention.

Now, let’s talk about — how to introduce team members in a presentation. Before introducing each team member, briefly explain their role or contribution to the project or presentation. This gives the audience an understanding of their relevance and expertise.

Group presentations are also a breeze with the help of Venngage. Our in-editor collaboration tools allow you to edit presentations side by side in real-time. That way, you can seamlessly hare your design with the team for input and make sure everyone is on track. 

Maintain enthusiasm

Enthusiasm is contagious! Keep the energy levels up throughout your introduction, conveying a positive and upbeat tone. A vibrant and welcoming atmosphere sets the stage for an exciting presentation and keeps the audience eager to hear more.

Before you think about how to present a topic, think about how to design impactful slides that can leave a lasting impression on the audience. Here are 120+ presentation ideas , design tips, and examples to help you create an awesome slide deck for your next presentation.

Captivating your audience from the get-go is the key to a successful presentation. Whether you’re a seasoned speaker or a novice taking the stage for the first time, the opening of your presentation sets the tone for the entire talk. 

So, let’s get ready to dive into the 15 most creative ways to start a presentation. I promise you these presentation introduction ideas will captivate your audience, leaving them hanging on your every word.

Grab-attention immediately

Ask a thought-provoking question.

Get the audience’s wheels turning by throwing them a thought-provoking question right out of the gate. Make them ponder, wonder and engage their critical thinking muscles from the very start.

Share a surprising statistic or fact

Brace yourself for some wide eyes and dropped jaws! Open your presentation with a jaw-dropping statistic or a mind-blowing fact that’s directly related to your topic. Nothing captures attention like a good ol’ dose of shock and awe.

State a bold statement or challenge

Ready to shake things up? Kick off with a bold and daring statement that sets the stage for your presentation’s epic journey. Boldness has a way of making ears perk up and eyes widen in anticipation!

Engage with a poll or interactive activity

Turn the audience from passive listeners to active participants by kicking off with a fun poll or interactive activity. Get them on their feet, or rather — their fingertips, right from the start!

Venngage’s user-friendly drag-and-drop editor allows you to easily transform your slides into an interactive presentation . Create clickable buttons or navigation elements within your presentation to guide your audience to different sections or external resources. 

Enhance engagement by incorporating videos or audio clips directly into your presentation. Venngage supports video and audio embedding, which can add depth to your content.

Begin with an opening phrase that captures attention

Use opening phrases that can help you create a strong connection with your audience and make them eager to hear more about what you have to say. Remember to be confident, enthusiastic and authentic in your delivery to maximize the impact of your presentation.

Here are some effective presentation starting words and phrases that can help you grab your audience’s attention and set the stage for a captivating presentation:

• “Imagine…”
• “Picture this…”
• “Did you know that…”
• “Have you ever wondered…”
• “In this presentation, we’ll explore…”
• “Let’s dive right in and discover…”
• “I’m excited to share with you…”
• “I have a confession to make…”
• “I want to start by telling you a story…”
• “Before we begin, let’s consider…”
• “Have you ever faced the challenge of…”
• “We all know that…”
• “This is a topic close to my heart because…”
• “Over the next [minutes/hours], we’ll cover…”
• “I invite you to journey with me through…”

Build connection and credibility

Begin with a personal connection .

Share a real-life experience or a special connection to the topic at hand. This simple act of opening up creates an instant bond with the audience, turning them into your biggest cheerleaders.

Having the team share their personal experiences is also a good group presentation introduction approach. Team members can share their own stories that are related to the topic to create an emotional connection with your audience. 

Tell a relevant story

Start your presentation with a riveting story that hooks your audience and relates to your main message. Stories have a magical way of captivating hearts and minds. Organize your slides in a clear and sequential manner and use visuals that complement your narrative and evoke emotions to engage the audience.

With Venngage, you have access to a vast library of high-quality and captivating stock photography, offering thousands of options to enrich your presentations. The best part? It’s entirely free! Elevate your visual storytelling with stunning images that complement your content, captivate your audience and add a professional touch to your presentation. 

Use a powerful quote

Sometimes, all you need is some wise words to work wonders. Begin with a powerful quote from a legendary figure that perfectly fits your presentation’s theme — a dose of inspiration sets the stage for an epic journey.

Build anticipation

Provide a brief outline.

Here’s a good introduction for presentation example if you’re giving a speech at a conference. For longer presentations or conferences with multiple speakers especially, providing an outline helps the audience stay focused on the key takeaways. That way, you can better manage your time and ensure that you cover all the key points without rushing or running out of time.

Pose a problem and offer a solution

A great idea on how to start a business presentation is to start by presenting a problem and offering a well-thought-out solution. By addressing their pain points and showcasing your solution, you’ll capture their interest and set the stage for a compelling and successful presentation.

Back up your solution with data, research, or case studies that demonstrate its effectiveness. This can also be a good reporting introduction example that adds credibility to your proposal.

Preparing a pitch deck can be a daunting task but fret not. This guide on the 30+ best pitch deck tips and examples has everything you need to bring on new business partners and win new client contracts. Alternatively, you can also get started by customizing one of our professional pitch deck templates for free. 

Incite curiosity in the audience

Utilize visuals or props.

Capture your audience’s gaze by whipping out captivating visuals or props that add an exciting touch to your subject. A well-placed prop or a stunning visual can make your presentation pop like a fireworks show!

That said, you maybe wondering — how can I make my presentation more attractive.  A well-designed presentation background instantly captures the audience’s attention and creates a positive first impression. Here are 15 presentation background examples to keep the audience awake to help you get inspired. 

Use humor or wit

Sprinkle some humor and wit to spice things up. Cracking a clever joke or throwing in a witty remark can break the ice and create a positively charged atmosphere. If you’re cracking your head on how to start a group presentation, humor is a great way to start a presentation speech. 

Get your team members involved in the fun to create a collaborative and enjoyable experience for everyone. Laughter is the perfect way to break the ice and set a positive tone for your presentation!

Invoke emotion

Get those heartstrings tugging! Start with a heartfelt story or example that stirs up emotions and connects with your audience on a personal level. Emotion is the secret sauce to a memorable presentation.

Aside from getting creative with your introduction, a well-crafted and creative presentation can boost your confidence as a presenter. Browse our catalog of creative presentation templates and get started right away!

Use a dramatic pause

A great group presentation example is to start with a powerful moment of silence, like a magician about to reveal their greatest trick. After introducing your team, allow a brief moment of silence. Hold the pause for a few seconds, making it feel deliberate and purposeful. This builds anticipation and curiosity among the audience.

Pique their interest

Share a fun fact or anecdote.

Time for a little fun and games! Kick-off with a lighthearted or fascinating fact that’ll make the audience go, “Wow, really? Tell me more!” A sprinkle of amusement sets the stage for an entertaining ride.

While an introduction for a presentation sets the tone for your speech, a good slide complements your spoken words, helping the audience better understand and remember your message. Check out these 12 best presentation software for 2023 that can aid your next presentation. 

The opening moments of a presentation can make or break your entire talk. It’s your chance to grab your audience’s attention, set the tone, and lay the foundation for a successful presentation. However, there are some common pitfalls that speakers often fall into when starting their presentations. 

Starting with Apologies

It might be tempting to start with a preemptive apology, especially if you’re feeling nervous or unsure about your presentation. However, beginning with unnecessary apologies or self-deprecating remarks sets a negative tone right from the start. Instead of exuding confidence and credibility, you’re unintentionally undermining yourself and your message. 

Reading from Slides

One of the most common blunders in the opening of a PowerPoint presentation is reading directly from your slides or script. While it’s crucial to have a well-structured outline, reciting word-for-word can lead to disengagement and boredom among your audience. Maintain eye contact and connect with your listeners as you speak. Your slides should complement your words, not replace them.

Overwhelming with Information

In the excitement to impress, some presenters bombard their audience with too much information right at the beginning.

Instead of overloading the audience with a sea of data, statistics or technical details that can quickly lead to confusion and disinterest, visualize your data with the help of Venngage. Choose an infographic template that best suits the type of data you want to visualize. Venngage offers a variety of pre-designed templates for charts, graphs, infographics and more.

Ignoring the Audience

It’s easy to get caught up in the content and forget about the people in front of you. Don’t overlook the importance of acknowledging the audience and building a connection with them. Greet them warmly, make eye contact and maintain body language to show genuine interest in their presence. Engage the audience early on by asking a show of hands question or encourage audience participation. 

Lack of Clarity

Your audience should know exactly what to expect from your presentation. Starting with a vague or unclear opening leaves them guessing about the purpose and direction of your talk. Clearly communicate the topic and objectives of your presentation right from the beginning. This sets the stage for a focused and coherent message that resonates with your audience.

Simplicity makes it easier for the audience to understand and retain the information presented. Check out our gallery of simple presentation templates to keep your opening concise and relevant. 

Skipping the Hook

The opening of your presentation is the perfect opportunity to hook your audience’s attention and keep them engaged. However, some presenters overlook this crucial aspect and dive straight into the content without any intrigue. Craft an attention-grabbing hook that sparks curiosity, poses a thought-provoking question or shares an interesting fact. A compelling opening is like the key that unlocks your audience’s receptivity to the rest of your presentation.

Now that you’ve got the gist of how to introduce a presentation, further brush up your speech with these tips on how to make a persuasive presentation and how to improve your presentation skills to create an engaging presentation . 

How can I overcome nervousness at the beginning of a presentation?

To overcome nervousness at the beginning of a presentation, take deep breaths, practice beforehand, and focus on connecting with your audience rather than worrying about yourself.

How long should the opening of a presentation be?

The opening of a presentation should typically be brief, lasting around 1 to 3 minutes, to grab the audience’s attention and set the tone for the rest of the talk.

Should I memorize my presentation’s opening lines?

While it’s helpful to know your opening lines, it’s better to understand the key points and flow naturally to maintain authenticity and flexibility during the presentation.

Should I use slides during the opening of my presentation?

Using slides sparingly during the opening can enhance the message, but avoid overwhelming the audience with too much information early on.

How do I transition smoothly from the opening to the main content of my presentation?

Transition smoothly from the opening to the main content by providing a clear and concise outline of what’s to come, signaling the shift and maintaining a logical flow between topics.

Just as a captivating opening draws your audience in, creating a well-crafted presentation closing has the power to leave a lasting impression. Wrap up in style with these 10 ways to end a presentation .

Presenting virtually? Check out these tips on how to ace your next online presentation . 

Captivating your audience from the very beginning is crucial for a successful presentation. The first few moments of your talk can set the tone and determine whether your audience remains engaged throughout or loses interest. 

Start with a compelling opening that grabs their attention. You can use a thought-provoking question, a surprising statistic or a powerful quote to pique their curiosity. Alternatively, storytelling can be a potent tool to draw them into your narrative. It’s essential to establish a personal connection early on, whether by sharing a relatable experience or expressing empathy towards their needs and interests.

Lastly, be mindful of your body language and vocal delivery. A confident and engaging speaker can captivate an audience, so make eye contact, use appropriate gestures and vary your tone to convey passion and sincerity.

In conclusion, captivating your audience from the very beginning requires thoughtful preparation, engaging content and a confident delivery. With Venngage’s customizable templates, you can adapt your presentation to suit the preferences and interests of your specific audience, ensuring maximum engagement. Go on and get started today!

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How To Create a Startup Pitch Presentation?

Gone are the days when PowerPoint was a mere presentation tool and limited to office board meetings. Today, with the advent of market-disrupting technologies, companies across the world have started leveraging PowerPoint as a powerful Marketing and Sales medium. Brands are constantly enhancing their sales funnel by using presentations to interact with patrons across multiple touchpoints.

For any entrepreneur, a startup pitch deck is one of the most imperative business documents. The 10-15 slide presentation deck talks about your company, business plan, and startup’s vision. When time is of the essence & you have to convince your investors why you’re worth their money, a well-thought & engaging pitch can draw a line between a closed deal or a missed opportunity.

What Goes Into Successful Startup Pitch Decks?

There is no denying that pitching to investors is one of the most important yet nerve-wracking experiences in almost everybody’s entrepreneurial journey. Pitching to investors is an art, and the purpose of a great pitch deck is to lay out the rationale for investors to come aboard and invest in your business. However, in a world where venture capitalists (VCs) are exposed to thousands of pitches, only a fraction of them make it to the actual investment rounds.

It takes more than just a presentation to introduce your idea to a group of guests who can either transform it into a ravishing reality or break its future. Great pitch decks are anything but a mere collection of slides. They tell a story! They evoke emotions, build curiosity, foster trust & educate the audience about the subject.

An ideal pitch deck talks about:

• Company Purpose
• Problem & Solution
• Market Size & Competition
• Your Unique Value Proposition
• Business & Revenue Model
• Roadmap & Financial Projections

Without further ado, let’s move ahead and understand out-of-the-box ways through which you can create remarkable startup pitches which engage stakeholders, establish integrity, and secure seed money for your business endeavors.

Know Your Audience:

Knowing the audience is one of the primary steps in preparing a winning startup pitch. Often presenters create common and ordinary slides and derail the audience from the presentation. Doing a little homework and preparing a pitch deck that aligns more with your audiences’ interests, traits and inclinations can do wonders for your presentation goals. It is then you can create a proactive and well-prepared pitch deck that has the potential to entice, educate and influence the audience.

The expectations of a customer, investor, or corporate buyer differ drastically! Where the majority of customers are interested in faster resolution or an improved set of unique features, the investor or buyer would want to emphasize on “why”, “what” & “how” aspects of your business. Therefore, putting in due diligence and knowing the audience can help you customize the pitch, magnify their expectations and cater to them, just right!

Use Professional Templates:

One of the effective ways to kick start your presentations is by employing ready-to-use, corporate-grade pitch deck templates . These templates provide the much-needed flexibility in terms of design aesthetics & customization. Entrepreneurs must understand that personalization is a key factor when we talk about driving the interest of the audience towards a certain service, product, or business as a whole.

SlideModel readymade templates allow you to 100% customize the pitch deck such that you can incorporate your company’s branding and marketing guidelines into the slides. Thus, you can align your presentation with your brand better and boost its integrity. Rather than worrying about the presentation design and layout, entrepreneurs can emphasize content’s quality. One can simply put relevant content into slide’s placeholders and come up with a winning presentation in a matter of minutes.

10 20 30 Rule of Presentation:

While creating a revolutionary startup pitch deck, presenters can consider using the popular- 10 20 30 rule of presentation. The rule states that a presentation should not have more than ten slides. Further, you should not take more than twenty minutes to present the entire deck. In the end, the rule encourages the presenters to keep typography or font size to 30px.

One of the perks of following the 10 20 30 rule is it allows you to say more with less. It empowers you to touch base with multiple aspects of the subject matter without stretching the presentation unnecessarily. This enables you to get hold of your audiences’ attention. Your audience tends to pay more attention to carefully designed, to the point, and lucid presentations. Hence the 10 20 30 rule can be your go-to guide for creating crisp and stunning presentations!

Use Graphs and Charts:

Often presenters create cluttered slides and overwhelm the audience. One should note that nothing puts off the audience more than reading random numbers off the screen. If your audience loses interest in the presentation, it may cause the popular phenomenon- “Death By PowerPoint”. Instead, presenters can boost the engagement manifolds by inculcating lucrative graphs and charts into their startup pitch deck.

Visual aids, such as graphs and charts let you transform ordinary content into meaningful illustrations. These also encourage your audience to connect the dots and bring out the actual value of the data. You can consider using popular graphs and charts such as histograms, scatter plots, line graphs, etc. With effective data visualization, your audience can comprehend the data better, generate valuable inferences and critical insights.

The End Line:

An ideal startup pitch deck should be compelling, credible, and concise & it should foster a memorable presentation experience for the audience. Whether you are pitching to potential investors, venture capitalists, or a group of evangelists, your presentation should get hold of their attention right from the first slide. Always try to keep the slides minimalistic as “the less, the better”.

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How to Start a Presentation with Impact + 12 Examples!

December 1, 2023

In the world of snooze-worthy presentations, your opening is your moment of truth. Knowing how to start a presentation—be it a sales presentation, an investor pitch, a conference keynote, or an internal team update—sets the tone for everything that follows. The best way to open your presentation? Forget about overly complicated introductions, because you’ll want to use your initial seconds to pique genuine curiosity and capture attention. 

Whether it's through a thought-provoking quote, a stunning visual, a brief yet impactful video, an engaging question, or an interactive poll, the goal is to make your audience sit up and take notice, avoiding the common pitfall of starting with an 'about me' narrative. Remember, in these moments, your story is less about you and more about resonating with your audience. Wondering how you can craft an opening that not only grabs attention but also holds it? Here’s how to make sure your message sticks the landing.

How to Start Your Sales Presentation with Impact

The opening of a sales presentation is crucial in setting the stage for what you're offering. It’s your chance to grab the audience's attention and make them eager to hear more about your product or service. We might specialize in PowerPoint design services, but we’re also suckers for punchy openings and clever wordsmithing. Here are five dynamic ways to start your sales presentation to engage your audience effectively. After all, who’s going to buy from you if your presentation isn’t engaging?

Interesting Statistics

Begin your presentation with a statistic that highlights a problem or opportunity relevant to your audience. For instance, if you’re selling a cybersecurity solution, you might start with, "Did you know that cyber attacks are increasing at an alarming rate of 30% per year?" This kind of opening not only grabs attention but also establishes the importance of your product or service. The more attention-grabbing, the better!

Compelling Questions

Asking a thought-provoking question can immediately engage your audience. It encourages them to think and become active participants. For example, "Have you ever considered how much time we waste on inefficient processes?" This approach works well in highlighting the pain points that your product or service can address.

Presentation Storytelling

Stories are powerful tools for connection, no doubt. Start with a short, relatable story that illustrates the need for your product or service. A narrative about a common challenge and how your product provided a solution can be very effective. For instance, "Let me tell you about a client who was struggling with..."

Visual Impact

Using a striking visual can be a great way to start a sales presentation. A compelling image or a brief video that gets your message across can make a strong impression. This could be as simple as a before-and-after scenario, showcasing the effectiveness of your product.

Bold Statements

Kick off with a bold, intriguing statement that makes the audience sit up and take notice. It should be directly related to the benefits of your product or service. For example, "We're not just changing the game–we're redefining it." This kind of opening sets a confident tone for the rest of your presentation.

How to Start Your Investor Pitch Presentation

Presenting to investors is a unique challenge. You need to quickly establish credibility and capture their interest. Here are five effective strategies for opening your investor presentation to ensure you make a lasting impression.

Visionary Opening

Begin with a powerful vision statement that encapsulates the essence and ambition of your business. This could be a glimpse into the future that your company is striving to create. For example, "At the heart of our company lies a vision to revolutionize sustainable energy for generations to come." This approach instantly sets a high-level tone and shows investors the potential impact of your business.

Compelling Problem Statement

Start with a clear and compelling description of the problem your business aims to solve. This not only highlights the need for your solution but also demonstrates your understanding of the market. For instance, "In a world where over 30% of produced food is wasted, our solution offers an innovative way to reduce this drastically."

Success Story

Share a brief story of a significant milestone or success that your company has achieved. This could be about landing a major client, a breakthrough in your technology, or a notable growth milestone. This kind of opening underlines your company's potential and track record.

Surprising Fact or Stat

Kick off with a surprising fact related to your industry that sets the stage for your presentation. This should be something that highlights the market opportunity or the need for your solution. For instance, "In the $2.2 trillion food industry, a shocking 30% of produce goes to waste. Our solution tackles this inefficiency head-on."

Personal Journey

Starting with a brief narrative about why you founded the company can be a powerful way to connect with investors on a more personal level. It adds a human element to your presentation, allowing investors to understand your passion and commitment. For example, "My journey to founding this company began five years ago when I encountered..."

How to Start a Keynote Presentation

Keynote talks are an opportunity to inspire, influence, and leave a lasting impression on your audience. The opening of your talk is critical in setting the stage for your message. These are our favorite ways to hook your audience from the get-go.

Inspirational Quote

Open with a quote that resonates with the theme of your talk. Choose a saying from a well known person that gets the basic idea of your message across. For instance, "As Nelson Mandela once said, 'It always seems impossible until it’s done.' Today, we explore the 'impossible'." This approach connects your audience to something that feels familiar and sets a reflective tone for the rest of the presentation.

Intriguing Question

Pose an intriguing question to your audience that provokes thought and relates directly to your topic. This could be a rhetorical question or one that challenges common perceptions. For example, "Have you ever wondered what truly drives innovation in our fast-paced world?" This strategy engages your audience’s curiosity right from the start.

Personal Anecdote

Sharing a personal story that relates to your keynote theme can create an immediate emotional connection with your audience. It adds a personal touch and makes your message more relatable. Begin with, "Let me share a personal experience that profoundly changed my perspective on..." Remember to avoid going on about yourself, and instead focus on how the experience relates to the rest of your presentation.

These are all effective ways to make presentation storytelling lots more engaging. You can also use the previous suggestions of beginning the presentation with a visual hook or surprising fact to hook your audience from the start.

How to Start Your Internal Team Meeting Presentation

Nobody wants their internal updates to prompt “couldn’t this be an email?” comments from their colleagues. For internal updates, the approach should be distinctively different, focusing on team engagement, shared goals, and collective progress. Here’s what we suggest for your presentation to ensure your team is attentive and motivated.

Celebratory Kick-Off

Begin with a celebration of a recent achievement or milestone. This could be team-centric, like reaching a project goal, or company-wide, such as a notable business success. For example, "I am thrilled to start today by celebrating our team's achievement in surpassing our quarterly targets."

Progress Highlight

Start by highlighting progress on key projects or initiatives. This could be a brief overview of where things stand or a specific success story. It’s a great way to show the team that their efforts are leading to tangible results. For instance, "Let's kick off by looking at the incredible progress we've made on the X project in the last month."

Team Member Spotlight

Open by spotlighting a team member's contribution or achievement. This not only recognizes individual efforts but also fosters a culture of appreciation and motivation. For example, "I want to begin today's meeting by highlighting James' outstanding contribution to our client project last week."

Industry News or Trends

Start with a brief discussion on relevant industry news or trends that might impact your team or company. This keeps the team informed and can start discussions on how these developments might affect your work. For example, "Let's start with some interesting developments in our industry that could present new opportunities for us."

Each of these approaches is designed to create an engaging and inclusive atmosphere for internal updates. The focus is on building team morale, encouraging participation, and keeping everyone aligned with the company’s goals and achievements.

Recap: 12 Examples for Starting Your Presentation with Impact

To wrap up, let's compile three actionable examples for each type of presentation we've discussed. These examples are designed to be directly applicable, giving you a practical blueprint for engaging your audience right from the beginning of your presentation.

Sales Presentations

Statistic-based .

"Every year, businesses lose approximately $1.7 trillion due to inefficiencies in communication. Today, we introduce a solution that turns this challenge into an opportunity."

Question-Based

 "How many of you have experienced frustration due to delayed flights? Our app is here to change your travel experience forever."

"Last year, a small business owner faced a daunting challenge with their supply chain. Our software transformed their process, resulting in a 40% increase in efficiency."

Investor Presentations

Vision statement.

"We envision a future where renewable energy is not a luxury, but a norm for every household. Our technology is the key to this future."

Problem Statement

"In a world where online privacy is constantly under threat, our platform provides an unbreachable shield, safeguarding digital identities."

"Just six months ago, our prototype caught the attention of industry giants, leading to a groundbreaking partnership that sets us on a path to revolutionize our field."

Keynote Talks

"Margaret Mead famously said, 'Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.' This idea is at the core of our discussion today."

"What if I told you that the biggest barrier to innovation is not a lack of ideas, but a lack of action? Let’s explore this further."

Visual Display

"This image [showing a powerful photograph] represents the drastic change our industry has undergone in the last decade. Let's dive into what this means for us."

Internal Updates

"I'm excited to announce that thanks to our team's efforts, customer satisfaction has hit an all-time high this quarter!"

Interactive Element

"To get us started, I'd like everyone to share one word that describes their current project experience."

Industry News

"Recent developments in AI technology have opened new avenues for our projects. Let's discuss how we can integrate these into our workflow."

These examples offer a versatile range of strategies to effectively start your presentations, tailored to the specific context and audience of your talk. Whether it’s a sales presentation, an investor pitch, a conference keynote, or an internal team update, using these examples as a guide can help you grab your audience's attention and keep them engaged throughout. Presenting is not easy, but a good opening will give you the confidence boost that can help you throughout your talk. Here’s to less-boring presentations!

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Pitch Deck: How To Create The Perfect Funding Proposal

Whether you are a startup founder, business owner or a 'corporate entrepreneur', your pitch deck is kind of important - after all, it captures your rationale for why people should invest in your idea and give you a lot of money. Maybe millions.

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So your investor pitch, and supporting pitchdeck, better nail it.

But for every venture capitalist or angel investor out there, there is a different opinion on exactly how to approach the investor pitch deck. 6 slides? 10 slides? 15 slides? No slides, just a killer demo?

I have never seen a presentation that has too few slides, too big a font, and too little graphics. Guy Kawasaki, Venture Capitalist

You can explain your startup in mind numbing detail or you can inspire an investor and let them imagine. Guess what works better? When you sit down and build your investor deck, think of six slides that will inspire and leave something for the imagination. Fred Wilson, Venture Capitalist

The most fundamental strategy of a startup is the financing strategy. If your company runs out of finance it will close no matter how good the product strategy is. Reid Hoffman, Entrepreneur, Venture Capitalist

[A ten section] business plan format, within 15–20 slides, is all that’s needed. Sequoia Capital, Venture Capitalists

In this post we provide the authoritative consensus on the slides you need in your business funding pitch.

We have looked at what the world's most influential venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and angel investors, including Guy Kawasaki , Reid Hoffman , Fred Wilson , Brad Feld , Mark Suster and Dave McClure, look for in a pitch deck (it is a veritable who's who of Silicon Valley VCs). We have then summarized that advice on pitching investors into an easy to follow plan.

What is a pitch deck?

A pitch deck is a brief, written presentation that supports your oral, fundraising sales presentation. It is a business pitch. The objective of a powerful pitch deck is to concisely layout the rationale for investing in your business (the investment opportunity).

After canvassing leading entrepreneurs and investors, the consensus set of investor pitch deck slides are:

• Company Purpose (The Title slide)
• The Problem
• The Solution (and your Demo)
• The Competition
• The Value Proposition
• The Business & Revenue Model
• The Financials
• Current Status & Use of Funds

In the rest of this article we explore each of these slides in detail, providing advice and examples of what to include, and what not to.

We also look at how your pitch approach must change depending on what stage your idea or company is at. We discuss pitch requirements for startup seed pitches, series A and B pitches, and IPO roadshow decks.

When do you need a pitch deck?

A pitch deck lets you present your business plan to potential investors when new funding is needed to develop the business.

You don’t need a pitch deck to attract funding if your business is successful, growing organically and at the right level and scale for the market and your ambitions.

What are you trying to achieve with your pitch deck?

Your goal is to persuade investors to put money into your business, to fund your business's growth. The funds are used to push your business to the next stage of its development.

Pitch decks are the tool to convince investors of the merits of funding your tech startup or business.

Who is your audience and what are their questions?

The classic partner in a VC firm is exposed to 5,000 pitches in a single year. Reid Hoffman, Entrepreneur, Venture Capitalist

At SlideHeroes we provide presentation training on how to develop McKinsey presentations that focuses on:

•   Identifying your audience,
•   Determining the question in the mind of the audience that you are there to answer, and then
•   Structuring a clear answer to that question

Your Audience

Your pitch deck target audience is any potential investor who provides investment for new business ideas (Venture capital, see funding). This will typically be VCs or angel investors and their question will be 'Why is this company worth investing in?'

While this may seem obvious (it is), a surprising number of pitches can lose sight of this fundamental question. Focus on answering this exam question.

It is worth noting that fundraising from angels and venture capital is tough.

•    Competition is fierce:  VCs are exposed to thousands of pitches a year, and may only make a few investments.
•   Venture Capitalists are looking for significant returns: Because startup investing is risky (90% of investments fail), VCs must compensate for these losses with a few big wins. As a consequence, venture capitalists are looking for investments that have the potential to return at least 10x the initial investment.
•   Venture Capitalists specialize:  VCs tend to specialize in particular areas where they either have expertise or a strong investment thesis.

As a consequence, fit between investor and startup is critical. Look for quality over quantity of investors. Research your target investor and see if they invest in the sector you are in or the stage of company you are at. Tailor your story to the particular investment theses or sector focus of the VC you are speaking to. Research past investments to understand what ideas resonate with your audience.

Michael Wolfe says you must get across how “this company is going to become more valuable in the future.”

As Reid Hoffmann explains, when pitching LinkedIn, “My strategy was to steer immediately into the revenue question because that was investors’ biggest concern in 2004.”

What do you absolutely need in your pitch deck?

Research from Professor Tom Eisenmann from the Harvard Business School for Docsend looked at the fundraising of 200 start-ups as they went through the seed and series A funding process, raising over $360 million.

It found that:

•   The financial and team slides were viewed the most and longest at 23.3 and 22.8 seconds each on average
•   The problem and solution pages were viewed for the least length of time at 11.3 and 10.6 seconds
•   Avoid listing deal terms and funding information in your deck, instead deliver them in person (they will vary for each investor)

Seed, Series A, Series B and IPO Fundraising Rounds

Michael Wolfe puts it best when he states: “The pitch deck you used for a seed round will not be what you need for series A or B pitches. Your business will have changed, the market too and what you want to get out of the investor meetings.”

Broadly speaking, there are four types of pitches related to businesses at different stages of development.

1. The 'Seed Round' pitch deck

A seed-round pitch deck is a pitch for initial funding from startup investors. The seed investment round can often come before you have a product for sale or any revenue. The focus of the pitch is typically on the problem being solved, the size and potential of the market, and how compelling the solution and business model is.

Seed investors are typically small venture capital funds that give between $250k - $1m. Angel investors, wealthy individuals investing their money directly (angel investment), are also an important source of capital at this stage of fundraising.

There are important differences between these two sets of audiences, and as a consequence, what they are looking for from a pitch.

Angel investors typically invest, in aggregate, substantially less than VCs (even micro-VCs specializing on seed rounds). As a consequence they are likely to take more of a personal interest in the founders and the business and be in a position to offer a more hands on role in advising the company. But they will be unlikely to invest in follow-on rounds due to their capital constraints. Their focus is typically on understanding the entrepreneurs vision for the product and commercial opportunity.

The biggest mistake presenters make is that they think that they are so interesting and have so much to say that they are the exception to the 'less is more' theory of presentations. Guy Kawasaki, Venture Capitalist

2. The 'Series A Round' pitch deck

With a Series A funding round, the business has typically figured out product/market fit and are now looking for money to:

•   Figure out or scale distribution,
•   Master a revenue or business model, or
•   Adapt a business model to new markets

As a consequence of this change in objective, the focus of the Series A pitch deck changes as well. The pitch deck must:

•   Demonstrate how the product fits into a target market
•   Show investors how funds will enable the company to master a business model, or
•   Show investors how more funds will lead to more customers, quicker

The investor profile may change in this round. Some investors specialize in follow-on rounds, others in very early stage investments. Do your research and tailor your story to the questions the prospective investor will prioritize.

3. The 'Series B Round' pitch deck

A Series B pitch deck focuses on scaling the business. You have a user base, customers and growing revenue helped by earlier funding. New funds are used to scale the business model, make further acquisitions and invest in key capabilities.

•   The focus shifts from describing the vision and concept to providing evidence that you have a viable business
•   The pitch should include details of what you have achieved with funding from earlier investment rounds
•   It should offer a more mature view of the market, revenue model and competition
•   The focus should be on sustainable growth models that drive scale

4. The 'IPO' Roadshow Document

Series C pitch decks and on-wards, including IPO roadshow decks, seek funding to expand, often into new geographies or adjacent markets.

•   At this stage the company has been very successful and has proven its viability
•   The IPO process is usually managed by investment banks, who will develop extensive material to support the investment process
•   IPO decks tend to be a longer and contain significantly more financial detail
•   But, as with pitch decks for earlier stage companies, clarity of message remains paramount

The Perfect Pitch Deck: The Consensus View

Based on the research we have conducted, these are the 10 slides you need.

The optimum time for a pitch, according to Kawasaki and Suster, is 20 minutes.

If your business has certain problems that, at this stage of its development, are still awaiting answers - confront them head on. Address these issues directly because you can be sure your potential investors will.

The best pitch is a conversation. It should be cohesive, tell a story and explain a trend. Mark Suster, 2X Entrepreneur, Venture Capitalist

Slide 1: Company Purpose

Cover slide. A title slide. A teaser slide. Whatever you call it, you need to start somewhere. And it makes sense to start with who you are.

Ideally you want to define the business idea in a single declarative sentence. Define, succinctly, what the company does or aspires to do.

As Michael Wolfe says “starting with a brief snapshot helps ground people and head off questions.”

And make it memorable. Show the vision of the business.

Reid Hoffman thinks the first 60 seconds of your pitch are the most crucial, so how you begin is incredibly important.

Brad Feld believes all entrepreneurs should have a variety of verbal pitches to use in different situations. A 15 second, three sentence overview should be 'very tight but get me interested in you.' This is the verbal voice-over for this slide.

In 60 second verbal elevator pitch version should be able to show “what you do, who you do it to and why I should care.” This is a brief investor pitch to spark interest in your business idea. Hone this elevator pitch obsessively so it becomes a winning pitch.

The 5-minute pitch should lead with the 60 seconds, “then go deeper.” A 15-minute pitch will be a full, high-level pitch and at 30 minutes it will be an extended pitch deck presentation with more detail.

You are obviously also going to need the name of your company, a logo and the names of the presenters. Consider adding a line about the purpose of the presentation along the lines of 'Investor Presentation to Sand Hill Road VC'. This is a small (very small) signal that you have tailored your pitch to the audience (always a good thing).

Objective: To give VCs a taste of your business and provide contact information for them to follow up

Include: Company name, your name and title, address, email and mobile phone number

Common mistakes: Including too much information that is difficult to take in and also steals the thunder of later slides.

Slide 2: The Problem

A problem well stated, is a problem half solved. Charles Kettering, Inventor

There is pretty strong consensus on this one. Your pitch deck should start with describing the problem your business intends to solve. Guy Kawasaki calls it the ‘opportunity’. Others talk about alleviating a pain or, as Dave McClure puts it, ‘making your customers happy.’

This is the opportunity to show exactly why you have a business. Mark Suster argues that the problem definition must be strong because in essence “it is why you exist.”

Objective: To show the investor that there is a large, painful problem that you can solve in a way that generates revenue.

Common mistake: Not defining the problem in a way that illustrates that customers are dying for an alternative.

Include: Explain the problem, why is it a problem? Who has that problem? How it is being solved now and how can you solve it better?

Grab the attention of your audience by showing the problem through an image or screenshot.

Slide 3: The Solution (and your Demo)

A great demo in the middle of a presentation is the best-case scenario. A picture is worth a thousand words, but a demo is worth a thousand slides. Guy Kawasaki, Venture Capitalist

After defining well the problem that must be solved, this section of the pitch deck describes how your business solves that problem. This is where you show your product and highlight its uniqueness. Where possible, show a live demo, use screenshots, animation or video to show your solution in action.

Nearly all our experts stress the importance of demoing the product at this point in the pitch. Brad Fled states, “I don’t want to hear you describe what you are going to do, I want to see it. Or – if it’s not built yet, see an example of it.”

Guy Kawasaki's advice "is to provide just enough information to make people want to watch a demo.”

This allows VCs to come to their own conclusions about the product.

Objective: To show your audience your compelling solution to an important problem.

Common mistake: Telling your audience what the solution is rather than showing them.

Include: An example, images and a demonstration of what your product does. Highlight the benefits to your customers.

Example: In Reid Hoffman’s LinkedIn Series B presentation he uses a slide to illustrate how his solution is version 2.0 compared to what went before it, introducing the concept of networks over 1.0 flat directory solutions.

Slide 4: The Market

In this section of the pitch deck you want to first identify and profile the customer you cater to.

Then you need to size the total addressable target market (TAM) for your solution and explain how it is either already large or will be large in the future.

Finally, calculate the serviceable addressable target market (SAM), which is the part of the total addressable target market that can actually be reached given the companies capabilities. This is the market opportunity.

Kawasaki says this should “explain how you are going to reach your customers without breaking the bank.”

Objective: Illustrate the potential size of the market. As Dave McClure says, “bigger is better.”

Common mistakes: Not understanding, or being able to clearly define, the market you are operating in.

Include: The state of the current market, how it is likely to grow and how you can grow your position in it. Who else is operating in it and how is your company different? Use business charts.

Example: Wolfe provides an analogy of how AirBnB could use the hotel industry to show the large TAM for its business.

Slide 5: The Competition

Investors want to know about your rivals, how you are distinct from them, how future technologies might disrupt the market and how you will respond to them.

This is a chance to show your deep knowledge about the market space, a vital point as Wolfe says: “The best way to communicate your business to investors is to actually know your business.”

Mark Suster says: “The competition slide must show the progress of your company and its key milestones.”

Who are your future rivals? Identify them and show how you will beat them.

Objective: To provide a complete overview of the competitive landscape and address how you are different.

Common mistakes: Focusing on a few major rivals rather than the whole competitive landscape.

Include: Images of your product that show why you are better or offer a useful alternative.

Slide 6: The Value Proposition

This slide is a natural build on the earlier solution slide. This is the opportunity to elaborate on the product and frame it in the way it would be marketed to customers.

A value proposition positions the product or service and illustrates what benefit it provides. As Guy Kawasaki describes, you want to communicate ‘the secret ingredient’ that makes your product unique from all other potential solutions.

This is also the section of the pitch where you can go into more detail on the product line-up, including expanding on form factor, functionality, features, product architecture, and intellectual property ownership. If additional development work is required to complete the product you should include a development roadmap as well.

Objective: To show how your product solves customers' problems or improves their situation, how it delivers specific benefits and tells the ideal customer why they should buy from you and not others.

Common mistakes: Some pitches ignore this element or don’t understand what they should say. It needs to show how your solution will resonate with customers.

Include: Talk about benefits, not features. Show what type of product you are selling, include further information on the potential returns for investors.

This slide could also include information on how you can monetize the product. It should illustrate why a customer should buy the product.

Slide 7: The Business & Revenue Model

The Business & Revenue Model slide focuses on how the business will make money.

You should cover things like:

•   Revenue model and pricing
•   Sales and distribution model (how will customers find you)
•   Customer acquisition costs, average account lifetime value
•   Customer/pipeline list
•   Barriers to entry

Michael Wolfe says: “Investors know that customer acquisition is where most startups fall down. Devote a few slides to the topic.”

According to Guy Kawasaki, in many cases “the best way to illustrate a revenue model is to make such a compelling demo that the audience can fill in the blanks for itself on who, when, and why people will pay,”.

Include 1-3 revenue streams. Reid Hoffman included three for LinkedIn, targeted ad’s listings and subscriptions, but admits this was unusual. He says, “The general rule is one business model drives the business. The charitable interpretation, which was true in our case, is that the company’s team doesn’t know which one model will work. The bad interpretation is that the team lacks focus and doesn’t understand that they generally need to drive to one business model to succeed.”

Objective: To present how you will make money for your company and the investors.

Common mistakes: Many investors focus too much on the problem and not enough on customers and the business model.

Include: Information on pricing, how you are going to attract and retain customers, customer numbers and what they are spending.

Slide 8: The Team

Team can be crucial. In fact in some instances, with repeat entrepreneurs, it is the team that is funded, rather than the idea.

Generally, the goal here is to show that the team has the requisite experience to suggest they know what they are doing. If there are any parts (skill sets) of the management team that are missing, be sure to articulate a plan for filling those gaps.

Don't bring more than three people to the pitch. Mark Suster suggests you split the presentation 65:35 or 50:25:25 if you have three people. The CEO should act as the quarterback for the presentation and questions.

Objective: To demonstrate that the team has that necessary skills that build and manage the business.

Common mistakes: At an actual presentation, if you bring and introduce key members of your management team, be sure to utilize them, otherwise investors will question why they are there.

Include: Introduce the key members of your team, briefly outline their role and how they add value to the business. Introduce other investors and a board of directors if you have them.

Slide 9: The Financials

This is one of the most important slides in your deck, so it is vital that the information on it is correct and you understand the numbers.

Objective: To provide investors with your financial results, a financial projection, an idea of potential earnings and what additional investment you need.

Common mistakes : Being unprepared. Answering questions incorrectly on financial details is a sure fire way to put off an investor.

Include: Sales achieved and targets, customer numbers, profit or loss details and a balance sheet if possible. Also, show the revenue level you have achieved so far and customer testimonials.

Slide 10: Current Status & Use of Funds

This should show how far you have come on your journey, what the company has achieved, and how investment funds have been used so far.

You should explain what funds you now require, what you plan to spend the money on and the key milestones you intend to hit with the next round of funding.

Suster thinks an exit slide is vital, one that “plants a seed for selling the company in the future.”

This slide should introduce your funding status, what you need for the business, who is currently invested and ideas on future sources of investment.

Hoffman notes that you may not want an appendix but in preparation of investor questions, “preparing appendix slides with structured answers is impressive, showing that you’ve considered all of your business’ challenges, opportunities, and comparisons.”

Objective: To leave your audience confident that you know why you are raising investment, and that you know how to deploy these funds efficiently and effectively.

Include: A summary of what has happened so far, key milestones, proof of the positive use of cash so far, future funding requirements, and an idea of what is expected to happen in the near future.

A successful pitch needs an immediate hook to attract investors’ attention, it needs to articulate a vision and clearly explain the problem that your business is solving.

It needs to answer the question 'why now?' and, in a compelling way, convince your audience that your product or service solves a problem a significant number of people are willing to pay to have solved.

It must present a model that shows how the business can scale rapidly and become profitable.

In almost all cases a live demo is needed to show your audience your product.

The perfect pitch deck contains the following ten sections:

• Company Purpose (The Title slide): Your single sentence distillation of your company and vision
• The Problem: What customer (or customer's customer) problem are you solving?
• The Solution (and your Demo): What is your innovative, better solution to this problem?
• The Market: How big is the market?
• The Competition: Who are you competing against and how are you better?
• The Value Proposition: How is your product or service positioned to customers?
• The Business & Revenue Model: How will you make money
• The Team: Why will this team be successful executing on this vision?
• The Financials: What kind of return on investment are we expecting?
• Current Status & Use of Funds: How will the investment be used?

Your prepared remarks should ideally take around 20 minutes, so it’s not rushed and there is time for questions.

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LinkedIn: A Case Study

When Reid Hoffman, one of the founders of LinkedIn, pitched LinkedIn to Greylock Partners for a Series B investment back in 2004, he used the pitch deck above. Hoffman provides a fantastic retrospective review of this 2004 deck here .

Three Key Challenges

At the time, Hoffman had to address three main challenges. The company was not a market leader, it had no revenue and no substantial organic growth.

He was also pitching in a very difficult market climate. Many investors had recently made mistakes investing in the dotcom bubble, so they were increasingly conservative and very focused on paths to revenue.

Hoffman explains how LinkedIn’s financing played out. “The Series A was a concept story for building the network. The Series B was a concept story for getting to revenue. The Series C had to be a data story that showed either how we could get to profitability or that we were profitable. And Series D ended up being ‘We can scale to a big opportunity’.”

However, with no clear revenue growth, he had to convince investors that building the network, in LinkedIn’s case, comes first, then the revenue.

Hoffman took on the revenue question head-on, knowing it was a topic likely to be picked over by investors.

The Problem and Solution

Hoffman identified the problem that LinkedIn was trying to solve; there was no effective, trusted way for professionals to find and transact with each other online.

The solution was to position LinkedIn as a network all professionals could be a part of, creating a reputation that would encourage trust fostering growth.

Pitching By Analogy

Hoffman showed rather than told investors the value proposition. According to Hoffman, “The winning moment for an entrepreneur is when an investor concludes on their own volition that an investment thesis is worthwhile.”

Hoffman used Monster and LexisNexis to show how LinkedIn could become more than the sum of those parts, how it could become a network rather than just a resume database.

Ending with a Single Sentence Summary

At the end of the pitch, LinkedIn left up a slide that encapsulated its value whilst taking questions. The slide said: ‘Find and contact the people you need through the people you already trust’.

Hoffman said: “End on a slide that you want people to be paying attention to. The final slide should serve to remind investors why they should invest in your company.”

Do’s and Don’ts of Pitch Deck Delivery

•   Research which investors to target (understand and profile your audience)
•   Know your business inside and out
•   Introduce the problem and your solution early in the pitch
•   Understand the numbers behind your financial slides
•   SHOW, don't tell - let your demo talk
•   Focus on the first couple of minutes of the pitch - nail your opening
•   Use short sentences, images, screenshots, bullet points. Make the deck easy to read
•   Limit your presentation to 20 minutes
•   Tell a story
•   Present with a team and not let them get a word in
•   Create dense, text heavy slides
•   List the terms of a deal in your deck (discuss them in person)
•   Let your enthusiasm for telling your story wane
•   Avoid obvious issues and hope Investors will skip over them - address them head on
•   Don't make these mistakes: apply these presentation tips

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By Status.net Editorial Team on February 27, 2024 — 11 minutes to read

Starting a presentation effectively means capturing your audience’s attention from the very beginning. It’s important because it sets the tone for the entire presentation and establishes your credibility as a speaker.

Effective Openers: 5 Templates

Your presentation’s beginning sets the stage for everything that follows. So, it’s important to capture your audience’s attention right from the start. Here are some tried-and-true techniques to do just that.

1. Storytelling Approach

When you start with a story, you tap into the natural human love for narratives. It can be a personal experience, a historical event, or a fictional tale that ties back to your main point.

Example Introduction Template 1:

“Let me tell you a story about…”

Example : “Let me tell you a story about how a small idea in a garage blossomed into the global brand we know today.”

2. Quotation Strategy

Using a relevant quote can lend authority and thematic flavor to your presentation. Choose a quote that is provocative, enlightening, or humorous to resonate with your audience.

Example Introduction Template 2:

“As [Famous Person] once said…”

Example : “As Steve Jobs once said, ‘Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.'”

3. Questioning Technique

Engage your audience directly by opening with a thoughtful question. This encourages them to think and become active participants.

Example Introduction Template 3:

“Have you ever wondered…”

Example : “Have you ever wondered what it would take to reduce your carbon footprint to zero?”

4. Statistical Hook

Kick off with a startling statistic that presents a fresh perspective or underscores the importance of your topic.

Example Introduction Template 4:

“Did you know that…”

Example : “Did you know that 90% of the world’s data was generated in the last two years alone?”

5. Anecdotal Method

Share a brief, relatable incident that highlights the human aspect of your topic. It paves the way for empathy and connection.

Example Introduction Template 5:

“I want to share a quick anecdote…”

Example : “I want to share a quick anecdote about a time I experienced the customer service that went above and beyond what anyone would expect.”

How to Start a Powerpoint Presentation: 45 Example Phrases

Starting a PowerPoint presentation effectively can captivate your audience and set the tone for your message. The opening phrases you choose are important in establishing rapport and commanding attention. Whether you’re presenting to colleagues, at a conference, or in an academic setting, these phrases will help you begin with confidence and poise:

• 1. “Good morning/afternoon/evening, everyone. Thank you for joining me today.”
• 2. “Welcome, and thank you for being here. Let’s dive into our topic.”
• 3. “I’m excited to have the opportunity to present to you all about…”
• 4. “Thank you all for coming. Today, we’re going to explore…”
• 5. “Let’s begin by looking at the most important question: Why are we here today?”
• 6. “I appreciate your time today, and I promise it will be well spent as we discuss…”
• 7. “Before we get started, I want to express my gratitude for your presence here today.”
• 8. “It’s a pleasure to see so many familiar faces as we gather to talk about…”
• 9. “I’m thrilled to kick off today’s presentation on a topic that I am passionate about—…”
• 10. “Welcome to our session. I’m confident you’ll find the next few minutes informative as we cover…”
• 11. “Let’s embark on a journey through our discussion on…”
• 12. “I’m delighted to have the chance to share my insights on…”
• 13. “Thank you for the opportunity to present to such an esteemed audience on…”
• 14. “Let’s set the stage for an engaging discussion about…”
• 15. “As we begin, I’d like you to consider this:…”
• 16. “Today marks an important discussion on a subject that affects us all:…”
• 17. “Good day, and welcome to what promises to be an enlightening presentation on…”
• 18. “Hello and welcome! We’re here to delve into something truly exciting today…”
• 19. “I’m honored to present to you this comprehensive look into…”
• 20. “Without further ado, let’s get started on a journey through…”
• 21. “Thank you for carving time out of your day to join me for this presentation on…”
• 22. “It’s wonderful to see such an engaged audience ready to tackle the topic of…”
• 23. “I invite you to join me as we unpack the complexities of…”
• 24. “Today’s presentation will take us through some groundbreaking ideas about…”
• 25. “Welcome aboard! Prepare to set sail into the vast sea of knowledge on…”
• 26. “I’d like to extend a warm welcome to everyone as we focus our attention on…”
• 27. “Let’s ignite our curiosity as we begin to explore…”
• 28. “Thank you for your interest and attention as we dive into the heart of…”
• 29. “As we look ahead to the next hour, we’ll uncover the secrets of…”
• 30. “I’m eager to share with you some fascinating insights on…”
• 31. “Welcome to what I believe will be a transformative discussion on…”
• 32. “This morning/afternoon, we’ll be venturing into the world of…”
• 33. “Thank you for joining me on this exploration of…”
• 34. “I’m delighted by the turnout today as we embark on this exploration of…”
• 35. “Together, let’s navigate the intricacies of…”
• 36. “I’m looking forward to engaging with you all on the subject of…”
• 37. “Let’s kick things off with a critical look at…”
• 38. “Thank you for your presence today as we shine a light on…”
• 39. “Welcome to a comprehensive overview of…”
• 40. “It’s a privilege to discuss with you the impact of…”
• 41. “I’m glad you could join us for what promises to be a thought-provoking presentation on…”
• 42. “Today, we’re going to break down the concept of…”
• 43. “As we get started, let’s consider the significance of our topic:…”
• 44. “I’m thrilled to lead you through today’s discussion, which centers around…”
• 45. “Let’s launch into our session with an eye-opening look at…”

Starting a Presentation: 45 Examples

Connecting with the audience.

When starting a presentation, making a genuine connection with your audience sets the stage for a successful exchange of ideas. Examples:

• “I promise, by the end of this presentation, you’ll be as enthusiastic about this as I am because…”
• “The moment I learned about this, I knew it would be a game-changer and I’m thrilled to present it to you…”
• “There’s something special about this topic that I find incredibly invigorating, and I hope you will too…”
• “I get a rush every time I work on this, and I hope to transmit that energy to you today…”
• “I’m thrilled to discuss this breakthrough that could revolutionize…”
• “This project has been a labor of love, and I’m eager to walk you through…”
• “When I first encountered this challenge, I was captivated by the possibilities it presented…”
• “I can’t wait to dive into the details of this innovative approach with you today…”
• “It’s genuinely exhilarating to be at the edge of what’s possible in…”
• “My fascination with [topic] drove me to explore it further, and I’m excited to share…”
• “Nothing excites me more than talking about the future of…”
• “Seeing your faces, I know we’re going to have a lively discussion about…”
• “The potential here is incredible, and I’m looking forward to discussing it with you…”
• “Let’s embark on this journey together and explore why this is such a pivotal moment for…”
• “Your engagement in this discussion is going to make this even more exciting because…”

Building Credibility

You present with credibility when you establish your expertise and experience on the subject matter. Here’s what you can say to accomplish that:

• “With a decade of experience in this field, I’ve come to understand the intricacies of…”
• “Having led multiple successful projects, I’m excited to share my insights on…”
• “Over the years, working closely with industry experts, I’ve gleaned…”
• “I hold a degree in [your field], which has equipped me with a foundation for…”
• “I’m a certified professional in [your certification], which means I bring a certain level of expertise…”
• “Having published research on this topic, my perspective is grounded in…”
• “I’ve been a keynote speaker at several conferences, discussing…”
• “Throughout my career, I’ve contributed to groundbreaking work in…”
• “My experience as a [your previous role] has given me a unique outlook on…”
• “Endorsed by [an authority in your field], I’m here to share what we’ve achieved…”
• “The program I developed was recognized by [award], highlighting its impact in…”
• “I’ve trained professionals nationwide on this subject and witnessed…”
• “Collaborating with renowned teams, we’ve tackled challenges like…”
• “I’ve been at the forefront of this industry, navigating through…”
• “As a panelist, I’ve debated this topic with some of the brightest minds in…”

Projecting Confidence

• “I stand before you today with a deep understanding of…”
• “You can rely on the information I’m about to share, backed by thorough research and analysis…”
• “Rest assured, the strategies we’ll discuss have been tested and proven effective in…”
• “I’m certain you’ll find the data I’ll present both compelling and relevant because…”
• “I’m fully confident in the recommendations I’m providing today due to…”
• “The results speak for themselves, and I’m here to outline them clearly for you…”
• “I invite you to consider the evidence I’ll present; it’s both robust and persuasive…”
• “You’re in good hands today; I’ve navigated these waters many times and have the insights to prove it…”
• “I assure you, the journey we’ll take during this presentation will be enlightening because…”
• “Your success is important to me, which is why I’ve prepared diligently for our time together…”
• “Let’s look at the facts; they’ll show you why this approach is solid and dependable…”
• “Today, I present to you a clear path forward, grounded in solid experience and knowledge…”
• “I’m confident that what we’ll uncover today will not only inform but also inspire you because…”
• “You’ll leave here equipped with practical, proven solutions that you can trust because…”
• “The solution I’m proposing has been embraced industry-wide, and for good reason…”

Organizational Preview

Starting your presentation with a clear organizational preview can effectively guide your audience through the content. This section helps you prepare to communicate the roadmap of your presentation.

Outlining the Main Points

You should begin by briefly listing the main points you’ll cover. This lets your audience know what to expect and helps them follow along. For example, if you’re presenting on healthy eating, you might say, “Today, I’ll cover the benefits of healthy eating, essential nutrients in your diet, and simple strategies for making healthier choices.”

Setting the Tone

Your introduction sets the tone for the entire presentation. A way to do this is through a relevant story or anecdote that engages the audience. Suppose you’re talking about innovation; you might start with, “When I was a child, I was fascinated by how simple Legos could build complex structures, which is much like the innovation process.”

Explaining the Structure

Explain the structure of your presentation so that your audience can anticipate how you’ll transition from one section to the next. For instance, if your presentation includes an interactive portion, you might say, “I’ll begin with a 15-minute overview, followed by a hands-on demonstration, and we’ll wrap up with a Q&A session, where you can ask any questions.”

Practice and Preparation

Before you step onto the stage, it’s important that your preparation includes not just content research, but also rigorous practice and strategy for dealing with nerves. This approach ensures you present with confidence and clarity.

Rehearsing the Opening

Practicing your introduction aloud gives you the opportunity to refine your opening remarks. You might start by greeting the audience and sharing an interesting quote or a surprising statistic related to your topic. For example, if your presentation is about the importance of renewable energy, you could begin with a recent statistic about the growth in solar energy adoption. Record yourself and listen to the playback, focusing on your tone, pace, and clarity.

Memorizing Key Points

While you don’t need to memorize your entire presentation word for word, you should know the key points by heart. This includes main arguments, data, and any conclusions you’ll be drawing. You can use techniques such as mnemonics or the method of loci, which means associating each key point with a specific location in your mind, to help remember these details. Having them at your fingertips will make you feel more prepared and confident.

Managing Presentation Jitters

Feeling nervous before a presentation is natural, but you can manage these jitters with a few techniques. Practice deep breathing exercises or mindful meditation to calm your mind before going on stage. You can also perform a mock presentation to a group of friends or colleagues to simulate the experience and receive feedback. This will not only help you get used to speaking in front of others but also in adjusting your material based on their reactions.

Engagement Strategies

Starting a presentation on the right foot often depends on how engaged your audience is. Using certain strategies, you can grab their attention early and maintain their interest throughout your talk:

1. Encouraging Audience Participation

Opening your presentation with a question to your audience is a great way to encourage participation. This invites them to think actively about the subject matter. For instance, you might ask, “By a show of hands, how many of you have experienced…?” Additionally, integrating interactive elements like quick polls or requesting volunteers for a demonstration can make the experience more dynamic and memorable.

Using direct questions throughout your presentation ensures the audience stays alert, as they might be called upon to share their views. For example, after covering a key point, you might engage your audience with, “Does anyone have an experience to share related to this?”

2. Utilizing Pacing and Pauses

Mastering the pace of your speech helps keep your presentation lively. Quickening the pace when discussing exciting developments or slowing down when explaining complex ideas can help maintain interest. For example, when introducing a new concept, slow your pace to allow the audience to absorb the information.

Pauses are equally powerful. A well-timed pause after a key point gives the audience a moment to ponder the significance of what you’ve just said. It might feel like this: “The results of this study were groundbreaking. (pause) They completely shifted our understanding of…”. Pauses also give you a moment to collect your thoughts, adding to your overall composure and control of the room.

How should one introduce their group during a presentation?

You might say something like, “Let me introduce my amazing team: Alex, our researcher, Jamie, our designer, and Sam, the developer. Together, we’ve spent the last few months creating something truly special for you.”

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How to Create a Successful Project Presentation

Written by: Unenabasi Ekeruke

You’ve spent time working on a project that could be a potential game-changer for your company or client. Now you’re buzzing to present it to your team, investors and other key stakeholders.

Creating and delivering project presentations can be nerve-racking and you probably have one question running through your mind.

How do you get the decision-makers to understand your project or secure their buy-in?

Considering that some companies have had about 12% of failed projects in the past year, you want to create presentations that are not only convincing but memorable.

With the right project presentation deck, you can win and keep your audience’s attention long enough to explain project details and why it’s sure to succeed.

Not sure how to create successful project presentations? We’ve got you covered.

This article will show you how to set project goals and create winning presentations that take your project to the next level.

Here’s a short selection of 8 easy-to-edit project presentation templates you can edit, share and download with Visme. View more templates below:

Let's get to it.

1 Set Goals for Your Project

Before you dive into the main details of your project presentation, you want to answer these questions:

• What is your project set out to achieve?
• Why is it important for you and your team to achieve your set goals?
• How do you plan to communicate your goals to your audience?

If you have to make long guesses before answering these questions, you’ve got a lot of work to do.  

Here’s what you should know. Beautiful or well-articulated project presentations aren’t a substitute for project planning. Without clear goals, your project is already set up to fail. And your investors might think, “why bother listening?” 

Many project managers tend to rush through the goal-setting phase, but we don't recommend this. That’s because you could be setting yourself up for failure.  

Once you clearly define your project goals, you can get stakeholders to buy into them. 

Now the question is, how do you set goals for your project and achieve them? One way to do that is by using the SMART goal setting method. 

Setting SMART Project Goals

SMART is an acronym that stands for S pecific, M easurable, A chievable, R elevant and T ime-Bound.  

SMART goals are a staple for planning and executing successful projects. It takes a deeper look into the finer details your audience care about, such as:

• Project plan and schedule,
• Project timelines,
• Milestones, 
• Potential roadblocks and more

For example, let's say your project aims to improve customer experience on web and mobile devices. Notice this example describes the end goal. But it doesn’t specify how you’ll work to enhance customer experience. 

Here’s how using SMART goals provides direction for your planned project. 

When setting your goals, be clear and specific about what you want to achieve in the end. 

A specific goal could be: “We want to build a responsive website and mobile app for our company to improve customer experience. This project will require inputs from our product design, software and marketing department”.

Measurable  

During your presentation, you'd have to answer questions like:

• What metrics will you use to determine if you meet the goal? 
• How will you know you’re on the right track? 

Having metrics in place will help you evaluate your project. Plus, you’d be able to monitor progress and optimize your project to achieve better results.

It doesn’t matter if you’re planning a short-term or long-term project. Ensure you set metrics and milestones that count towards your goal.

From our earlier example, a measurable goal could be to have: 

• Over 100,000 mobile app downloads on Google Playstore and Apple App Store. 
• A 20% bounce rate on your website and a 15% conversion rate on mobile and web. 

Attainable  

One of the most critical questions you want to ask during goal-setting is, “Can we achieve our set goal?” Do we have the resources to accomplish the goal within the available time frame? 

If the answer is no, then you’d have to consider what it would take to achieve those goals. This may require adjusting your goals or the resources needed to achieve your goal. 

Although it’s okay to be ambitious, you should also be realistic.  For example, getting 200,000 app downloads in one week could be overly ambitious if you’ve just launched your app. However, if you set out to achieve that goal in three months, that could make your project practicable. 

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Your project goals need to align with your broader business goals. Are your goals relevant to the growth and success of the company?  Are they worth allocating resources for?

For instance, if your company is B2B and doesn’t plan to expand to the B2C market, launching an e-commerce website would be an irrelevant goal. 

Time-Bound  

Regardless of your project type and size, you should set time frames. Setting target dates for deliverables creates a sense of urgency and motivates you to hit your goals. 

From our example above, a time-bound goal could be “We aim to achieve 100,000 mobile app downloads and a 15% conversion rate by the end of the fiscal year. Our company will launch the mobile app by Q3 with a robust marketing campaign that will run through the end of next fiscal year.”

Setting SMART goals doesn’t have to be a challenging task. Use the template below to set project goals that position your business for success. 

Communicate Project Goals to Your Team Members 

After you've set your goals, your team will play a key role in helping you achieve them. So you ensure they understand these things: 

• Why the project goals are in place
• What it's supposed to deliver for your business and customers
• How their role, team and department contributes to the success of the project

Unless you’re clear on this, the project can derail and move in all sorts of unwanted directions. 

Rather than slam the goals you’ve set on your team, make it a collaborative effort.  Spend time talking to your team and stakeholders about the project goals. 

Don't limit your communication to people within your department. You can reach out to people in other departments like sales, operations, finance, etc., to see how well your goals align with theirs. 

To give your team a better understanding, you can communicate your project goals in a variety of ways, including:  

• Visuals (videos, images, charts, infographics, etc.)
• Verbal presentation
• Documentations

By doing that, you’re sure to get their valuable feedback, buy-in and commitment to the project. Plus, getting your team on board with your project plan will up your chances of successful execution.

2 Lay Out Your Project Plan  

Once you’ve set your goals, the next big step is to outline how you'll achieve them. An excellent place to start is by organizing your project into an actionable plan and steps for execution. 

You might wonder why this step is important for creating a successful project presentation. 

Whether you’re planning a small or big project, writing a detailed plan, structure and layout puts everything into perspective. It eliminates vagueness and helps your audience grasp the project roadmap without missing the points.

Your project plan should contain the technical and non-technical project details. Therefore, you want to give yourself an edge by using a project presentation template that clearly explains all the activities and steps. 

Not only that, your presentation structure should be simple and easy to follow.

Depending on the project type, your plan could include key details such as:

• The goals and objectives you've outlined earlier
• Your project scope, methodology and framework
• Project milestones, deliverable and acceptance criteria
• Project schedule and timelines 
• Resources and budget estimates, etc. 

There's no hard and fast rule for laying out your project plan. However, if you want to create a memorable plan that will keep your audience engaged, you could break it down into three parts, including:

Introduction

• Conclusion and key takeaways

Your introduction should provide a brief overview of what you’re going to talk about and why it’s relevant to your audience. You could start by writing down the project name and the executive summary. 

Think of your executive summary as an abridged version of the project plan. 

If your audience read only your executive summary, would they have all the information they need about your project? If the answer is yes, your executive summary has served its purpose. 

The length of your executive summary will depend on what you intend to cover in your project plan.  However, we recommend keeping your executive summary one or two pages long.

You can include key information such as:

• Objectives of the project
• Key points of the project plan 
• Results, conclusions and project recommendations

Keep in mind that not everyone will have the time to dive into the details of your project plan.  

Having a snapshot of your project brings clarity to key stakeholders and collaborators. It also enables people who aren't actively involved in the project to understand it at a glance. 

Ready to create your own presentation in minutes?

• Add your own text, images and more
• Customize colors, fonts and everything else
• Choose from hundreds of slide designs and templates
• Add interactive buttons and animations

The body of your project plan is where you have the full project details and everything relevant to its success.

Here you can break your project into deliverables, tasks, milestones and schedules (start and end dates). 

Ensure you precisely define the resources you need to complete the project, including finances, team, time, technology, physical resources and more.

This is the part where you sum up your project plan with key takeaways. Your conclusion should include what you expect from your audience, including key action points and next steps.

Writing your intro, body and conclusion may sound like a lot of information. But instead of writing multiple pages of text, incorporating visuals can make your project presentations more effective.

By using images, videos, infographics and charts , you can capture all the vital information and help your audience understand your message better. 

Visme presentation templates are effective for visualizing different sections of your project plan. They are professionally designed and easy for anyone to craft high-quality project plans that keep their team on track. 

Use the project plan templates below to kickstart your project planning process.

3 Outline the Problem and Solution

You've just spent time crafting your project action plan. Now it’s time to communicate your project plan and goals with your audience.  

Project presentations are a lot like sales pitches. Whether you’re presenting your project plan to clients or creating a pitch deck for investors, your job is to keep your audience hooked right from the start till the end.

One of the most potent ways of grabbing your audience's attention is by highlighting their pain points. 

It’s not enough to have beautiful slides that showcase your amazing product features and project activities. 

Make sure you set up your project presentation to:

• Outline your audience pain points
• Emphasize how your project, product or service works to address their pain points
• Explain how they’ll benefit from using your product or investing in your project

In a nutshell, your audience should have a clear insight into how your project makes their life better. When they’re clear on this, they’ll most likely listen to the solutions you bring to the table and take the desired action.

Don’t make sweeping assumptions about your audience. 

If you’re looking to get them on board, dedicate a slide to discuss their problems and solutions. Make them understand how your project benefits them.

Not sure what your audience's pain points are? Go ahead and do these things:

• Run a persona survey or interview existing customers. This will help you build a data-driven user persona that you can use for all types of business and marketing decisions.
• Talk to your customer support and success team. They have close relationships with your customers, so they know their challenges and what they want. If they don’t know these things, do them a favor and create a customer success program . 
• Interact with your community, ask for feedback and involvement. The more you engage with your consumers, the more you understand their challenges, work toward solving and get them invested in your brand.
• Keeping an eye on relevant social media trends,  Twitter hashtags, Facebook trends 
• Join relevant online forums like Quora, Reddit, Stack Exchange, etc. 

RELATED: How to Write an Effective Presentation Outline

4 Keep Your Presentation Slides Short

When creating project presentations, prioritize quality over quantity. Be sure to keep your slides short and simple. When you do this, your audience will be glad you value their time. 

Remember, this isn’t the time to slam your audience with lengthy and irrelevant jargon. Instead, keep your slides on topics and hit the main points without the boring and unnecessary details.

Here’s why you need to keep your presentation brief:

• Concise presentation slides are not only powerful, but they are also memorable.
• Studies have shown that during project or business presentations, attention levels drop sharply after 30 minutes . By creating lengthy presentations, you risk losing your audience's attention halfway. 
• Nobody wants to sit and watch you flip tons of slides for hours. With shorter slides, you can capture your audience's attention and get them to focus on the message.
• Most people might have limited time or have short attention spans. So they’d want to quickly digest information and move on to the next best thing. 

How do you keep your project presentations short? 

• If your slide doesn’t add value to your presentation, it shouldn’t earn a spot on your deck.
• Supercharge your slide deck with captivating visuals that capture more information 
• Adopt proven methods for preparing your slide

For example, the 10/20/30 rule by Guy Kawasaki is one of the most popular methods used by experts. The rule recommends using ten slides for 20 minutes presentations (about two minutes per slide). It also specifies using a font size of at least 30 for text.

This will enable your audience to digest the messages on your screen while you’re talking. 

Keep in mind that this isn’t an iron-clad rule for presentation. There are other rules such as Pecha Kucha method , Takahashi method, Lessig method, etc. You can adapt any of these rules to suit your project presentation needs.

5 Use Less Text and More Visuals 

Another great way to keep your slides brief yet interesting is using less text and more visuals. 

Remember, your slide should aid your verbal presentation and not replace it. So you want to avoid crowding too much information on one slide. 

Cluttering your presentation with too much text could: 

• Overwhelm your audiences and bore them
• Shift your audience's attention to the text, making your presentation less effective.

Instead, use one slide to present each idea. Marketing guru Seth Godin recommends no more than six words per slide .

People retain more information when it’s presented in bite-size chunks and visuals. This applies to B2B, B2C audiences, project managers and corporate executives.

About 59% of business executives say they’d rather watch a video about a topic than read about it. Hence the need to supercharge your project presentation with compelling visuals that capture and bring your audience’s attention right where you want it. 

Steve Jobs’ MacWorld Keynote presentation in 2007 is an excellent example of how to enhance your presentation with compelling visuals. 

During the presentation, Steve Jobs used live and interactive visuals to show how the iPhone 1 works. 

Read on to learn more tips on creating engaging presentations that will wow your audience. 

With Visme's presentation maker , you can make stunning project presentations with a rich blend of text and compelling visuals. Hook your audience and inspire action with stellar project presentation templates like the one below. 

6 Use Quality Visuals, Diagrams and Presentation Aids

Visuals are important for making successful project presentations. Beyond grabbing the audience’s attention and keeping them engaged, viewers recall 95% of a message when presented in visual form. But when shared via text, they retain only about 10%. 

There are many types of visual aids you can use in your presentations, including:

• Graphs and charts
• Heat and choropleth maps
• Scatter plots 
• Screenshots and more

Using images and videos will up your chances of getting audience engagements and positive responses to your call-to-action (CTA).  

Gantt charts , whiteboard drawings and mind maps are ideal for visualizing early-stage project designs. You can use charts, diagrams, maps and trees to present the project architecture for technology-related projects. 

If you’re working on product development projects, consider adding sketches, flowcharts , models and prototypes to your slide. 

Pie charts are excellent for showing percentages. Vertical bar charts indicate changes over time, while horizontal bar charts help you compare quantities. 

Infographics are perfect for visualizing data and explaining complex information like market trends.

Here’s the interesting part. Visme has the tools you need for every job. The software allows you to add different visuals, infographics, charts and graphs to your deck and customize them to suit your needs. 

You can change design, text and background colors, add or remove legends, animate charts, etc. 

You can also use maps to represent geographic information. Or, use progress bars, thermometers, radials and widgets to visualize stats and figures as shown in the template below.

When adding visuals to your slide, don’t go overboard. Stick to a minimum of two images per slide. In addition, make sure your visuals are relevant to your project presentation.

While designing your presentation slides , always stick to high-quality visuals.  Blurry or low-resolution images or videos can be a major turn-off for viewers. 

With high-quality visuals, your presentations will be crisp and clear, even on large screens. 

The slide below is an excellent example of how to power your presentations with compelling visuals.

7 Pay Attention to Design 

Want to create impressive presentations that pop? If the answer is yes, you need to pay attention to your design details. Your design can make or break your project presentation. 

Whether you are an experienced designer or a novice, design tools like Visme give you an edge. You can create compelling presentation designs for your business in a few minutes.

The beautiful thing is that you don’t have to break the bank to make stunning project presentations. You'll find beautiful ready-made templates and millions of stunning royalty-free images for your slides. 

Here are tips you should consider while designing your slides.

Use the Right Color Combination 

If you want to make your presentations appealing, use color moderately. 

We get it; everyone loves color. But using too many colors can make your presentations look chaotic and unpleasant.

Your color choice can influence how your audience grasps and responds to your presentation. A general rule of thumb is to pick colors that evoke positive emotions in your audience. 

For example, warm colors like yellow, orange and red convey feelings of excitement and positivity. On the other hand, cool colors (blue, green and violet) reflect an aura of calmness. 

When combining colors, aim for a balanced color scheme. For example, if your slide or image background is dark, your text and design elements should have bright colors. This contrast will make your project presentation legible and visually appealing.

You can learn about color psychology and how to use it in your next presentation design by watching the video below. 

Use Clear and Consistent Typography 

Optimizing your typography can make a difference in how people perceive your message. So you want to make sure your slide looks organized, professional and sends the right message. 

Here’s how you can make this happen:

• Use fonts that embody the spirit of your brand
• Keep your text styles consistent throughout your presentation. We recommend you stick to a maximum of three fonts.
• Avoid fancy fonts and tiny text that strain the reader's eyes. Rather use fonts like Arial, Time News Roman, Calibri and other legible fonts suited for small and large screens. 
• Use a font size of at least 30 for the body text and 36 for titles.

In addition, remember to present your text using the color scheme we mentioned earlier. This will keep your text visible over your background. 

Take a look at this slide from one of our presentation templates. Notice how the design, fonts and color combination blends in to make the visuals pop. 

8 Start With a Presentation Template

Whether you’re a newbie or pro, creating project presentations that pack a punch can be time-consuming.

Let’s say you’ve got a deadline looming. You’d have to deal with writing your project outline, preparing your slide notes, designing your slides, sourcing and incorporating visuals and more. 

Handling these things from scratch could slow you down or make your presentations untidy. 

Using presentation templates could save you from all the stress. They help you make professional-looking project presentations fast and easy.

Since the slides are pre-designed, you’ll find a place to insert every possible piece of content you need. Be it a progress bar, chart, graph, table, video or image, the design is right there. 

All you need to do is type your content, input data or insert the image. And boom, your presentation is ready to go. 

In addition, using presentation templates offers brand consistency in terms of font, style, layout, colors and overall design. You can customize and share templates with your project team to keep your presentations uniform. 

The title and main body slide, image and chart layout and fonts are set in the template. Therefore formatting your slide becomes a breeze—no more messy or cluttered project presentations. 

Visme has a wide selection of templates designed to make your presentations shine. You’ll find millions of pixel-perfect graphics, icons, design elements and professionally designed templates for any purpose, industry and project type. 

Regardless of your skill level, you can customize your templates like the one below. Just add your content and your project presentations will be ready in a few minutes. 

9 Present Your Project Like a Pro

If you follow all the tips we shared above, you’ve probably got the perfect project presentation on paper.  Great stuff, but your job isn’t done yet. 

Your delivery is the final piece of the puzzle, and you’ve got to make it count. 

Here’s the thing. Your presentation could flop if the delivery isn’t convincing. Hence the need to plan your delivery and drive your message across with passion and enthusiasm. 

Here's how to deliver project presentations that leave an impact.

Practice Makes Perfect 

Did you know that Steve Jobs used to spend two days prepping for presentations? Yes, you read that right. 

Practice is one of the key steps to nailing your delivery. 

You can practice by reading out loud in your quiet space. While you’re at it, make audio and video recordings and watch them repeatedly.

Ask your friends and colleagues to serve as a test audience and give feedback on your presentation.

This run-through will help ensure your presentation captures the main points within the allotted time. It will also help you maintain the correct body posture during your project presentation. 

Make time to check if the equipment is working and get familiar with the settings and operations. This is especially important if you plan to use video or audio in your slides.

Start With a Strong Opening 

Your audiences could have short attention spans, so make those first moments count. With solid openings, you can hook your audience and set the mood for a successful presentation. 

Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford commencement speech at Stanford is an excellent example of having a solid opening. With over 4 million views on YouTube, it’s one of the most memorable and watched speeches in history.

Notice how he hooks the audience with powerful anecdotes about his life, beginning from dropping out of college. And then, he goes on to share the lessons he learned in his early days at Apple, losing his job in 1985 and reflections on death. 

Here’s how to make an excellent opening speech that grabs the audience’s attention and convinces them you’re worth listening to:

• Ask a question
• Tell a compelling story
• Share mind-blowing facts and statistics
• Show captivating video and visuals that spark curiosity 
• Open your presentation with humor 

Be sure to tailor your opening hook to your audience. To make this effective, it’d help to know about your audiences, including their likes, dislikes, cultural and ethical dispositions, etc.

If you want to learn more about making captivating presentation openings and more, read our guide on starting a presentation .

While presenting your project, focus on your audience’s needs. By doing this, you’ll build an emotional connection and drive action. 

However, don’t go overboard. Be genuine and focus on getting the points across to them. This way, you’ll gain their trust and build excitement about your project. 

Keep in mind that everything may not go as planned. It’s best to have backup materials and be flexible enough to make necessary adjustments. Preparing for unexpected events will give you more control over them.

End Your Presentation on a High Note

After you've delivered a fantastic presentation, make sure you wrap it up in a memorable way. Doing this will leave a lasting impression and nudge your audiences to take action. 

One way to end your project presentation is to use a powerful call to action. 

You can also tell memorable stories, summarize the main points and highlight compelling figures about the project. 

For example you can mention some really intriguing figures like: 

• Expected growth rate, return on investment and profit margin
• Potential company valuation in the next five to ten years. 
• Projected earnings and market position etc. 

The goal is to hype your audiences and stimulate them to take action.  

You can check out our other article to learn more about ending your presentation on a great note. 

Get To Work: Create Powerful Project Presentations With Visme

Creating a successful project presentation starts with setting your goals and having a clear plan to achieve them. It also requires crafting compelling content, paying attention to design and excellent delivery.  

If you’re going to close those deals, you need a solid pitch deck to explain your project details and why it will succeed. We recommend using an intuitive project presentation software like Visme . 

Visme is the perfect design tool for creating stunning and engaging project presentations .  With Visme, you’ll have access to a wide range of features and tools to help bring your project ideas to life.  

The tool has hundreds of presentation templates, design elements, font styles, built-in stock images and videos, data visualization tools and more to make your project presentation a hit.  You can download your design in different formats and share it across multiple social media channels. 

Now you have all the tips and tools for nailing your next project presentations. Go ahead and make it memorable with Visme's project presentation software.

Create beautiful presentations faster with Visme.

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About the Author

Unenabasi is a content expert with many years of experience in digital marketing, business development, and strategy. He loves to help brands tell stories that drive engagement, growth, and competitive advantage. He’s adept at creating compelling content on lifestyle, marketing, business, e-commerce, and technology. When he’s not taking the content world by storm, Unenabasi enjoys playing or watching soccer.

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How to Scale a Start-Up

A conversation with HBS senior lecturer Jeffrey Rayport on the biggest stumbling blocks to long-lasting success.

• Apple Podcasts

Managing rapid growth is a huge challenge for young businesses. Even start-ups with glowing reviews and skyrocketing sales can fail. That’s because new ventures and corporate initiatives alike must sustain profitability at scale, according to Harvard Business School senior lecturer  Jeffrey Rayport . 

He has researched some of the biggest stumbling blocks to long-lasting success and he explains how to successfully transition out of the start-up phase. Rayport argues that success has a lot to do with an organization’s cash flow and its ability to meet growing demand. But it also involves something he calls “profit market fit,” which is when an enterprise becomes financially sustainable.

Key episode topics include: strategy, start-ups, entrepreneurial business strategy, customer strategy, growth, scaling, demand, cash flow, sustainable business.

HBR On Strategy curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock new ways of doing business. New episodes every week.

• Listen to the full HBR IdeaCast episode: Why Some Start-Ups Fail to Scale (2022)
• Find more episodes of HBR IdeaCast
• Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org .

HANNAH BATES: Welcome to HBR On Strategy , case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, hand-selected to help you unlock new ways of doing business.

Growth is always good, right? It turns out, even growth can be complicated.  For young businesses, rapid growth can create more problems than they can handle. That’s because start-ups aren’t just designed to grow; they have to also figure out how to sustain profitability at scale.

Harvard Business School senior lecturer Jeffrey Rayport says that is a huge stumbling block for many new organizations. In this episode, he explains how to successfully transition out of the start-up phase. He argues that that has a lot to do with an organization’s cash flow and its ability to meet growing demand. But it also involves something Rayport calls “profit market fit” – when an enterprise becomes financially sustainable.

This episode originally aired on HBR IdeaCast in December 2022. Here it is.

CURT NICKISCH: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Curt Nickisch.

As a startup founder, it’s got to feel exhilarating to see new customers streaming in and paying for your product or service. To get to this point, you’ve gone from conceiving your idea, building a small team and getting those early funders to help you test it in the world. Considering how many startups fail, watching customers put money down can make you feel like you’ve slayed a dragon. But watch out. There is another dragon waiting around the corner. Even fast-growing startups that get glowing reviews from customers and the media often end up flaming out. Despite all that positive momentum and growth, they’re just not able to stay profitable at scale.

This scale-up phase of entrepreneurial ventures is a huge challenge, and today’s guest has researched the stumbling blocks to long-lasting success. He says you can overcome them by expanding your business model while at the same time systematically removing internal constraints on growth.

Jeffrey Rayport is a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, and he’s a co-author with Professor Davide Sola and Martin Kupp at ESCP Business School of the HBR article, “The Overlooked Key to a Successful Scale-up.” Jeffrey, thanks for joining.

JEFFREY RAYPORT: Curt, thank you so much for having me.

CURT NICKISCH: So, what is the scale-up phase and how do startups know when they’re in it?

JEFFREY RAYPORT: So, that is a great question, and it’s really where we began. The startup world orients very much around these ideas of zero to one, getting from the proverbial two guys in a garage or the group of folks in front of a whiteboard to something that has what in lean methodology terms is called product market fit.

And much of the startup world, after 25 years of internet entrepreneurship, focuses very much on that incredibly hard problem of how you stand something up. We think of the scaling phase, we meaning Davide and Martin and I, I’m so glad you mentioned my colleagues in Europe, we think of the scaling phase as beginning with the confirmation of product market fit.

And that means you’ve got an opportunity. It does not mean that you have much in the way of revenues, and most folks at that point have negative profitability. So, for us, the scaling stage begins with confirmed product market fit and moves up a very steep growth curve to the point where a venture can declare that it not only has product market fit, but also profit market fit. Often business models are borne out, not just on a unit economics, but become profitable by dent of scale. And so, those two critical things need to happen in the scaling stage, and those we would argue are where real value creation occurs.

CURT NICKISCH: I love that term profit market fit. What does that look like?

JEFFREY RAYPORT: So, for us, the key initial insight was that what it looks like is not the middle of a curve. And what I mean by that is that the received wisdom from the academic literature, going all the way back to an article by James G. March in the early 1990s, was that there are effectively two stages in the development and evolution of any business enterprise.

And stage one is famously the period of exploration, roughly coincident with this idea of searching for some kind of market demand or market traction. And then the second stage was that ventures and corporations move into the stage called exploitation. And it’s a very, very elegant model, and intuitively it makes sense. You look for opportunity. When you have find opportunity, you figure out how to exploit it for all of its potential economic value.

For us, the problem with that is that we have been seeing, as I think anyone in the business world these days who have got an eye on the startup space, but especially the tech space, a lot of companies where they can be very successful on the road to product market fit, but the wheels come off the bus in some way during the scaling phase. The academic world hasn’t commented a lot on the question of what it takes to get from that zero-to-one phase to the stage of scale. We have deemed that middle stage, not exploration, not exploitation, but the extrapolation phase.

CURT NICKISCH: Where do the wheels come off the bus in this phase?

JEFFREY RAYPORT: It’s interesting. As my colleague Tom Eisenmann has written about in his book Why Startups Fail, there are clearly many, many modes, and Tom has created a typology of them, of why startups fail. He’s looking largely at earlier stage businesses.

CURT NICKISCH: That’s not a lot of solace to people who’ve been there. It’s like, now I know how to name this failure.

JEFFREY RAYPORT: Exactly, exactly. That’s right. That’s some form of consolation as you go through the bankruptcy process, and I shouldn’t joke about that because we’re seeing a lot of that happening right now. We’re seeing a lot of significant meltdowns, most recently the FTX implosion, very much in the scaling phase of a business. And there are many ventures that by dent of their success and moving up that steep portion of the curve, cannot keep up with the demand that they’ve generated. So, some of this is wheels coming off the bus because they actually can’t source enough supply to keep up with demand.

Friendster would be a good example of that, the earliest of the major social platforms. The demise of Friendster had not a lot to do with the question of whether they had product market fit. It had everything to do with whether they could actually serve the tens of millions of simultaneous users who were coming onto the platform. So, one is the issue of being killed by your own success.

Another, of course, is that for businesses that have not yet achieved profit market fit, the issue of securing capital to finance your way to the point at which the business becomes cashflow positive is very significant. And if you have not planned carefully as to how much capital you need to get there or what milestones you need to hit, that’s another way to see a venture run out of fuel before it actually gets to the point of sustainability.

We have seen ventures fall apart on a human level, meaning on the level of organizations not having sufficiently coherent culture, in order to assure that as they go from 50 to 500 to 5,000 people, that people are on mission and that the efforts are aligned. And then I suppose there are ventures, and it seems crazy to say this, but there are ventures and entrepreneurs who attempt to scale into a market that’s not big enough to justify the scale that is part of their vision.

If it turns out that you can win 90% of the share in the market and you’re still a small venture, then actually you’ve got a ceiling on growth and scalability, which means you have nowhere to go. We see that happen quite a lot. We see organizations who think they have a sound go-to-market strategy in order to access the consumers they need to serve, again, to drive scale, who find out that they don’t have either practical means or economically feasible means to reach the customers who are their target market. So, it is all over the map. There are lots of ways to fail.

CURT NICKISCH: So, you’ve given another term to help explain the scale-up phase, calling it extrapolation. Can you just explain what extrapolation is?

JEFFREY RAYPORT: Well, maybe the best way to bring it to life is to talk about one of the companies that we’ve spent a lot of time with, and that’s King Digital Entertainment. It’s a London-based game maker. Many people will know it. It’s been recently acquired by Activision Blizzard. King, people who will not know the corporate name will know Candy Crush Saga, Candy Crush Soda Saga, the mobile casual games that they produce. When they introduced Candy Crush, it became a hit unlike anything they’d ever seen, and their revenues grew 12-fold. Now that meant that in order to keep up with that pace, they had to significantly expand headcount. They had to significantly expand infrastructure.

So extrapolation is often an order of magnitude increase in top line revenues in a relatively short period of time. The companies that we looked at, several dozen companies we’ve written cases about collectively, tend to do this in a relatively compressed period of one to three years. And so, for anyone who has managed steady growth at 10 to 20% a year, think about the idea that over a period of one, two or three years, your revenues go up 10X or 20X or 30X. It starts to describe the unique challenges, not just of growth, but of exponential as opposed to linear growth.

CURT NICKISCH: Your operating costs are going up exponentially too, perhaps.

JEFFREY RAYPORT: Absolutely. And even before the crises of today, think about a company like Uber, which in theory looks very much like the kind of platform dynamics with increasing returns that we just talked about. But the reality is that Uber, by dent of its relentless pursuit of growth, competition in the marketplace from Lyft and others and so forth, managed to move up that growth curve, get all the way to an IPO, establish a public market valuation before the tech meltdown of $100 billion market cap, and they still had not found profit market fit. They had not made the business model work.

That’s changed in the last couple of years as they’ve pursued profitability, as many tech ventures are these days with the change in market sentiment. But what you say is absolutely right, which is the fact that you have a platform does not guarantee that you are achieving profit market fit. That has to be part of what happens during the extrapolation phase, not by accident, but by design.

CURT NICKISCH: What do you need as a company then to begin extrapolating?

JEFFREY RAYPORT: The sufficient conditions, meaning that you’ve got some foundational attributes of your opportunity, but now you actually want to see it come to life. One is understanding, back to what we talked about just a moment ago, that you’ve got an effective way to get to the target customers, that large proportion of the large market that you need to reach to be successful, that you actually have a so-called go-to-market strategy that you believe in that can be successful, that gets you the access. And by the way, in economic terms and unit economic terms, you can support.

It’s also true that you’ve got to have some view, if you don’t have it on day one, to what your approach to monetization will be. And Curt, I know you know the audio industry well, and we both as consumers, I’m sure, have spent many, many delightful hours listening to two of the major streaming services on the planet over the last 10 years, one being Spotify and the other being SoundCloud.

Several years ago, Davide Sola and I had the pleasure of spending time with the leadership team at SoundCloud in Berlin and then in New York trying to understand their business. This was at a time when the consumer listenership of SoundCloud was around 200 million monthly active users, and that made it, at the time, on a consumer basis, larger than today’s industry leader, Spotify.

So, what was the difference in the outcomes of those companies? SoundCloud at that time was effectively giving away music free of charge to consumers and focused on a very small and vibrant community of musicians who wanted to use SoundCloud as a hosting platform. So, several hundred thousand musicians paid SoundCloud monthly or annual fees to host and stream their music on the platform. It’s very clear, if you’re thinking about market size and scalability, that a market at that time of 300,000 musicians who are monthly active users is a lot smaller than 200 million monthly active users who are consumers or listeners.

Spotify focused first on the hundreds of millions of consumers, and SoundCloud got there late. And even though they managed to do a bunch of the deals they ultimately needed to do with the record labels to clear the copyright protections on that audio content, it was too late, in effect, to save the business from a dramatic recapitalization down round and effect turnaround that has been true of its story to this day.

So understanding how it is you’re actually going to monetize what you’re doing is enormously important, and then there are other attributes that we’ve talked about. There are increasing returns, dynamics to that economic model, understanding how the business will make the most of and leverage network or density effects, things that people refer to as virality or the viral coefficient in the market. And then, of course, none of this comes without capital investment, and that means that if it’s a big, bold, ambitious strategy, it’s going to take capital across multiple rounds of venture funding to get there. And there’s got to be a strategy and a view as to how that capital will come into the enterprise, which means knowing what it’s going to take in terms of milestones to score those additional rounds of capital until you move up the curve and hit that point of profit market fit, at which point the enterprise or the venture, in theory, moves towards sustainability.

CURT NICKISCH: Well, let’s talk about this process then of extrapolation, and what are some of the successful ways you’ve seen startups navigate this phase?

JEFFREY RAYPORT: One we talk about is a business started by a couple of friends of mine, our next door neighbors here in Back Bay in Boston, Niraj Shah and Steve Conine, who are the founders of Wayfair. Anyone who is in the business of refurnishing or furnishing their homes knows that there are only a couple of places to go online to buy furniture and furnishings, and Wayfair is lead among them with these days 14, 15 million SKUs with essentially a platform that is comprehensive to the home category.

Wayfair had a very interesting start back in the early days of Google, days when Yahoo was a big search portal and so forth, they noticed that there were these category sites, people who sold very specific products online, and the very first business that Wayfair established was called racksandstands.com. It was a site, I would call it a product.com site that sold only that category of product, or products plural. They went on to other amusingly named sites like allgrandfatherclocks.com, and they went category by category, niche by niche until the business was nearly a decade old and they had about 250 such sites that sold product very successfully online at competitive prices.

Growth was directly correlated to their ability to stand up additional categories. And by the time you got 250 categories, you could argue that would be a diminishing return strategy. And what clearly would allow you to grow the business was to find a satisfied customer at racksandstands.com and convince her that the next time she needs a grandfather clock, she should go to allgrandfatherclocks.com. But that kind of repeat purchase did not happen because there was no way to know from any one site that they were part of a larger store.

So the point at which they raised real money was at the time when they recognized that the only way to get that kind of repeat purchase and cross-category sale was to put all of these sites on a common platform under a common brand, and that is the point at which they spent two years migrating what was then eight or 10 million SKUs from the 250 product.com sites over to the common platform ultimately branded as Wayfair and spent a good deal of money in marketing and media in order to build that brand.

So, this is interesting. So, this eliminated one significant constraint to growth. They had another constraint which was next on the list, which is that people tend to buy from eCommerce platforms where they have incredibly delightful and satisfying experiences, as defined by an Amazonian gold standard. You get the product quickly, it’s beautifully packaged, the box is clean, what you ordered is actually what’s in the box and so forth. One of the barriers for Wayfair with its dropship model, and even today at your top line of 15 billion and up, the company still is selling roughly 85% of what it offers on its site via dropship, meaning it ships directly from the manufacturer.

Two problems with that at the time. One was that manufacturers are not in the business of serving or fulfilling one-to-one orders. They ship on pallet loads to warehouses that go out to retailers who break down the lots. So, one issue was these folks were not terribly skilled at one-to-one order fulfillment. They didn’t do it quickly, and they didn’t actually have much skill, capability or background in how to package up the product, let alone to put a Wayfair brand on the box.

The guys, Niraj and Steve, recognizing that this was their next constraint, then built a logistics network, something that they call CastleGate, in which they went to their suppliers, their manufacturers, and offered to do two things. One was to educate them in state-of-the-art packaging of product and shipping logistics, so that they could fulfill orders directly dropship in a more consumer or end-user friendly way.

But even more importantly, and this is where CastleGate came in, was to forward position, meaning to move the best selling products on offer into CastleGate owned by Wayfair, so Wayfair distribution points across the country, so that those products could be shipped with lightning speed directly to consumers. And hence, you now have a rising level of satisfaction or net promoter score, NPS, among your users.

CURT NICKISCH: And returns go down. Right.

JEFFREY RAYPORT: That’s right. Returns go down, satisfaction goes up, loyalty increases, people come back and make three more purchases that year instead of two, so all of a sudden lifetime value begins to grow. The third constraint was that they’re an incredibly commoditized category, as you know from walking into any furniture store. In general, this is one of the last big categories of consumer durables where pretty much everything you look at outside of a Knoll or a Herman Miller showroom is largely unbranded. And because furniture is unbranded, especially at the manufacturer level, they don’t have a lot of pricing power.

So one of the things that Wayfair did to increase pricing power for their suppliers and for Wayfair as a retail platform or a marketplace, was to establish a huge number of private label or house-branded lines, essentially to take, whether it’s sofas or it’s mattresses or wall coverings, Wayfair created a bunch of house brands which allowed them to market these as branded products, establish higher price points and hence more gross margin for them as the retail platform to pocket, as well as to share with the suppliers. So, one of the things that we see as a success factor is applying this ruthless and disciplined process to the ways in which you take off the limiters on how scalable the business could be and how large it could become.

CURT NICKISCH: What about your team and your people and your culture? What do you have to do there to make sure that you’re able to reach product market fit from a functioning organizational perspective?

JEFFREY RAYPORT: I am so glad you asked that because that human element is as important, if not more so, than all of the strategy go-to-market and operating dynamics we’ve just been talking about, the support positive economics. What we have seen, of all the ways in which successful scaling CEOs and founders that we’ve studied have delivered the dream here that we’re talking about, is that their version of design for scalability is to put disproportionately heavy emphasis on cultural issues early on. I’ve always thought, in the businesses I encounter in my own experience in the business world, that there are two fundamental ways of thinking about corporate culture, and one is that culture is like the weather. We have no control over it. It’s just something that happens to you. And five years out, if you wind up in Dilbert land with a bunch of cubicles and depressed employees, my God, what went wrong? But it just happened.

And much of large-scale enterprise defaults to that kind of cultural environment, not because they want it, but because it just happens. One of the beauties of being in the startup space, of course, and one of the motivating factors for entrepreneurs is you get to invent the world anew. You get to dream a dream and then live inside it, and it’s your dream. The folks who manage to do that at scale, meaning to get to scale, do it by making some very clear decisions about what kind of culture they want at the very start and driving toward it with mindful investment over time.

There are many, many positive examples of this. One company we’ve spent a good deal of time is the circular commerce company that is a platform selling pre-owned apparel called Thredup. And James Reinhart and a graduate of the school started that venture with a very clear eye to a culture of curiosity, of ambition, of performance, to the point where James would periodically stand up in front of the workforce and essentially let folks know, in a way that I suppose might sound very Elon-like in terms of what’s happening at Twitter right now, that with a human face, he would say, “Look, here is what we’re all about. And if this is not what you are all about, we’ve got an incredibly generous severance plan that will aid you in departing from the enterprise.”

It’s something that Reed Hastings at Netflix is famous for. Many people know what their severance is on the day that they take their job. And as a result, essentially the culture is saying that this is not a family, it’s a team, that people are on a team because they have a useful role to play. When the role is no longer useful, then there needs to be a graceful, respectful way to get them into a different role or take them out of the team. But these ideas, again, whether it’s warm and fuzzy or it’s hard driving, whatever it is, being clear and explicit about it correlates with success in the companies that we’ve studied.

CURT NICKISCH: Jeffrey, you’ve talked a lot about the work that startups have to do on their culture, on understanding their operations and the size of the market and making really strategic choices about getting to the profit market fit that you’re talking about. I’m curious if you think a lot of startups fail in this extrapolation phase, in this scale-up phase because they know their voice is telling them to do that and they just don’t have time to do it because of this compressed timeframe that you’re talking about. Or do they just not know and that’s the reason that they fail at making some of these crucial choices?

JEFFREY RAYPORT: We have a very healthy respect for something that great Austrian military strategist, that is von Clausewitz, used to call the fog of war. I don’t think you can underestimate how challenging it is to do any of what we’re talking about, whether it’s in the launching phase, again in searching for product market fit, or it’s now in this incredibly intense phase moving up the curve towards profit market fit and scale.

So Curt, I would say that we’re talking about immensely talented people who are fully aware, clearly or largely aware, one would hope, of the risks involved. But I think the notion that it is hard to see clearly while you’re in the midst of it is very profound. So, that’s the fog of war argument.

I think the other part of this takes us all the way back, if you will, to the beginning of the conversation and where this article came from. One of the things that we found very interesting, when we’ve taken the ideas in this article back to many of the people we wrote cases about and in several cases we interviewed and quoted in the article and we said, “Here’s our conceptual understanding of what you did to be successful,” without exception, we got very interesting looks, raised eyebrows, a sense of surprise and delight. Nobody was arguing with us about the fact that this was a robust and high fidelity way to describe what they do, but there’s not a single one of them who said, “Oh my God, of course, I had a roadmap. I knew exactly what I was doing.”

I think it illustrates the fact that without actually circumscribing this phase of growth, meaning that without pretending that we move from exploration to exploitation in a nanosecond, but instead saying, wait a second, there’s this middle phase, and it requires different ways of leading and managing and structuring operations, thinking about economics, thinking about culture, planning for the future, raising capital.

There are a bunch of skill sets and capabilities that are unique to success in this phase as well as approaches that we’ve talked about, none of which we as the business world have been paying attention to or will pay attention to in a rigorous way without saying that this phase in the development of any venture is fundamentally different from what comes before and what comes after.

So, I think there is a fog of war version of this, but there’s also the fact that we in the world of practice and the world of academia have a lot to do, we believe, in further understanding this space and further figuring out ways to maximize upside and success while minimizing the very substantial risks that come with the territory.

CURT NICKISCH: Well, Jeffrey, you and your colleagues’ research hopefully will clear some of that fog and give people in that situation some better information for moving ahead. Thanks so much for coming on the show to talk about it.

JEFFREY RAYPORT: Curt, thank you so much.

HANNAH BATES: That was Harvard Business School senior lecturer Jeffrey Rayport – in conversation with Curt Nickisch on HBR IdeaCast .

We’ll be back next Wednesday with another hand-picked conversation about business strategy from Harvard Business Review. If you found this episode helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues, and follow our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you’re there, be sure to leave us a review.

When you’re ready for more podcasts, articles, case studies, books, and videos with the world’s top business and management experts, you’ll find it all at HBR.org.

This episode was produced by Mary Dooe, Anne Saini, and me, Hannah Bates. Ian Fox is our editor. Special thanks to Rob Eckhardt, Maureen Hoch, Erica Truxler, Ramsey Khabbaz, Nicole Smith, Anne Bartholomew, and you – our listener.

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The One Word You Need to Remember When Presenting

The fear of public speaking is the most common phobia. Even thinking about an upcoming presentation can create anxiety . You might think, “I have so much to say…stakes are high…how do I get these ideas across…I don't want to look unprofessional.”

You’re not alone.

In this article, you’ll find what you need to feel more confident and clear for your next presentation.

Whether you're presenting to a client, a company, or hundreds of people, the butterflies will probably still be there. The good news is that you can improve and deliver presentations like superstars, inspiring action.

You are the expert at what you do. Here’s how to set yourself up for success when presenting.

It all starts with one word. This is the only word you need to remember whenever you feel lost or need to prepare your presentation. And that word is (drum roll) “connect.”

A presentation isn't about you; it's about your audience . Shift the focus from yourself to your audience.

Your goal isn't just to sell them an idea or solution; it's to connect with them on that idea and look at the problem or solution TOGETHER. To quote the theme from SNH 24: “Boldly Go.”

What do you want your audience to experience?

• 1. What do you want them to feel ? (e.g., reassured, inspired, motivated, hopeful)
• 2. What do you want them to know/think ? (e.g., this is easy, doable, saves money, saves time)
• 3. What do you want them to do ? (e.g., ask for a second meeting, start the next steps, implement the solution)

Notice that none of these examples are about you.

When asked, ' What do you want your audience to feel ?' most people answer, 'I want them to feel confident in me.' That's like the old actor joke: 'Enough about me, what did you think of my last scene?'

Examples from the Scaling New Heights session

Recently, I had the privilege of sharing presentation and public speaking skills, tips, and techniques at Woodard’s Scaling New Heights 2024 in Orlando. We had about 100 open and engaged participants ready to elevate their presentation skills.

On a personal note, I was so impressed with everyone's vulnerability and support for each other in the room; it was truly a special two hours spent with this group.

One of the things we focused on was having a strong start. One that hooks your audience and creates trust and respect within the first moments.

Some ways to create a strong start

• Begin with the ending
• Share a personal story/anecdote
• Project into the future/look into the past

At the session, one attendee bravely volunteered to share their opening. Chris (I’m using a different name for them in this article) wanted to improve their sales presentations. Their original opening focused on their company's longevity and success. It lacked connection and didn't differentiate them from competitors.

A strong opening in your presentation means that within the first moments, the first impression you're creating is trust and that human connection ( Hello AI! ).

When asked if Chris had an anecdote, they could share it instead. Chris shifted now to tell us about helping a contractor who was overwhelmed. Their bookkeeping was a mess, and by working with Chris, they felt organized, and the contractor felt a huge weight off their shoulders.

Emotions for the win! That’s an example of using an anecdote to begin and connect.

Another example was a personal story; Stevie (names have been changed) felt lost in their opening and lacked confidence in public speaking. We learned that Stevie had previously been in a completely different field. One reason they switched to accounting was their belief that they could really help people. This truth and passion were so clear. And when Stevie stood up and spoke about it in front of 100 people, there was no trace of self-consciousness.

In that brief moment, Stevie captivated the entire room with their opening. Connection happened.

How you say it matters

Did you know?

For your message to be received:

• 55% is your body language and facial expressions (online, anyone?)

People are often surprised by this, especially when they have great facts to share. But think about a time when someone was speaking, and it didn't quite feel right. For example, they might have said, 'This is really exciting,' but their facial expression, body language, and voice didn't match… so you didn't trust it.

This is why connection is so important in your presentation, especially in those first few moments. Because first impressions leave an imprinting belief. If your opening is sales or scripted, it’s just words, and your body language and tone of voice don't match the intentions.

If you’re wondering, the 3 takeaways from our ‘Present like a Superstar and Inspire Action’ session at Scaling New Heights 2024 were: 1. Opening—Not a sales pitch. Be real to engage (present, relevant, vulnerable) 2. Connect—Who's your audience, and why should they care? 3. Anecdotes—Where have you done this before, for whom, what happened?

You are the expert. Now, go connect with your audience.

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Make an Interactive Quiz on PowerPoint in 30 Secs (Free Templates)

Leah Nguyen • 13 August, 2024 • 4 min read

As the world shifts, PowerPoint presentations will not go anywhere soon as statistics suggest that more than 35 million presentations are presented each day.

With PPT becoming so mundane and boring, with the audience's shortened attention span as a cherry on top, why not spice things up a bit and create an interactive PowerPoint quiz that reels them in and gets them involved?

In this article, our AhaSlides team will guide you through easy and digestible steps on how to make an interactive quiz on PowerPoint , plus customisable templates to save heaps of time🔥

Table of Contents

How to make an interactive quiz on powerpoint.

Forget the complicated setup on PowerPoint that took you a stinking 2-hour and more, there's a much better way to have a quiz out in minutes on PowerPoint - using a quiz maker for PowerPoint.

Step 1: Create a Quiz

• First, head over to AhaSlides and create an account if you haven't already.
• Click "New Presentation" in your AhaSlides dashboard.
• Click the "+" button to add new slides, then choose any type of question from the "Quiz" section. Quiz questions have correct answer(s), scores and leaderboards and a pre-game lobby for everyone to interact.
• Play with colours, fonts, and themes to match your style or brand.

Or use the AhaSlides' AI slides generator to help create quiz questions. Simply add your prompt, then choose within 3 modes: Funnier, Easier or Harder to fine-tune the PPT quiz to your liking.

Step 2: Download Quiz Plugin on PowerPoint

After you are done with these steps, open your PowerPoint, click "Insert" - "Get Add-ins" and add AhaSlides to your PPT add-in collection.

Add the quiz presentation you have created on AhaSlides to PowerPoint.

This quiz will stay on one slide, and you can use keyboard shortcuts to move to the next quiz slide, show the QR code for people to join, and put on quiz celebration effects like confetti to motivate the audience.

Step 3: Run an Interactive Quiz on PowerPoint

After you are done with the set-up, it's time to share your elaborated quiz with the world.

When you present your PowerPoint in slideshow mode, you'll see the join code appear on the top. You can click on the small QR code symbol to make it appear larger so everyone can scan and join on their devices.

🔎Tip: There are keyboard shortcuts to help you navigate the quiz better.

When everyone has appeared in the lobby, you can start your interactive quiz in PowerPoint.

Bonus: Review Your Post-event Quiz Statistics

AhaSlides will save the attendants' activity in your AhaSlides presentation account . After closing the PowerPoint quiz, you can review it and see the submission rate or feedback from the participants. You can also export the report to PDF/Excel for further analysis.

Start in seconds.

Get free templates for your next interactive presentation. Sign up for free and take what you want from the template library!

Free PowerPoint Quiz Templates

Get started quickly with our PowerPoint quiz templates down here. Remember to have the AhaSlides add-in ready in your PPT presentation💪

#1. True or False Quiz

Featuring 4 rounds and over 20 thought-provoking questions covering a wide range of topics, this template is perfect for parties, team-building events, or simply a fun way to test your knowledge.

#2. English Language Lesson Template

Sharpen your students' English skills and get them involved in the lesson from start to finish with this fun English quiz. Use AhaSlides as your PowerPoint quiz maker to download and host it for free.

#3. New Class Icebreakers

Get to know your new class and break the ice among students with these fun icebreaker activities. Insert this interactive quiz on PowerPoint before the lesson starts so everyone can have a blast.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you make an interactive game in powerpoint.

Yes, you can by following all the simple steps we have stated above: 1 - Get a quiz add-in for PowerPoint, 2 - Design your quiz questions, 3 - Present them while you're on PowerPoint with the participants.

Can you add interactive polls to PowerPoint?

Besides interactive quizzes, AhaSlides also let you add polls to PowerPoint.

Leah Nguyen

Words that convert, stories that stick. I turn complex ideas into engaging narratives - helping audiences learn, remember, and take action.

Tips to Engage with Polls & Trivia

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More From Forbes

8 rules if you want to raise investments for your startup.

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Head of Softline VP.

Every day, our venture firm’s analysts receive 10-15 pitch letters, resulting in thousands of letters each year. Over 30% of these startups are at the wrong stage of their growth to pitch for funding, and 40% come from sectors we don’t invest in. These figures clearly highlight the continued need for investment-raising guidelines, despite the wealth of material that’s already out there.

So, if you want to raise investments for your startup, here’s a checklist of major points to consider.

1. Determine Whether VC Is The Way To Go

Venture investment is far from the only option when it comes to funding, so the first thing to do is to understand whether your startup is a good VC fit. If you don’t want investors to partake in the company’s decision-making process, venture funding is not for you.

2. Know Who You’re Reaching Out To

If you do decide to seek venture investors, you must do the preliminary work of scouting the investors and their funds. Before you hit “Send,” read the fund’s site and business media to find information about the VC, such as what sectors they invest in, which funding stages they prefer and what their average check size is.

3. Find A Mutually Beneficial Fit

Search for win-win propositions. Study the investor’s portfolio to see whether it has any companies that are synergetic to your own. If your own solution can be integrated with any technology stack that’s already in the portfolio, note it.

4. Seek Funding Before You Need It

Remember that all of these things take time and cannot and should not be done spur of the moment. And this is just the preliminary steps you have to take before seeking financing. A funding round is rarely a quick affair. Never start raising investments when you are already short on cash; always do it six months in advance.

5. Make A Good First Impression

Your written presentation is the investor’s first impression of you. Don’t mess this opportunity up.

A good template for structuring your presentation is the Sequoia Capital Pitch Deck Template. And if you haven’t done so yet, check out Guy Kawasaki’s 10-20-30 rule for PowerPoint presentations.

Remember that product presentation does not equal investment presentation. Investors don’t need to see a 40-slide, 10-point font deck about the intricacies of your product and all the usual asides about “patent pending” and whatnot. What they want to see is a clear business plan, description of the team, a timeline, the amount you are asking for and how you plan to spend it.

Keep in mind that your presentation may and will travel from investor to investor without your initial letter attached, so contact details in your presentation are essential. Our analysts once received a presentation with no contact details and had to search high and low for the founders’ personal emails, finally finding them through Medium posts. That was a notable exception, not the rule—and it definitely took some shine off the startup’s team in the fund’s eyes.

6. Ace The In-Person Presentation

Your in-person presentation is also essential. Even if investors liked the written presentation, it all can go south quickly if you don’t avoid the following pitfalls:

• Responding late to requests for additional information and attempts to set up a meeting. Make sure you respond quickly to all requests.
• Being late to a meeting. This can be forgiven if everything else you do and present is pitch-perfect and investors are really interested in your project, but the rule of thumb in your communication with investors (and anyone else, for that matter) should be punctuality.
• Lack of knowledge about market/competitors. You should know everything there is to know about your competitors, whether already established or up-and-coming. You should always have your eyes on the new bigger markets and be able to discuss them in a meeting.
• Refusal to introduce the team to investors. Any investor worth their money knows that the right team is the key to any project’s success. If you hesitate to show your team and talk about values that keep it working together, that will be a big red flag that might come to haunt you during the due diligence process.

7. Proactively Follow Up

After the presentations comes the follow-up. This is the time to be proactive.

Do not be afraid to remind the investors about yourself. This is not the time for false modesty.

If there are any changes in your business or product, write about them. The follow-up is also a great opportunity to share any articles about your startup that have appeared in the media or any comments that you or your colleagues have given on relevant topics.

Remember that a refusal to fund is not final and irreversible. Even if you don’t receive funding, you can ask the investor for referrals and recommendations or suggest a pilot project.

8. Avoid Final-Stretch Pitfalls

After the follow-up comes due diligence on the part of the investor. Despite this being the final stretch, there are pitfalls to avoid, as well:

• An attempt to “cook up” numbers and conceal uncomfortable facts. If your numbers are lackluster at the moment, but you’ve done your homework, have a well-thought-out business plan and clear KPIs, your honesty in dealing with investors will be a much better foundation for a possible future partnership.
• Conflicts within the team. The conflicts may be a result of poorly defined co-founder roles or competing visions for the company’s way forward. Either way, such things are a no-no for most investors.
• If your startup is already involved in some sort of litigation, that’s a big red flag for investors. Whether it’s a copyright or patent conflict, legal action from the first disgruntled customers or anything else, resolve these issues before you go to the VCs.

Honesty and openness are the foundation of any good relationship, and that includes your relationship with an investor—be it in the process of funding negotiations or afterward. Keep that in mind, and your funding process just may prove to be some smooth sailing in the current economy’s choppy waters.

Forbes Finance Council is an invitation-only organization for executives in successful accounting, financial planning and wealth management firms. Do I qualify?

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