After your pitch do you have a lot of people coming up and talking to you?

So you’ve got an idea for a business and you get to work to realize it. You find a co-founder/s you trust to work with you and divide responsibilities.

You figure out your market, product/service specification, and start building your company. You work hard to get everything in order and gain traction. For whatever reason, you get to a point where you need a capital injection to keep your business growing.
It’s time to find investors who can do just that.

Before looking for investors, and especially before approaching investors, it’s a good idea to make a pitch deck first. Every aspiring founder and entrepreneur knows the importance of a compelling pitch deck when looking to find investors for funding.

In this article, we will go over what a pitch deck is, how to build one, how to use persuasion in your pitch deck, and the key difference between a sales deck and an investment deck. With valuable input from Scott Hindell, who has over 20 years of experience consulting budding entrepreneurs on building strong pitch decks, you will take away key points on how to synthesize a pitch deck that can articulate the makeup and strengths of your startup.

Scott Hindell is an Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Business and Custom Programs master instructor at UCLA extension and Lead business coach at M Accelerator.

Pitch Review Session at M Accelerator.

What is a pitch deck?

At a high level, a pitch deck is a set of slides that are presented before investors when seeking funding. The pitch deck goes over what your product or service is, why it’s needed, what size of market exists for it, how much money you’re asking for, what you need the funding for, and who your team is.

Scott says:

A Pitch Deck is traditionally used to raise capital. But it isn’t the only use. We put a lot of emphasis on the Business Model. The problem with business models is that most people can’t find the words to properly communicate.

The pitch deck is a way to articulate your business model using vivid and tangible words that help people relate in a meaningful way to your project. It is a clear, concise, and profound way of talking about your project.

The true test is if the audience wants to know more about your business.

After your pitch do you have a lot of people coming up and talking to you?

Access the full article on the M Accelerator blog with Scott's tips.