Preparing Your Pitch
You should be able to provide a brief description of your company that is compelling enough for an investor to want to continue the conversation about the opportunity.
Executive Summary
If the venture is very new, a complete business plan may be difficult to ascertain, making a comprehensive executive summary even more important to obtain capital. Your executive summary is a snapshot of your business plan and explains your venture profile and goals. It should be concise, and should quickly convey all important venture information to the reader. An executive summary is between one and three pages in length, and usually contains the following sections:
- Business description
- Problem to be solved
- Solution
- Leadership team
- Intellectual property
- Commercial potential
- Competition
- Financial projections
- Business strategy
Pitch Deck
A polished pitch deck is vital for attracting investment. The “pitch” is the one piece of information potential investors will see, and it will make or break your ability to obtain investment. Like the executive summary, the pitch is a snapshot of your business plan, but more importantly, the pitch is the venture’s “story.” A pitch presentation should begin with a story of why your venture is relevant. It should follow up with a snapshot of your executive summary. When creating a pitch presentation, it is important to tailor the presentation to the audience. A pitch presentation that is sent electronically will contain more verbosity than a presentation that is going to be given in person. Furthermore, an investor pitch will have a stronger emphasis on the business, compared to a pitch to a collaborator or partner, which may contain more emphasis on the technology. As a general rule of thumb, less is more, in wording, and in number of slides.