Effective storytelling is a superpower, especially for fundraising founders. A slick pitch deck & confident delivery won’t compensate for a business that doesn’t work, but poor storytelling can obscure a great one. In this note, I will be sharing some key fundamentals to help you build your perfect pitch deck.
According to my findings, investors typically spend only 9 seconds per slide. Therefore, it's crucial to keep our message concise. Here's a recommended deck structure that you can adapt to your startup's stage and omit any irrelevant sections.
| Name | Promot | Airbnb |
|---|---|---|
| 🎣Hook | Your driving vision & mission for the future. | You can live anywhere and belong everywhere. |
| ⚠️Problem | What are the barriers to your vision/mission? | Young people want to travel the world, and value affordable, authentic experiences that chain hotels can’t provide. |
| 🔮Why Now | Why is now the perfect time to solve this problem? | The recession created an excess home inventory. Costs are rising and individuals are looking for sources of supplemental income. Young travellers are open to unique, affordable accommodation options. |
| 🧠Solution | How do you resolve the problem in a unique way? | A trusted community marketplace for people to list, discover, and book unique spaces around the world. |
| 📦Product | What sets your solution apart? What are the unique benefits? | Airbnb is the easiest way for people to showcase their distinctive spaces to an audience of millions: whether the available space is a castle for a night, a sailboat for a week, or an apartment for a month. |
| 📈Traction | What progress have you made to prove your solution/product is working? | AirBnB has 2500 listings and close to 10,000 registered users. |
| 🌎TAM + Roadmap | Why is this a HUGE opportunity? | From airbeds and couches, Airbnb will expand to Vacation Rentals, corporate travel, and international markets to become the trusted global network of P2P rentals. |
| 🤼Competition | Why can’t your competition realize this opportunity like you can? | Airbnb is capitalizing on previously unavailable accommodation inventory. In contrast to hotels, travellers can find unique accommodations that fit their budget with friendly locals as a hosts. |
| 💫Team | What makes you uniquely qualified to realize this opportunity? | Two RISD grads and a Harvard CS grad, the cofounders have the exceptional design and technical skills to make their vision a reality. |
| 🚚GTM | What secret sauce do you have to attract attention, convert + retain users, etc.? | We built a successful playbook in SF: focused on events, partnerships (Kayak) and cross-listings (Craigslist) — we will land and expand using this model to 200 more cities in the next 5 years. |
| 📁Business Model | How does your product/service generate revenue? | AirBnB charges 7-10% of the traveler’s payment and 3% of what the seller receives; despite this, it’s still cheaper for guests and profitable for hosts. |
| 💵Fundraise + Financials | How are you going to deploy investor money to achieve your goals? | Raising $600K Seed at a $2.4M valuation to expand from air beds and shared spaces to a variety of properties: homes, apartments, tents and boats. |
| 📣CTA + Purpose | Besides making money, why do you do what you do? | Go where you want. Stay where you want. Experience a city like the locals do. |
Some other useful resources
https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/01/startup-pitch-deck/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly90LmNvLw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAJ7AuZeUL4B1Nb4mdpEfbDyqyatc1rFJGR1OCrBsNyskQvVTWqqW8p2hbx3Ve-UErQ3pMTQcSs7ikLyNMG3FholzVBBerb8wjNcqqp0od8d6lkMIVzgc0SA3uFWHe_koMO70v0gheWBzGg-brYnzUGdpUJJTsTQfg2WndmyQifLi