Pitching is an important part of scaling your startup.Seraphina Therapeutics
- Every entrepreneur needs a good pitch deck, whether it's to raise money or to win over customers.
- Insider reviewed a collection of decks to pinpoint the components that make them successful.
- Your pitch deck should set your company apart, establish credibility, and demonstrate growth.
Pitching is an important part of every entrepreneur's journey, whether it's to get a bank loan, win over investors, or acquire customers. You need to believe in your product or service and then persuade others to buy into it.
Even though funding for startups had hit record highs in 2021, this year will be very different. According to The New York Times, "the start-up world's easy money ebullience of the last decade" is disappearing, and research firm PitchBook's data shows that in the first three months of 2022, venture funding in the US is valued at $71 billion. This is an 8% decrease compared to last year, which means that entrepreneurs need to be aware of the change that's taking place.
"At the risk of sounding cliche, what goes up must go down. And likewise, as individual limited partners, investors in most small to mid-sized venture capital funds watch the market shrink their net worths, it's inevitable that you'd see caution everywhere," said Nathalie Molina Niño, Managing Director at Known Holdings, which helps entrepreneurs from underrepresented backgrounds raise funds and launch their companies.
"From fewer checks being written to venture capital fund managers, to venture capital firms starting to spray less and pray more, fear in venture is one of the few things in finance that actually does trickle down," she told Insider.
"Investors find themselves being more discerning, being a masterful storyteller suddenly becomes a critical competitive edge, and decks, as arcane as it sounds, are still the storytelling instrument of choice."
Insider regularly publishes pitch decks from startup founders who have raised capital, and while they're all different, they also share many techniques. We've sorted through our library to pinpoint what makes a successful pitch deck.
Dominic-Madori Davis contributed to this article.