How To Make A Pitch Deck Interesting

How to make a pitch deck interesting?

Being interesting is one of the most important factors when it comes to creating a pitch deck for raising funds for your startup. There are some boring investments and businesses out there that may perform well over time, like bonds.

This isn’t the arena for that. Not if you are looking for aggressive investors willing to bet a lot on helping to grow your venture fast. So, how do you make your pitch deck more interesting?

Why Interesting Is So Vital For Pitching Your Startup

Aside from the fact that you really don’t want to be known for creating something boring, interesting is the key to actually getting funded.

In fact, without being interesting from the start, don’t expect anyone to even open or start swiping through your pitch deck.

It has to be unique and interesting enough to keep them listening and swiping to get to the great stuff too. If you get boring in the middle, they’ll never make it to your ask.

You have to carry that through to still being interested enough to take action and follow-through at the end of your deck and presentation too.

You especially need to be able to stand out from the pack. Millions of other startups are vying for the same funding. Your investors will see hundreds of pitch decks and startups this week, before investing in just one of them.

So, how to make a pitch deck interesting?

If you need more practical information on how to nail a pitch deck’s narrative, I have additional tips you can use. Check out this video where I explain how to do that.

Be Short & Concise

It is far harder to stay interesting with a longer pitch deck. It is a lot more work to be interesting on every slide with a long deck. Too many slides alone are just asking them to glaze over and skip onto the next deck.

If you are concise you can get your pitch deck down to just 10 slides. Be very wary of going any longer.

Don’t Include The Obvious Or Cliches

Remove redundancy, the obvious, and cliches in order to stand out and stay interesting.

Remove anything an investor can think “of course,” or “I hope so,” to. Remove any bland cliches. Like “integrity.” “trust,” or “the best.”

Get rid of anything competing startups that are pitching these investors can say.

Strip It Down To The Basics

You don’t just want a short slide count, your slides still need to be simple and clean with lots of white space.

With your text, strip away all of the redundant words and sentences. Especially naming your slides. For example, you don’t need to headline the slide ‘The Problem’. Just succinctly state the problem in a few words or a sentence. The financials slide is obviously a financials slide, you don’t need to reiterate that.

Using this strategy throughout your deck may help you slash the fluff and density by 30% to 50%. It’s one of the key factors when considering how to make a pitch deck interesting?

Don’t Give It All Away Upfront

You do want to answer the investors’ most key questions so that they can make the decision to move forward, and know you have done your homework. Just don’t give it all away with too much detail in your deck.

You want to overcome the obvious mental objections investors will have, but it’s also okay to leave a couple of questions in their minds so they contact you to find out or engage in the Q&A session.

Leave them a reason to converse with you or click through.

Make It Visually Appealing

Without going too wild or out of what’s expected in business, make your pitch deck visually appealing.

Plain text slides are simple and can get the point across. Though they can also become dull after a few slides.

Use visuals where you can. Spark the right receptors in their brains with engaging visuals. Use charts and diagrams instead of text. Use images of your product or prototype in real-world situations.

Keep in mind that in fundraising storytelling is everything. In this regard for a winning pitch deck to help you here, take a look at the template created by Silicon Valley legend, Peter Thiel (see it here) that I recently covered. Thiel was the first angel investor in Facebook with a $500K check that turned into more than $1 billion in cash.

Remember to unlock the pitch deck template that is being used by founders around the world to raise millions below.

Pitch Deck Flow

Do stick to the order of a pitch deck that investors want and expect. Though each page should spike interest and curiosity to get to the next.

The cover should interest them enough to see what’s inside. The problem should be spun so that they want to know how you are going to solve it. The market slide should have them salivating at how big this opportunity is.

The solution and product slide should have them wondering what your business model will be. Your business model should have them wondering who your team is. The financials should have them curious as to how you’ll use the money raised in this round. It should all leave them eager to get to the closing and contact slide so that they can reach out for more info.

Every line should spike their interest to keep reading, swiping, and clicking. Keep that in mind when learning how to make a pitch deck interesting.

FOMO

Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) is what you’ll get if you make your pitch deck interesting enough all the way through. This FOMO is what creates the needed urgency to get investors to take action and fund you.

You can also do this with your timelines and mentioning competitions, grants, and awards you’ve won. By mentioning other respected investors who have been in previous rounds or have pledged to compete in this one. As well as with a countdown to when you will be closing this round, and showing how much it has been subscribed to already.

Call To Action

This is a sales pitch. Make a call to action. Call on them to click to find out more about the ‘X,Y,Z, and Z’ of what you are doing, or to call you directly.

You may find interesting as well our free library of business templates. There you will find every single template you will need when building and scaling your business completely for free. See it here.