Why Pitch Deck Templates Are So Useful

Are you wondering why pitch deck templates are so useful?

Pitch decks are essential for getting your startup funded. While seemingly simple, they seem to prove to be much harder for entrepreneurs to get right than you’d imagine. One great alternative to the lengthy of trying to create your own deck from scratch is to use an existing template.

Getting It Right

Everything is riding on your deck. It doesn’t matter how ingenious your business idea is, if you have the ultimate team to create the product and execute on the sales and operations side, and the timing is precise. It doesn’t even matter if your numbers are flawless. Not if it isn’t presented just right. 

Sadly, most entrepreneurs blow it right here. There are many very smart, talented, passionate and committed founders that fail to raise money, even with revolutionary products the world could benefit from. Most often this all comes down to the deck.

The first problem is learning. You have to invest in learning what it takes to make a great and successful pitch deck. This isn’t a four year degree. Though given millions in funding are on the line and your life’s work too, it is worth spending a few hours educating yourself on the best practices, and what to include. 

Keep in mind when trying to understand why pitch deck templates are so useful that you also have to make sure you are getting quality information. If you are relying on junk from unqualified sources, then guess what your pitch deck is going to end up like? Make sure you are learning from those who are actually getting deals funded or are funding deals now. Preferably the types of rounds and types of deals you are trying to do too. 

Unfortunately, despite having access to this knowledge online, the majority of founders still seem to struggle to implement it. Otherwise it is hard to explain why so many fail, and most commonly fail due to finances, or simply not raising the money they need. There can be a lot of temptations to disregard the knowledge and freestyle it, or go way too long on information and slides. It takes discipline to apply the right information to your deck creation. 

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.

Reasons To Use A Pitch Deck Template

Here are just some of the reasons to use an existing pitch deck template over starting from scratch.

Use A Proven Recipe For Success

This probably isn’t the time and place for embracing a long trial and error gauntlet. You’ll have plenty of other factors you are doing that with. If you want to get funded for sure, use a proven formula and template for success. This takes the guesswork out of creating a pitch deck, and dramatically reduces the learning curve.  

Save Time

This is one of the most important factors when addressing why pitch deck templates are so useful. Time is your most valuable and limited asset. You simply can’t afford to waste it. Intentionally taking the extra long scenic route is a luxury you probably can’t afford and won’t be rewarded for here. Even with a great pitch deck, raising all the money you want and on the best terms from your ideal investors can take longer than you think. Don’t burn more than you have to. Especially unnecessarily. 

Save Money

It takes money to create an amazing pitch deck. You may be the best in the world at operating a business, understanding your market or creating this type of product. Yet, most founders aren’t that and masters of putting together the best pitch decks in the world.

That’s really what you need to be if you are going to compete against all of the other startups in the world vying for the same money from the same world class investors. You may still want to invest in professional design tweaks and copywriting, but you won’t burn money going around in circles recreating the foundation of your deck. 

No Worrying About Getting The Fonts Right

No worrying about debating details like choosing the right font or font sizes for your pitch deck. Just fill in the blank. 

No Debating The Right Amount Of Text

The biggest and most deadly mistake that entrepreneurs make with decks aside from too many slides is cluttering slides and overloading them with too much text. A good pitch deck template will help you avoid this pitfall and keep you disciplined to an appropriate amount of text.

Giving Investors What They Want

Save your disruption and innovation for your business and product. Don’t confuse investors or turn them off by trying to reinvent the wheel. Serve them your unique data in the format they get and want and which checks the boxes they are looking for. 

Harness The Right Flow

Getting the flow of your story and stages of data right is as important as what you are saying. If you don’t have it right it will be the first thing that they notice. If they get hung up on you not having the flow right, they aren’t even going to pay attention to what is on your slides. Otherwise it is like having the right ingredients, but mixing them in the right order, or ignoring the cooking instruction. It just doesn’t work right. 

Summary

Getting your pitch deck right is vital to your success. Fortunately, using a proven template can make this process faster, easier and more certain. Find a good one, plug in your data and start raising.  

Hopefully this post provided you with some perspective as you are looking into why pitch deck templates are so useful.

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.

I cover this topic in detail in the video Why Pitch Deck Templates Are So Useful which you may find below.

* * *

FULL TRANSCRIPTION OF THIS VIDEO:

Hello, everyone. This is Alejandro Cremades, and today we’re going to be talking about why pitch deck templates are so useful. Before we get started, make sure that you hit that Subscribe button, and this way, you will never miss out on any of the videos that we roll out every week.

Getting it right when it comes to the pitch deck is essential. You have literally only 2:41 to get the investors pumped. In today’s video, we’re going to be breaking it down as to why those templates, and also how to use those templates to come out strong and secure those meetings that are essentially going to lead to getting that money in. With that being said, let’s get into it.

You may have the best product, the best team, whatever that is, but if you don’t get the pitch deck right, nothing matters because you’re not going to get the investor excited to potentially give you the money. There’s a lot of junk out there in terms of information. There is poor guidance. There’s no need for you to actually start your pitch deck from nothing, from scratch. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. There are tons of templates out there that you can use and that you can tweak. Maybe you can get a designer, even on websites like Upwork, that can give it a facelift from a design perspective. 

And without going further, you can download the pitch deck template underneath here that founders are using around the world to raise millions for free right away. Again, don’t start from scratch. Try to build on something that already has some of those fundamental building blocks of a good story, or a good flow, of a good structure, and then adjust it so that you can tell your own story.

A pitch deck template is also going to be essentially using a proven recipe of something that has succeeded in the past. Those templates have been used by tons of people. They are tweaked from time-to-time based on feedback, and that is going to allow you to have something right away that has worked in the past where you’re not trying to reinvent the wheel to try to get feedback and to try to tweak. 

So, right away, you can go online and find pitch decks of other companies that have raised millions. Perhaps take a look at their flow, their structure, how they were positioning the problem, the solution, perhaps even the market size so that people will get excited as to the potential and the possibility of what the company was doing. It’s just getting inspired. Don’t start anything from the ground-up. Just use a recipe that has succeeded for others.

Also, with a pitch deck template, you’re going to be able to save time. Saving time is a really big component of being a founder because your biggest resource is time; that’s all you’ve got. You only have 24 hours a day to be able to execute and to build this baby that you are giving birth to. Again, don’t try to build everything from the ground-up and spending all the time in making it look beautiful because that’s going to be time wasted that you could have allocated on the actual execution of your business.

By using a template, you’re also going to be saving money. Maybe you don’t need the design because the template is fantastic, or maybe you don’t need time for copywriters or for people in branding or people that are going to help with the structure or flow because all of that is already going to be done. Again, don’t try to do things from the ground-up because it’s going to cost you a lot of money.

With a pitch deck template, you’re also going to be able to get the funds right, and also the amount of text that you have involved, and then also the combination between the text and the visuals that you’re going to be incorporating. That type of template that you’re going to be using is going to allow you to replace your own text or your own visuals into whatever boxes or places that they have already allocated. So, you already know in which pieces of the equation you need to put those pieces of the puzzle together.

With those templates, you are giving the investor exactly what they want because you’re following the type of flow that they are used to reviewing. You’re also harnessing the power of the flow of the story. The way that it starts and the way that it ends is all gradual. That’s what you’re going to get from one of those templates.

Getting your pitch deck right is everything to get that money in. Again, use the pitch deck template that can help you. Replace it with your own story, and you should be on a very good path to get those investors excited.

So, hit a Like on this video. Subscribe to the channel so that you don’t miss out on the videos that we’re rolling out every week, and leave a comment and let me know what kind of templates you’ve been coming across that you think are good suggestions for other members of the community. And if you’re raising money, send me an email at [email protected]. I would love to help out with your fundraising efforts. Thank you so much for watching.