01 – PITCH DECK COVER SLIDE – 10 SLIDES TO VC FUNDING SUCCESS

1: Pitch Deck Cover Slide – 10 Slides to VC Funding Success

❏ Today in Part 1 of my series on 10 Slides to VC Funding Success, I’ll speak on 1: Pitch Deck Cover Slide – 10 Slides to VC Funding Success (Link).

The Cover Slide is the first page of every successful VC Pitch Deck. It is often the most overlooked slide concerning its importance. However, it has the same importance value as to how you appear to any person you first meet.

Think about how your first impression of a person you form in your mind before you ever hear the first word they have to say. The Cover Slide for your Investor Pitch Deck has the same impact.

What is the Cover Slide? You will learn in this article the answer to this question and what is essential to show on your Pitch Deck Cover Slide.

My History:

One of my responsibilities as an Executive Coach is helping company founders with the creation of their Investor Pitch Deck. Throughout my career, I have created and reviewed many Investor Pitch Decks. Some of our team’s Investor Pitch decks, especially early in my startup career, upon reflection, were “horrible.”

Sometimes our teams were successful in raising monies from investors. Many times they were not.

I never thought that the content and presentation style of the investor pitch deck might be hurting us. Boy, was I ever wrong! By working with many investors, I’ve learned what they want in an Investor Pitch Deck. In my last company, we raised $87M over rounds A, B, and C.

So in this series and an upcoming book, I look to share my hard-learned lessons from 20+ years of being an Entrepreneur.

The Investor Pitch Deck Series:

In this series you will learn the order and the importance of each of the following Pitch Deck Slides:

1. Cover Slide  (Link)
2. Problem Slide  (Link)
3. Market Slide  (Link)
4. Solution  (Link)
5. Traction  (Link)
6. Competition  (Link)
7. Monetization  (Link)
8. Financials  (Link)
9. Team  (Link)
10. Ask  (Link)

This 10-part series covers the ten investor pitch deck slides’ ideal content, order, and flow. You’ll have learned how to craft your story into a successful ten-page investor pitch deck that can get you funded!

When entrepreneurs assemble their investor pitch deck, they usually hoard information. Sadly, they often construct a “book” that is 20, 30, or even as much as 80 pages long! Most of us humans have a concise attention span. Even ad networks know that most ads over 30 seconds don’t work with consumers. For investors, the successful length of an investor pitch deck is about ten pages and 7 to 15 minutes in presentation length.

Pitch Deck Cover Slide – Why Is It Important?

In 1: Pitch Deck Cover Slide – 10 Slides to VC Funding Success (Link), I’ll discuss the cover slide and its importance. The cover slide, the first page of every presentation, is often the most overlooked slide concerning its significance. However, it has the same importance as how you appear to any person you first meet. Your attire, stride, smile, and grooming all make for that all-important “first impression.” Your cover slide is of the same import as the cover and title of any book. The image and title set expectations for what a reader will find inside. Expectations of Your cover slide accomplished the same thing. Please treat it with the same level of importance.

In many cases, the cover slide will be visible for the most significant period of your presentation. This one slide will either get your audience immediately interested in what you are about to share, or they will reach for their phones to entertain themselves. Let’s dig in and talk about how to ensure the former happens 100% of the time.

Pitch Deck Cover Slide – Content

Most pitch deck cover slides I see from entrepreneurs could be more generic. Usually, the cover slide is black text on a white or blue background. Excuse me; I just fell asleep from the boring introduction!

There are five rules to follow for an excellent cover slide.

1. Your pitch deck cover slide should give your audience a firm idea of what you will be saying. For example, let’s say your product is a mobile-focused advertising service. You might convey this with an image of smiling, happy millennials looking at their phones. With no text, you gave your audience information about your presentation topic.
2. The text you should add to this killer image is your company name, the presenter’s name, role, and email.
3. You should also add your tagline below your company name to identify the purpose of your business.
4. I don’t think you should include the date on the cover slide. You forget to update when you suddenly have an opportunity to present to an investor, and it doesn’t look good.
5. I do not recommend including the title “Investor Presentation.” Your audience knows who it is. What if you are in front of a potential customer, and the investor presentation, is all you must show? You can leave out the final slide, the Ask Slide, and you have a simple presentation you can share with almost anyone in a pinch.

See the image associated with this article to see a great example Cover slide that one of my coaching clients uses My Area Network.

Pitch Deck Cover Slide – What’s Your Story?

So, what could you say while your pitch deck cover slide is visible? Like on a first date, these opening words often set the tone for the rest of the engagement. Please keep it simple! State your name, your working title, and your company name. Remember to thank your audience for taking their valuable time today to meet with you. Allow me to give one example.

“Good (morning, afternoon, evening)! Thank you for agreeing to share your valuable time with me today. My name is (your full name). I’m the founder and CEO of the company. Today, I will share the story behind the company and our plan to bring our incredible solution to the market.”

Remember what I said earlier? Your first words, delivery, and energy level will set the tone for the presentation. You must be smiling. Your body and hands should be animated. Your vocal sound should be highly audible to the people farthest from you. It should reek of high energy and a level of excitement. You are setting expectations for your audience. The 15-20-second delivery lets you calm any jitters and get you “in the zone” for flawless delivery.

When you follow this guide, your cover slide will be a great start to a successful presentation!

Presentation: We Can Read or Listen – Not Both!

Most humans can “read” or “listen,” but we cannot do both simultaneously. Your Pitch Deck slide presentation exists to support “the story” you will be telling your audience. Does your investor pitch deck have a lot of words, charts with numbers, or distracting images? Then, your audience will switch their brains into “reading mode” and out of “listening mode.” As soon as that happens, you’ve lost your audience and will struggle to get them back to listening to you! To avoid this, use primarily images and as few words as possible, usually in bullet form. So absolutely, positively, no sentences!

Conclusion

So, I suspect many of you were surprised concerning the importance of the Pitch Deck Cover Slide. If you’re starting to create your first investor presentation, congratulations! You will start on the right foot if you follow my recommendations above. Go back and look at your cover slide and apply what you’ve learned above. Please return and take a. If possible, you should wait to read the remainder of the series before presenting it again. I can almost promise you a better reaction from your audience. I can almost promise you a better response from your audience.