07 – PITCH DECK MONETIZATION SLIDE – 10 SLIDES TO VC FUNDING SUCCESS

7: Pitch Deck Monetization Slide: 10 Slides to VC Funding Success

❏ Today, in Part 7 of my series on 10 Slides to VC Funding Success, I’ll speak on Slide 7: Pitch Deck Monetization Slide: 10 Slides to VC Funding Success.

The Monetization Slide is the seventh page of every successful VC pitch deck. After discussing the competition slide, you should immediately describe how you make money. What do I mean by monetization? Monetization is a list of the different ways you will make money.

For example, let’s say your company has designed a new wine bottle opener. You make money when you sell the wine bottle opener.

If you sell a 3-year warranty plan, you make money selling that service.

If you have an application that allows your customers to store a list of their wines, you make money selling that service.

In general, the more ways you make money, the stronger your business, and the easier it will likely be if you seek to raise funds from investors.

What is monetization? You will be able to learn in this article the answer to this question and what you need to show on your Pitch Deck Monetization Slide.

My History:

One of my responsibilities as an executive coach is to assist company founders with creating their investor pitch deck. Throughout my career, I have made and reviewed many investor pitch decks. Upon reflection, some of our team’s investor pitch decks, especially early in my startup career, were “horrible.”

Sometimes, our teams were successful in raising money 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? Working with many investors taught me what they want in an investor pitch deck. In my last company, we raised $87 million 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 importance of each of the following pitch deck slides:

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

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 an entrepreneur assembles their investor pitch deck, they usually make a hoard of information. Sadly, they often construct a “book” that is 20, 30, or even as much as 80 pages in length! 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 Monetization Slide – Why Important?

Last week in 6: Pitch Deck Competition Slide – 10 Slides to VC Funding Success (Link), I spoke about the competition slide and its importance. This week, I’m talking about the Pitch Deck Monetization Slide, the seventh page of every presentation, and its significance. After discussing the competition slide, you should immediately describe how you “make money.”

Why? Your investor audience is now evident in who your competition is, the size of your market, and why your solution rocks. Now they’re ready to learn the answer to “How do You Monetize Your Product or Service?” In layperson’s terms, how do you make money?

If you’ve followed this series and your investors are in your market space, they’ll be on the edge of their seats!

Pitch Deck Monetization Slide – Content

The content of your Pitch Deck Monetization Slide depends on your type of business. Physical products have a different monetization method than software-as-a-service (SaaS) businesses.

If you have a physical product, the slide will want to show information related to the product costs. Plan to share the manufacturing costs, average selling price (ASP), margins (by variant), sales channels, etc. Display the monetization methods in one or two pie charts, perhaps combined with a short table or a few bullets.

This slide will focus on your service pricing variants if you have a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company. Account setup charge, monthly fees, customer lifetime value (CLV), customer acquisition cost (CAC), add-on services, and monthly customer growth. Again, a pie chart or two, along with a short table or a few key bullets, is all you need.

Pitch Deck Monetization Slide – What’s Your Story?

So, what do you think you could say while your Pitch Deck Monetization Slide is visible? Point out your high margins on each product, service, and variation. Speak to your sales channels and ask how much revenue each generates now and over the next 1-2 years. Please talk about your customer acquisition costs and what you are doing to lower them. Speak about how your customers pay you. Do they pay before you deliver the product or service or after? Do they pay by credit card, cash, or check? Could you speak about how you are lowering your costs? Again, remember, you’ve only got 45–60 seconds, so focus on three key points. Allow me to share one pitch example.

“We are a software-as-a-service (SaaS) business. We make money by charging our customers a one-time setup charge and monthly service fees. Our Bronze, Silver, and Gold packages are priced at $100, $250, and $500 per month. Setup fees are $495, $995, and $1995, respectively. By dollar, sales by the package are 40%, 30%, and 30%. We also offer additional add-on services. Our setup costs are $27, $55, and $102, respectively. Our monthly service delivery costs are $72, $96, and $114, respectively. After six months of sales, customer acquisition costs average $47 across all tiers. 87% of sales are direct. 13% is via various distribution channels, which get 30% of monthly sales in year one, 10% in year two, and zero after that. Our average customer lifetime value is two years and $3800”.

Wow! You’ve got an impressive, high-margin business! The investor has the key metrics on how you make money. You’ve got them excited to the point that they will have lots of follow-up questions for a “second date.” Well done!

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 Monetization 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. You can go back and look at your monetization slide and apply what you’ve learned above. You should wait to read the remainder of the series before you present it again. I can promise you a better reaction from your audience.