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Essay On Netboarding

Decent Essays

Capturing the investors’ imagination with your pitch deck

Now you have the building blocks of a great deck.

You’ve seen examples of the slides that work and why they work.

You are aware of the information investors want to see, why they want to see it and how you can convey it convincingly.

But how do you put these elements together?

What are the fundamentals of a winning pitch deck?

It’s time to pay attention to the finer details – combining your slides and the information about your startup with a good storytelling structure.

As I’ve outlined before, your pitch deck must tell a story – it must not be a list of figures and facts but an engaging journey down the path your startup is on – from the idea to the business.

So, you need …show more content…

And it worked, as the startup raised $500k with the pitch deck.

They tell a story

Pitch decks tell stories.

And stories often follow a specific structure, which you should use as the basis for your deck.

The winning storytelling formula comes in the form of Freytag’s Pyramid:

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So, what does it mean for your pitch deck?

Let’s look at the possibilities it offers in its purest form:

THE EXPOSITION – INTRODUCE THE TEAM AND THE COMPANY PURPOSE (VISION)

INCITING INCIDENT – OUTLINE THE PROBLEM

RISING ACTION – SET OUT THE CURRENT MARKET, COMPETITION

CLIMAX – PROVIDE THE SOLUTION, SHOW THE UNIQUE VALUE PROPOSITION

FALLING ACTION – INTRODUCE THE FINANCIALS

RESOLUTION – OUTLINE THE BUSINESS MODEL, FUNDRAISING STRATEGY

DENOUEMENT – TALK ABOUT TRENDS AND FUTURE PREDICTIONS

That’s the basic composition for a good story and a solid way of structuring your essential slides.

However, you can change the impact of your story focusing on how you tell the story, even if you don’t fundamentally change the structure of the slides.

Soren Petersen and Steven Bussard brought up two great examples of this in their blog post ‘Using Storytelling to Pitch Startups’.

They used the slides introduced by Guy Kawasaki and noted that by changing the structure slightly and focusing on how you engage the listener, you can create different types of stories.

First, you could tell an origin story – emphasising how things started with your

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