A post with 8 things you should not include in a pitch deck on TNW. My comments:
- No detail, 20-30 slides. It depends. If your slides are really light and visual, you can go through a lot of them in 20 minutes. maybe more than 30. Depending on your situation, (some) detail can be good. Really high level pitches lack meat.
- No contact information. No reason to overdo it, but an email or phone number on the last page does not harm I think. I do not like it when I cannot find a phone number at the bottom of an email.
- Remove a point they can object to. Maybe, but if it is a major point, it has to go in. You cannot change reality... If this is a deal breaker, then this investor is not the right one for you.
- Fund allocation. Yes, opening up criticism over your budget might not be smart. Still, an investor wants to know roughly what is going to happen with the funds, and why you need this money, now, and not in 6 months from now
- Guestimates. Agree. If you have to make guestimates, make intelligent ones, and make it transparent that it is a guestimate
- Unrealistic success prediction. Agree
- Saying there is no competition, absolutely agree. Even if there is no direct competitor, there are other solutions, categories, that people are using to solve a particular problem
- The "The End" slide, yes, you can take that one off, and replace it with a repeat of a strong visual earlier in the presentation. This is a nice backdrop against which to hold the Q&A discussion. The last slide is the slide that probably sits longest on the projector.
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