The Perfect Investor Deck for raising Series A
We previously wrote here about building a perfect deck for raising a Seed Round.
Raising a Seed round is very different from raising a Series A.
Because of the stage of the company, the process is going to be different - you will need to find a lead, and plan your entire financing.
The dynamics of the round are going to be different, the due diligence process will be more rigorous, and the expectations of the investors will be different as well.
A Series A company is expected to have a lot more figured out vs a Seed stage business. A typical Series A deck needs to have a lot more information on traction, financials, early product-market-fit, customer acquisition, unique insights, market details and overall, is expected to be much more in depth and fluent in the business.
In this post, we focus on a layout of the investor deck that is likely be more effective for Series A.
As always though, there is no perfect deck (I just like catchy headlines 😃), and you need to make the deck your own. That said, it is always a good idea to start with a template, map it all out, and then refine and make it your own.
Before we get into the structure of the deck, here are a few general pointers.
Start with a basic templated outline, don’t go into design first, use google doc and keep things simple. This will be hard for you if you are a visual thinker, but trust me, this is a proven system that works.
Don’t start with a narrative deck. Start with a basic deck as described below. You can easily turn a basic deck into a narrative deck through a simple method - changing titles to be more of a narrative, and then splitting each slide into one or more. But again, do not start that way, start with a simpler template.
In general, a good Series A deck packs A LOT of information into EACH slide.
Investors expect a lot of details about the business because of the stage you are at. They expect a lot of numbers and insights, so keep that in mind as you work on your deck.
Slide 1: Introduction
Put a compelling, compact statement on what is your company’s vision or mission, along with your logo and maybe product or other visuals, if makes sense. Do not waste the first slide, set the stage for what you want to deliver. Also include your title and contact information on the slide.
Slide 2: Team
Even if you didn’t have a perfect founder-market-fit when you started the business if you are at Series A stage, you have now learned a lot and have should be able to speak to why YOU are working on this problem.
The Team slide gives you an opportunity to establish authority, BEFORE sharing your vision, traction and the details of the business.
What investors really want to know here is:
Why you as a CEO so passionate about this problem that you can’t do anything else but work on this business.
Why you as a Founding team are so passionate about this problem?
Are you visionary and mission driven? Explain why
Why are you together? How do you compliment each other? What makes the founding team special?
How did you come together and why? Did you work together before? Where? How long?
What background and experience do you have in this particular space? If you didn’t work in the space before then briefly focus on the insights you gathered and your traction.
Investors need to get a strong feeling that you are the right team and that you we will this space.
Investors are also looking to learn about entire management team. Their roles, backgrounds, why did they join and what their super powers. Please the information clearly, spell out people’s titles and make effective use of their previous experiences - include logos of the places they worked, schools they attended, and accolades as makes sense.
3. Vision and Opportunity
The Vision and the Opportunity should be in the deck twice - briefly in the beginning and then in more details in the end.
Series A investors want to see a bold, broad vision to build a market dominant company.
Deliver the vision and opportunity clearly and succinctly. If you can’t articulate what the business becomes in 5-7 years or that it can’t be a category winner it will be a red flag and a turn off for investors.
4. Traction summary
This is the last slide of the Team, Vision, Traction Summary sequence, which is designed to hook the investors, to establish credibility and authority and get them to take the meeting. Put it differently, after reading these 3 slides they should be ready to take a meeting with you even without reading the rest of the deck.
Making a great traction slides is a key aspect of fundraising, and series A traction slides need to be sharp.
Put a chart of your top metric, like revenue or customers, on the left side of the slide. Ideally show the growth of new revenue, or cumulative if that makes more sense. Be extremely clear with the labels and style of the graph. Spent a lot of time making sure it looks great. Typically, when you display data by quarter using bar chart, it looks a lot better than showing a line graph.
On the right side of the slide, place a bullet list or blocks of other key metrics or data you want to communicate. This could be growth of another metric, number of customers, retention, CAC/LTV ratio, logos of top customers - anything that is particularly impressive and you want to communicate quickly.
Avoid complexity here, this is just summary of the traction that is designed to hook the investors.
5. Customers and the Problem you are Solving
Who are your customers?
How well do you know and understand your customers?
Be as specific as possible. Investors are looking for an insight and fluency here.
What problem are you solving?
How big of a pain point this is?
Who in the organization needs the solution?
Who holds the budget and is the economic buyer?
6. Solution
What is your product and solution?
Explain in broad strokes what you product does.
How exactly do you solve a customer problem and why the product makes sense?
What is unique about your product and solution?
How do you know you have Product-Market Fit?
What makes it long term defensible?
7. How it Works or Demo
Show, don’t tell.
Quickly get into a product demo. This works at the Seed stage and Series A stage alike. Investors love demos and you, as a founder have a great opportunity to explain the nuances of your solution THROUGH the demo from the lens of a customer.
Ideally, embed the screenshots, and a link to a product video in the deck.
If not possible, describe the key product features or how the system works in details. When presenting the deck, give the live demo instead. When doing a demo go deep and nerd out. Investors love that.
This is also a great opportunity to emphasize again what is unique about your product, and your technology.
8. Technology and Data
If you are a technology company, go deeper on your technology. This is not about your tech stack, instead this is about what makes your technology unique, scalable and defensible. Explain how technology fuels the product, and makes your company more interesting.
If you are a business that is acquiring or generating an interesting proprietary data, talk about your data advantage, and if you have it, the data flywheel and data network effects.
9. Traction and Metrics Details
Go deep on your traction. Be awesome at charts. Communicate growth through a set of compelling charts, numbers, and logos.
This slide or slides should answer all the questions an investor may have about the state of your business. Think through how to best present the information.
The general rules are - don’t use complex charts, like bar graphs that capture multiple years next to each other or stacked charts. Best visuals are via monthly, or quarterly bar charts. Don’t use screen shots of your internal dashboards, those are hard to read, instead redo the charts with the data so that it is clear and clean.
Every business at a Series A stage should have 5, at most 10, metrics that drive it. Think about presenting from most to least important. Don’t over do it with different metrics as it can get confusing and overwhelming.
You can always have more information and details in your data room.
10. Business Model
Clearly explain how you make money, who pays and how much
If you are a B2B product or subscription business clearly show your pricing tiers
Show unit economics, how much does it cost you to acquire the customer (CAC), and what is the life time value of each customer (LTV).
Include any other costs, and any non-obvious things about your model
11. Customer Acquisition
Explain how you segment your customers, talk about your sales and marketing strategies
Rank your top customer acquisition channels, matrix works best. Show CAC and LTV by channel
Describe your word of mouth, virality, referral programs if applicable
Talk about your partnership, and other distribution channels if makes sense
Give more color to what is working best and work haven’t work
Talk about your funnels. If you are a B2B sales business talk about your sales funnel. If you are D2C company talk about your conversion funnel.
12. Competition and Competitive Advantage
The goal of this slide is to communicate that you are fluent in your space, know it inside out, and understand how to win through unique product and sales motions.
Avoid using magic quadrants and feature matrices, they are tired and no one takes them seriously
Instead, use a list and list each of your top direct and indirect competitors
Do not badmouth your competitors, it is not a good look. Instead, acknowledge what each competitor is doing well are doing well.
On the bottom of the slide, explain what makes you unique and different and why do you win.
13. Market Size / Opportunity / Why Now
Clearly articulate what market you are in
Show both top down and bottom up market size. For top down provide links to sources. For bottom up, show your calculations clearly
This slide is also a great place to talk about Why Now and a broader opportunity to complement the numbers in the market size. Why Now is really a trick question, it is more about what happens in the future.
When talking about opportunity be specific around industry trends and where the world is going. Opportunity is not the same as Vision, it is a lot more about Blue Ocean or Disruption in the industry.
14. Product Roadmap
If you are a technology company describe your upcoming product milestones. Be specific about what you are going to ship. The timeline is less important as this is more about your vision.
15. Vision
Talk about your Vision, expand on what you alluded to in the beginning of the deck
Investors at this stage are looking for visionary founds who can imagine and create a new, compelling and lucrative future
Avoid being too broad here. The key is to take credit for what you’ve accomplished already, and then show clearly and succinctly that much more is ahead.
Excite investors with your opportunity by telling a story about the world 5-7 years from now where you created a market dominant business.
16. Milestones with this Fundraise
List key revenue, customer, business milestones you will achieve with this raise
Include projections and charts. Make them compact. You can always include detailed financials in the data room. Again, avoid using screenshots as they are hard to read.
List key hires you will need to make, focus on the executive team
Summarize any other business milestones that are relevant
Obviously make the Series A deck yours, specific to your business, but you can start with this outline and then iterate. Please let me know if you think anything else should be included.
