Do you have an innovative business idea that you’re pitching to Venture Capitalists (VCs)? Well, believing in your abilities and having a confidence that your ideas will definitely see the light of the day is what that helps you keep focused on the goals. But the ability to convince a room of seasoned professionals that your idea is actionable can be tough.

This is where pitch deck designers will come in handy.

Your pitch deck is a key to getting those finances that you need to support your idea. So make sure it’s content is powerful, impressive and powerful enough to make VCs shell out their money. A talented designer can help take your ideas and merge them into a compelling and cohesive experience.

Well, if you’re not ready to hire a dedicated designer just yet, here are a few tips that we utilize to improve results:

1. Create an Impressive Company Overview

Pitch deck designers recommend a solid company overview. This is the slide after the cover page. This is a good opportunity to provide some detail about your company. The investor isn’t interested in listening to a long story, so you should know how to describe your business in just a few words. Keeping the company overview short, crisp and simple to understand is the key to creating an impressive intro. Your business description should be so simple that a five year old could understand it.

2. Come up with a Clear Vision and Mission

While a mission statement explains the company’s reason for existence and focuses on the present, a vision statement mainly explains the future goals and aspirations of the company. With your powerpoint pitch deck, you should be able to explain both of these accurately in just 15 seconds. Your mission and vision statement should clearly describe the overall intention of your business and your strategic goals. This is is one of the key details that will help your investor determine whether your idea is viable or not.

3. Clearly Define the Existing Problem

Successful pitch decks help explain critical problems customers are facing. After a great introduction, you need to define a problem that your company is solving. Your pitch deck should also tell who you are solving the problem for, which means your target audience. Mixpanel, an advanced web and mobile analytics platform, created a pitch deck presentation that started off with an impactful problem – people guessing their analytics. The presentation helped them raise over $65 million.

4. Describe how you are planning to solve the problem

Propose your solution in a way that instantly grabs the investor’s attention. Consider it as the most important slide deck that can make or break the deal. It’s a good idea to validate and describe your solution by using stories and pictures. Showing is always better than telling, so graphics and charts will be quite helpful at this point.

5. Show why your solution is better than others in the market

Unless you are launching a completely new business idea, there’s a good chance that similar competitors already exist in your market. Pitch deck designers will help you stand out visually, but your concept will matter the most. Obviously, the investors will be less interested in a business idea that many companies are already capitalizing on. You must be prepared with a solid reason why your solution trumps all.

6. Your pitch deck should be based on solid numbers

Your pitch deck should be based on solid numbers and facts and not just textual information. For example, the pitch deck of Facebook was based on strong numbers such as their user engagement, users, traffic, and growth metrics which helped them raise funds of $500,000. Similarly, the pitch decks of Buffer, a social media scheduling platform, and BuzzFeed were also based on solid numbers. BuzzFeed managed to raise over $240 with its powerful presentation.

7. Describe the market opportunity

The VCs like to invest in big market opportunities. Along with your pitch deck designers, you should be able to show that your company is addressing a very large market. You should be able to support your statements with solid numbers to make your pitch more credible. Adpushup, a company that helps others maximize ad revenues through advanced A/B testing, was able to raise more than $632,000 of funds through its effective pitch deck presentation. The deck had a great introduction, outline of problems, solution, market opportunities, case studies and more to support its idea.

8. Keep it short and sweet

A pitch deck presentation should not be more than 15-20 slides long and each slide should have short and sweet content. Cluttering up every slide with a lot of information is just going to distract you and your investors. Remember that your in-person presentation will give you a chance to highlight key information. Wealthsimple, Canada’s first online investment manager, managed to raise $2 million in funding thorough their effective, brief pitch deck presentation. Every slide had a strong layout with crisp information.

9. Make your pitch deck presentation look professional

Your pitch deck presentation should look fresh and professional. If your current presentation has failed to grasp investors’ interest, it’s time to change its layout, graphics, content and more. If you aren’t comfortable designing, hire someone else! There are many pitch deck designers that can apply a good-quality look and feel to your content. The effort will pay off in dividends. Just ask Crew, a freelancer marketplace. They managed to raise $2 million dollars with a well-designed pitch deck presentation.

10. Prove that you have already got traction

If you are already working in some way on your concept, it shows VCs that you already understand your industry and have some real-life experience. It also proves that you’re solving an actual problem with your product and not pitching on the basis of assumptions. Don’t forget to include press coverage, testimonials, awards or accolades in the slides that you have managed to obtain.

11. Demonstrate how you plan to execute your idea

If you pitch your idea without planning any specific steps of execution, your all efforts will be in vain. It’s important to show your investors that you not only have goals, but know how you are going to reach them. Be realistic with the plans and finances you ask for in your pitch deck presentation. You must be able to justify your proposal with strong facts and numbers; otherwise the VCs may abandon you.

12. Have a good marketing plan

You might have a good product, but how will you make it accessible to customers? This is where your pitch deck designers and marketing strategy come together. Your “marketing plan” pitch deck should cover some important points in order to convince VCs that you are capable of reaching your target audience. These include key marketing channels you plan to use, what early channels you have worked on if you already have traction, what the acquisition cost is per customer, what the project lifetime value is, and what PR you will be using.

13. Mention how your pricing fits into the large market

Keeping in mind your competitors’ landscape, you should set a realistic pricing of your product/service. Ask yourself whether your product fits in the premium, high-price offering niche or a budget offering niche. If your product is far better than theirs, tell investors why and how your pricing fits. Before investing in your venture, they would certainly like to know how much money you are going to make out of it and how much benefit they would be able to obtain from equity. Your powerpoint pitch deck should include all these facts.

14. Don’t create a text-rich, picture-poor pitch deck presentation

Reading and listening can’t be done at the same and the investors aren’t from out-of-this-world. It’s important to add plenty of graphics and visuals in your pitch deck presentation to engage the VCs. While it’s tempting to add too many benefits or too many metrics, you should never go overboard. Experienced pitch deck designers will ensure that you don’t sacrifice your presentation with too much text or too many bullet points.

15. Keep a consistent look to your presentation

When designing a powerpoint presentation, make sure that every slide has a consistent look and feel. Use the same layout, font, color, size and capitalization format across all slides to make it look professional and exciting. Always use a font that is large enough to be read by all audiences. Castle, a startup that lets rental owners put their properties on autopilot, created a pitch deck presentation that helped them raise $270,000. It had a great design with an easy to digest format.

16. Take inspiration from real-life, tested pitch decks

Creating compelling content is one thing, but how you structure it also matters. You might have a great idea but you won’t raise funds if you don’t know how to present it. Taking inspiration from other popular pitch decks by Facebook, Plumbr, Square, Bliss, Sequoia Capital, BuzzFeed and more will help you understand the heart and soul of a pitch deck presentation. Before finalizing your own, make sure to go through them at least once and review with potential pitch deck designers.

Article: 30 Startup Pitch Decks That Are Worth Gold

Plenty of people have great ideas but lack the skills to present them. A well-created PowerPoint pitch deck presentation with a short and clear value proposition can help you gain the much-required capital from the VCs. Make sure to nail it with the above-mentioned tips before turning to investors.

Need a team of proven pitch deck designers?

We’d love to help! Our creative design agency can breathe fresh life into your next presentation, so you can focus on what you love.

Or maybe you’re in the reading mood? Check out 30 Startup Pitch Decks for Today’s Leading Brands, our Top 10 Presentation Tips, or read our list of 7 Creative Powerpoint Design Tips from a Design Agency CEO.