How to Build a Pitch Deck

A successful pitch deck begins with structure and design, and in most cases, consists of 10-20 slides that help summarize and explain your start-up concept and vision. To start this article, I wanted to say you will do great at your next pitch! I was so afraid of my first pitch, but the advice that helped me get over my fear was that it's okay not to be perfect; you are just starting your entrepreneurial journey. Think of this moment as the opportunity to tell a story about what you are passionate about and know that practicing and putting yourself out there means you are already a successful entrepreneur that is adapting and persevering.

Whether this pitch deck is for a class, a pitch to gain funding, or a pitch to find investors, a pitch deck is a vital aspect of your entrepreneurial process and should reflect your idea or company's essential aspects. To keep things as simple as possible, utilize this structure as a basis, then explore other decks similar to the direction and entrepreneurial stage that you are looking for.

1. Start Slide

Keep it basic! Have a clean background with an eye-catching logo aligned in the middle, along with a tagline that captures what your company or idea is in one sentence.

2. Meet the Team Slide

Keep all of the images of your team the same size and aligned. Place the team member's names and titles underneath their photos.

3. Introduce your customer

An essential part of being an entrepreneur is to know who your customer or target audience is and what they value. This may be an excellent place to explain how they are currently attempting to solve the issue.

4. What are the customer's needs?

Describe what the customer's needs are in concise statements or break down each need that the product you will introduce later will solve.

5. Explain why this problem is not uncommon.

Give statistics of industry revenue, other companies tackling the issue, and one concise statement about the problem.

6. Introduce your solution and explain what you will provide to the customer.

Show a graphic or path which shows how the customer interacts with your business or product.

7. Explain the buyer and user.

Be as specific as possible to help build a story about how buyers and users will interact and benefit from your solution.

8. What is the value

Explain how your company provides value to the customer. This is extremely important to understand and defend why your solution holds value not just as a solution but the value that the customer gains from the product and what its value has to the customer.

9. Why is it unique

Explain how your company or solution is unique compared to other competitors or solutions in the same market.

10. How will this make money?

Depending on the stage you are at as an entrepreneur, this section will change. However, when in the beginning stages, create a project-based revenue model and explain how much revenue will go towards your idea or start-up cost.

11. Thank you slide

It is always a staple for ending a presentation thanking the viewer for their time, then opening the conversation to questions that the judges or viewers will have.

12. Secret Slides

Think of what questions the judges or viewers may ask and have a set of slides hidden at the end of your presentation that you can flip directly to and help support your answers. These slides can impress judges by your preparation for your presentation.

To make your presentation stand out, begin the process by using a template. A few websites you can utilize include Canva.com, Slidescarnival.com, and Slidesgo.com to move away from the average and be unique. If you have yet to build your brand guidelines, remember to use a color palette to make your branding uniform throughout your presentation, and make slides pop. Color palettes can be found at multiple sites, including coolors.com, if you're looking for inspiration. You can also get creative by adding new fonts by searching fonts.com to increase your font options. However, one mistake often made in pitch decks is adding too many colors, fonts, graphics, or text. The goal is to be minimalistic and effective rather than filling the slide. Try to use at max three fonts with a specific hierarchy and six colors.

Another tip to unify and simplify your presentation is to use icons to present your message with a similar graphic style from the noun project.com or flaticon.com. For graphs and data visualization, use online tools Visme or Infogram, which can keep your data visually cohesive. The goal is to inform through visuals with minimal text as you want to present your pitch verbally through storytelling for a more impactful effect. Keep in mind the most exceptional presentations are not directly read from a slide but telling a story for others to connect to and remember.

For example layouts and structured pitch decks made by successful startups here is an article on the website slidebean that helped inspire this article. The article contains even more helpful advice on how to create different decks depending on the stage of your start-up and content specific to different pitch deck needs.

For more resources and access to mentors that can help support your entrepreneurial and leadership journey, go to the WEL Institute website to further explore your ideas and access tools to think like an entrepreneur. If you are a UT student and want to learn this process in practice, consider applying for the WEL Institute sponsored courses TXA365 // Accessory Design, Development and Merchandising & ES377 & ES397 // STEM Innovation and Technology Commercialization. There are many opportunities to get involved with the WEL Institute, and I hope to see you all virtually at WEL Institute events!

Learn more about upcoming empowering and emboldening opportunities at https://ksinstitute.utexas.edu/programs/.