It took ‘Miracle Worker’ and teacher Anne Sullivan a long time and a lot of effort to get through to a blind and deaf young Helen Keller. An exasperated Sullivan finally did succeed. The first word that made an impact and succeeded in helping the girl to understand the relationship between words and everything in her world was ‘water.’

With all due respect, it’s more or less the same with many first-time entrepreneurs when it comes to constructing their investor pitch decks and/or pitching. So, we’re going to spell it out for you.

We know you know the information that needs to be included, in no particular order: problem, solution, differentiators, market size – total addressable market (TAM), sample addressable market (SAM), sample obtainable market (SOM), go to market strategy, traction/partnerships, competitors, financials, team et al. 12-15 slides. Done.

Simple. Straight-forward, n’est pas?

So you’d think, except that many founders are so enamored with what they’ve built that they don’t realize that investors aren’t in the business of buying the product.

They’re in the exits business.

They’re all about the potential big exit: do you have, or can you assemble the team to do it, are you the lead dog who can get them to the finish line? And remember that as they’re looking at your deck, they’re looking for outliers. And have the attention spans of hyperactive five-year-olds.

Then again, how many decks do you think they look at in a given week? Hint: not just yours.

How often have you been told that your deck needs to tell a story? It’s not simply the story of your company: it’s the story of how you’re going to get to the exit – as will your investors. That’s another point that many founders fail to address: what’s your exit? Every story has a beginning, a middle and an end. The end of yours is the exit. What’s the plan? The real story your deck tells is what you’re building, what’s the exit, how will you do it and how long do you expect that it will take?

And how much money you’ll need to achieve this, too, of course. Don’t let the financials scare you: they’re about arithmetic, not calculus.

Also remember: if you haven’t grabbed the attention of the investor – or more likely, the associate – in the first few slides, he or she might not make it to the fifth or sixth slide, where the gold is literally buried.

And that’s the problem.

Most founders bury the lead; that one point or outlier that makes them investable:

You’ve gotten outstanding traction in just a few months; you’ve managed to sign a major company for a free (for now) or paid pilot; you’ve been earning revenue with your premium offering; your repeat business is growing – and the information is buried on slide #8. Usually primarily because you’ve fallen in love with the bricks and the buyer – or investor – wants to know what’s inside and all of the other salient points that make this house you’re selling so attractive: how close are the grocery stores, schools, the local toxic waste dump?

You’ve all seen the pitch deck templates. Note to self: they’re guides. Have you noticed that they’re not carved in stone? The order in which you can present your information is mutable. No two companies are exactly alike. The order in which you present the information in your pitch deck doesn’t need to be, either.

All companies pivot at some point, so although you may have a rough idea of where you’re going- at least for now – there’s no road map on how to get there. There will come a point where you’ll need to ask for directions. The people who can help you navigate the landscape are called mentors or advisors and every startup does need them. And does need to compensate them in some form as well.

Speaking of the long, unmarked road, you may need to bring on other advisors along the way. Or replace advisors who were taking you down the wrong path. Which is not to say that you should completely jettison those advisors who were truly helpful early on. They did give you their time and expertise and helped you to navigate the terrain when you needed it. You might not have gotten where you are without them. Show some appreciation.

 

Speaking of ‘teams,’ which is one of the slides critical to any and every deck, it is a slide to which investors pay a lot of attention, especially when it comes to actually meeting with an investor. As a friend of ours shared with us, which was told to him by an investor: I’d rather invest in an A team with a B idea, than a B team with an A idea.

Persistence and perseverance will get you far. Focus. And always bring you’re A game. And your A team.

 

We know that founding and building a company is not easy. But here’s an important point to consider: startups are complicated; investors are simple. Think about it: how many different tech startups have been built since those early Web 1.0 days and even prior to that? Some have succeeded; many failed; a few reached unicorn status – and actually stayed there; some were acquired. And dollars to donuts, every single one of those startups pivoted at some point.

But the VC model hasn’t changed in over 50 years.

Which doesn’t stop many an investor from claiming that they’re keeping their eyes peeled for true innovators, for disruptors and for founders who see things differently.

Maddening, isn’t it? A bit hypocritical, to put it mildly, what, eh, and which may explain why so often the majority of their investments fail. It’s enough to make you want to reach for something a bit stronger than W-A-T-E-R as we go onward and forward.