Series A pitch best practices

HIGH-LEVEL WISDOM

Outline the arc of your story before you begin to ‘make slides’. Slides should simply support your story
Each slide should have a main point you are making. Hit them over the head with the point in the title or up top and then have the data underneath to support the point. Don’t make the VCs do the work to put the pieces together…subtle does not win here.
Your goal of meeting #1 is to get them to want more (more info, meeting #2, etc). Your goal is NOT to tell them everything or pre-emptively answer any question they MAY ask. So, keep your story high and not have too many details. If you are concerned about all the things they may ask, create a slide for that question and put it in the appendix. VCs are oddly impressed when they ask a question and founder says ‘let me pull that up’ and up comes the slide directly addressing the question they asked.
VCs have short attention spans! You need to make them interested in the first 5 min/2-3 slides or you will lose your audience.
Enter a meeting with the spirit of having an intellectual conversation about your business v. hard-core ‘sell’ mode. One, you will learn more and two, VCs prefer to work with people who can have intellectual discussions with a desire to come out with the best answer v. just be sold to. And never, ever, be defensive…be curious.

SECTIONS OF THE PITCH

SECTION 1: Goal of this section is to give them a high-level intro that makes them want to pay attention to the rest of the pitch. It may include some/all of the following:

Team
What you do (big vision of the company–NOT simply what you do today)
Market – opportunity to educate about the market which includes market size but also macro trends (VCs should understand that it is a big market + a reason for the ‘why now?’ question that they all want an answer to)
Problem/Opportunity in Market (make it clear who your customer is–problem is their problem that you are solving)
Solution for stated problem/opportunity (which is your co)
Slide that goes up and to the right along the lines of ‘And it is Working’

An alternative is to have an ‘‘executive summary’ slide which states what your company does plus 4-6 ‘nuggets’ that make them realize you are legit.

You breathe after this section and check-in with VCs. “Any questions? Make sense?”

SECTION 2: Goal of this section is to explain what you have done thus far in product and growth. This section typically contains some or all of the following:

Where you have started. Note: all startups have to start somewhere. You told them earlier what the big vision is. Now you want to tell them where you started (and maybe why) and how it is going.
Who your customers are and your value proposition for them. You may show how you target/acquire them if it adds value
Revenue source and traction thus far (here is a laundry list of potential revenue/traction metrics: active users, total users, growth rate, retention, churn, net revenue, recurring revenue, GMV, average sales price, rake percentage, cac payback, ltv:cac ratio, demand frequency, supply frequency # of signed contracts, average value of signed contracts # of contracts in pipeline, annual value of contracts in pipeline)
Unit Economics
Engagement stats or something that shows that people are not just buying/using your product but are loving it and/or hopefully finding it to be indispensable (can show engagement stats, virality, spending more over time, putting more of their business on your platform, etc)
Any other slide that is CRITICAL to your company’s success. All other ‘nice to have slides’ should go in the appendix
Competitive landscape. This is NOT a feature comparison but rather a mapping of the market to educate them on the players in the game. Many use a 2×2 map to show who is in the market based on two attributes. Counter-intuitive but you want big, important players on this slide v. a bunch of start-ups. You want your prize to be worth winning.

SECTION 3: Goal of this section is to tell a clear story of where you are headed. This section typically contains some or all of the following:

Product and/or strategic/geo rollout roadmap. Basically, tell them where are you are going next and why
3-year projections (maybe)
Milestones you will hit with this round BONUS slide – Connect where you are today to where you are going to how it gets you to the big vision.

POSSIBLE APPENDIX SLIDES:

Sales productivity
Acquisition by channel
Deeper breakdown of market
Net Promoter Score (NPS) or Sean Ellis test