Deck to Deal helps entrepreneurs prepare for investor pitches.
- Educational material covering 20 business aspects that investors care about
- Example slides from funded pitches explaining the investment opportunity succinctly
- Do's and Don'ts when pitching to investors
- 100 + pre-formatted, customizable MSFT PPTX templates
- Online, self-paced material and downloadable toolkits
Introducing Deck To Deal, a self-paced, online education and creation toolkit for entrepreneurs to create an effective and persuasive investor pitch deck.
There are many business pitch deck examples available, from Guy Kawasaki’s 10-slide concept to Y Combinator’s slide template, which are all very helpful; however, these examples create more questions with the reader than what they actually asked at the beginning of the exercise, which commonly goes like this:
- I need to find the right investor(s) who will support my company so we can grow and repay the investment.
- I need to convey my fundraising intentions in a compelling yet not desperate manner.
- I realize I have only 3 – 15 minutes to create a connection with the investor, but I have dozens of selling points to make as my innovation or business plan is complicated.
- How do I appropriately skinny everything down?
Deck to Deal is your Online Investor Pitch Expert
For more than 10 years, the team at Hen House Ventures has been behind, supported, pitched, and critiqued hundreds of funding pitches. We have accumulated a strong understanding of not only what the investors are looking for, but more importantly, what the entrepreneurs don’t understand.
Several times during pitches we’ve just shaken our heads thinking that if the entrepreneur had been
- mentored or groomed for fundraising,
- understood more about investor interests and intentions,
- learned about the other pitches that they are in fact competing against;
that they could have closed on a funding round.
We at Hen House have collected our knowledge and have worked on composing an online learning system that educates entrepreneurs about closing funding rounds, and the outcome of the education is in fact, creating a better pitch deck.
Entrepreneurs are Great at Pitching Products, Not Their Companies
Perhaps it’s because entrepreneurs have focused the majority of their time and consideration on how to make the product work, and how to adapt the product to fit the market need – that their mindset defaults on pitching the product. Funding pitches that spend too much time on a product is often an indicator that the leadership is more focused on creating an innovation than a successful business. Here’s the thing – many investors will doubt if the company is being led by the right team, and the team quality is usually a top deciding factor when it comes to investment.
However, this concern is one of the easiest to address, and it’s done by getting the CEO to reconstruct a storyline about the business and its sustainability, efficiency, and growth. This can be taught through web searches, books, business coaching, consulting, or through Hen House’s online Deck to Deal.
Deck to Deal provides entrepreneurs the ability to learn about investor pitching and take lessons through an online educational platform. Deck to Deal has 20 courses that cover what we call Business Disciplines encapsulating 20 areas of a business plan that are often asked and explored during funding conversations. Some disciplines may appear mundane, such as the course on “About You” as the CEO, however, there are investor tricks and traps within every discipline, and if answered improperly, will turn away a prospective investor, possibly forever.
Advantages of using Deck to Deal as a trusted investment pitch resource:
- Online, self-paced learning platform with courses that cover each investor topic, individually
- Tips and tricks on how to discover the impact behind these topics, and how to get the data to back it
- Example slides from winning pitch decks, the narrative behind why the slide conveyed the right points to the investor
- “Investorcabulary”, which is the terminology you must know when pitching an investor
- Design elements that visually convey the story without words
- Downloadable Microsoft PowerPoint 100 + slide template that is ready for you to customize
- Constant updates and improvements to the funding material; as the investment market changes, we’ll update it.
Your Investment Pitch Is Competing Against Other Businesses
Another funding pitch aspect that Hen House Ventures considers to be one of the most imperative considerations when pitching to investors is that your pitch is competing against several other pitches, simultaneously.
If, and only if your pitch is at the top of the list AND meets the investors’ portfolio requirements and investment return expectations, will you get an investor call-back. Call-backs are not an invite into a due diligence process nor is it close to receiving a term sheet.
There’s not much information out there when it comes to the other companies that your pitch is competing against unless you are doing an Accelerator or Pitch Competition and you see the company names on the agenda.
As mentioned, entrepreneurs are used to competition, but on the product or innovation front. Doing research on competing products is vastly easier than doing research on competing companies who also seek funding. Realizing that your company’s investment opportunity is competing for the attention and interest against other companies that have a similar investment opportunity helps entrepreneurs with honing their story and proving why investing in their company is less risky than others.
Providing competing investment pitch insights is something that Hen House can assist with — and we call it Deal Genius — which we’ll cover at a later time.
Deck to Deal can start and accelerate your investor pitch readiness by teaching you what to expect when you have a conversation with investors, and also what to ask investors to ensure connection and understanding during your pitch. Going back to the first question entrepreneurs ask “I need to find the right investor(s) who will support my company so we can grow and repay the debt” must remain top-of-mind during the interactions.
Especially in a soft or recessive economy, investors are more prone to take fewer risks and will scrutinize the investment return expectations and likelihood because their cash flow has also been impacted similarly to the startup’s cash flow. We understand that every investment is a risk, but since March 2020, the count of early-stage seed deals with no prior funding has dipped.
Pitching post-COVID-19 requires more preparation and education, than any other time in history. So, if you’re an entrepreneur, don’t be discouraged. Put in the time and get expert support in understanding what investors want and presenting it in a compelling manner. Deck to Deal starts at $49 for the PowerPoint template and goes to $149 for either the online educational courses or the entire toolkit and material. We hope these reasonable prices will encourage startups to trust and try our platform.