How Not to Make a Pitch Deck: These Things You Should Avoid

If you’re about to embark on the process of pitching your idea, product or service for the first time, you might be feeling a little intimidated. You have an important task ahead of you – convincing people that they need what you are offering. Your pitch deck is one of your most powerful tools in this endeavor. But it can also become your worst enemy if not constructed with care and attention.

Don’t start with a summary of your company’s values and mission statement. It is incredibly boring for investors to read these hackneyed points, and they’ll be looking at what you can actually do (not what you want to do).

Make sure that the information included in your pitch deck is current. Investors don’t like it when facts are outdated because this could affect their decision making process – especially if it leads them down the wrong path! If there has been a development within the past year or so, make sure it gets added into your presentation as soon as possible.

Do not use logos from other companies even if only one aspect of each will be used in small on slides where no logo would normally appear. As a general rule, if it can be confused with another company or product, don’t use it!

Do not make the text too small to read. This will only serve to turn off your investors and cause them to move on without actually reading what you are trying to convey – defeating the purpose of having an elevator pitch in the first place! Remember that they have already signed up for this meeting so at least some interest is there; do yourself a favor by making sure their investment isn’t wasted because they couldn’t see anything clearly.

If possible, show examples of your potential clients using your services/products during presentations instead of just relying solely on words (or worse…just describing what you want to do). This will help investors better visualize the value of your services, and show them how they could benefit from working with you.

Do not include information that isn’t directly relevant to the rest of the document. It is much more difficult for an investor to process a lot of information at once – especially when it doesn’t seem like there are any ties between these pieces! So make every single sentence count by ensuring only important facts are included in each slide.