Financing your life science tools or IVD startup company is critical. No financing – no company.
Securing capital requires a compelling story for investing in the company. An investor pitch deck is how you tell this compelling story. Only 1% of investor pitch decks secure financing. Let that sink in.
Nobody thinks that their deck is going to be in the 99% that fail to secure financing. How you tell your company story will probably determine whether it survives. There is a pitch deck template you can use to maximize your chances of success. It is a proven framework to craft a story that resonates with investors – the Sequoia Capital Pitch Deck Template.
Sequoia Capital Investor Pitch Deck Template: 10-Slide Story Flow
- Company purpose
- Problem
- Solution
- Why now
- Market size
- Competition
- Product
- Business model
- Team
- Financials
Don’t make the following “rookie” mistake.
You secured a 60-minute pitch meeting with a potential investor. You assume that you’ll be getting 60 minutes of attention. That won’t happen if you don’t win their attention in the first 5 minutes. Investors have a short attention span.
If they don’t think “Wow, this is interesting” out of the gate, then it’s likely they will:
… end the meeting early.
… or at the end of the meeting, say “Come back when you have more traction”.
Sequoia Capital Investor Pitch Deck Template: Slide Content.
Sequoia’s recommended content per slide is shown in bold below and my comments are shown in regular font.
1. Company Purpose Slide
Define your company/business in a single declarative statement.
That sounds easy – but it’s not.
What do you do?
Who do you help?
How do you help?
Keep it clear and simple.
Sequoia says that only 1 in 15 entrepreneurs can do this successfully.
2. Problem Slide
Describe the pain of the customer (or the customer’s customer).
Outline how the customer addresses the issue today.
You need to convince investors there’s a big problem that needs fixing. If you don’t, then it may seem like you have a solution looking for a problem. And if the investor thinks that’s the case, then here is where you lose them.
3. Solution Slide
Demonstrate your company’s value proposition to make the customer’s life better.
Show where your product physically sits.
Provide use cases.
4. Why Now Slide
Set-up the historical evolution of your category.
Define recent trends that make your solution possible.
Timing is an important – investors may be thinking “Sounds good, but why now?”.
5. Market Size Slide
Identify/profile the customer that you cater to.
Calculate the TAM (top-down), SAM (bottom-up) and SOM.
6. Competition Slide
List competitors.
List competitive advantages.
I like to use a table for this comparison. Try to keep the number of comparison criteria under five. You don’t want to have a dozen criteria that take a lot of valuable time to explain.
7. Product Slide
Product line-up (form factor, functionality, features, architecture, intellectual property).
Development roadmap.
8. Business Model Slide
Revenue model
Pricing
Average account size and/or lifetime value
Sales & distribution model
Customer/pipeline list
9. Team Slide
Founders & Management
Board of Directors / Board of Advisors
Investors know that the right team is critical to realizing the company’s vision. Emphasize what experience and expertise your team brings, but don’t go overboard by providing excessive detail.
10. Financials Slide
P&L
Balance sheet
Cash flow
Cap table
The deal
Other Considerations:
I like to add a Use of Proceeds slide at the end which outlines how the requested capital is going to be spent. If you do, this brings the number of content slides to 11. In our industry, we love to talk in extreme detail (and in a lot of slides) about everything that our tech can do. Avoid doing this. I know that might be hard.
Ensure that your deck proactively answers common investor questions and predictable objections.
Avoid text-heavy slides.
Be careful not to use too much industry jargon.
Use a clean professional design.
Need Help?
We provide Investor Pitch Deck Development for life science tools and IVD companies.
If you need help with yours, please reach out to me at david@bournestrategic.com.
