Knowledge Base: Pitch Deck

Pitch Deck for Investors

Click Here to access the amazing template pitch deck model that Inverse Funding have shared for free.

Things to remember

Slides: Aim to keep your slides to a maximum of 15 slides. This will show the investor that you understand the key rules: make things as straightforward as possible, focus on facts and reality, meet their expectations, and respect their time.

Font: Ensure the font size is no smaller than 25. This not only enhances clarity but also limits the amount of information, preventing the text from resembling a script. Additionally, choose conservative font colours that don't clash and remain visible against any background.

Page Numbers: Always include page numbers. When pitching to investors, keeping them on track is challenging enough without an easy way to guide them back to the correct page.

Slide layout

The slides, titles and layout set out below are fairly standard and follow one another logically. Feel free to change the order or titles to suit your pitch, but the core content mentioned should remain.

1. Cover Slide - The first slide should introduce the pitch deck and explain the business in straightforward, easily understood terms. Customise it to make it relevant to the recipient, include any copyright or legal text at the bottom, and if you have a brief summary of the business, this is the place to include it.

2. The Problem - This can be 1 slide, but possibly more if providing a demonstration or a narrative example. If there isn’t a grave problem, don’t make out that there is. You just need to explain the necessity of your product or service.

3. The Solution - Again, this can be 1 slide, but possibly more if providing a demonstration or a narrative example of the product / service use. The solution slide should clearly outline how your start-up tackles the problems faced by your target market.

4. The technology/Clever bit behind the solution - What sets you apart or makes your timing/positioning special. Highlight your USP, but don’t go overboard.

5. Business Model – How your customers’ pain can be translated into your revenue.

6. Team/Management – Sell your team to the investor, but keep it simple, clear and honest. Attach photos and LinkedIn URLs to help investors remember who you are.

7. Competition – Be honest and realistic. In your actual presentation, use your competitive analysis to demonstrate how your strategy and direction differs from your competitors.

8. Route to Market – Start-ups often overlook the process of delivering the product to end users. You should outline your route to market and discuss its impact on the business and financial model, as well as how it might evolve over time. Clearly state how the product will be marketed and sold. Investors will look for this information to assess your understanding of market size and how your marketing strategy sets you apart from the competition.

9. Financial Forecasts – Remember that forecasts are only estimates. Be prepared to explain the basis of your numbers and avoid presenting overly precise figures. Focus on providing factual foundations, such as price per unit, capacity, and market size, which support your headline forecasts. Infographics like pie charts or bar graphs are far more appealing to look at for investors.

10. Current Roadmap/Funding - This content could be spread across multiple slides but should centre on the roadmap. They should outline your past achievements, current status, future goals, and the resources needed to continue progressing in that direction. Roadmaps and milestones are effective tools for showcasing management competence and progress. They are also easier to discuss than financial metrics and tend to leave a more lasting impression as visual elements.

11. Traction - Growing recurring revenues are the best third-party validation of any investment proposition, but anything that suggests traction should be in a start-up initial presentation, provided it is from a credible and unconflicted source. Willing suppliers or curious channel partners do not constitute validation.

12. Deal Structure – While investors might expect some uncertainty at the outset, you should outline the amount of funding needed, how it will be used, the expected duration, and potential milestones leading up to the next funding round. Discuss the potential value in broad terms, but avoid offering any precise or definitive figures in the early stages.

13. Exit Strategy – Investors need to know they can exit, but they can work that out from your description of the business, the competitors etc, what the likely exit route will be. When the only answer to the potential question is ‘trade sale’ or occasionally ’trade sale or IPO’, there seems little point in putting it in, and this can cause problems with HMRC per here.

14. Appendices – only to be used for information that the investor is unlikely to know and never more than 3 slides.

Pitch Deck for HMRC

What to include?

• You need an ‘Ask’ slide:

  • How much you are raising. This should reconcile to the investment shown in the forecast model.
  • We would recommend you add ‘SEIS/EIS advance assurance pending’ or ‘SEIS/EIS advance assurance granted’, depending on your status.
  • A use of funds pie chart, showing what % of the raise is being spent on what.
  • You can’t show a significant amount of your ask going to third parties as HMRC may consider this a capital preservation activity.
  • If you are raising £250k, it might be worth increasing this to £260k so that you can get EIS advance assurance at the same time.

• Don’t express that development will be outsourced - this often causes a problem with HMRC. Drop this information - it’s not required.

• Make clear what your business model is, or if it doesn’t exist yet, add it.

• When describing your business model, you should cover how your business generates revenue as requested by HMRC per here.

What not to include?

• Don’t use the word ‘partner’ or ‘partnership’ - reword all instances of these to ‘collaboration’ or similar. The use of partner/partnership often causes HMRC to raise a query due to ITA07/S257DH.

• We’d strongly recommend you don’t submit a business plan. HMRC will be obliged to read the plan and they will compare this to the pitch deck and forecast. It’s really easy to misstep in 45 pages of writing. You will certainly be able to address all of the relevant items required to pass advance assurance in a pitch deck alone.

• Don’t describe ‘leasing’ as a source of revenue - broadly this is an excluded activity under the (S)EIS legislation - see VCM3050.

• Don’t describe an exit - HMRC will almost always query how you reconcile this stated aim with the scheme requirements that you should ‘grow and develop its trade over the long term’ per here. We’d recommend you remove any reference to this exit.