Top Pitch Deck Design Tips

How do you design a winning pitch deck that will land your startup the funds it needs?

Table of Contents

Pitch deck design is one of the most important tasks that startup founders have to tackle and master. Yet, no matter how exceptional entrepreneurs are at building businesses or innovating with new products, this is one area in which many still struggle.

Failing to get this right will cost you everything. With no funding, your startup will be starved of fuel and will always be working at a disadvantage. Whereas, if you ace it, you may find you are able to raise far more money than you need and have the choice of the best investors.

Keep Your Text To A Minimum

A successful pitch deck is simple, obvious, and has legible text.

It should be so readable, that your 95-year-old grandmother in the back row of the room can read it.

To accomplish this, each slide in your pitch deck should only have a sentence or two, or three bullet points at the most.

Combinator suggests starting out with a bold, 100-point font, which has a strong contrast with your background color.

Pitch Deck Software

The main concern here is choosing software to create and present your pitch deck in. Though you may also use other software programs to add in different parts of your pitch deck design and creation. For example, image editing software, and financial modeling software.

When it comes to your main slide software, you may default to the preferred software of those you choose to hire to design your pitch decks. At least providing it is compatible with the devices you have.

Microsoftsoft PowerPoint is the old guard of slide presentation software. Some may like Apple software. Though Google Slides has emerged as one of the best overall options for pitch deck design. It easily integrates with Gmail, team collaboration in Drive, Powerpoint, and hosting your pitch deck online.

So, what is the best pitch deck design service? and what do you need to work to to increase the chance of success.

Images

To convey your message with minimal text, you will need to use visuals.

Each visual can instantly convey many words. This can be done in a variety of formats. Including charts, graphs, tables, screenshots, and pictures.

Again, each of these should be simple, and obvious, and instantly convey the one main point you are trying to get across.

Do not use more than one per slide.

If using pictures, avoid using commonly used stock photos. You should use your own unique images, which you have full rights to use.

Color Selection

Color choices are very important and impactful when it comes to pitching deck design.

There are several things that you need to keep in mind when selecting your color palette:

Colors should match your brand identity and style guide
Colors need to provide great contrast between text and slide backgrounds
Colors should create the right psychological and emotional responses in your audience

Colors instantly make a difference for those viewing your pitch deck. They can immediately turn off potential investors before they even read a single word. Or they can mentally link your presentation with success, and keep them moving toward the action you want them to take next.

Font Styles

As with the pitch deck design tips that we’ve covered for text and colors, your font styles should also make your messaging clear, and match your brand.

Do not use more than two font styles on a single slide. Use the same font styles throughout your pitch deck slides.

Your font choices should also match your existing brand identity, and style guide. If you do not have official brand fonts, then choose wisely. Fonts should be super simple to read. They should also be fonts that are easy to use across all of your other assets. Including your other text documents, website, etc. If they aren’t available, then you are losing brand recognition or will fail to achieve it.

Err on the side of oversized fonts. Bigger is better. This will force you to minimize the amount of text you use, and improve the overall effectiveness of your pitch deck.

Number Of Slides

The number of slides you use in your pitch deck is incredibly influential on the outcome of your fundraising efforts.

It sounds simple. Yet, it is one pitch deck design factor that entrepreneurs continue to get horribly wrong and frequently fail to stay disciplined on.

It doesn’t matter how important or revolutionary the information is; if you have too many slides you are going to struggle to raise funding for your startup.

Most obviously, it will just exceed the attention span that people have today. Especially the best investors. They won’t make it through to your call to action. Even if they do, they will run out of time to actually take that action. The next time they get into their inbox, they are going to have another 1,000 emails to clear.

Being such a basic blunder, it also destroys your credibility. If you can’t get your slide count right, then how can they believe that you can run a startup, maintain your focus on the important things, or make it through the hard and complicated parts?

As an early-stage startup, more than 10 slides can be overkill. Even for mid to late-stage startups, 20 slides can be too much.

Where To Host Your Pitch Deck

Hosting your pitch deck online is incredibly important. You do not want to be limited to sending your pitch deck as an email attachment.

Hosting it online will enable you to share it more efficiently, with a greater chance of getting it through to investors, and viewed.

This will also enable you to constantly tweak and update your deck. As well as to retain control of access to your deck, and monitor and measure activity.

With Google, you can host your deck and the rest of your data room in the same software for easier sharing and management.

Alejandro Cremades is a serial entrepreneur and the author of The Art of Startup Fundraising.

Author Profile

Adam Regan

Deputy Editor

Features and account management. 3 years media experience. Previously covered features for online and print editions.

Email Adam@MarkMeets.com