Investors’ brains dislike complex and abstract concepts, yet many pitch decks are so abstract that readers finish them without knowing what the company does. Explaining tangibly what your product does is a foundation of the pitch story. The easiest test: send the deck to diverse people who do not know your business and ask what they understood.
Our brains hate complex and abstract concepts. Investor’s brains hate complex and abstract concepts.
Our brains like tangible things. Many fundraising stories and pitch decks are far too abstract.
You’re reading the whole deck and yet, afterward, you have no clue what the company is doing.
Happens more often than you might think.
I’ll never forget when my team and I organized a “Microsoft ScaleUp pitch day” years ago and it took one founder, actually a senior guy with a quite solid AI company, 8 minutes until he actually explained what they were doing.
At least, he did it after 8 minutes.
I just roasted a pitch deck from a member of my INFINITE DISRUPTORs Community that is one of the most obvious, recent examples of how you can fill a lot of slides with a lot of fancy words, still leaving the reader with a puzzle they can’t solve about what the company is actually doing (link to the roast video below).
Explaining most tangibly what your product is doing is one of the fundaments of your pitch story. Without understanding that fundament, a reader won’t be able to put everything else you’re conveying into any context.
The easiest thing you can do to prevent this problem is to send your pitch to friends and other people you know who don’t know what you’re doing and ask them afterward what they understood (and what not).
The more diverse the people you ask are, the better.
If you want to watch me roasting the in2humans Deck, you can do it here.
Thanks to the brave founders for submitting the deck and being so open to learning and improving.
Frequently asked questions
Why do investors struggle with abstract pitch decks?
Our brains hate complex and abstract concepts and like tangible things. If a reader does not understand what the product does, they cannot put anything else in the pitch into context.
How can I test whether my pitch deck is easy to understand?
Send it to friends and other people who don’t know what you’re doing and ask them afterwards what they understood and what not. The more diverse the group, the better.
What should a pitch deck explain first?
What the product actually does, in the most tangible way. Iskender recalls a pitch day where a founder needed 8 minutes before explaining what the company did.
