Thanks to the other parts of this guide for building a great investor deck you now have a great Introduction, Problem and Solution slide. If this is not your case, you can check the other parts here:
We’ve created the «Builing the perfect Investor Deck» PDF to help you in this process based on the book «Entrepreneur Pitch Book», from HassoPlatner Ventures. Don’t forget to share it with Swanlaab once it’s finished!
You can download our PDF here:
Part 4: Solution
Lets dig a bit deeper into what investors love reading in the Solution slide. If you did well with the introduction, team and opportunity slide, the investors is now thinking: all right, this looks like an amazing opportunity, the team can surely make it and the story behind makes total sense but, how are they going to achieve it?. For proving there’s a great solution for solving the problem , you should use between 2 and 5 slides.
Purpose is what drives entrepreneurs and helps build large and successful organizations. Investors love founders who thing big and yet have a clear and realistic vision on what they can achieve. On this slides, you should prove that the solution is clear, you have validated its differentiation and why is it better than all current approaches to the problem.
What the investor wants to know
You should always put yourself in the shoes of the investor and think: «How is this new solution better? How are you going to really solve the problem?» Well, this is what we, as investors, would like to know:
The Offering
Investors analyse hundreds or thousands of Investor Decks every year. It’s quite frequent that they might have met a similar solution to yours. It’s vital that after reading this very first slide in the Solution they have a clear feeling that this is not «just as XYZ start up did».
Also note that investors are usually generalists and, although they probably will know a lot about your market, they’re not experts as you are. Try to explain your solution in the simplest way possible. Explaining your solution to a potential customer how is an expert in an industry is one thing, explaining it to a potential investor is a whole different thing. You should adapt the message to a generalist investor.
It’s crucial that you don’t leave the investor with the question: «But, is this a SaaS, a service, hardware, a combination of both…?». The investor, at this point, should only have a question: «How is this different from current solutions?»
Differentiation
So, now the investor understands what you’re doing perfectly but is thinking on what your key differentiation and unique competitive advantage is.
There are many things that can differentiate companies. Depending on your business model and type of company, this can vary enormoursly from one project to another one. It can be related to the team, your network, your domain expertise, a disruptive new business model or the technology itself. In Swanlaab, for example, being High-Tech Investors we only consider companies that concentrate their innovation in the technology.
You should adapt your unique competitive advantage to your own project. Think about how this slide could be for Quick Commerce companies like Getir, Gorillas o GoPuff, Scooters Micromobility companies like Lime, Voi or Tier or a Cybersecurity SaaS. As you can imagine, they would have nothing to do from one to another.
You should clearly state three or four key benefits that your solution provides and who specifically realizes these benefits. It’s extremely relevant to explain this is a simple way highlighting who is the client benefiting about this and what their previous alternatives were.
Scalability
Once you gain traction and start to grow, how are you going to scalate and take your product to the next level? You should also focus on what elements of your technology give you potential for leverafe and scale as your grow.
It’s also very relevant to explain how your solution can grow and scale into a great company, not just a feature. There are great companies like Calendly or Dropbox that started just like a feature and faced this problems. Show your roadmap and how you’re going to scale and leverage this first traction into something big.
Demo
Investors love demos. If your product is tangible, show pictures, videos or anything that can make them fall in love with it at first sight. If it’s a software, marketplace or anything digital, it can be extremely helpfull to do a live demo while live pitching. If this is not a possiiblity, bring up a video or mock up.
Going back to the Investor Deck, you can try to replicate this by inserting an image, video or mock up in the PDF shared. Make sure there are no doubts about what the product is and why your solution is so valuable.
Key objective
Help us understand how you will solve the problem.
Main takeaways
- Demonstrate your solution
- Validate your differentiation
- Explain your technology
- How is the new solution better than the existing?
- If you can provide a live demo, go for it! If there’s no way you can do this, think about how to show the product in a visual way with a video or mock up
