Thinking about applying for The Pitch, our early-stage startup competition? If you really want to stand out, our recent webinar — in partnership with Dell For Startups — shared expert tips and valuable insights from past winners and finalists.
Hosted by SmartCompany’s editor-in-chief, Simon Crerar, it’s packed full of advice from industry experts Amy Benson, Nikki Tugano and William Hasko. Here are their best tips to help you create a killer pitch deck, refine your elevator pitch and fine-tune your presentation.
What’s the most important element when building a compelling pitch deck? According to Benson, CEO of Diolog and winner of The Pitch 2023, it’s about building a connection.
“How are you going to connect your audience to the problem, even if they have no understanding of your industry to begin with?” she says. “It really comes down to who you are and what you want the audience to feel as a part of the problem. That’s where I would start in terms of setting the context and how you’re going to make that easily understandable.”
Benson’s success with Diolog, an innovative retail-investor communications platform, largely boiled down to her ability to effectively showcase the platform’s benefits to potential investors. Once she understood her audience, she was able to build that connection.
Both Benson and Tugano, CEO and founder of SeenCulture, highlighted three major elements of a successful pitch deck:
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Tugano also stressed the importance of storytelling with your pitch deck. “At the very early stages, it’s quite premature to expect a product-market fit. But what you can do is demonstrate how you have found a product fit — so leaning into your story, how you’ve come to the conclusion about this being the problem to solve and what you’re going to do to cut through against any other potential incumbents.”
While Benson believes the pitch deck should be your core focus, there’s also the very real need for crafting a strong elevator pitch. And the rule of thumb should always be: keep it simple and uncomplicated.
“No jargon, no buzzwords,” she advises. “These people are just real people. You don’t need to make it some crazy, professional language that belongs in an essay. You’re just having essentially a conversation with these people. So I’d try and make it as personal as you can.”
Hasko, Regional Director of Small Business Marketing at Dell Technologies, added that it’s equally important to shape your pitch according to who you are speaking to. Pitching in a competitive environment, for example, is very different to pitching your product in an elevator.
“Think about who you’re presenting to and why they would care,” he says. “Are they a customer? Are they a potential end user? Are they an investor? Are they there for the ride? Are they a mentor? What is it about your company that they care about? That might be very different from how you would describe your company to your mum. Having that lens can help.”
Hasko spoke about the idea that your pitch deck and presentation aren’t static objects. On the contrary, they should be shaped by feedback you receive and tweaked according to the questions you anticipate potential investors might ask.
“Take note of what questions you get asked, because if you are presenting to very credible panels and with people who do this for a living, they’re asking those questions for a reason,” he says. “It might be worth actually addressing those proactively in your next pitch by pre-empting some of those questions. If you can answer those questions and leave a panel relatively speechless, then it shows you’re forward-thinking, which reflects really well on you.”
Tugano emphasised the importance of practice – especially if you aren’t a seasoned public speaker.
“Pitching is scary. I don’t think that should be overlooked,” she says. “Public speaking is the first or second most prominent fear that we as human beings have. The way that you can really help manage that experience and how you conduct yourself is just to practise. Really know your pitch and understand it.”
But beyond mastering the pitch itself, she added that you also need to prepare yourself for all eventualities once your audience starts asking questions.
“A mistake I made was I focused almost 90% of my time on practising only the pitch and not for the Q&A,” she says. “The Q&A is so important for investors to assess your ability to stand up to robust challenges and come back with a really clear and concise response to whatever they’re challenging you on. I would absolutely recommend having a think about how you’re preparing for potential questions that you might be asked from the panel.”
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