A great demo day pitch

Guide to a Great
Demo Day Deck
April 2015
SketchDeck

SketchDeck www.sketchdeck.com
What is demo day?
On Stage
It’s presented in front of a lot of investors.
Big Opportunity
It’s a great opportunity to raise investment.
2-5 Minutes

Interesting Content
Clear Objective, Messages, and Story
A Great Deck
Well-Delivered Speech
What makes a successful pitch?

Do not open PowerPoint
until you have a story!
One of the biggest mistakes we
see is companies creating a
deck before they have a story.
It wastes time and leads to bad
results.

You need to have something interesting
to talk about. For a demo day pitch,
prove that your company is growing fast,
in an interesting market, driven by a
great team.
If you’re reading this guide a few months
before your demo day, the best thing to
do is work on your company and make it
grow!
Develop Interesting Content

You should also have concise answers to:
The Problem
You Solve
Value Proposition Target Audience Market Size
And Growth
Develop Interesting Content

This is where any presentation should
start: What do you want to achieve with
your pitch?
For demo day: make investors want to
speak to you.
(The goal is not to close investors – this
comes later.)
Have a Clear Objective

What are the messages that will
achieve this objective?
You only have a few minutes to
convey them.
Send Strong Messages

Keep it really simple –
3 messages max.
There’s no time to explain complex
ideas – you’ll lose your audience.
Focus on the messages you want
your investors to remember.
Send Strong Messages
→ You have 1 million active
users
→ You’re growing 10% per
week.
→ Your market is $50 billion.
Example

Create a Compelling Story
The final part is to tie this together
into a compelling story.
Write out the story as a list of bullet
points – these are your story points.
For a 3 minute pitch, you should
have 5 - 10 points.
→ Surprise your audience –
it makes your pitch more
memorable.
→ Avoid generalizations/
generic statements.
Tips

Example
→ There is this thing that lots of people do…
→ But it has this major problem…
→ These are the solutions today, but they suck…
→ We solved this problem with x…
→ This many people now use x, and x is growing really fast…
→ Recap. Come speak to us after.
Here’s a pretty common demo day flow if you’re stuck for ideas.

Before you continue,
get feedback!
Tell the story you have created to
your friends, co-founder, and
advisors. Get their feedback and
refine.
It’s quick and easy to change up the
story now – it gets harder once you
start making slides.

Whiteboard Your Deck
Now that you have a story, it’s time
to sketch out the slides – one page
per story point. You want no more
than 8 slides for a 3 minute pitch,
including the title and back cover.
Think about how best to visualize
each point.
Charts/Graphs
Growth, market size
Diagrams
Concepts,
relationships
Big Text
Driving an idea home!
Images
Examples, users,
products

The 5 Second Rule
Any slide should meet the 5 second
rule: within 5 seconds of looking at
a slide, you know the key message.
Test the 5 second rule by showing
the slide to someone and ask them
what it means.
Tips
→ Keep the slides really
clear and simple.
→ Have a short, clear title.
→ Don’t rely on information
from a previous slide for
understanding.

Design Effective Visuals
Now turn your sketches into a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation.
Here’s some rules to follow:
Clear fonts
High contrast
Uncluttered slides
Clear metrics on charts
Don’t give product walkthroughs or demos
Avoid generic slides and cheesy clipart
Avoid screenshots - they are usually too
complex to understand
Check slides against the 5 second rule test

Practice Strong Delivery
Everything we’ve talked about so
far lives and dies in the 3 minutes
on stage. The best presentation will
have zero impact if you get on stage
and freeze.
Investors also read a lot into your
stage presence – confidence on
stage will get you far!
Tips
→ Practice a lot. Especially in
front of others.
→ Don’t make a lot of
changes at the last minute.
→ Speak really slowly.
→ Practice some more.

SketchDeck’s
Demo Day Service
Demo days is one of the busiest
times of the accelerator experience.
We have a demo day service to help
you with your deck design.
Get started at sketchdeck.com.

SketchDeck’s
Demo Day Service
We’ll design it into the
template.
During that week, you own
the deck. Play with it, edit
it, as you need.
48 hours before the main
event, send it back and
we’ll tidy it all up for you.
Visit sketchdeck.com and
start a demo day order. You
should do this at least 2
weeks before demo day.
We’ll create a template and
style for you. We can iterate
a few times with you to get
it right.
A week before your first
pitch, send us your content.

Recap
Demo day is a great opportunity to raise investment for your startup!
1. Interesting content.
Make sure you work hard on your
startup in the run up to demo day.
2. Clear objective, messages,
and story.
Work on this before opening
PowerPoint.
3. A great deck.
5 - 10 slides. Really clear and simple.
Abide by the 5 second rule.
4. Well-delivered pitch.
Practice, practice, practice.

Thank You!
SketchDeck
www.sketchdeck.com

A great demo day pitch

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