These are the top 3 most important slides in your pitch deck – TechCrunch

In case you have a robust traction slide, nothing else about your pitch deck issues

It’s a generally accepted knowledge that you just want between 10 and 20 slides to inform the story of your startup. Lots of founders don’t appear to appreciate that not all slides are the identical, nonetheless. Some slides carry extra weight than others — and three of them are completely essential. At the moment, I’m taking you thru why these three slides are so necessary.

The way in which to make use of this text is to consider which of those attributes you could have in your startup to assist manage your pitch deck. For instance, No. 1 on this checklist is traction. In case you have wonderful traction, that ought to most likely be the primary slide in your deck. In case your traction is flat (i.e., not rising, and even shrinking), poor or non-existent — possibly don’t spotlight that and assume as an alternative about how else you possibly can inform your story.

1 — Traction is king

Up and to the proper. Which is sensible. Up and to the left can be time journey, and if you are able to do that, you could have an much more beneficial firm than you thought.

Your traction slide is, by some appreciable margin, your trump card. If you’re exhibiting an enormous quantity of income and fast progress, all different sins are forgiven.

It doesn’t matter if in case you have an inexperienced workforce, a horrible product or a doubtful market. For those who can present that you’ve got cash coming in and rising at 9% or extra week over week, you’ll elevate cash.

There’s a hierarchy when it comes to what sort of traction helps:

• Revenue. If you’re cash-positive and rising quickly, you most likely don’t even want enterprise capital — but when elevating money helps you develop even quicker, you’re in an amazing place.
• ARR. In case your annual recurring income is rising quickly, you’re in luck. Recurring revenues and SaaS dynamics imply that you’re onto one thing.
• Energetic customers. For those who’re rising your variety of customers exponentially, with out essentially realizing how one can monetize them, that’s nonetheless a formidable feat. For those who can present which you can construct an enormous, sticky viewers, you possibly can most likely discover a method to make cash off that down the road.
• Signal-ups. For those who’re seeing enormous progress within the variety of sign-ups to your services or products, however they aren’t producing income or sticking round, there’s nonetheless worth in that — though your traction slide must be paired with a strong “How is that this going to make cash?” slide.