These are the highest 3 most essential slides in your pitch deck

When you’ve got 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. Plenty 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 present, I’m taking you thru why these three slides are so essential.

The best way to make use of this text is to consider which of those attributes you have got in your startup to assist manage your pitch deck. For instance, No. 1 on this listing is traction. When you’ve got superb 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 — perhaps don’t spotlight that and assume as an alternative about how else you’ll be able to inform your story.

1 — Traction is king

Up and to the suitable. Which is smart. Up and to the left can be time journey, and if you are able to do that, you have got an much more worthwhile 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 you probably have an inexperienced staff, a horrible product or a doubtful market. In case you can present that you’ve 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 sooner, you’re in an awesome 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. In case you’re rising your variety of customers exponentially, with out essentially understanding the right way to monetize them, that’s nonetheless a formidable feat. In case you can present you can construct an enormous, sticky viewers, you’ll be able to most likely discover a solution to earn a living off that down the road.
• Signal-ups. In case you’re seeing large 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 ought to be paired with a strong “How is that this going to earn a living?” slide.