I'm Writing A Few Pitch Decks This Month That Has Investment Asks Of Over $5m – Here's How I'll Do It.

Let's say you're sitting next to me during this entire month.

Example Slide from a “Real Content Template”

TLDR;

• 🗣️ Step 1 — We have to talk.

• 📖 Step 2 — Research, research, and research.

• ✏️ Step 3 — Designer notice and storyboard.

• ✅ Step 4 — Client Approval, then v1

• 🍻 Step 5 — v2, and it’s done.

• 📒 (For Paid Subscribers) Information about intensify.ai (my AI business writing platform.)

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🗣️ Step 1 — We have to talk.

I understand what a business does by reading its document. You can understand what Tesla does by reading a Wikipedia article. It’s not rocket science. SpaceX is…

But if you really want to grasp what Tesla’s future could look like, you’ll need to listen to its CEO/founder speak. You need to listen to the person who’s directing the ship.

Now, raising funds from investors requires you to get into their shoes. You need to pitch them the perfect story of your startup. So, if I ought to help you, then I need to hear you, the founder, and what you intend to do with your startup.

So that’s my onboarding step. I get on a face-to-face (virtual or physical) call and talk about random things. I need to understand the founder as a human as well as why they’re putting effort into their startup.

Only then will I be ready to move on.

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📖 Step 2 — Research, research, and research.

Now that I know the founder, I need to understand the startup just as much. The startup can’t speak, but the market can. I could get a bigger picture about the startup, learning about who’s doing similar tech and how fast they’re growing.

The research phase, when it comes to writing a pitch deck, is what makes or breaks. I remember vividly that I once took this rule so seriously that I binge-read an AI book to work with an AI startup.

There’s no such thing as too much information when it comes to research.

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✏️ Step 3 — Designer notice and storyboard.

Now that I’m ready to get to business. I need to be efficient. So I queued my designer and gave her all the information about the company so that she could design what I call a “design concept.”

That’s a PDF document that has 2-3 slides of placeholder information. It aims to showcase to the company what the final deck would look like. This already starts drawing an image in their minds to build up expectations and draw the deck using this concept.

While she’s working on that, I go ahead and meditate (okay, maybe not all the time.)

I start having a conversation with myself but wearing another hat, the investor hat. Now, I want to know critically what I need to know, and only that. So, I started mind mapping and building a storyboard.

This storyboard is what the investor is thinking at each moment and what I intend to show them in the pitch deck.

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✅ Step 4 — Client Approval, then v1

I send those two documents to the founder/entrepreneur and give them time to approve them. There’s no rush. They need to look at it from their lens as they have industry experience that I’ll never have when it comes to their own startup.

Once that happens, I start writing in a tense-free environment without rushing it. Then, release a version 1 a week later or so.

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🍻 Step 5 — v2, and it’s done.

There’s never a perfect first version. That’s because it was designed this way. I design it in a way that makes it 80% perfect. But I can never make it 100% perfect without input from the founder.

They’ll be pitching. In order for that to be a success, which is the ultimate objective, they need to be comfortable with every step of telling that story. It’s their story. So then they start putting their touch and giving their input.

Finally, I take this input and blend it, releasing a deck that is suitable for the investor and comfortable for the founder. This balance is what takes years to learn.

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📒 (For Paid Subscribers) Information about intensify.ai (my AI business writing platform.)

I’m in a chatting mood. So let me tell you what I’m up to.

Let me start by thanking you. You’re part of my network and motivate me to write every day. You’re enabling me to think of projects like intensify.ai, and for that, I’ll be forever thankful.