3 tips to make your pitch deck magic 🦄
Pitch decks are notoriously…daunting.
For starters, you’re resolving tough tensions like…
Following a 12 slide formula and being 💡 immediately memorable
Playing out thorough numbers 🔢 and the concision of a clear narrative
Showing 🎥 a recognizable model and your individual right to play
For socially minded founders, it’s even tougher.
You’re also incorporating a balance of purpose and profit into that concise, quick narrative.
so, how do we turn all of this tension into pitch deck magic? 🦄
This is the question we were holding in our recent project with smart gifting platform To&From.
📚The back story:
In 2020, Global searches for “online gift” increased by 80% in 2020 compared to 2019 (Think with Google). Corporate gifting surged (Business Journal). And yet, the surge in gifts didn’t necessarily deliver on what To&From Co-founder and CEO Bridget says she realized was the ultimate goal: connection.
When we met, Bridget had already built a powerful, smart gifting platform, and gathered 2 years of rich, personalized data on her $15B SOM. Most of her customers return monthly. Her differentiators are clear. And yet, she was struggling to articulate a cohesive, tight narrative to raise her seed round after successful traction from friends and family.
At Rare Animals, we regularly work with early stage entrepreneurs to refine their pitch process. We helped Bridget land clarity that has, incidentally, landed her straight in the middle of an important due diligence process. Here’s a peek into our process.
step 1: find your big insight
Instead of trying to back into a pitch deck formula, lead with what’s truly interesting about the problem you’re solving. For Bridget, it was about the purpose behind gifting, and what it revealed about the broken nature of gifting itself.
Wondering where to start? Look for what gives you pause, or makes you want to share a fun fact with someone else. Changes are, an investor will feel the same.
For example - did you know that scientists liken our response to giving to the Serotonin drop we get when we cuddle, or look at a cute baby 👶🏼? Done right, it helps build connection, create inter-brain synchronization and make both giver and giftee happier as a result.
(CBS: “Why do people give each other gifts?”, Nature: the ”Gift Effect”)
step 2: make your problem, competitors and product players in your story
Once Bridget knew that a lack of connection was her anchor, it became intuitive to show how the current market was lacking:
No platform for adults to share what they like and want (a white space outside of baby/bridal)
Search = useless when it came to discovery of new brands loved ones like
Large marketplaces couldn’t help us zero in on occasion, relationship or etiquette.
And, then, to show how her features and traction both delivered against what was missing:
As the first platform built for giftees, To & From:
Shares their preferences directly with the people who want to buy them the right thing, every time
Matches them with over 500 emerging brands by style, values, activities, personality and price point
Uses a patent pending algorithm, developed by retail leaders and technologists, to recommend gifting across nearly 4 million attribute combinations
The key 🔑 is to give every sentence two jobs. For example, “To&From matches giftees to over 500 emerging brands by style, values, activities, personality and price point” both highlights a leading product feature, and cues to investors that Bridget has already onboarded over 500 emerging brands.
step 3: Turn audience, sales and product features into value props
Once we had our upfront clear, the narrative around Bridget’s customer felt almost automatic. We ended up showing it through three, concise statements, worded as both platform features and value props:
Built for working moms: 6.2M dual income households gifting ~$2500 year ($15B market)
Built for connection: 2x organic growth in 6 mos: 1 in 3 giftees become gifters, and invite their network to engage and join
Built for repeat sales: our best customers gift monthly, at an AUR $106, and $1500 annual spend
Now, To&From has a memorable narrative to tell. It’s bolstered throughout by clear numbers and facts. And yet, it never loses sight of Bridget’s one, big insight: the power of connection.
Rare Animals partners with the Hudson Valley Venture Hub to support local entrepreneurs in their pitch and branding processes. Reach out to learn more.