We all know the importance of having a solid pitch deck when raising money for your startup. Every successful startup that you can think of had a killer pitch deck to start.

You’ve probably done a good amount of Googling on pitch deck examples before landing onto this article. From your research, you’re probably still confused on how to put together a good pitch deck that will impress investors.

Looking at samples can only get you so far, and that’s why we’ve put together this article to help you out!

Startups are fundamentally different from other kinds of businesses. Although they are relatively young and smaller than enterprise organizations, they still hold the potential for massive growth.

Fundable startups lay in between the idea stage and boosted growth, they have successfully proven that there is massive potential for growth, but have yet to realize that growth. Normally, the problem preventing these startup from scaling wide is the lack of proper resources, meaning they need all the help they can get to entice an investor that their growth potential is a real and likely possibility. While having a strong presenter is important, nothing helps back the investor pitch like having an amazing pitch deck.

When combined with an impressive presentation, a pitch deck is a key factor for successful fundraising.A budding startup with a messy presentation or pitch that leaves important questions unanswered has little to no chance of persuading investors to hand over their hard earned money. An average idea with an awesome pitch deck will have better potential. The enticing part of a pitch, however, is when you have an amazing and proven idea, a confident pitch and a memorable startup pitch deck that sells.

Pitching does come with a long line of competition. Startups will utilize every single strategy available to them, from showing off the number of users, monthly growth, revenue, feature concepts, prototypes, MVPs, usage feedback, and anything else that will help prove their case.

The most well-made pitch decks provide an organized presentation that allows the founder to perfect the correct arguments, in the proper order, with the right visual tools to design the maximum effect.

A pitch deck isn’t something that should be made in an uncaring manner. The best slide decks are crafted with persuasion and art, each slide enticing the viewer with its information. It can be quite difficult to develop a winning pitch deck without the proper inspiration, so here are some Pitch decks that we’ve seen and the reasons why they are so great.

This is one business that everyone should be highly aware of. One interesting fact to point out is that Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist, and entrepreneur, was the very first outside investor for Facebook during 2004. That’s when Mark Zuckerberg originally began to turn his dorm room project into a lasting business. Zuckerberg manages to successfully gain $500,000 from Peter Thiel.

The investor’s pitch deck they manage to set up contains the company’s value proposition, key metrics, and marketing services that were used to sell ads to potential clients. The main focus for this pitch deck was based on concrete numbers such as their user engagement, traffic, users, and growth metrics.

This is one of the most looked up pitch deck references on the internet, mostly due to the company being so familiar with many people.

This pitch deck reveals a great number of user testimonials and use cases on one slide that are easy to understand. Interestingly this deck is far longer than the CEO’s famous one-page business plan to take over the hospitality industry. Although, the most amazing part is that Airbnb has successfully accomplished all this while technically being illegal, similar to how Uber was when they first started out, and many of today’s cannabis startups were before recent legislation.

Buffer is a social media scheduling platform that helps its users schedule content to Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter.

The amazing startup pitch deck that Buffer used to raise over half a million dollars has become incredibly popular because of Buffer’s transparency. The founder decided to upload it on the internet to help others startup raise their funds. In a similar fashion to Facebook, the deck was made up of concrete numbers from Buffer’s users.

Castle is an innovative real estate solution made for rental property owners. This startup has continued to live by their slogan, “Put Your Properties On Autopilot!” and was created to help owners manage their properties without the usual hassle of being a landlord. Castle services a niche market, so there’s a chance that most people haven’t heard of them, but even so, they’ve created one of the best pitch decks around and one that you should learn from.

The pitch deck was designed with modern and attention-grabbing visual aesthetics. It begins by identifying the problem immediately, which is rental property owners wanting to rake in cash without having to work as a landlord. This quickly tells the investors why this market needs a solution to exist for it. Utilizing simple icons to explain each point, making it simple for the viewer to absorb the information. The best pitch decks are aware of how to give an incredible amount of information without cluttering the slide. Leads the investors into a strong and concise elevator pitch, automate landlording through software and on-demand labor. Provides an easy to understand growth plan that showcases the growth as well as projected future growth

LinkedIn’s Series B pitch deck is an old classic, but it’s definitely a must-read for anyone trying to create a strong pitch. Although this deck is quite long and very thorough, it’s a fantastic example of how to seed funding rounding pitch deck may differ from a VC pitch deck for a Series B round of financing.

The impressive part of this pitch is how the founders had to explain how the internet works and predict how users would use the internet in the coming future. Keep in mind that this pitch deck was made during 2004. There were many factors that played into this explanation from online research to online payment and all of these trends needed to be thoroughly explained to prove why LinkedIn was the correct solution to meet these problems. They clearly detailed their first priority, establishing the between and explained exactly why this was important to their capability to scale rapidly. The best pitch decks asses how the funds will be utilized to progress the business and push it to the next level. Reveal how their actual growths far outscored the projected growth, proving to investors that there is massive potential for growth.

Canvas is a business solution that allows corporations and organization to digitize their paper assets. The main goal for this business to get rid of the paperwork system by transitioning business processes into mobile applications. When it comes to having a great startup deck, Canvas shows us how they use imagery and simplicity to get the message across.

They begin the pitch with some simple visuals that showcase how all of the processes, from listening to music to reading, have become digitized in the past decade. They also provide statistics to show how their application has managed to help high profile business such as Pepsi; gaining them instant credibility. They utilized a slick strategy to compare competitors by showing that they focus on the why while competitors are focusing on the what.

Tinder, formerly known as Match Box, is a globally recognized dating application. While there are tons of dating apps in the market, Tinder was able to succeed by implementing a gamification aspect, allowing individuals to swipe left or right to express interest or to pass on another user. Match Box’s pitch deck reveals how to balance creativity and simplicity to win investors over.

The concept behind this is very simple but utilizes a real-world scenario to explain the problems and the solution. In this case, it would be the fear of rejection most people have when asking someone out and the solution being Match Box. It shows an under the hood view on what the app will offer its users. It shows a transparent monetization mode and although it has changed quite significantly since the pitch deck was made, it at least allows investors to know that the founders had considered how they would generate revenue.

During the ninth anniversary of the founder of Uber, co-founder Garret Camp released the first pitch deck created in late 2008. During its inception, Uber was originally named UberCab, and it has transformed from a simple idea into a major platform that has improved the car service industry.

Uber created a nice sleek and clean pitch deck as you’d expect. The deck delves into the detail of vehicle types and mile per gallon. All plans that seem to have been left behind after the company successfully gained funding. This pitch is a great reminder to not box yourself in with specific strategies and tactics you’ll almost inevitably change your route later.

At this point in time when Uber created this pitch deck in 2008, they projected the overall market is worth $4.2 billion annually. It has successfully raised over 5x that in funding.

Conclusion

To sum up, a strong pitch deck not only serves to support your brand to investors. It also demonstrates that you understand what your business is and who your customers are. While none of these pitch decks are perfect, they did work in conjunction with other factors, such as getting to meet the proper investors. As you will come to learn with the profiles of investors they onboard, you’ll see that very early on they were capable of convincing some high profiled investors.