Investment / Ask Slide
Learn how to build a winning investment slide for your pitch deck with this step-by-step guide.
At the end of the day, the primary purpose of every pitch deck is to raise funds. Accordingly, every pitch deck should conclude with a clear ask slide. The goal of this slide is to describe why you are seeking investment and what you want to do with that money over time. Prospective investors should be able to comprehend not only the amount of funding you’re seeking but also how this funding will generate value in the form of product milestones, customer wins, and revenue growth.
The ask slide frequently includes a breakdown of the “Use of Funds” – generally categorized by high-level accounting category (e.g. $x for product development, $y for marketing, $z for general & administrative). Although your funds allocation is helpful for investors to understand why you’re raising funding, a simple yet effective alternative is outlining the growth & development objectives that the funds will help achieve.
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Instructions
How to create an investment slide for your pitch deck
Follow along with this brief guide for what you should include in your pitch deck’s investment slide:
1. Content of the investment slide
- The amount of funding you are raising
- Relevant investment terms (ie. valuation, vehicle, discount, interest)
- Use of funds &/or related milestones
2. Questions the investment slide should address
- How much funding are you raising?
- Where will this funding get you? (ie. revenue milestones, months of runway, next anticipated round)
- How will the funds be used?
- Why are you seeking this investment (ie. scaling growth, new product development)? What will this help achieve?
3. Common investment slide blunders
- Lacking concrete milestones or roadmap
- Being too broad in the use of funds (specific product & growth goals are better than accounting categories like R&D, G&A, etc.)
- Being unclear about the amount of money raised (ranges are acceptable, but you should have a specific number in mind)
- Failing to paint a clear path to profitability &/or the next round of investment
4. Design tips for investment slides
- Don’t overcomplicate: Y-Combinator suggests just one sentence stating the ask and what that will help achieve, by when
- Leverage pie charts and tables for use of funds, timelines for roadmaps
- Choose clear, readable fonts and colors
- Keep it concise & to-the-point (see Guy Kawasaki‘s 10/20/30 rule)
Inspiration from the experts
Example pitch deck investment slides from Airbnb, Uber, Crowdbotics & more
The best investment slides make a clear case for how the funding sought will help the startup achieve key milestones, with a clear timeline for goals and growth. Depicting the path to profitability or the next round is often plenty sufficient in lieu of a complicated use of funds breakdown.
Below are some examples of winning investment slides from pitch decks for household names like Airbnb, Uber, and Sequoia Capital:
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