To help our readers prepare for their next financing round, we’ve compiled a list of the 5 must-have slides for any investor pitch deck.
Incorporating these slides and considerations will help ensure potential investors feel more confident about the messaging within your deck. While some of these may seem straightforward or even obvious, we have seen many pitch decks that miss these key elements and/or are far too long.
The Problem Slide
A great way to kickoff an investor pitch is to start by clearly defining the problem your team plans to solve. Key topics to cover include:
Disease background
Epidemiology
Unmet need
Highlighting these key elements earlier in your discussion helps ground your audience with a clear understanding of disease burden, patient journey, and the gaps that your company intends to fill.
The Solution Slide
After outlining the problem(s), it’s time to present data-driven evidence that supports your company’s solution. A key consideration for this section is to remember your audience!
Investors are more concerned about the “so what?” in early-stage discussions. Later stage discussions, particularly in the due diligence phase, will focus more on the “how.”
Keep this in mind as you develop your deck and use this slide to emphasize the impactfulness of your solution instead of taking a comprehensive, deep dive into the science.
Market Size and Opportunity Slide
Investors need to be shown the current and future value of any worthwhile investment.
For example, many companies view rare diseases as noble opportunities because of their high unmet need. Incentives from the FDA and smaller patient populations that equate to lower clinical trial expenses also make this disease area an attractive target. However, without the right context, an investor might see a small, decentralized patient population and view the opportunity as too niche due to limited physician reach and/or trial recruitment challenges.
The best way to avoid this issue is to paint a clear picture of the market landscape that includes:
Information about the current standard of care
Competition (marketed and pipeline)
Trends affecting the indication of interest (i.e., new diagnostics, emerging biomarkers, etc.)
Evidence of disease and economic burden
Data on patient characteristics and prescriber behaviors
Intellectual Property & IP Strategy Slide
This is where investors expect to see your thought process behind IP, lifecycle management, and where it’s heading.
Taking that into account, a sound IP slide should address:
The type of IP protection your team plans to pursue (patent filing vs trade secret)
Plans to protect your company’s competitive advantage
Plans to mitigate the risk of losing your competitive edge (i.e., data protection, internal governance, and non-compete clauses for employees)
Levers and milestones that will impact IP lifecycle management
Management Team Slide
When the decision is made to invest in a company, investors are placing their confidence in IP and the team behind it.
In this section, it's important to highlight and validate the team’s ability to follow through on the strategic plans that have been discussed throughout the deck. This information includes:
CEO’s qualifications and ability to steer the business
Knowledge, accolades, and complementary skill sets of the management team
Credentials and experience of the Board of Directors and/or Scientific Advisors
Additional considerations for investor pitch decks
Not all decks are created equal. Investor decks should be focused on aspects of the business and the potential of the technology. Pitch decks for potential partners are typically more focused on the science behind the technology.
Keep it short, sweet, and to the point. We recommend a maximum of 15 slides. Information dense slides that support key takeaways should be included in the appendix or saved for a future conversation.
Effective storytelling is critical! The content and flow of your pitch deck should be relevant, coherent, and most importantly, memorable.
As a final consideration, know that Headland Strategy Group’s here to help!
Our expertise has helped some of the most exciting companies in biopharma raise over $700M in private fundraising and we would be more than happy to help your team as well.
For questions or more information about developing investor pitch decks, please feel free to contact us at solutions@headlandstrategy.com