Pitch Deck Tips: You Need a Closing Slide

Your first slide is obviously important for a pitch deck; first impressions count, and having a solid intro goes a long way. It seems founders often forget that the last slide is just as important.

There’s a simple reason for this: Investors easily go through hundreds of slide decks a month, and it’s hard to remember them all. Sure, startup names are often catchy and pretty self-explanatory (Lyft, DoorDash), but it’s hard to remember that Orange refers to a car-charging company, not the fruit. Companies often give abbreviated summaries of the companies they work with. In Orange’s case, it could be “You know, the company that puts chargers in apartment buildings.” Everyone around the table says “Aaaah, yes” and the conversation continues.

As a founder, you have the opportunity to influence how someone sums up your business. The way to do this is to reinforce your message on the first and last slides. What’s a good shortcut for your business? Are you Dollar Shave Club for underwear? Are you Turo for caravans? Are you Freshbooks for Airplane Ownership? Well, those are all useful shortcuts – but you can get more creative too!

You need a closing slide

When you launch, you start with your best and go from there. The last slides are usually the ones where you show weaknesses. If you don’t have a closing slide, your biggest weaknesses might stay on display as you chat with investors and answer questions. As you can see, that’s not a great way to prime the pump, and you’ll end up getting toasted on your finances, your team, your marketing, or whatever else you added at the end of the game. bridge afterwards. Instead, set yourself up for success with a good closing slide. Remind your audience who you are and what your business will do.

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In this story, we dive into the 45+ pitch deck teardowns completed so far, and select some of the closing slides from our library of pitch deck examples. Tip: It’s worth subscribing to TC+ just to get these teardowns and our amazing library of presentation tips. But again, I wrote most of it, and I’m very biased. Always. Subscribe. Keep on going. It will be the best fistful of dollars you will spend this year, I promise you.

Some examples of closing slides that work

Alto has raised $200 million to create a better pharmacy. Choosing to end with an inspiring slide rather than overshadowing conversations is one thing. But picking the succinct “a better pharmacy” completes the slide to make it an A+. See the full disassembly of the deck.