The Slide Presentation

The next stage of presenting your business plan is your slide presentation.

There are several presentation programs available to use, but the best known ones are Apple Keynote and Microsoft PowerPoint.

The slide presentation is more detailed than the executive summary, but still not the fine detail that you have in your actual business plan. There are key things that you need to keep in mind when you put together your slide presentation.


Do not drag on the presentation. Like the executive summary it needs to be short and to the point, but unlike the executive summary, it needs to have more information about your business plan and how you plan to execute your milestones.

You should include a brief description of each phase of each milestone. The slide show should also include more detailed information about your market analysis, competitors and barriers of entry.

You should also include all the accounting information that is broken down from the amount of capital you are asking to raise.

You need to remember that the investment comes in a series of tranches that are determined by the amount of capital needed to meet each milestone.

Remember that the slide show presentation is designed so that an investor can review the opportunity with his partners, experts, associates and market analysts.

You may also be present when your slide presentation is presented so the investment team can ask you questions about your venture.

This means that your slide presentation should be about ten slides with the font no smaller than 40 points. The slides should be professionally done with a professional display.

 Keep in mind that you need to have all the data in the slide presentation accurate, you do not want to look naive.

You should carefully research all your market data and have your sources where you got your data clearly present so the investors see that you have done the research.

If you need to, you should spend the extra money to hire a market analyst to do some of the more difficult work in this matter. You can bet your top dollar that investors have their market analysts and other experts who will also look at your slide presentation, and they will ask you questions.

These questions can be difficult and you need to be prepared to answer these questions confidently, otherwise it will show that you are not experienced and you will probably not get funded.

Never falsify data. Investors are very savvy in the markets that they invest in, and they have many resources available, from their analysts to their portfolio companies, who can give them the real data and it will show if you falsified the data.

It is always good to be honest and not to lie when doing business.


The average slide presentation should be about a half-hour, and you should be prepared for scrutiny.