How can you use your startup pitch to build your brand?

One thing that is important to remember is that your brand really exists in the hearts and minds of your customers, staff and stakeholders. While you can plant the seed or manage certain factors - the stated vision and mission etc. Their perception is the reality. This is not easy to show in a pitch deck but loyalty, NPS and testimonials present a better picture. Logo and other visual/physical creations are simply that.

If you haven't defined your brand as outlined in point 1. you may need to consider whether you have a pitch at all. Sometimes it's hard to answer all of these points but you must do it to be credible. Investors want to see how they might make a return and, more importantly, they want to see founders they can believe in.

Don't waste time and money defining your "Brand". Develop a MVP (Minimal Viable Brand) that looks professional and includes: - Name (vetted) - Professional Logo (a legit one) - Basic Identity (colors, fonts, guidelines) - Audience (understanding) - GTM Message - Basic Website - Profession Pitch Deck That's it. Keep it simple and build on it from there.

Before “defining”your brand (brand positioning), make sure you have done your research on: ➡️ 1) Your buyer’s great pain points ➡️ 2) Go-to-Market strategy ➡️ 3) Roadblocks from preventing your buyers from purchasing a product/service like yours. All the vision, mission, and positioning will be pointless if you are not speaking in a voice that your buyers do not relate to. They don’t care about your mission and vision, what they care is how you will remove their greatest pain points.

You probably need two pitch 'decks'. The first to outline the business in no more than 4 or 5 pages. Investors might be money rich but they are often time poor, so you need to convince them that the idea will work as quickly as possible. The second deck is for the meeting you earn with deck one. If you are presenting to potential investors, make sure you include projected numbers and can back them up when questioned.

I would argue that your Pitch Deck should be a story! Forget technical jargon or details and focus on the problem you solve. - What's the current situation? - What's the issue? - What's the effect of this issue? (emotional / rational) - How do you solve this issue? - What does life look like when the issue is gone? Place a few hidden slides at the end that speak to technology, market, pricing model etc. for when they ask questions. Hook them first with the story though.

Think about each page with these guides: 1. Minimal words (Less than 7 is ideal. If you need more, the words on the screen should not be the words you are speaking.) 2. A slide can have zero words - yep! 3. A large picture that has an emotional response relating to the idea of the slide (bulldog = Best College Football team ever) 4. An infographic is a great way to tell a story without any words.

Valuation It is often overlooked that a Brand is massively valuable. When pitching, Founders may try to assign a value to IP, also an important intangible. However I rarely see Brand being assigned any value - admittedly this is hard to do at a startup stage. As sales, loyalty and evidence of a premium price being paid emerge, this should be included in the valuation