Pitch Decks That Created Successful Companies

Whether you are a startup looking to raise capital or a successful business willing to expand your market, the chances are you will need a powerful pitch deck to attract investors. A pitch deck is a presentation to pitch your ideas to investors, customers, partners, etc.

What is a Pitch Deck and Why is it Important?

The main idea behind a pitch deck is to sell an idea and to attract investment or gain approval for a venture. The latter might be when one might require convincing the senior management or business partners to proceed with a venture. A pitch deck can be presented using a variety of platforms such as PowerPoint, Prezi or Keynote.

What Makes a Good Pitch Deck?

A good pitch deck should be short, to the point and easy enough to comprehend. Your presentation should be simple enough to be understood even by people who might not have the technical know-how related to the nitty gritty details regarding the technical aspects of your product. The Dropbox demo video given in examples below serves as a perfect example of what makes a good pitch deck presentation.

As you would learn from the pitch decks listed in this post ahead; it is not always practical to go before Angel Investors with a mere concept. Some businesses pitch their decks only after getting traction or establishing at least some part of their business, even if it is a website or web app which serves as proof of concept. In most of these cases, an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is launched.

Showing your audience that you have something functional can increase the chances of success. A good example of this is the BuzzFeed pitch deck listed in this post. Furthermore, sometimes one might need to simply sell their product or service to attract customers directly, just like Dropbox; which became an instant hit and had a very good demo video to pitch their service to potential users.

Pitch Decks That Created Successful Businesses

We have compiled a list of pitch decks that created successful businesses. These include slide decks used by top companies that helped them secure the needed capital to take their business to the next level.

If you are an entrepreneur, business studies student or even an employee looking to pitch new ideas to your senior staff; we recommend that you go through these presentations to gain valuable ideas to find what should a good pitch deck include. Since these are copies of actual pitch decks that were able to successfully convince an audience, they serve as a good blueprint that can help you in designing your own pitch deck. You can customize them based on your own pitch deck requirements.

1. Dropbox: Example of a Perfect Demo

Dropbox is now a household name. Of course, I’m not referring to the dropbox used for packing your old stuff during spring cleaning but rather the Dropbox service which started with a simple idea and went on to become one of the best startups of the Silicon Valley. For those of you who might not have heard of Dropbox, it is a file hosting service which enables you to save your files to the cloud and sync them across multiple devices by logging in with your account on a smartphone, desktop computer, laptop or tablet.

When it comes to the term ‘pitch deck’ you should understand that this is a relative term. This means that your ‘deck’ can even be a good marketing video (so to speak). Below is the original demo video that was created by Dropbox founder Drew Houston.

Original Demo Video: This video demo shows how you can use the Dropbox service. Bear in mind that many of us are now used to using file sharing services. Back in 2008 it was quite a novel idea to create a service like Dropbox and making people understand the concept was quite a challenge. This video is remarkably easy to understand, even for novice users.

Lessons Learned from Dropbox: Here is a pitch deck by Drew (founder of Dropbox) which you might also find interesting. He explains about lessons learned from the Dropbox experience.

2. AirBnB: Original Pitch Deck which Made a Billion Dollar Company

AirBnB is one of the most magnificent startup success stories. The company is valued at more than 1 billion today and it all started with the founders sharing a pitch deck with a student of MBA. Back then the company had aspired to be a rental company for air mattresses. The company now enables people to list and find lodging for rent.

The pitch deck given below has been reproduced with the original slides from the presentation that got the company off its feet. You can also see copies of the original slides here.

3. AppNexus: Original Pitch Deck that Created a Top IT Company

AppNexus is an IT company which provided the idea for scalable IT infrastructure that can be globally responsive to meet user needs more efficiently. Below are slides from the original pitch deck that got AppNexus the seed funding.

4. BuzzFeed: Pitch Deck that Created a Company with 200 Million Users

BuzzFeed is a famous website which provides the most sought after content from across the web. It not only provides infotainment, celebrity news and gossip but also the most relevant news stories as they develop from across the globe. BuzzFeed has an estimated audience that exceeds 200 million people. While BuzzFeed is now a success, a few years back it was just an idea. Here is the original BuzzFeed investor deck from 2008.

5. Mixpanel: Pitch Deck that Raised $65 Million

Mixpanel is one of the top companies which provides the means to effectively track web and mobile analytics. What’s special about Mixpanel is that it doesn’t rely merely on raw data and drills deep to provide analytics about how users use an app or what actions they perform when they are on a specific website. This is why we also listed Mixpanel among our recommendation for Best Software & Services For Performing Cohort Analysis. Below is the pitch deck which raised $65 Million for Mixpanel.

6. Buffer: Pitch Deck that Raised Half a Million Dollars

Buffer is a website which is used by businesses and individuals to schedule their content throughout the day to target audience according to the best possible time when their posts are most likely to be seen. If you want to find out how Buffer raised half a million dollars from Angel investors, check out this pitch deck that made such a feat possible.

7. Dwolla: The 18 Slides which Raised $16.5 Million

Dwolla is a money transfer service which provides secure transactions for fast and convenient money transfer. The slide deck given below contains the 18 slides which raised as much as $16.5 million for the company.

8. Pitch Deck by Socialcast & About.me CEO that Raised $10 Million

This a set of slides by Tim Young, who is the founder and CEO of companies like Socialcast and About.me. This slide deck helped him raise over $10 Million for two of his companies with around 3 rounds of financing within a year.

9. SEOMoz: Pitch Deck Used for Raising Funds

SEOMoz is one of the most recognized names in the world of search engine optimization. SEOMoz not only provides tools for search engine optimization but also delivers top notch content related to the latest news about changing algorithms and best practices. The slide deck given below was used in 2011 by SEOMoz for raising funds. This is a prime example of how top companies pitch their ideas to raise funds.

Pitch Deck Examples and Resources to Help You Succeed

Other than the pitch decks from top companies mentioned above, we have also compiled a list of some sample pitch decks and resources that you can use for making you succeed in your next venture. You can also learn about the components of pitch deck presentations, and what are the 5 or 6 slides that are included in an effective pitch deck.

1. Investor Pitch Deck Templates for PowerPoint

After going through the successful pitch decks above you might be thinking about how to make your own slide deck to impress an audience. To help you with this task we have presentation templates that have been created specifically for this purpose. These pitch deck templates by SlideModel provide some amazing slide decks that can help you create impressive presentations by making use of high-quality sample slides. These pitch deck templates are compatible with PowerPoint, Google Slides and Keynote.

Go to Pitch Deck Templates

Template Demo and Tips for an Effective Pitch Deck: You can see the various slides of this pitch deck template with some useful tips about how to make your pitch deck effective via the SlideModel video given below. The screenshot shows an app pitch deck example with the Traction slide, that is one of the most important slides in every pitch deck.

2. Pitch Deck Example for Medical Services

If you are in need of a pitch deck related to health services than this is a good sample set of slides to get you started with your project proposal and presentation.

3. Pitch Deck for Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding is quite a successful model these days. Even Wikipedia uses crowdfunding to keep its service afloat. There are many platforms which enable running a campaign for crowdfunding. These include; Indiegogo, Kickstarter and Crowdfunder. Below is a sample presentation to help you design a crowdfunding project for platforms like Crowdfunder.

4. Pitch Deck Tips for a Sales Presentation

Sales presentations are one of the most common types of pitch decks. Here are 10 tips for making an effective sales presentation.

5. Pitching B2B (Business to Business)

It is quite common for one business to pitch an idea to another for acquiring funding, support, cooperation or selling products or services, or a pitch deck to sell a company. The pitch deck design below explains 9 steps for an effective B2B pitch.

6. How to Pitch an Angel Investor

Angel investors are the reason many startups became a global success. It was the co-founder of Sun Microsystems, Andy Bechtolsheim who gave $100,000 that resulted in the formation of Google Inc. Here are some useful tips about how to pitch your ideas to an angel investor.

And please don’t forget us in case you end up starting a company like Google!

7. Web Services for Uploading and Presenting Pitch Decks

There are a range of handy services which can be used for uploading and sharing your pitch decks. These include; SlideShare, SlideOnline, Sway and Docs.com to name a few. Furthermore, you can also use services like SlideBean. This is a service which automatically renders slides with your added content.

We hope these slide decks, resources and tips will help you effectively pitch your ideas to impress your audience. If you know of a good resource for effectively making pitch decks, then join the discussion by leaving your comment below or alternatively visit our free pitch deck templates for PowerPoint or the best pitch deck templates review.