Are you putting your slides together and wondering how to position the team in a pitch deck?

How you present and position your team in your pitch deck can make all the difference in getting your startup funded. So, how do you introduce your team well? Who is even on your ‘team’ when it comes to designing your pitch deck? What do investors want to see? How can you fill in the gaps? 

The Most Important Slide In Your Pitch Deck

What is the most important slide in your pitch deck?

Some think it is the solution? Others the problem slide? The financials slide is a popular one with investors. The cover slide can be key to setting up the entire deck with a great first impression.

Yet, it is the team slide which really trumps all the others in importance. 

Yes, you have to get the others right. Though the decision to fund you or not often all comes down to the team. 

As you are addressing how to position the team in a pitch deck, keep in mind that you can have the right problem, solution, a great product idea and be in a really big market, but without a team investors are willing to bet on, they aren’t going to give up a dime. Ironically, the opposite can almost be true in some cases. 

Keep in mind that in fundraising storytelling is everything. In this regard for a winning pitch deck to help you here, take a look at the template created by Silicon Valley legend, Peter Thiel (see it here) that I recently covered. Thiel was the first angel investor in Facebook with a $500K check that turned into more than $1 billion in cash.

Remember to unlock the pitch deck template that is being used by founders around the world to raise millions below.

What Investors Are Looking For In A Fundable Team

If the team is so important, what is it that potential investors really want to see?

There are two main factors that they are looking at:

1. Ability
2. Commitment

Is your team capable?

There are two parts to this. First is if your team has the technical ability to solve this problem. What unique skills have you developed to understand and solve this problem? Maybe you are one of only a few engineers or scientists in the world to have spent years studying and working on systems like these.

The second part is real experience, especially in a business context. Being able to code, design a system, or having seen many others do it is one thing. Having the commercial experience of creating a product that sells, and building a profitable business that can scale is a completely different thing. It’s apples to oranges or ice cream to cake. 

Technical genius is one thing, but it doesn’t make an actual business and this is where most folks miss the mark when thinking about how to position the team in a pitch deck. So, you also want experience in marketing, managing a team, finance, and more. If you have experience in a startup setting, and especially have previous exits with strong multiples returned to investors that is a huge bonus. 

Investors are looking for the best team. That’s the one you’d back with your own money, right? It is the startup with the best team that wins. So, demonstrating that you’ve compiled the best team with experience in your domain can help overcome weaknesses in any other area. 

Being coachable is also a huge deal. Being intelligent and wise is important. Though being coachable can be far more important than what you know. There will always be things you don’t know. You’ll never get it if you aren’t willing to learn from those who do have the experience. 

How can you prove you won’t quit?

Everything else can look perfect, but without the grit and perseverance no entrepreneur or team is going to survive the constant barrage of daily challenges that are going to come. 

What can you demonstrate that shows you have commitment and resilience? What have you done in the past that shows you’ve got what it takes? What have you sacrificed to get here? What are you willing to give up to continue with this startup and get this funding?

Who Counts As Your Team In Your Pitch Deck?

You only have a limited amount of space to display your team on a pitch deck slide. There are also downsides to including too many team members. Even though they may be key team members, if they are just employees there is the risk they may not stick it out. That’s not going to look awesome, if you are bleeding people who you raised money based on having during the startup fundraising process.

So, what we are specifically talking about here are:

• Cofounders
• Executives
• Advisors

When To Start Introducing The Team In Your Pitch

The team slide typically comes in late in the pitch deck. Though you don’t have to wait that long to begin positioning your team. Begin introducing your team and positioning them with these qualities early on. You can do it with your verbal introduction, the story of your problem and solution, and so on. 

You should also try to bring in your cofounders to any live pitches or on video calls. 

I created a 30 min video on Youtube that gives you every single insight to create your own pitch deck. It is called how to create a pitch deck and you can see it below.

https://youtu.be/OXzBxCxDLqk

What To Include On Your Team Slide 

The team slide is simple and that is the way to look at it when tackling how to position the team in a pitch deck. It is profile pictures of your team, their names and roles, and a one or two sentence bio. Just a few words which best sums up how they bring the above strengths to the table. 

You can also include links to their executive bios on your website (best), or links to their LinkedIn profiles for more depth. 

You may include a second slide for notable advisors as well. 

What If Your Team Could Be Stronger?

If you aren’t confident that your current team checks all the boxes, this is the time to do something about it. 

You can:

• Hire the best in the business
• Bring in cofounders who are willing to bring capital
• Give small amounts of equity to notable advisors to bring them in

As a part of your fundraising ask you can also explain who you will hire to fill any of these gaps with the funds you bring in.

Hopefully this post provided you with some perspective when looking into how to position the team in a pitch deck.

You may find interesting as well our free library of business templates. There you will find every single template you will need when building and scaling your business completely for free. See it here.

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