Top Things to Address in an Investors Presentation
When selling your story to investors, you face competition from other “items” on the market, just like any other business. There are hundreds or thousands of other publicly traded firms out there with compelling tales, brilliant financials, and top-tier management teams.
So, how will your business compete? You only have one shot at capturing that audience and telling your story to prospective buyers. Ensuring that you have addressed and are ready for questions and conversations in these five areas is critical to a successful investor presentation. The first stage in delivering an investor presentation is to gather the necessary documents. A detailed agenda covering the normal terrain is required, but there are a few more items to cover. Here are five aspects.
Major Points to Cover in an Investor Presentation
1. What Do You Do?
It may seem obvious, yet it’s remarkable how many CEOs cannot summarize their organization logically to outsiders. The technology in the Life Science industry may be so sophisticated that the clarity of the problem it answers is lost on an investment audience. Ensure that your summary and description of what your firm performs are as clear as possible in the summary of your investor presentation. Although subsequent conversations of science and research may dive deep into the sophistication of the development phase, the overview and debate of the critical issue you are attempting to solve should be cautiously distilled to create an instant effect of its relevance without leaving any ambiguity due to the use of unnecessary scientific terms in its clarification.
You should talk about your product and its benefits. People do not consider companies as companies but as stocks. You should focus on your products or services rather than your business idea. If you’re looking for investors, it’s probably a good idea to give them details about your business, not your opinion. They’ll be thinking about what they can gain from their investment. So, try to make your presentation as exciting and compelling as possible.
Begin by outlining what the business does in one paragraph, then work your way down to a single statement, preferably not an absurdly long, heavily punctuated run-on sentence.
2. Financial Overview and Forecast
It’s astonishing how many businesses devote page after page of their investor presentations to discussing what they do while failing to describe how they generate or expect to make money. What is the nature of your business? How will this change as time goes on? Is it expandable? Even if you work for a mining corporation, it isn’t as simple as “we earn money when we find gold.” For instance, if you made a discovery, explain your plans to continue researching the areas surrounding that project. You don’t need to get too specific here, but you should give investors a clear image of how you intend to make money.
An investor presentation slide should show the financials. It should contain the right amount of details. Don’t include too many complex spreadsheets. Instead, include visually attractive charts showing the number of customers, sales, expenses, and profits. Depending on the size of your company, you may want to customize the investor presentation slide to focus on the financials.
In the investor presentation, your investor is more interested in the business’s revenue and the cash flow. A comprehensive financial plan is required for your presentation. In your speech, an overview should cover the following:
- Actual figures to date
- Forecasted results incorporating the strategy for the use of funds
- Views from an operation statement and a balance sheet
- Analysis of the present equity structure
Your investors will look at you as a company, not as an individual. So, focus on your company’s cash generation. Most investors focus on the fundamentals, so you should focus on this aspect. Also, keep in mind that US-based audiences are more interested in the cash generation side of the business. Therefore, your presentation should include a detailed analysis of your sources of funds and your ability to generate money.
Consider if you have incorporated enough material from each of the above categories into your presentation to answer questions that investors will expect you to have explored and vetted when you prepared your overall fundraising plan. Assign a great candidate to your presentation to assist you in articulating and answering questions in areas where you may require more expert support.
3. What Is Your “Moat”?
To put it another way, what is your core competency? What is the size of the market, and where does your business fit in? What are the entrance obstacles, and how are you different from your competitors and peers?
Explicit and unambiguous explanations about competition factors will most likely be some of the most obvious and heavily discussed issues in your investor presentation. Be ready and extremely thorough in your research and planning on this topic. Know who and what your industry’s competition symbolizes, and be extremely clear about your differentiation plan.
Prepare to discuss the opportunities and threats in your region. External elements are a significant discussion point in your approach, whether they are legal and regulatory challenges, technological advances, or demographic/social concerns. Prepare to address both the positive and bad aspects of the situation openly and transparently. Investors will have done their homework, and they must believe your management team is capable of spotting, evaluating, and developing plans to address the factors as they emerge.
4. Who is behind the company?
Who is behind the company? A synopsis of your leadership team. Include the structure of your management team in your presentation, whether they are already on board or if you plan to establish one in your use of funds. Any investor will recognize that execution is a critical component of what they are investing in, and a clear understanding of what that entails is crucial.
Because employees are often not good at writing their bios, hiring a professional copywriter or marketing specialist to develop bios for everyone on your team is worthwhile. Allow each executive to supply bullet point facts and then delegate the task of comprehensively summarizing them to a writer.
Final Remarks
In the investor’s mind, you’re the key to conveying information. When presenting to investors, remember that your job is to communicate the facts. Be sure to make your presentation engaging and as compelling as possible. You don’t want to scare them away. You need to make them want to invest in your business. It’s crucial to capture the interest of your target audience and convince them of the value of your products or services.
