How much should I REALLY pay for an investor pitch deck?

If you’re reading this article, it’s more than likely because you’re currently stuck at one of the most critical points in your aspiring venture or current business. You want to raise venture capital, bag a major client or kick start a big idea and you need some form of investment or buy-in. Yet as the old saying goes, “you need to spend money to make money”. And thus, you’re battling with the thorny issue of how much to ‘spend’ in order to ‘make’. Specifically, how much to spend on an effective investor pitch deck! Well, my financially responsible friends, you’ve come to the right place.

Although you’ll find this article on a website for a company that makes investor pitch decks, the intention behind this is NOT to sell you one of ours. Yes, some of you will weigh up the options and decide that we’re the right pitch deck builders for you. However, I’m also certain that I’ll convince many of you that you can save money by creating your pitch deck another way, even via another pitch deck provider. This is not only a trade-off that I’m willing to make. It’s crucial in order to make sure that the pitch decks which we create for our clients don’t plumet in quality, simply because we’re forced to handle way too many. This article is about YOU – not us. Yet the only way that I can truly convince you is to prove it, so here goes…

There was a reason that ‘you’ was capitalised. Just as no two pitch decks are created equal, often, no two reasons for having one are identical either. If you’re pitching to Warren Buffet, it’s prudent that your approach differs than if you’re pitching to an old school friend who’s just won the lottery. If you’re a clothing company, you’ll require an alternative graphical approach than if you’re pitching to an investor to come onboard with your new accountancy firm. Yet, most crucially of all, if you’re about to have the lights go out in the office because you can’t pay your electricity bill, it’s vital that you don’t spend thousands more on an investor pitch deck than your business can afford. Therefore, before you can even decide on the correct pricing, you must first tackle what your actual necessary requirement truly is.

You and only YOU can know the importance of your investor pitch decks overall quality when deciding a price that’s right. The further up the business ladder you climb, judgement itself will become your most vital attribute and thus, exercising it wisely here is just an extension of what your world will become - should your investor pitch deck be successful and raise the capital you so desire. After all, who wants to give money to somebody with bad judgement? The judgement you make on what to spend on your investor pitch deck also goes two ways. Firstly, there is the affordability criteria mentioned in the last paragraph. Get that wrong and you won’t even be able to see your pitch deck, because you’ve had your power cut off! On the other hand, there is the second kind of judgement to consider. That being how a potential investor will judge your business or idea, based on the quality and substance of your pitch deck. Get it wrong and you don’t ‘pass go’. Get it right and the money starts to flow. This, my fellow biz-kids, is the double edged sword that some of you must now ponder and mostly… ponder alone.

Where I can help is with your options, so let’s start there. As you may have already found via a quick spin on the old Google machine, the price of investor pitch decks can vary – wildly! In fact, when WayAboveDeck.Com was first created, it was to address this huge disparity in pricing, by aiming to place ourselves perfectly in the middle – albeit with a few extra twists and add-ons to make the offering ‘unbeatable’. We knew this coming from, not a graphic design background but, a business and investment background, previously having to tackle the exact same conundrum which you are presently. So, here’s what we found…

On the high-end side of deck building, it’s not uncommon to find pitch deck builders charge in excess of $600 per page. It’s because of this that I’ve spoken to people who have paid $12,000 dollars for a single deck! This is fine if your company has money to burn and your desire is to almost ‘set and forget’, not having to spend hours of back and forth with a designer, simply to get your company name spelt correctly on the first page. For some, the extra money spent here is worth way less than the frustration and time saved and therefore, the high-end price seems like a bargain to them. The same could be true for you?

The caveat here is that just because a designer or pitch deck building company charges a lot of money, it doesn’t always mean that they understand what an effective pitch deck should entail – particularly as it relates to selling your business in the perfect way. Rather, they might create a pitch deck for you that wins a graphic design award but fails to accurately articulate enough about your actual business to raise venture capital. Again, you need to use judgement as to what the right balance is here and also, if possible, find out how many of that designers’ pitch decks have led to successful investment rounds. After all, some businesses set out to price themselves at the high-end of the market, merely as a way to differentiate themselves on paper, and not as an indicator of any true competitive or experience advantage. Just like that investor that you’re hoping to win over, do your due diligence first folks!

Then there is the lower end. The internet is littered with graphic designers doing pitch decks at dirt cheap prices - sometimes at less than $100 dollars per page! Some of them are terrible and others, believe or not, are pretty damn good. You’ll find many of the cheaper options are based in emerging markets with weaker currencies and therefore, what appears cheap to you or I, is a really great pay day for them. When it comes to the digital world, this is one of the main benefits of globalisation for budding entrepreneurs. That being said, differentiating between the good and the bad can be somewhat tricky - even down to trusting if someone’s showreel of ‘past work’ is even their own. Fortunately, this type of deception is often the exception and not the rule. The main downside to consider with this approach is frequently a language barrier, which can be particularly tricky when it comes to getting your vision across or making urgent revisions to a subpar first draft. Yet, if you’ve got more time than money, you should absolutely consider this as an option.

Before I get to the most cost effective of all options (at least for some) and why you might want to consider it yourself, here is where I talk about the middle way. WayAboveDeck.com charge £300 per page for those with either a vision in mind or a fairly stable grasp of what content they want the deck to include. Alternatively, it’s £400 per page to work alongside an experience businessperson and investor, to co-create a pitch deck that will speak to your target market or investor perfectly. We also then offer the ability to ‘mock-pitch’ your deck and presentation to real venture capital fund managers, to get their ‘off the record’ feedback, allowing you to make changes if required. Then, should you wish, we can even make introductions to real investors, either taking a flat fee or a small percentage of the VC money invested.

In short, we’re incentivised to make your pitch deck as effective as possible in raising money, because we aim to come along on some of that wider journey with you. For some, that’s exactly what they want. However, this approach is not for everyone. If you already know what you want in your pitch deck, have an investor on the hook, and/or are extremely confident about your pitch’s chances of success – why would you require any of that? In such instances, you’d likely be better off going either high-end or lower end, depending on your available cash flow. Yet there is one more alternative and for some… it’s the most cost effective one of all.

Why not learn to make your own pitch decks? There is loads of online software available out there, all allowing you to do design work like investor pitch decks more easily than ever before. If you have the time, desire, creative flare or, you’re just such a giant control freak that you trust literally no-one else with your brand (and let’s be honest, that’s 99.9% of us businesspeople), why wouldn’t you consider it? Spending the time to learn this skill could literally pay dividends later – if not right now. Yes, I know, I’m talking my own company (or at least one of them) out of work yet again but fairs, fair. I did promise to be honest, after all and this is brutally so. I know because I can already feel my business partners kicking me (mentally) in the face the very moment they read this. I certainly didn’t warn them about my novel literary approach in the investor pitch deck that I hooked them with!

Whatever your current situation, there is certainly a pitch deck solution that works for you. Oh, and the same rules apply for your investment dreams themselves. If you truly believe in your product, business or idea, the reality is that your future success will not rise or fall on the power of your pitch deck - just as a business card won’t determine someone’s desire to contact you. What a pitch deck (and even a business card) does do however, is to make a very clear statement about who you (or your company) are, what you do, how confident you are in presenting yourself and what type of entity you might be to deal with. A great business card won’t make somebody more friends, just as a bad business card won’t stop people wanting to talk to a great person. The only difference here is that your investor pitch deck might be passed on to people that don’t get to know you before they know your business. Therefore, making the right first impression could be too valuable to gamble on with haphazard, digital introduction. Once again, only you have the judgement to know if this could be the case, and if so, what that first impression (pitch deck) should be – and cost.

I’ve been Deckster Jobs. Until next time, happy pitching.