A VC fund who is raising money itself asked me the other day to give some example slides of other VC fund decks I have been working on. Showing slides is not possible because of confidentiality, but I could jot down the usual pieces of content after browsing through a dozen recent ones. Here we go in random order:
- Bios of the investment team, emphasizing different things: investment exit record (if present), how long people have been working together (in and outside the fund), the diversity of skills the team has (including running operations in a business), the big brand employers they have been working for in the past
- Examples of deal flow they saw last month (sanitized of course)
- Their perspective on the particular geography they work in (which sectors are hot, where valuations are reasonable, how things have changed over time, how things compare to Silicon Valley)
- Their perspective on which technology sectors are attractive, which ones not.
- The network to potential acquirers of companies they have
- Returns, investment track record, big exits
- The story behind how the partners in the fund met
- What sort of deal flow funnel they want to build (how many companies they see, due diligence, investment, etc.)
- The legal and organization structure of the fund
- Quotes from entrepreneurs they invested in about them
- Social media follower stats
- Pictures of events for entrepreneurs they organized
- First page screen shots of industry articles they have written, interviews that were published, images of TV appearances
- Some sort of competitive map of all funds in the same space, highlighting how they are different without “thrashing” their colleagues
- A list of achievements they had with their portfolio companies, which clients they introduced, which hires they were involved in, which companies raised follow-on investments
- Which famous LPs invested in their funds (very confidential stuff)
- Profile pages of portfolio companies
- Some sort of BCGmatrix not about products but about portfolio companies, which ones are OK, which ones are stars, which ones are write offs
- List of advisors
- A slide with legal terms of the fund (fees, carry, etc. etc.)
- And: evidence of how uniquely “hands-on” the investment team is with their portfolio companies (every fund says this)
The list goes on! A good investor presentation does not simple tick the above boxes. Every fund story is different and the art of the presentation designer is to pick the right topics, and sequence them in the right way.