The ask slide is the climax of your pitch. You don’t want to spoil the moment by simply throwing a number out there or overwhelming your audience with excessive detail. To help you strike the right balance, we’ve put together tips on how to round off your presentation on a high note and set the stage for productive investment discussions.
Your pitch deck’s ultimate goal is to secure funding for your business venture. So it makes perfect sense to finish off your presentation with a clear investment request—how much money you’re seeking to raise in this round and how you will use these funds over time. Your final slide should outline where the money will go and how it will generate value by achieving key milestones, attracting customers, and driving revenue growth.
The ask slide does just that for your pitch deck, answering three main questions you’ve been building up to.
The prime spot on the slide is for the amount of money you are seeking in this investment round. While ranges are possible, they’re generally not recommended. You’ve done extensive research, analysis, and calculations to put together your slides, so in an ideal world, you should by now have a good understanding of the exact figure you’re looking for.
You can also mention the funding stage—Seed, Series A, Series B, and so on. This offers investors more context and helps them understand better where your business stands in its growth trajectory.
Break down how the investment will be allocated between different critical areas of your business. Typical categories include product development, marketing and PR, staff hires, operations, research and development, and expansion.
Use a pie chart or a simple list to visually represent this information and make it easier for your audience to see at a glance how each portion of the investment is put to work. It’s also a good practice to add a brief explainer to each category on what exactly you aim to achieve with the funding. For example:
The funding request and allocation of funds are the bare minimum for every investment slide. As soon as you have them, you can add some more details depending on your particular circumstances.
If you already have a detailed roadmap with tasks and deadlines you need to tick off to achieve your initial business goals, consider a timeline with specific milestones rather than broad strokes, as you would for the use of funds.
For instance, instead of a general category “key marketing team hires,” pinpoint exactly who you’re looking to bring on board, like a VP of Growth or brand strategist.
This approach can really make your pitch deck investment slide stand out. Browse investor presentations online, and you’ll see tons using the phrase “key hires” on the ask slide and only a handful getting into the nitty-gritty details. This level of precision tells investors you have a solid plan in place and are ready to make it happen.
This bit of information tends to stir up some debate among pitch deck experts.
Some believe it’s oversharing and one of the big mistakes you can make with your ask slide. Mentioning the raise type would, in most cases, mean you have to bring up the valuation, too. And this can sabotage your chances to negotiate with investors who were hoping for a bigger slice of the pie.
Others argue that being upfront about the raise type makes for a straightforward and transparent fundraising process. This way, both parties are aligned in expectations and investment terms from the get-go. And it saves time for both by avoiding back-and-forth over terms they might not like in the first place.
We at Reprezent lean towards team transparency. But at the end of the day, it’s up to you to do your homework and decide whether your audience will appreciate this kind of transparency or not.
Below are the common types of fundraising instruments:
Obviously, you’re starting your venture with high hopes it will take off, and you want to share that excitement with investors rather than think about the exit strategy from day one. However, investors tend to be more critical when analyzing where to put their money and wouldn’t mind knowing how they can eventually see returns.
The exit strategy shouldn’t definitely be the first thing on your mind when creating your investment slide. For early-stage startups, it is most probably redundant altogether. But this can become more relevant if you’re further along the funding process, like at Series B or C. It shows that you have considered the investor’s perspective and are also mindful of creating value for them.
Common exit strategies include:
An engaging and clear call to action that invites investors to join you on your entrepreneurial journey adds a nice touch to the slide. Make sure to put some thought into it and go beyond the generic “Invest into [your business] now!” Instead, tailor your call to action to emphasize mutual benefits or how investors can become part of a larger mission by funding your idea.
ChatGPT can be immensely helpful for brainstorming a perfect message, especially if you have the right prompts on hand. Check out our compilation of prompts for every slide of an investor pitch deck, including the ask.
This is one of the most straightforward and simple slides in your pitch deck. One of the best pieces of advice you’ll hear is not to overcomplicate it.
If this is your first time presenting your business idea to this audience, it’s all about building relationships and fostering trust. Let’s be real, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll see investors hastily making wire transfers while you’re wrapping up your pitch. No one is ready to fund your business after just one presentation.
So, directly asking for money at the end of your pitch can backfire because it puts a lot of pressure on investors. When under pressure, our first natural reaction is to retreat to safety. In this case, that safety net would mean saying no to your request.
What you should do instead is to suggest setting up another meeting to deepen the conversation and take the next step. Lay out your request and terms, and then ask the audience if they’re interested in exploring the opportunity further.
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