Trial By Pitch Deck

 I am beginning to understand what Sisyphus must have felt like pushing that boulder up the hill for eternity but always falling back to the bottom at the end of his day's labor. For it appears that my task of drafting up the pitch deck needed to go after the investment money Theodora Project requires will go on forever. 

What, you ask, is this thing, this 'pitch deck'? Great question. A pitch deck is the vehicle used by those seeking investment to present their case to potential investors. It is written in PowerPoint. Have you ever worked in PowerPoint? Have you ever tried to create something that gets meaningful information in a persuasive way? I have not.  

Back in the day, when I was in the investment banking business, I put together many of a pitch to induce buyers to pay up for the clients I represented. In that far back period, after hunting a mammoth for the family dinner, I would put that pitch in a word processing app. I used writing techniques that allowed me to create a quick hard-hitting summary allowing the reader to get the gist of the argument quickly but having all the backup material at hand in the document to answer the deeper questions. 

I gather that the purpose of the pitch deck is to achieve that first goal. But it leaves no easy opportunity (or even not easily) to provide the backup you know people are going to want to see. Plus I find PowerPoint extremely difficult to use due to the fact that too many words create a messy, non-visually impactful slides. 

Add to this that we started with one resource helping us create our deck that then bailed, having changed our sales pitch strategy twice, and having key people unavailable, it has dragged and dragged. I am hoping I can get something done by the end of the year which is essential because I have people who have indicated interest in investing and are just waiting to get our 'deck'

I will prevail.