I am a pitch deck writer. I’ve been a pitch deck writer for over 12 years. I’ve helped companies raise and grow from my own pitch decks.
So let’s start the article this way. That will make it more clear of the reason for this article. Now, you need to know a few things about pitch deck writers. You mainly need to know:
- What a pitch deck writer should stand for
- What their operations are
- How they do what they do
- What tools do they use
So let’s get started with this mini guide, which involves everything you need to know about a pitch deck writer.
About Me
In case you don’t know me, I’m CEO of this company, Albusi in Switzerland. I’ve been a pitch deck writer for a very long time on websites like Upwork, and Fiverr. I started this pitch deck writing journey when I had my own company. I needed to write my own pitch deck to raise funds for my startup.
At that stage, I realized that investors needed different iterations of different pitch decks that would make the message true. From there, I’ve evolved into much bigger methodologies when it comes to pitch deck writing. Nowadays, I write pitch decks for companies who have raised more than a hundred million dollars like Garuda and others who have gone into Y Combinator or 500 Global, a couple of the biggest accelerators on the planet.
Now you know who I am. Now let’s talk about what defines a pitch deck writer and what you should be looking for, whether you want your pitch deck done or you want to hire a pitch deck writer.
What’s a pitch deck writer?
A pitch deck writer is typically a person who writes pitch decks. When I say writes, that doesn’t involve design at most stages. But almost every pitch deck writer that works in this market has a pitch deck designer that they work with. It just makes sense that you would fulfill the whole image rather than just showcase a piece of text.
This really doesn’t show how good of a pitch deck writer you are. Because, at the end of the day, the pitch deck is not just going to be text. It’s going to be a whole design presentation. To see the whole picture, part of this relies on the pitch deck writer. The other part relies on the pitch deck designer.
So a pitch deck designer’s job is to take the pitch deck copywriting and put it into a good design. Taking that into consideration, a pitch deck writer should typically follow certain stages when it comes to pitch deck writing.
That’s what I personally do and have been doing for years and years.
Stages of Pitch Deck Writing
Writing a pitch deck could be as simple as just thinking of which slide should go first. You could start with the elevator pitch and a cover letter, and then just write the team, and so on.
It could be as simple as that. But a pitch deck is only as effective as whether it raises funds or not. Alternatively, some decks are not for fundraising. Some are for marketing, some are for teams to be pitched to join their team, and so on. These have different focuses.
So whatever the objective of the pitch deck is, this is what determines whether it works or not. You can’t determine it by just putting a structure that you found online and hope for the best. How does a pitch deck writer get involved in all that? They need to be aware of the whole process from A to Z. This is where they start their process.
Storyboarding
The first part of the process of any smart pitch deck writer is storyboarding a pitch deck. That is saying what you are thinking of saying and predicting how the reader should receive it. So let’s say, let’s put as an example, you’re creating a pitch deck for your technological startup and you’re looking for a pitch deck writer. Now there are questions that have to be asked, not just questions like what’s your product, who’s your team, what’s your market sizing, or things around this area.
The most essential questions that have to be asked first by pitch deck writers are:
- Who are you sending this pitch deck to?
Because an environmental company who might give you a grant should not receive the same pitch deck that you have as a venture capitalist who cares about the return on their investment. This is more of a financial deck, while the other is more of a vision-focused deck.
Alternatively, if a co-founder was interested in reading this deck, then you shouldn’t be sending them the same exact deck. You should be sending them a deck more focused on the team, the KPIs, and what the future of the company is going to be like. That’s why I personally always recommend to my clients to create variants of the pitch deck, different versions of them based on each and every encounter they’re sending it to.
The storyboard is always the first stage. You draw the whole thing. It doesn’t matter what tool you use when you’re creating a storyboard.
Tools?
You can create it with Google Slides, Google Docs, Microsoft Word, just a text file. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is knowing what questions the readers are going to ask and what are your answers and what you want to show them when they think of that question. And that’s the first stage, which is the storyboard.
Let me share with you a link to a free storyboard template that you can use if you’re interested in creating your own storyboard.
Writing the Pitch Deck
Ironically, to me, writing a pitch deck is the easiest stage of the whole pitch deck writing procedure. As a pitch deck writer, I always focus on the storyboarding and the designing of the pitch deck writing process simply because the storyboarding involves a lot of thought and predictions of the mentality of the reader.
The designing involves a lot of work when it comes to what the visuals of this reader should see. So the writing involved is not that big of a deal as it’s simply following what the storyboard is saying. If the storyboard is saying there has to be a perfect market research slide at that stage, it shows the answer to the question of how many cars are there in the US on that year, for instance. Then it’s as straightforward as just researching such an element.
For that reason, the writing process, which is the second part of the process, is the simplest process and the most straightforward process. In a nutshell, the pitch deck writer has to simply follow what the storyboard said.
Pitch Deck Design
The last part of a pitch deck is the design aspect of it. Now for that, a lot of pitch deck writers hire pitch deck designers or graphic designers that know how to design pitch decks. Their job is not to simply throw the text copywriting and just hope for the best when it comes to a proper design.
Just check out and evaluate a freelance and decide, “Alright, this person looks like they can know how to design visuals well.” They would just send in the copywriting of the pitch deck. On the contrary, the job is a lot more thought and monitored.
A pitch deck writer’s job is to triple-check the designer’s work to make sure that each vision of each slide was achieved. You could be saying, for instance, that you want a market research slide to show this chart of how many cars in the US and how they are growing. Then the designer would follow what you exactly said. But then you realize there should be a stress on the number. But the number would be actually in huge text in the center of the slide rather than just a small number at the top right corner.
This sort of thing would never be determined except by monitoring the work of a pitch deck designer.
The File
A pitch deck writer should always send out the final version of a pitch deck in an editable format like a PowerPoint, Google Slides, or Canva, for example.
Simply because a lot of entrepreneurs eventually would like to make textual changes in time or changes to the message of the pitch deck. And building reliance or building dependency on such a thing when it comes to small matters like changing an icon in an image is just impractical and is a huge waste of the time of the entrepreneur and the pitch deck writer.
This is the exact process of how a pitch deck writer should work. When it comes to tools, I usually use Google Slides, Google Docs to create a storyboard and to design pitch decks myself in some cases or tell my designer to use PowerPoint or Google Slides.
But these two tools might be more than enough when it comes to the actual storyboard or the actual pitch deck writing.
The Research
Of course, there is the element of research and this involves me looking through Google and searching sites like Deloitte, McKinsey, PwC, Ernst & Young.
All these websites have market research that is credible, that is already pre-selected in terms of credibility. Of course, what is to me a little bit higher in priority or more in accuracy are the governmental websites. So if a .gov website states that like a labor.gov for instance in the US states that there are 2 million cars that are increased every month in the US for instance, I trust this number much more than any other research online.
Especially websites like Statista or a research website that says that it is projected to reach this by this amount of years. Those are just websites that I would call SEO begging websites. They would just look at what people are searching for and provide an answer that makes it a lot easier. Most of the time these projections are based on absolutely nothing.
The Perfect Pitch Deck Writer
That’s a small summary of my job as a pitch deck writer and how pitch deck writers usually operate in such a market. A final piece of advice before leaving you is that pitch deck writers are not usually essential when writing a pitch deck. It highly depends on the case.
For example, if you’re an entrepreneur running on a low budget, you shouldn’t be hiring a pitch deck writer. At that stage, you should be writing your own pitch deck by downloading a template like one of the ones that we have at the store. Free templates and you would just modify the message until you have your own.
Pitch deck writers are usually hired. The proper way to hire pitch deck writers is when you don’t have the proper time and expertise but you do have revenue. So if your shop, for example, or your website made revenue of 200,000 this year and you’re interested in growing next year and getting an investment, that’s the perfect case scenario of when you should hire a pitch deck writer because that pitch deck writer would be paid well.
That pitch deck writer would be focused on you as a startup and they would have enough data to see that you’re already generating revenue. This makes it a lot of a better and easier job for the pitch deck writer and it increases the accuracy of the pitch deck being actually useful. So this is when the perfect time for a pitch deck writer to be incorporated in the startup ecosystem.
Pitch Deck Writing Services
Finally, if you’re interested in creating your own pitch deck with us as a team based in Switzerland. Here are all the details of how much a pitch deck will cost, and our process. Most importantly, remember that a pitch deck is a means to an end. It’s not something to just create because you need it.
It’s mostly something that should achieve a specific purpose and this is where you would get the best return on investment.