Need Funding? Learn From Some of the Most Popular Investor Pitch Decks

What do some of the world’s biggest brands have in common? Successful public companies like Tesla, Facebook, Airbnb and Coinbase all started with an entrepreneur who had an idea. But an idea alone doesn’t make a successful company. Capital is required to transform a mere business plan into a thriving entity, and acquiring that capital means impressing an investor.

How did the world’s most successful companies impress their early investors? They presented their business plans with engaging pitch decks. An essential fundraising tool, a well-designed pitch deck can mean the difference between a $50 million investment and a pipe dream. Unfortunately, too many of these vital visual presentations end up looking like a bunch of PowerPoint frankendecks with deficient designs and a lack of engagement.

Pitch decks are so important we’ve dedicated an entire set of presentation templates to improving upon the original decks used by some of the world’s most successful brands, including Uber, Tinder and Peloton. We’ve made these PowerPoint makeovers available as pitch deck templates for Beautiful.ai users to customize into their own.

Not every pitch deck, however, needs a makeover. Just a quick glance at the design of some investor pitch decks will tell you exactly why they were so successful. In fact, there’s plenty we can learn from the best investor pitch decks of some of the world’s most successful brands.

Wondering just how to pitch an angel investor? Check out the following five popular investor pitch deck examples, and see what you can learn from them.

1.   Mint

Formerly known as Mint.com, Intuit Mint helps users take charge of their finances with its online budget planner and other financial management tools. The company launched in 2006 with a $325,000 seed investment, and it was worth $170 million by 2009 when it was purchased by Intuit.

Granted, Mint didn’t use this well-known pitch deck to secure funding, as the deck was designed for a competition. But thanks to the quality of this deck, we feel Mint could have made a bundle with it. The deck relies on the principles of good design, it uses a cohesive layout for unity, and it skillfully employs white space to make content stand apart from other elements. 

We especially like the branded color scheme that makes the deck uniquely Mint’s, and the deck does a great job of addressing any possible investor concerns upfront, before they can take hold in potential partners’ minds.

2.   Moz

Moz might have started out as an SEO company, but its success has led it to offer support for all types of inbound marketing strategies. Founded in 2004, Moz raised almost $30 million over multiple funding rounds before being acquired by J2 Global in 2021. 

Moz used this pitch deck in its 2011 series-B funding round, where it raised more than $18 million. Since the company had already been established for six years at that point, the deck features additional company information and its history than you would find in a typical pitch.

We love how much data Moz infused into its investor pitch deck, with plenty of detailed information about its business and financials. Instead of presenting pages of dull and lifeless numbers, Moz presented this data with engaging infographics, bringing the company’s story to life for its audience.

3.   Dwolla

A fintech company that connects businesses to the ACH payment system, Dwolla helps users to send, receive and request electronic funds. The company was founded in 2008 with just two employees. Thanks in part to a $16.5 million funding round in 2013, the company continued to thrive and has now raised more than $72 million as it continues to expand its operations with additional features.

The investor pitch deck that scored Dwolla its 2013 funding is what we like to call beautiful. It features a consistent and unified design and excellent use of a branded color scheme. Dwolla captured its audience’s attention with storytelling, which brought the presentation to life and gave meaning to the information. 

The pitch deck featured engaging images, icons and logos to help visually communicate the story, and it told the complicated story of credit card usage with an easy-to-understand flowchart, complete with its own visual storytelling elements. 

4.   Front

Front participated in the famed Y Incubator startup program in 2013 and quickly grew to success offering corporate email solutions. In 2016, it secured a pivotal $10 million in a Series A funding round, and Front has gone on to raise more than $125 million in the years since.

Front’s 2016 investor pitch deck featured an amazing design, which focused on three primary colors in its branded color scheme used in backgrounds, fonts and artistic elements. Such a unified color scheme not only unifies the entire design, but it makes the elements pop off the screen for audiences to notice. 

The pitch deck is informative with plenty of data illustrated by engaging infographics and other data visualizations that bring the company’s story to life. Thanks to elements like bar graphs and line graphs, the company clearly illustrated its growth and trajectory.

5.   Copper Cow Coffee

How does a company offering a product as common as coffee stand out to investors? Copper Cow, which was founded in 2017 and offers all-natural, sustainably-sourced coffee, demonstrated its worthiness with an eye-catching pitch deck. The company has now raised more than $11 million through eight successful funding rounds, but of course, it all started with a pitch deck.

Copper Cow’s original pitch deck featured vivid photos that told the company’s story. It clearly presented the problem the company hoped to solve and offered its coffee as the ideal solution. Each slide in the deck incorporates the principles of good design, and the slides incorporate common color palettes and typography to unify the presentation. Common Cow used relevant data to impress its potential investors, but it kept its slide deck short, sweet and to the point. 

What did you learn from some of the best investor pitch decks? Can you find elements to incorporate into your own visual presentations? Are they as good as our investor pitch deck template or PowerPoint makeovers? What do you think makes a great investor pitch presentation example?