If you’re going to market, your GTM slide needs to be awesome

Only 7% of founders have a pitch deck with a reasonably good go-to-market (GTM) narrative. Given that a lot of founders are raising money to acquire new customers, allow me to put words to what that means: It’s an absolute embarrassment.

The vast majority of slide decks barely qualify to be called even a coherent brainstorm. As an investor, when I’m looking at such a deck, I despair. Why should I give you $5 million when you clearly haven’t the foggiest clue how you’re going to deploy that money in a meaningful way?

Trust me when I say this: Fundraising is hard right now, and there are no signs that things will get easier. It’s crucial to have a basic level of competency.

Here’s how to approach designing a competent go-to-market slide:

It’s key to develop a deep understanding of your customers for developing an effective go-to-market strategy and persuasive slide. This involves more than just demographic segmentation; it requires immersing yourself in your potential users’ lives to grasp their challenges, needs and decision-making processes. This demands diligence, empathy and strategic market research. Your understanding of your customers often shows up elsewhere in the deck (under “target customer” or similar), but without it, the GTM slide often doesn’t make a lot of sense.