Tips on making an impactful pitch deck traction slide

The startup world is full of passionate founders with innovative ideas. But how to persuade an investor that you are not a dreamer but a doer? A professional pitch deck always comes with a traction pitch deck slide. Without it, pitch deck best practices are just a theory. The traction is that element that shows that your idea is not just a dream but resonates with a real audience and has growth potential. The traction slide usually comes after you have explained the problem your business solves and your proposed solution.

It sets the stage for the rest of your pitch, which can delve deeper into the details of your business model, team, and future plans. Moreover, it provides concrete evidence that there is demand for your product or service and reassures investors that their money will be well-spent.

The traction slide acts as a quantitative and qualitative snapshot of your company's progress. It showcases market validation, user acquisition, and startup growth metrics. This section is crucial as it provides evidence of market validation and customer demand, and reduces the perceived risk for investors.

Here, you can present all data that demonstrate your ability to attract users, customers, or generate revenue. A traction slide must be clear and concise. It may contain graphs, charts, and infographics. The key idea is to demonstrate the most impressive metrics that will grab investors' attention and make them confident you have the potential for success.

Investors are interested in companies with the potential for business scalability. They look for an upward trajectory in your traction slide to assess this potential. Investors are particularly interested in metrics that demonstrate user engagement, such as repeat usage, conversion rates, or customer lifetime value (CLTV).

Weak performance indicators can raise red flags for investors. For example, a declining engagement might indicate problems with your product, marketing strategy, or overall business model.

Even a beginning startup with no sales or users yet can craft a traction slide to win over the investor. For example, you may show you have generated a waitlist or pre-orders. It will prove early interest in your product or service, even before launch.

Every startup will have a different traction slide. It depends on the stage of company development, industry and business model. However, roughly, the framework of traction analytics looks as follows:

Traction is not only about numbers – it should be visually compelling and easy to scan. Your traction slide should not be boring! Wrap your startup benchmarks in a clean, attractive design. Focus on 2-3 key metrics with clear, simple charts. Highlight growth and milestones with easy-to-read icons or notes. Avoid overwhelming with too much data.

Use data visualization tools to tell your story. This balance of design and data will impress investors and spark their interest in your startup's potential. Do not underestimate the value of colors. Use green to confidently represent your growth, with drops of orange to enthusiastically highlight milestones.

You must know who you are going to sell your business idea, as different investors speak different languages.

• Venture capitalists (VCs) are looking for explosive growth potential evidence. So, show them how fast your startup can bring a significant return on investment. They will appreciate user growth and user base metrics.

• Angel investors are passionate about innovative ideas. You will surely impress them with high conversion rates, glowing customer reviews, or compelling partnerships.

• Strategic partners are interested in market penetration data and industry-specific metrics. Show them how you can multiply their success; for example, you may have expertise or a customer base relevant to their needs.

Trying to make your traction slide too good, you can mess it all. What should you remember to avoid?

• Data overload. Do not make your traction slide oversaturated with numbers and complex charts.

• Vanity metrics. Do not boast with numbers that do not mean much, like website visits.

• Unrealistic or false metrics. Do not inflate or decorate your progress. Rely only on data you can prove.

• Poor design. Try to declutter your slide to allow the audience to concentrate on the main achievements – use clean visuals, colors and fonts.

With so much theory in mind, it will be helpful to see some best and worst examples of traction slide pitch deck examples to illustrate the above.

• An example to follow:

Snapchat, a multimedia instant messaging app, used its stunning metrics to impress investors from the first pitch deck slides. Strong statements like “More than 60% of 13 to 34-year-old smartphone users are Snapchatters” and “2+ billion video views every day on Snapchat” did their job – the company attracted more than $4.9 billion of funding since its start in 2009.

• A mistake to avoid:

YouTube managed to raise $3.5M in funding in 2005. However, it seems the company already had an investor on their side before the pitch deck presentation. It is enough to look at its metric slide to understand this template will not help your startup. You are unlikely to repeat YouTube’s success with such a traction presentation.

A well-crafted traction slide can be the difference between capturing an investor's interest and fading into the background. It is not only about impressive numbers; it's about the story of your startup's journey, growth, and potential.

A powerful traction builds investor confidence in your ability to scale and succeed. Do you need a professional touch to your traction slide? Let DreamX experts have a look at your pitch deck and inject innovative design ideas into it. Trust us and make a lasting impact with your traction slide!