We all know how important design is when it comes to pitching your startup, but did you know that (according to The Strategic Designer) good design can increase sales by 23%? At a certain point, all successful entrepreneurs learn that despite all of the work that goes into compiling the mounds of information needed for a successful pitch, presentation is still very much key in getting investors to fund your startup dreams.
Pitch Perfect(ly)
It sounds a bit shallow, but situating your ideas into a pitch deck with a solid and engaging design has a HUGE impact on your investment prospects. That’s not necessarily a bad thing because the people you are pitching your idea to are looking for viable investment opportunities. No one is expecting you to be a graphic designer on top of being a founder, but it isn’t unrealistic to expect investment contenders to be able to delegate or outsource this task to get the job done correctly.
This process of delegation got much easier thanks to Christopher Finneral and David Mack. The pair co-founded SketchDeck, a web based service that lets clients get their ideas converted into professionally designed presentations. The idea came from Finneral’s experience working as a business analyst at McKinsey (London) where he was able to send out roughly sketched-out slides to a third party overseas, who would then build professionally designed presentations around the sketches or outlines and email it back within 24 hours of receiving the order.
This service has become standard practice for larger organizations, but Finneral realized that everyone, (especially startup teams and entrepreneurs), could really benefit from being able to access this type of support.
The Process
Getting your deck created is incredibly straightforward. Upload sketches, PowerPoint slides, whiteboard doodles, logos, and whatever other scanned documents you have onto the site using a drag and drop function. You can give input on what you would like worked on, parameters for what you would like to have highlighted, and notes on the aesthetic you’d like to shoot for (i.e. having the deck’s design match your website’s color pallet).
After that, indicate the number of slides you would like to have worked on and when you need them by (24 hrs, 48 hrs, or 4 days). Then select the level of support you are looking for. Three options are made available: Tweak, Design Light, and Design. Each reflects a different level of design help and pricing.
Pricing
Their method has your presentation move across the desks of more than one designer, which translates into a higher quality product in the end. Prices are set by the hour (based on a 48 hour turnaround) and depend on the number of hours the junior and senior designers work on your project. Junior designers come in at $10 an hour and senior design work is set at $50 an hour.
Junior designers work on the time-consuming tasks and lay the groundwork before passing the presentation along to a senior designer for styling and finalizing. Discounts are offered to orders asking for 4 day delivery and a 50% fee is put on 24 hour orders. The 24 hour turnaround includes weekends, which is awesome for folks who need their orders back for those big Monday morning meetings.
On top of serving as an incredible resource for people interested in creating awesome pitch decks, SketchDeck is also a very practical option for individuals who need help creating great slides from sketches for conferences, events, or sales presentations. Design, like it or not, is an important factor in creating effective presentations. SketchDeck brings a remarkable level of convenience, fairness, and transparency to the design table and offers a service that is well worth investing in for those in need of some investing themselves.
