An investor presentation is, arguably, one of the most important material for a Life Science company. With a longer time to market compared to companies in other industries, in order to survive, most Life Science companies rely on the financial support of investors to fuel their development programs. In order to woo the next potential investors, many members of the management team have to make a great effort to constantly meet potential investors to get them onboard and invest in their company.
With plentiful of presentations under our belt, we thought to share some of our best tips and advice on how to make a pitch work for potential Life Science investors.
Here are our 10 top tips.
1. Define your goals and needs. One of the main things that you should define before creating a presentation is what you would like to accomplish with your presentation e.g. raise x amount of money to advance the lead program to phase 2b. This might be done by analyzing your internal resources and determining what the company needs to reach the next big milestone.
2. Must-have slides to attract your next collaborator or investor. As time is a limiting resource and you would like to provide the information that matters the most to your potential investor, we have compiled a catalogue of content slides that should be included in your slide deck.
- Executive summary. Here you describe the company, lead development program and/or main assets, and the company’s goal. This slide(s) is recommended to be created as one of the last steps of your whole presentation.
- This slide could include general information of the company such as location, founders, if it’s a project, private or publicly-listed company, latest development stage and focused indications, mission and a highlight or two about the company’s progress (e.g. recent patent approval in the US or positive results in a preclinical disease model showing the desired effects).
- Technological innovation and how it closes gaps of current unmet medical/clinical needs. You can start by providing a brief background of the pursued indication and listing the main unmet medical needs e.g. current treatments are expensive, have serious side effects, are invasive, etc. You can then present what your technical innovation is and mention its technical strengths and commercial potential. Note: in order to avoid massive amounts of text, make sure to simplify some of the information in the form of figures, tables bullet points, etc.
- Data provides credibility. Key results from studies to support the efficacy or safety of your innovation is very important as it provides crucial information to investors about the value of your innovation. Make sure to provide some data (in table, graph, etc.) and summarize in bullet points or a sentence what the main conclusion is.
- Market size, potential and opportunity. Remember that many investors constantly have “return of investment” in the back of their minds, therefore you can provide a sense of the potential of the company’s assets by providing numerical estimations. These slides should contain information about the market potential of the target patient population as well as estimations of the market opportunity in specific geographical areas. To provide relevance to the presented numbers a benchmark to market sales of comparable products as well as a benchmark to the whole market size and growth can be presented. Also, from our experience, presenting comparable financial deals that other peers have accomplished in the same space is very interesting.
- Slide about competition. An overview of the competitive landscape or a benchmark of your innovation(s) to current competitors could provide valuable information to your potential investor about the current positioning of your innovation. Information about the competition can provide the potential investor a sense of your business strategy e.g. whether you are pursuing a crowded market with a unique product or you are a pioneer in an untapped market.
- Intellectual property (IP), regulatory environment and development timelines. Intellectual property is very important as it guarantees that you are doing something unique and you can fence off competition through a limited period of time. You can also provide information about the regulatory environment as depending on the nature of your innovation, exclusivity granted by regulatory agencies can fence off competition for longer periods of time compared to your existing IP portfolio. Finally, an investor must know what you are planning to do with money to be raised and this can be done by providing a development timeline or plan.
- Company’s aim/goal and budget. Remember the first tip that I gave you? Well, now that you have presented how great your company and innovation is as well as the potential opportunities, you can tell the potential investor what your aim is to get out of the meeting with them (e.g. need investment of x amount of money to complete a phase 1b study to resume discussions with a Big Pharma potential collaborator). You should also present a budget/use of proceeds from the investment. Note: If you have a good understanding about the development plan and key activities that needs to be performed, you should be able to translate this information to budgetary means. If you need help, make sure to reach out to necessary service providers or benchmark costs.
- Slide about team. In this slide you can present the management team as well as the Members of the Board and/or Scientific Advisory. You can also write a very short summary of their relevant experience or verbally describe it during the presentation.
- Other slides. Depending on the time that you have available and the aim of the meeting, you can add additional slides to this core slide deck.
3. Work on a graphical profile. Many times, the colors, logo and design of a company presentation can build an image of a company in the target audience’s head. Whether it is to show professionalism or a distinguished identity of your company, these factors could work in favor of your company’s brand. The brand along with the uniqueness of your innovation could form an impression that would make it easier for your potential investor to remember you next time you contact them or when they read news about your company.
4. Be precise and concise. When you are nearly done with your presentation, make sure to run the ‘Spelling and Grammar’ function in PowerPoint, Keynote or whichever program you are using. Also, make sure that you use the same spelling of words, acronyms and standards throughout the document. A common example is that in Europe, commas (,) are used to separate decimals from integer numbers and dots (.) are used to separate thousands. However, this is the complete opposite in other countries (e.g. US) and many people make the common mistake of editing their slides to fit American investors but forget to change this in all of their numbers.
5. Highlight very important information. You can highlight the most important information or keywords in bold. You can also add action titles to each slide if that is the main message that you want to convey to your target audience.
6. Time is gold. This might be your only chance to impress a potential investor, so make sure to be prepared and plan out the time for your presentation. Practice or present it to your colleague(s), especially if you are pitching in front of a larger audience as running out of time could look unprofessional.
7. A figure, graph or table is worth a thousand words. In your presentation, placing information in a figure, graph or table can provide more legible information to the reader instead of a bulk of text. Make sure to add some bullet points of the main conclusions that you would like your reader to get out of that figure, graph or table as sometimes, the potential investor would be interested in getting a copy of your presentation. This would allow the reader to understand the presented information when you are not around.
8. Common understanding and trust. We understand that the potential and value of your innovation is huge, but it is worth remembering that some investors are familiar with the industry and they might know what a reasonable ballpark number is for the market size estimation and potential peak sales. Try to be reasonable with the numbers that you present as this could provide the vibes that you could be a reliable partner.
9. Flexible presentation. The presentation will look different depending on the stakeholder or event where you are presenting. From our experience, an efficient way to create presentations for different situations is to first create a large and extensive presentation and use this version to pick and choose slides to create additional simple presentations such as a non-confidential version of the presentation or a keynote-style type of presentation.
10. Appendix. Depending on the nature of the meeting, keep technical data in the appendix. However, if this data is confidential, make sure to get the proper confidential agreement in place before you present such data.
Hope these tips are helpful in creating or improving your own investor presentation. At MSC, we have a lot of experience in creating investor presentations for different life science companies. Our expertise varies from creating a clean and slick graphical profile to business-related content that truly portrays the potential value that the company’s innovation bear. If you want to talk more, feel free to contact us at msc@monocl.com.
By: Paola Jo, Senior Business Analyst
