The Most Common Problem Slide in Your Pitch Deck

The first principle is easy. You need to provide how your company is different from everyone else.

Most companies can get this far. This comes primarily in a mix of two flavours:

(1) How our solution is different (unique insight) or

(2) How our execution is different (unfair advantage).

Recommendation: Go beyond the easy step.

• Founders lose credibility because they purposely or inadvertently downplay their competitors.
• Spend the time thinking deeply about your unique insights and unfair advantages. It’s very possible you don’t have it. This step will not only help you raise, but also increase your chances of building a successful startup.
• Think and communicate in terms of trade-offs. Your competitors are not dumb. Why did they choose one model over another? What are the trade-offs? And why did you choose this trade-off that positions you to win. It needs to relate back to your core messages.

• Founders "straw-man" competitors, replacing the product of competitors with more convenient ones from which to differentiate.
• Excluding real competitors, and only share competitors that are easy to differentiate.
• This happens when they are living in denial, and even claim that they don't have any competitors, which is always an illusion.