Startup Pitch Deck: the Roadmap Slide [+ Examples]
Are you building a pitch deck for your startup? Make sure to include in your pitch deck a strong roadmap slide to show investors what are your future plans, step by step.
In this series of articles we show you how to create a stunning pitch deck for your startup.
The Roadmap slide explained
The roadmap slide tells investors where you are going and how is product going to evolve in the future. You can either keep it high-level (e.g. your long-term strategy) or more detailed (e.g. the pipeline of the near-future product features).
Investors do not just invest in your product as it is today. For example, you might only have developed a MVP with limited features for early-adopters while your product could be tweaked and serve a much larger customer base in the future.
We recommend to keep roadmap high-level and do not fall into specifics. Common roadmap elements can be:
- Launch of MVP (if not already launched)
- Launch of a new product / feature
- Hiring specific employees (or teams)
- Expansion in a new geography
- Partnerships with companies / institutions
What about your product pipeline?
Product pipeline can be great to add in your pitch deck, if you keep it simple though.
Indeed, your pitch deck is designed for investors, who might not be engineers. So avoid at all cost to go into too many details: your pitch deck isn’t your product manager’s weekly presentation to engineers.
If you choose to include a product pipeline, you may also include it in appendix instead of the roadmap. If you do, we recommend you make the 2 slides separate and do the following:
- Roadmap slide: high-level, long term plans, included in the core presentation
- Pipeline slide: detailed, short-term (next 24 months for example), included in appendix
For the product pipeline: instead of features, focus on the additional benefits and customer segments you might target as such. For instance, if you plan to launch a messaging feature, focus on the fact it will open new growth opportunities (e.g. network effects).