Business plans and pitch decks

Before the big meeting

An angel investor (a person who invests their own money in young companies) wants to hear about Hyper Shards 2. First, Kai and Remy write a business plan: a document that answers seven questions.

• Problem: what do players want that they can't get?
• Players: who are they, and how many?
• Game: what are we making?
• How it earns: the business model.
• Costs: what we will spend, month by month.
• Team: who does what.
• Plan: goals and dates.

Banks, grant judges and publishers ask for the same answers.

A 10-slide pitch deck

A pitch deck is a short slideshow that tells the plan as a story. Guy Kawasaki, an early Apple marketer who became an investor, made the 10/20/30 rule famous: 10 slides, 20 minutes, and no text smaller than 30 point. A common outline:

• 1. Title: studio name and one sentence
• 2. The problem
• 3. Our game, the solution
• 4. Players and how many there are
• 5. Traction: proof that players like it
• 6. Business model
• 7. Competition
• 8. Team
• 9. Money: costs and forecast
• 10. The ask: how much, and what for

The numbers investors ask for

• TractionInstalls, daily and monthly players, and how fast they grow. Example: 40,000 installs and 6,000 monthly players.
• RetentionOf the players who install on one day, how many come back on day 1, 7 and 30. It shows players really like the game.
• RevenueMoney per month, ARPU (revenue ÷ players), and LTV (what one player brings in) compared with what a player costs to get.
• Burn and runwayHow fast cash goes out, and how many months it lasts (the Financials lesson does the maths).

Investors back numbers, not just ideas. The last slide, the ask, turns them into a request: how much money, what it pays for, and which milestone it reaches, like "Hyper Shards 2 demo at Steam Next Fest". All numbers here are made-up examples.

Tell the story honestly

A good pitch is a story: players have a problem, our game solves it, here is the proof, and here is what the money will do. Honest means:

• Use real numbers with their real names. Installs are not players.
• Show the bad numbers too, with what you learned and changed.
• Label guesses as forecasts, and explain how you made them.

Before paying, investors check everything in a step called due diligence. Misleading investors can break the law, and it ruins trust for good.

Practise, and bring a parent

Practise out loud with a timer. Then ask a parent to play a tough investor: "What if a big studio copies you?" "Why will players stay?" Write down every question you couldn't answer, and improve the plan. Also prepare an elevator pitch: the whole idea in 30 seconds.

A parent or adult partner joins every real investor meeting, call and email. An investment is a legal contract, and only an adult can sign for the company. It is also basic safety: you never discuss money with a stranger alone. Real investors expect this.

Next: where the money comes from

A plan and a deck are tools, not goals. The same plan works for an angel investor, a venture capital firm, a publisher, a grant or a Kickstarter page (Stage 10 covers the last three). Next: raising money from investors, and what it costs the studio.

Bolt says: Short decks win. If a slide needs a whole paragraph, it probably needs a better number or picture instead.