What's Your Problem?

Your Pitch

Your pitch needs a narrative as its central pillar. That narrative should be relevant
to your business and persuasive to investors. The problem, however, is
determining the foundation on which to build your solution, its value proposition,
and its market strategy. You must understand the reason your business exists.

Your Pitch

Einstein himself said it: you need to define the problem before you can have any
hope of finding a solution. In a pitch deck, you define the problem your business
solves on a problem slide, which is a part of the business problem and solution
section.

If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and five minutes resolving it.

Problem Slide

At its core, what is a problem slide?

The primary goal of the problem slide is to show the essence and magnitude of
the problem experienced by your customers. The problem should be real,
concerning, and relevant to the industry in which your business operates. Its
existence and impact must be supported by statistical and empirical evidence.

If you can confidently forecast that the problem will become more of a problem in
the future, even better.

What problem does your business solve? Let’s find out!

problem slide: the slide in your pitch
presentation where you tell why your business is needed

What problem am I solving?

As with anything perfectly executed, preparation is your first step in presenting the problem.

Obviously, you understand that there is a prevalent problem in your industry. Before you can
present the problem, it is crucial to research and ultimately understand that problem in as much
depth as possible.

Achieving such an understanding is a five-step process that involves answering several
questions:

●Establish the need for the solution:

What problem does your business solve?

●List the obstacles your customers face:

How can they achieve their desired outcome?

●Study the scope of the problem:

How many are affected? How are they affected?

●Define your market and target audience: Who will benefit from the solution?

●Understand how existing solutions fail:

How is your solution superior?

Methods for identifying customer problems

There are several ways to gain insight into this research:

●Share an online poll to reach a broad audience cohort.

●Ask willing customers, peers, and community
members about their pain points.

●If you already have an MVP, collect user feedback.

●Conduct thorough market research through competitor analysis.

By identifying underlying problems that need to be solved business ideas, you’re
in a position to outline how the solution addresses those obstacles, solves
problems, and makes customer lives easier.

minimum viable product

(MVP): a product with enough features to attract early-adopter customers and validate a product idea early in the product development cycle.

Problem or Opportunity?

In the problem solving idea for a startup, one entrepreneur – a vegan restaurant
chain – presented their problem as an opportunity. This opportunity was based on
the growing popularity of vegan food with no adequate supply, signalling an
outspoken market demand. The ambition is clear in this startup idea of the
problem to solve: take advantage of a vast market by filling the gap for a
vegan-based chain in the UK to become a category leader.

At this point, you’re ready to create your problem slide.

Problem or Opportunity? An Example

This person
framed their
problem slide as a
“Solution Slide”

How to create a compelling problem slide

After completing research, your job is to set the scene. To do this, you’ll need to
identify an existing global problem that your solution fixes and draw focus onto it.
Start by defining a single, key statement, then support it with two prevalent pain
points.

Ask yourself: What problem does my business solve?

How to create a compelling problem slide

When you’re creating your pitch deck, you can take inspiration from the following
problem solving startup ideas:

●Illustration of your problem should be backed up by facts.

●Real use cases and actual quotes develop trust and relatability in an audience.

●Outward expression of the prominence of the problem and how it’ll grow is
important.

●Graphs and diagrams are essential design components for grabbing an audience’s attention.

The problem you present should be based only on facts. It must be a real situation that is
currently happening – something an audience feels, understands, and relates to.

pitch deck: another term for slides used to pitch your business plan

How to create a compelling problem slide

There are only two ways in which you can assert facts in a problem slide. The first
is achieved through quantitative, statistical data, whether it’s the percentage of
participants who report feeling a problem or an industry-specific figure shedding
light on problem.

But words are often not enough. The second way to visualize facts and statistics is by placing them on a graph. It becomes easier to compare statistics when they are visualized in this way.

How to create a compelling problem slide: Example

This example is lifted from the pitch deck of a dental app, and it works. The image
opens with a global issue, outlining how prevalent tooth decay is in children.

Beautifully, this problem slide
then offers reasons for the
problem in the form of visualized,
statistic-based facts. Minimal,
easy to understand, and
relatable. The problem narrative
is made coherent in a few dozen
words and a single image.

What to avoid when creating a compelling problem slide

With comprehensive research backing you up, it’s relatively easy to prove your problem
based on the elements we’ve provided. That said, knowing how to present a problem
slide is only half the fight.

The other half is knowing how not to present a problem slide.

●Do not address a problem that is too small or too complex.

●Do not address a problem in too many words or with too much technical jargon.

●Do not address too many problems on the same slide.

The problem must be an acute, global issue faced by a wide enough cohort of the
population to be relevant. It must also be a recurring problem that will bring your
customers to you over and over to solve. If not, investors will recognize that there is
simply not enough demand for the solution.

What to avoid when creating a compelling problem slide

Similarly, impact is lessened when too many problems are addressed. Each
problem is diluted as you add more. Your message should be strong and simple.
The business problem and solution section of a pitch deck should have an impact
on readers.

The design of your problem slide is key.

With too many words or too much technical jargon, your problem slide becomes
too busy and the message gets lost. Conciseness is essential for persuasion.

What to avoid when creating a compelling problem slide:
Example

In this problem solving startup idea from Hologram , the problem is difficult to
grasp. Connectivity and devices of the future are both broad categories.
Furthermore, supporting
statements could be backed
up with statistical evidence.
The designer should have
included information such as
the number of devices that
were lost due to connectivity
loss, specifics around
import-export complications,
or downtime statistics.

More examples

This example
clearly outlines a
specific problem.
Its layout showcases
different aspects of
the problem, and
each point is
supported by a
statistic.

More examples

This striking example
proves that
minimalism makes
maximum impact. The
designer has focused
on just one issue,
getting their message
across in just two
sentences… even
without statistical
evidence.

Does your pitch not gain enough traction?

The issue could be that you’re not researching the problem enough. Perhaps
you’re addressing too many problems, you’re making the problem slide too busy
and complicated, or you’re not designing slides with graphs and charts to visualize
the problem. You’re not taking problems that need solving business ideas into
account.

A problem slide is the starting point for your business narrative, and the narrative
is a central pillar of your business’ potential.

Think about it: What problem does your business solve?