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• The process by which founders pitch to venture capitalists for money has been upended by the pandemic.
• As pitching takes place via Zoom, founders are turning to platforms like cloud productivity startup Notion and a Zoom alternative called Loom to evolve the pitching process and set themselves apart from the competition.
• "They can do it [pitch] in a much more dynamic way that can allow investors and customers really get to know them faster and in a more effortless way," says Maren Bannon, founding partner of January Ventures. 
• Bannon shares her five tips for pitching investors without a pitch deck.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

COVID-19 has upended the established process by which founders go to venture capitalists and ask for money.

It can be tough for founders to make it into a meeting room with VCs, but the pandemic has made it even tougher for early-stage founders to make an impression. Investors, conventionally, are reluctant to make new bets without the benefit of in-person relationship building. 

"In a virtual world, there are a lot more nuances to getting it right," says Maren Bannon, a founding partner at January Ventures, an early-stage VC firm focusing on scalable enterprise software startups with founders from diverse backgrounds. 

"Startups typically pitch with a PowerPoint deck, and I think it feels very 1990s," she says. "It's a static one-dimensional type of deck."

Since the start of the pandemic, Bannon has started to see a lot more founders pitching without a pitch deck, largely using alternative formats like Notion and Loom to get the attention of investors. 

Notion is a productivity startup billed as a competitor to Google Drive and Microsoft Office. Its cloud software is designed to help remote teams work effectively, but the platform also offers an interactive and dynamic way to pitch investors. 

Combined messaging and video tool Loom is also designed to improve remote communication by making it easier to explain complex ideas — or pitch — online.

"I'm seeing a lot more startups use those tools to actually fundraise. And they can do it in a much more dynamic way that can allow investors and customers really get to know them faster and in a more effortless way," says Bannon.

Here are Bannon's top 5 tips for pitching VCs without a pitch deck:

1. Play to your strengths as a founder

While pitch decks work for some founders, for others a different format may sell their vision better. 

"PowerPoint decks favor a certain profile of a founder," says Bannon. "I think a very consultant-banker type of founder can really put together a nice looking pitch deck, but I don't think it necessarily means that you're going to build a great company."

Using an alternative format can help you to flag some of the key skills that investors are looking for. 

"You can really pick the format that you're best at," says Bannon. "A founder who can communicate really well, verbally and also in their writing, is a really powerful sign and that's also something you don't get from just looking at a deck."

2. Make your pitch clear

The advantage of using a platform like Notion or Loom is that you can present the core information in a clear, concise way, but also give investors the option to delve into the detail.

"I think having it be very concise and well-organized is important," says Bannon. "What I liked about the Notion format was just that I had the ability to skim it, understand it at a high level, but also the ability to double click on things and go much more in-depth and see the product demo and get into more of the nuances of the business in a really efficient way."

3. Demo your product 

Pitch decks are one-dimensional, which makes it tricky to include product demos in your pitch. But, video platforms such as Loom make it possible to explain exactly what your startup does to investors. 

"The other thing I love is when I see a product demo," says Bannon. "Some startups will have an overview and then really focus on the product demo part of it, so you can see it and experience it."

She adds: "There's so much you glean from that audio of hearing them articulate it."

4. Remember the fundamentals are the same

"Having the kind of key areas of the problem, the solution, what your product and traction are, your team, competition, and why now, are some of the key elements that you would want to see in a pitch regardless of format," says Bannon. 

Ultimately, the purpose of the pitch deck is to sell your product to an investor, so focus on putting all the key information at their fingertips. 

This is what helped to convince January Ventures to invest in one startup that pitched via Notion, says Bannon: "It was so organized that it basically had everything that I needed to make a decision in one place."

5. Maximize your time and resources

Pitching can be difficult and time-consuming, especially for early-stage startups. By reducing the time and money spent on the pitching process you can network more widely with potential investors.

"For the startup [that pitched using Notion], it was probably efficient because they didn't have to have a deck," says Bannon. "They basically just put all of the information into this one document and it was mostly text. So they weren't having to hire pitch designers."

She adds: "If you're amazing at building product and a VC says 'pitch however is best', maybe wasting the time on the deck is a little bit of a consulting exercise and that may not be best."

If you're a founder or startup who has raising new funding during the pandemic without a pitch deck and would like to share the story, please email the author Amy Borrett at aborrett@businessinsider.com.

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