Raising money is an inevitable requirement of all hedge funds and is of critical importance. However, investing in your hedge fund is not of the same importance to the family offices and other private investors that you will likely be targeting. Therefore, having a concise hedge fund pitch deck that showcases returns, your approach, and management is vital to getting any type of investment. This article provides information about what a hedge fund pitch deck is and how to properly formulate once to raise money.

A hedge fund pitch deck is quite a bit different than a standard ‘Startup pitch deck’. Most investors will look for things like the problem you are solving, your approach, and financial projections. For a hedge fund, most savvy investors will want to understand your investment method, team responsible for managing it, and performance so far. Most investors are unpersuaded by anything other than tangible metrics and a reasonable approach. Therefore, it is better to only use graphs, charts, and other imagery to illustrate information more effectively.

This section introduces the approach that your fund takes to generating a return. For instance, you may focus on emerging markets fixed income, options trading strategies, black box trading, specialty financing, precious metals, or the thousands of other hedge fund strategies on the market. You do not need to provide every detail of your strategy, but you should properly inform prospective investors regarding what asset classes and types that your fund is investing in so that they have a sufficient understanding of a risk/reward ratio.

Related: Avoid these 7 Pitch Deck Mistakes

The bios of the fund managers are critical and the more capital markets intensive the business, the more important it is. Many sophisticated trading operations have very experienced teams of not only finance professionals, but also technology and support staff. The fund partners generally have a background that conveys a proven track record for performance not only at the existing fund, but prior funds that they have worked for and ideally larger companies that have an established reputation. However, names and credentials alone are not substantial – performance metrics that are reasonably replicable are perhaps the most indicative sign of a promising fund.

The performance metrics associated with hedge funds are generally organized in a way that is easily digestible to most investors. In other words, providing key metrics such as return on investment for the past year, three years, and since inception. Some funds may also provide an analysis of how much a nominal investment would be worth that year if it where invested at the fund inception, generally for less sophisticated investors. Key ratios for specific industry such as capital at risk are also presented as they related to the specific investment classification.

Related: Approaching Investors for Capital