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The objetive

This small paragraph will be sent by email or chat from people in your network to investors asking to meet with you. The objective of the blurp is the same of the pitch deck: get to the first meeting.

Structure

Apply the same concepts of the pitch deck: Be extremely concise and sharp with no complexities and buzz works.

The structure I like to have is to 1) open with the one-liner and then 2) use the concepts of the “three vertebrae” slide (see below), which should be the most important and punchy ones. I like to add the LinkedIn profile of the founders, for convenience

Example 1: long version

(One liner, solution) OpenAuto is the Operating System for car dealers. We help them end to end from sourcing inventory, customers CRM, finance & accounting and also inventory financing.

(The market and the problem) Despite growing 28% CAGR with a TAM of 88B, small car dealers (88% of the market) are still underserved with no solution available. (Why now) This is changing now thanks to…

(A team of insiders) The team saw this problem when leading the “dealers loan” team at [bank name]. Our tech team built O.S. for offline businesses at Square.

(Traction, the future) We launched 8 months ago, we have 800 paying customers with a 80% retention rate. For the future, we are excited to connect car dealers, car suppliers, buyers, and financing solutions under one ecosystem.

Example 2: shorter version

OpenAuto is the end-to-end Operating System for car dealers. We help them end to end from sourcing inventory, customers CRM, finance & accounting and also inventory financing. Today there are no solution available for them despite offering a $88B TAM.

The team saw this problem when leading the “dealers loan” team at [bank name] and building software at Square for SMEs.

We launched 8 months ago, we have 800 paying customers with a 80% retention rate. Our goal is to build one centralized ecosystem serving customers end to end.

Introduction

On the first slide, simply have your company name and the “one liner” below. Nothing more. Keep it clean.

The one-liner is vital since you will repeat it all the time with investors and employees,but too many decks get it wrong. A bad one-line kills the entire pitch. The investor will most likely pass.

The one-liner is a short and simple description of what your company does in only one line. It is not your vision or mission, it is not a long description of your business. To share, I always start any conversation by reminding the other person of my “one-liner”, it becomes part of my name. I do this also with investors I have met in the past. They need it.

One of the best one-liner is from Airbnb of 2008: “Book rooms with locals, rather than hotels.“. Short but exhaustive, it is bottom-up and really tells what they do, it explains even why their solution is better than the alternatives… all in just 7 words. It’s epic.

The objective

Don’t make the investor think. She/he should understand your one-liner instantly without thinking. Your goal is to ensure the audience understands what you do in a few seconds and is therefore ready to absorb more concepts. The goal at this stage is not to impress but to explain and be aligned with the audience.

Common mistakes and misconceptions

Having a wrong “one liner” will immediatly kill the audiance’s attention and the entire presentation is jeopardized. The common mistakes I have seen are: too high level, too long, too complicated words, use of buzz words, use of high level or too technical terminology or concepts. All of this is made to impress but not to explain.

It takes several iterations to get it right and it might evolve over time. Test it with your grand parents or friends from unrelated industries at a noisy party. Some tips: be extremely simple, concise, exhaustive, and self-explanatory. Don’t use buzzwords, don’t try to be sexy or impressive, don’t use too many complicated words.

Some examples

Some short examples: “We are XYZ, we provide loans to e-commerce sellers in Indonesia”“We are XYZ1, we automative payroll for SMEs. Think about us as Gusto for Germany”, “We are XYZ2, we are building a blue collars consumer bank in Brazil, starting with salary-advance loans through factories”, “We are XYZ3, we automate tasks for accounting teams with AI starting from dental clinics”, “We are XYZ4, we run your crypto taxes. Think about us as Turbotax for crypto”, etc…

A longer examples:

OpenAuto is the Operating System for car dealers. (Short version)

(If meeting in person you could extend the version) With our software, car dealers can finally run digitally and in one system their purchasing, Sales CRM, financial tasks and also inventory financing.

We reduce their sales cycle from 4 months to 2 weeks and their costs by 30%.

Some bad examples:

Any one-liner that starts with “Reinventing“, or “Distrupting” is usually wrong. They are usually too generic and will confuse the audience rather than clarify. For example: “Reinventing construction material industry for country X” doesn’t clarify and it is confusing. Is this a marketplace for construction materials or a B2B software? It turns out the startup is actually manufacturing in-house the raw materials with some advanced R&D techniques. How would you have rephrased it?

“We are ABC, we run AI on the blockchain for EV and self driving cars” — too many buzzwods, too generic. It is hard to understand what you do.

“We are ABC3, we help decentralized communities of students invest together for the long term while playing educational games with conciusness” — too many buzzwords, too generic.

“We are ABC1, AI for Finance teams” — too generic, it dosen’t tell what you do.

“We are ABC2, the fastest growing Fintech startup” — too generic, self celebration is not belivable

Summary: 1) ensure founders have valuable and high impact insights, 2) is able to identify the most important & urgent problem for the users and 3) present it with a bottom-up approach.

Introduction

This is one of the most important and most mistaken slides. A well-crafted problem slide will uplift your deck and increase your chances of securing the first meeting.

Nevertheless, founders often don’t iterate enough on identifying the right problem and presenting it concisely.

Essentially, on this slide, investors need to understand if this problem is worth solving: 1) is this a real problem, that has the highest priority for the users and are they willing to pay enough for a solution and 2) can it solution have a massive impact for the users?

The objective

The objective of this slide is to show that the problem is worth the majority the founders’ time and some of the investors’ money. This imply that the founders, thanks to their deep domain knowledge and a good way of thinking (“modus cogitandi”), have identified the most important problem for the users.

If you indentify the wrong problem then you will build a “pain killer / nice to have” solution for the users. If you identify the right problem (the most important or the highest priority), then you will build a “medicine” solution that will actually solve the real problem.

Therefore your solution need to be the best at solving the most important problem for your users. Identifying the most important problem is really hard but it will build your only and real aunch pad.

A good question VCs should ask more often is: “How do you know and how confident are you that this specific problem is the most painful, urgent and important for your users?”.

Before drafting the deck, it is advised to spend a fair amount of time to:

1. Identify and uncover an extremely painful and vital problem where users have a desperate urgency for a solution
2. Ensure this is the highest priority problem and not a one-off or a lower-ranked problem. Often founders are directionally right but start by solving the less relevant set of problems. It will take years and funding to adjust.

It might take some effort to arrive at a good level of confidence and conciseness. It might takes years to find high clarity and go throught the “idea maze“. Ideally, this is a domain the founders have identified, worked on, and iterated before starting their startup.

Interestingly, if the right high priority problem is identified and there is clarity on the specific list of blockers that need to be solved, then the explanation of the solution will ovious and it will unfold itself without even the need to explain it.

Common errors & misconceptions

The common mistake is 1) not having identified an extremely painful and urgent problem that rank first for the users and 2) not presenting it with a bottom-up, user-centric, and concise manner.

This tendency can be represented by:

1. Not having identified the most important and urgent problem for the users
2. Focusing on the high-level gap in the market or industry (top-down) rather than the concrete user’s problem (bottom-up). For example: “Banks are the only ones that haven’t digitized their operations and the customer experience. Let’s build a digital bank!” or “Mortgages are the last non-digitized product in banking. We should create a digital mortgage startup!”.
3. Presenting the right user’s problem with high-level and generic problem statements instead of specific use cases backed by data and experience. High-level answers are often directionally correct but this format usually masks a misunderstanding of the items that matter the most and should be prioritized
4. Having identified the real problem but presenting it in a non-concise manner. Even when the real problem is identified, not being concise will dilute the impact of the problem statement and raise doubts about the founders’ clarity and knowledge on the topic.

(Coming soon)

Introduction

At the early stage specifically, the market slide is either ignored or adored by investors. The first believes the best founders find and expand market opportunities, so they focus only on the founders’ profile and the problem their are trying to solve. Michael Seible said:

“This is an area that people talk so much about. Do one hour of research, figure out where there are billions of dollars being made in the market and customers use your competitors’ products. After that… I don’t care.”

The second category of investors is obsessed with the size, growth and the dynamics of the market. For them the market comes first, the team second. Some investors even pre-select the market of interest and then seek for the suitable team. The quotes below are pretty emblematic of this approach:

“We have always focused on the market — the size of the market, the dynamics of the market, the nature of the competition — because our objective always was to build big companies. If you don’t attack a big market, it’s highly unlikely you’re ever going to build a big company” – Don Valentine

Andy Rachleff famously said: “When a great team meets a lousy market, market wins. When a lousy team meets a great market, market wins. When a great team meets a great market, something special happens”

Sarah Tavel from Benchmark focuses more on the “why now” part of the market (see slide 2.1 below) rather than its overall size or growth. She said that many people see the market as a big body of water to go after, while the most interesting markets are like currents. The current is going to pull you forward v.s. a market that doesn’t really have momentum. So she cares less about market size and more about the dynamics of change and what is this current and momentum that will pull the company and make the job easier for the founder

Today, I am really carefull in undertanding a market and I belive it is the most important factor when building a venture backed startup. Founders need to constantly review how their SAM and ancillary SAM are evolving. This is also based on a personal experience where we did not split TAM from SAM carefully, we overestimated the size of our SAM and we underestimated how adjacent markets were surprisingly evolving into larger ones.

The objective

This slide has two goals: (1) show that the size, growth and structure of the market can support the creation of outlier/generational outcomes and (2) show how founders understand the market as insiders.

Common mistakes

Many investors say the market slide is among the most important and frequently misexecuted. The reason usually is due to:

(1) not having an interesting growing market with a current (the market why-now)

(2) a clear distinction between the TAM and SAM

(3) luck of understanding of the market dynamics. The founder did not go throught the idea-maze process. In fact, most of the decks have only a top-down approach high-level data like a consultant, instead of a thoughtful bottom-up approach demonstrating the detailed understanding of the real market on the ground. A granular bottom-up approach is a great opportunity to demostrate founders’ insights, undertanding of customers’ behaviours and competirors or alternatives offers and clarity about what is most important and needs to be done first.

The slide design

To design this slide I would personally divide it into two parts, or at least have the second part as a back-up slide for yourself.

(1) On the left side, I would use a top-down approach to show the current size of the TAM and SAM and their growth (e.g. use Venn diagrams with SAM as a subset of TAM). Eventually, add in the backup the size of the top 10 largest incumbents for both your TAM and SAM.

(2) On the right side, use a bottom-up approach to show the size of the specific customer segment targeted today (the SAM today) and how this can evolve in a few years by expanding the customer segments and product lines (the SAM in a few years). Note that some investors might need to create a bottom-up calculation showing the path to $100m in Revenue. The goal is to understand which are the assumptions of the model that needs to be true in order to support the creation of $100m Revenue and beyond. I would suggest preparing it or even displaying it directly on a backup slide.

As an example, a good story line could be:
– Top down: “Last years in the sector the total Revenue/GMV/Bookings were $50B (the TAM). However, the Revenue from our initial segments in our niche market was $0.5B (today’s SAM), and it was $5B if we include all the cities/categories we plan to expand into in the next 2 years (mid term SAM).“
– Bottom up: “The way we calculated the $0.5B SAM is by taking all the 250k SMEs in our sub-segment that are already buying similar softwars paying ~$200/month. This number will then grow to 2M businesses once we expand to all cities“.

A final note, while the TAM needs to be massive and the mid/long terms SAM needs to be attractive, it is perfectly fine is the immediate SAM is not that big. The objective is to show that you undersand in details and with a bottom-up approach how is the market structured, it’s challanges and what are you realistically targetting.

Find here some examples of the market-slide.

Summary: What is the shift that is happening in the market? The current that will pull the founders into hyper growth?

Introduction

This is a renowned slide. Consider if adding it on the main deck.

Sequoia, Benchmark and many others focus a lot on the “why now”: a market shift that can reinforce the startup growth and momentum. In China investors refer to this as “fēng kǒu” and it was said that:

“Even a pig can fly as long as the wind is strong” – Lei Jun, founder of Xiaomi

Sarah Tavel from Benchmark also focuses more on the “why now” rather than its overall size or growth. She explains that:

“Many people see the market as a big body of water to go after, while the most interesting markets are like currents. The current is going to pull you forward v.s. a market that doesn’t really have momentum. So I care less about market size and more about the dynamics of change and what is this current and momentum that will pull the company and make the job easier for the founder

On the contrary, Michaele Seibel did not include this slide in his table of contents (see min. 4:20 here), instead he added a slide called “unique insights” (see slide 6 above) to put emphasis on the team’s understanding of the problem and the domain. I feel that, for an early stage startup, it is fine to remove the “why now” slide from the main deck in order to keep the focus on the problem and the team’s understanding of it (product-market fit and founders-market fit). Nevertheless, prepare an answer since investors will seek for this information.

The objective

The goal of this slide is to show that there an additional reason why companies in your market deserve to be financed at scale and that the market is able to pull and help the founders to scale for several years.

Common mistakes

Having this “current” is not obvious. It is hard to identify and many founders might not find it or have it. Don’t artifically create this slide just to have it in the deck.

Some examples:

1. A techological shift – Uber had a perfect timing or “why now”. The advent of the mobile phone was a strong current for them
2. A technological shift – The current played a role also on Instacart (2012) v.s. Webvan (1996)
3. A comparison with another market – To share a personal experience, in 2012 in Lazada we had a slide comparing the inflection point of e-commerce in China, with its drivers, and how Southeast Asia was now reaching this same point in each of them
4. A shift in demand – I have seen a deck that was explaining an interesting shift in demand. The startup was raising for their WhatsApp commerce tools. Their slide was showing retail in the 80s with an image of a brick & mortar shop, in the ‘00s with an image of Amazon, and in ’20 with WhatsApp. They displayed data to support this trend
5. A governament or regulator shift – an example could be EV in China, given the magnitudes of investments and incetives, or Primary homes development in several Asian countries given its astonishing backlogs in the supply of new homes finally addressed now thanks to recent public investmetns and incentives and the recent fast growing GDP per capita
6. Lastly, a recent technological and demand shift can be the demand for services to support AI companies (eg. data centers, chips, quality data to train models, etc…)

Introduction

In the pitch deck display only your “one metric”, eventually a second metric. To share, in my previous startup I used to show the trend in the GMV and in the payback period of the CAC, given that it was performing well. The retention rate could be a good a second metric.

The objective

As discussed, at the initial stage the goal of the intro deck is to trigger the investor to request the first meeting with you with Fomo. Therefore keep the reader laser focused on one or two metrics that matters the most and that are also growing.

Common mistakes

First, refrain yourself from displaing too many metrics in this occasion. It will only defocus the investor and your deck will be less effective. You will discuss the other metrics in the next meetings when the investor will analyze your data room to evaluate if there are some signs of genuine product market fit and if the growth can be sustained.

Second, selecting the wrong “one metric” can indicate that founders don’t have clarity of what is relevant and what moves the needle. Therefore, don’t select vanity metrics or non core metrics. To elaborate, Sarah Tavel explained how MAU or DAU/MAU are not the right “one metric” to focus on for social or consumer app. In the early days of Pinterest the leading indicator or “one metric”: was the number of pints executed, for Facebook it was the number of friends added right after registration. In a marketplace, GMV is definitly a good “one metric”.

There is no need to over complicate this. The simpler the better.

The slide design

To design this slide, simply add a chart for each metric. Keep the design simple and concise as usual.

N.B. I have seen decks stating that product-market fit is achieved. I would avoid such a statement: it might appear naive or pretentious. Instead, control your founder’s enthusiasm, in this slide at least, and just let the data talk and show your progress.

Introduction

Often VCs ask themselves this optimistic question:

“If everything goes right, how big can it become?”

Their dilemma is not if your company is too risky but, on the contrary, if it is not risky enough and therefore not ambitious enough.

This is why I like to keep the future slide in the first pitch deck. I want to separate the present from the future and ensure investors understand immediately how our ambition can be implemented in the future. Sequoia included a slide named: “Vision: if all goes well, what will you have built in five years?” (here) and Aaron Harris has a slide named “Future growth” (here) where he talks about the market and the future. On the other side, Michel Seibel doesn’t include this slide in his table of contents (here at the min 4:18) probably to reinforce the focus on the “team and its unique insights” and on the “problem and solution”.

Please note that I personally like to have this slide in the deck but I would say check what fits best your storyline and narrative. If you decide not to include it, for simplicity and focus, then be prepared to discuss this topic.

The objective

With this slide you can show investors that (i) your team is ambitious and wants to build a generationally large company and most importantly (ii) what your plan is and especially the thinking process behind it.

In your plan you will need to explain how you intend to find product market fit and then how you plan to scale. With the sentence “think big, act small” Khosla Ventures indicates the importance of building the product like an artisan – starting small by focusing on the craft and on the details of the product and customers’ needs – and at the same time you need to have a big view of the future.

Note that you could add in this slide the bottom-up calculation of the path to $100 mil. in revenue – this is for those investors who need to understand how your input metrics need to evolve and if that is feasible, as discussed also in the slide 3: “The market”.

Common mistakes and misconceptions

Some comon erros is to (1) talk too much about the aspirational vision, (2) present a plan that is too high-level and (3) not concrete, actionable, and well supported. This slide is not a high-level and creative brainstorming session. It’s a concrete optimistic plan that can be implemented soon.

The misconception is to pitch like the actor of Adam Neumann in the WeWork movie: big buzz words, a vision larger than life but without a rational, thoughful and actional plan.

The slide design

I like to use a tinmeline diagram and devide it in phases.

To use the example 1 from blurb, the phases could be:

• Phase 1: build the first version of the operating system for car dealers
• Phase 2: add functionalities: CRM, automation for finance tasks, etc…
• Phase 3: add the marketplace to source cars and spare parts
• Phase 4: build the lending marketplace to allow car dealers and buyers to access credit

Eventually, you could also add a bottom-up calculation of the incremental revenue generated in each phase.

Introduction

This is one of the most important slides and frequently misunderstood. This slide needs to impress and increase the heartbeat of the investor.

Especially at the seed and series A stage, this slide is not about how smart the team is and how many nice logos it has but how much the team fits this problem/solution and market. This slide is only about founder-market fit. It is about being the right team, not the smartest team. Therefore, if this team have the insights and skills for this specific problem v.s. another team of smart generalists made of Google or OpenAI engineers, Stanford MBAs, or bankers and consultants. And second, are those insights valuable and able to have a large impact.

Fundamentally the most important skills a founders need in the early stage are knowing how to code and knowing secrets (or insights) about a specific market. I would say having secrets is more important since there is a significantly higher number of coders compared to people having impactful secrets. Usually, these secrets are discovered from a previous personal or professional experience and from talking to a lot of users in person. Having secrets or insights is an unfair advantage.

Secondly, this slide is also about having secrets (insights) that are high-impact and that can lead to outliers outcomes. Often this is not the case and founders don’t reflect enought on this point.

Potentially you could split it in two parts or two slides: one about the team fit with this insight and market and one about how the insights are high impact and can unlock outliers outcomes.

The objective

The goal of this slide is to simply show investors that (1) this team has autentic and in-depth insights specific to this problem and market with the specific skill sets to address them and (2) that these insights are high impact and high priority.

This slide is about having this unfair advantage: (1) t’s about being the right team and not the smartest team and (2) having insights that are relevant and able to lead to outliers outcomes.

Great investors focus a lot on these two points.

These needs to emerge and pop-up instantly from the slide and generate a “wow effect”.

The slide design

Note that the team-slide will be different from the Seed/A and series B+ deck. The former is about the team insights and how important they are. The latter is about S-team past experience in scaling into large organizations and financials.

So, at the early stage, (a) the subject line of the slide should be centered around the insights/secrets you have or/and about your background that make you an insiders. The common error is the subject line: “We are second time founders with years of experience in the most succesful tech companies“. This will present you as a really smart team but not as the right team for this specific problem and market. Also, it is a high level stategment, and therefore it dosen’t transfer the message well, and it dosen’t connect with the business you are building. Instead, be specific and list immedialty the main point. For example, to share the headline we used in my first startup that initially was offering loans to e-commerce sellers: “We have built the largest e-commerce in the region. We know our sellers need credit lines, urgently. In addition, we already know how they need them“. This is specific and instantly shows the founder-market fit.

(b) To design the rest of the slide, continue to focus only on the founder-market fit. First, you should list the logos and name of the companies the founder worked but the less space you take the better. Allocate the majority of space available in the slide to explain what have you done specifically in your previous company to acquire the required insights and skills for you current startups and why these insights are the right ones to unlock outliers outcomes. Be specific. To use the above example above, you could write the following below one of the founder’s picture: “While heading the commercial division of Lazada and acquiring ~100,000 sellers, we saw how their top 2 problems is the access to credit. We started to help them by connecting with banks (not scalable) or even personally lending funds to them.” Focus the reader attention only on your specific insights.

N.B.

If you are at the pre-seed and seed stage investors will try to understand also if (1) this team will stick together during the hard times – ideally you worked together in the past. Other investors might also look for (2) a spark or something exceptional in the founders’ past, even if unrelated to your startup.

Introduction

This slide is absent in many decks somehow. Khosla Ventures says to “Finish with a flourish!” (see slide 56 in their deck) and YC, during the training for the demo day, suggests founders to include this slide and calls it the “three vertebrae” slide.

This is a simple slide to present the 3 most important points about your story. The 3 things you want the investor to remember about you.

The objective

This slide is to ensure that your strengths are summarized and pushed all together to the investor who is reading your deck. The goal is to generate FOMO and have the investor snap and request immediately the first meeting with you.

It’s an important slide to have.

The slide design

To design this slide simply have your one-liner at the top and below the three bullet points. The font in big size.

Simply have your company name, the one-liner and your contact details (yes, some founders forget them).

Introduction

Transparency is appreciated. Don’t defame and denigrate your competitors, it is counterproductive and it usually backfires. You only need to show the differences and whether your business positioning is superior and fits the thesis and preferences of the investor you want to partner with.

The differences can be about distinct segments of customers (e.g. SMEs vs Enterprise, premium vs econony customers, B2C and B2B, etc…) or product lines (e.g. list down all the products existing in your space and show that you have a wider offer or that you focus on the most relevant ones while your competitor doesn’t). Great to add an explenation of why your positioning is superior.

The objective

The goal is to show that you are focusing on the right items while your competitors might be off track and will be penalized in the near future.

Common mistakes

Again, don’t defame. Limit yourself to present the differences with your competitors and what is the thinking process you had to adopt a different approach.

I have seen founders using this slide to gossip or even spread fake news. Don’t do that. It will make you become an unpleasent person not to partner with.

The slide design

To design this slide you can use a simple matrix with each player, including yourself, in the columns and each factor in the rows.

Introduction

Investors always talk about the defensible position or the sustained competitive advantage. Warren Buffet famously said that:

“The key to investing is […] determining the competitive advantage of any given company and, above all, the durability of that advantage.”

“In a business, I look for economic castles protected by unbreachable moats”.

Bill Gurley lists the “moat” as the first point in his famous essay “All revenue is not created equally” and wrote:

By far, the most critical characteristic that separates high multiple companies from low multiple companies is competitive advantage.

Growth-stage investors should invest only in startups with a competitive advantage that is defensible and sustainable over time. Seed-stage investors don’t require it but some might need to understand what it could be and how to achieve it.

Therefore, if you are talking to seed investors you don’t need a slide dedicated to this topic – keep the investors focused on the first 6 or 7 slides. However, founders should understand this concept and have a compelling and concise answer ready.

The objective

The (1) first goal of this slide is for the team and BoD to actually understand where and how to build a defensible position.

Secondly, when raising new capital (2) reassure external investors that founders have a clear and realistic plan they buy in. Fundamentally investors are paranoid that a new agile startup or a big tech company could copy the product, invest in talent, and subsidize prices to leap-frog their portfolio company.
These are valid concerns for later-stage startups in the growth stage. However, good to keep this in mind at the early stage when building the foundations of the company.

Some examples

Some examples of sustainable competitive advantages – besides the usual IP, branding, and economy of scale, a lower cost structure – could be:
1) a complicated and time-consuming distribution. E.g. NerdWallet was the first mover in SEO for financial topic. Today it dominates all on high-value competitive keywords. It might not be worth for a new entrant to compete: it will take 5-10 years of work and investments to maybe rank on the second or third position
2) or a granular distribution channel that is complicated to build. E.g. In Indonesia, a successful retail startup digitized a large network of offline agents in rural areas and built a low-cost logistic network. It would be hard and slow for Amazon to build this sales and logistic network efficiently
3) a superior conversion rate that is hard to emulate is another moat. E.g. PolicyBazaar in India is able to sell insurance product with a ~5x higher conversion rate thanks to their incredibly advanced call-center technology and product. The higher conversion rate allows them to over-pay in digital marketing and TV advertising and monopolize the entire distribution of insurance products in the country, while being the only profitable player.
4) build an ecosystem that is hard to repliace. Shopify’s e-commerce platform and app ecosystem have created high switching costs for merchants and high barriers to entry for new players. Same for Alibaba with his all-in-one ecosystem of e-commerce, marketing platform (Alimama), logistic platform, payment and lending to merchants (Alipay), etc…
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(Coming soon)

(Coming soon)

This is a simple slide. Explain how much money you need to achieve which milestones and how would you allocate the funds.

I personally prefer not to add this slide and explain these concepts during the first call.

(Coming soon)

“Stories, not facts lure investors!”

1. Tell the story like a founder, not like a COO. Don’t pitch only what you have built, pitch why your company will own the future
2. Position your story in an area of interest. E.g. Don’t position your company as a media company or co-working space if these verticals are no longer of interest
3. The slide headline is always the summary or description of the slide. It is not a title. It is not “The team”, “The market”, etc… Use statemetns not captions in the headline of the slide (eg. “sales autolook” vs. “sales are growing 20% MoM”). One line per headline
4. One concept per slide. The concept is indicated in the headline
5. Make the slide readable in 5 secs. No extra words, no extra colors, lines, boxes, etc..
6. Inside the slides use graphs rather than texts
7. Bottom-up forecasts for market size are usually more appealing than top-down ones
8. Bottom-up > Top-down. In everything you do (eg. forecast, market dynamics, product dev., what users need, etc…)
9. No autocelebration, show magnitudes with numbers. “We are having exponential growth” and “we are growing 50% MoM” have opposite effects
10. Avoid declarations without proof or validation

There are too many concise and short deck templates online, I mainly like the one from Sequoia and YC.

I recommend readying this document of Khosla Ventures due to its different format and this exhaustive video by Michael Seibel. It’s epic, watch it.

(Coming soon)

This is a great example. The deck is concise with a clean look.

Their “one liner” is epic!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FlMXpFiyBwkxU5TGH48dfyK8ZRGO7xfh/view

I really like the explenation of the problem. Using only a picture to explain it (slide 2) was a good hack.

Great to see the “why now” slide. The competitor slide is really simple and effective.

https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/dropboxs-original-pitch-deck/251815932

I like the Market size slide and slide 8 to show how the product works.

https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/uber-pitch-deck-2008/79075025