31–40 of 48 posts
"We use SEO to concentrate niche product conversions on our website." Seems briefer, more honest, and it's more obvious why that would make money. The people who ended up buying a creative stuff were going to do it anyway, and the people who were going to sell it do so slightly more often. Now they do it on your website, because a search led them there! The "Route to Market" slide changes are pretty funny. You're mic…
All this tells me is that a slide deck matters little, if at all. There's hardly anything on these slides except some marketing bs. None of the graphs even show important metrics. I'm sure what was said when the deck was presented was far more influential
1. Kept it under 15 slides
2. Used tight copy to succinctly get across what they do, why they're doing it, what their "angle" is and how big the space is
3. Illustrated some traction and hustle
4. Showed the team wasn't completely wet behind the years (and that they could successfully recruit and execute)
5. Outlined a plausible initial growth strategy
6. Signalled some social proof: from early investors and happy users
7. Wrapped it up in a clean design and sensible slide sequence
It's harder than it looks.
Edit: and that's just the deck. Chances are they will have had to plough hundreds of hours in to: networking, google+linkedin+crunchbase+angel list deep dives building a VC pipeline, reading countless money raising blogs/books/podcasts and practising their in-person pitch for when they do get a meeting (not to mention making sure their existing cap table wasn't fucked up from earlier FFF investments, if they had any). After all that comes a probable 75% to 95% rejection rate from the final list of VCs they drew up and managed to get a meeting with [and you have to keep the company moving, growing and developing while you do all of this].
Basically, if you're early stage and a founder who doesn't already have one or two notable previous wins under your belt, there's a lot of background shit you need to do before you even have a chance of getting in a room with a credible VC and winning them over with a slick sales pitch. An effective deck is one of those things.
Edit: URLS not allowed so I can't do my brief properly... https://cl.ly/0C0K3z2n372c
This suffers from both the fundamental attribution error and the labor-theory-of-value error. They seem to be implying: 1) We got funded. 2) We worked hard on our pitch deck. 3) The effort on our pitch deck is why we got funded. I don't see any reason that their first pitch deck is better than their 12th or their 23rd. Just because the 23rd investor liked their business plan doesn't make that pitch deck, or their str…
Your pitch deck will get you meetings, not investment. No one invests from only seeing a pitch deck. From speaking with investors, we learned about better ways to get across what we are doing. What the key ares that interested investors, etc. Most of that we learned was from the actual conversation rather than specific feedback on the deck. On a side note, the first version of this deck makes me slightly embarrassed.…
Do your investors find that concerning at all?
When did the transition occur from success and profit mattering to $$ raised being the most important metric? So many startups today brag about $ raised before they even mention what they do. Is this really the new norm?
I'm also trying to get quotes for a logo design for one of my open source projects, but I can't find logo design in the dropdown. What category do I choose? Edit: URLS not allowed so I can't do my brief properly... https://cl.ly/0C0K3z2n372c