Documentos de Académico
Documentos de Profesional
Documentos de Cultura
the Ultimate
Pitch Deck
“Your pitch has a
massive impact on
the outcome of
your startup”
At Foundersuite, I decided to
raise a $500k seed round, and
based (partially) on the
strength of our pitch deck, I
was able to wrangle in almost
$1m instead. Nat B c o d,
CE of F er e
Here is my “handbook” of pitch
deck hacks. Enjoy!
Investors Are Trying
to Find Something
Exceptional
Wha k o x e t a?
First, why is your pitch deck so Thus, you need to find a “hook” that
incredibly important? Because in will put you in you in other 2% — you
the early days, unless you have need to find your “one thing” that is
Slack-like traction or 3x exits under the single most unique, compelling
the belt, no one really gives a crap piece of your story. In other words, if
about you or what you’re doing. you strip everything away...what will
investors remember about you a
It’s your pitch that helps turn this week or two later? To capture this we
cold raw fact around, and helps you use archetypes.
sell your vision to investors,
partners, co-founders, employees These archetypes are important
and others. When I was consulting because how you frame your
to startups, I reviewed atleast 1000 business and how you frame the
decks, and 98% were discussion has a massive impact on
unremarkable. Most were ignored how people react, what they retain,
and the startups behind them died what message they will share with
a slow death. other investors, and what actions
they take. Here are 6 pitch
archetypes to rock your pitch deck.
1
6 Pitch
Archetypes
1. Pro m/so on
This is the classic format long
favored by Sequoia Capital and Examples:
many others. You’ve found a
valuable, rich pain point in the Existing vehicles are polluters —>
market, and you have the unique we built an electric car (Tesla).
domain expertise or a novel way
to solve it. You’re building a Poor people are being preyed on by
painkiller vs. vitamin. payday lenders —> we built a
platform to help people learn and
This structure probably accounts build good credit (LendUp).
for 3/4 of the decks out there. It’s
classic, it’s familiar, it’s powerful, Building relations with customers is
but it’s not always as relevant to hard for SaaS firms —> we built a
web 2.0...is there really a pain customer relationship
point solved by another social management chatbot (Intercom).
photo filterapp? :)
2. Tra n or You’ll get massive bonus points if
you can also demonstrate the
lifetime value of a customer (LTV) is
With the Traction Story archetype, greater than your cost to acquire a
you’re basically “pitching the customer; in this scenario, adding
numbers;” what you’re actually venture money to the bonfire
doing becomes secondary. The becomes a no-brainer and it makes
traction story is the hardest to sense to dump as much in as you
achieve but the easiest to get can profitably spend.
funded, as there’s a direct
correlation between the strength of By default, a traction story pitch
your traction and the speed at means you’ve found
which you raise money. product/market fit, which is sexy.
Questions and pushback may
Here, the story arc of your deck is center on your strategies to
focused on your growth and rate of maintain this growth and
growth (i.e. the slope of the line) as defensibility as new competition
validation of your vision. In some comes online.
cases, I suggest you start off strong,
on the first slide of your deck, show
a chart of your numbers / users / Example: See slide from Front
revenue, and use the rest of the App’s pitch deck below, showing
deck to tell the story of how you got consistent organic growth.
there.
3. X fo 4. Sc a c Y ur
This archetype has been in vogue It
lately, especially with the rise of
Uber and Airbnb. Essentially, it
centers on applying a proven The “scratched your itch” archetype
business model to a new market or simply tells your personal story of
application. how you came to be where you are
today. Usually it involves how you’ve
Here, X is the established model solved something that was vexing
(e.g. Airbnb) and Y is the new you. A lot of technical companies
market that the model is being get started this way.
applied to (dog boarding) =
DogVacay. You see this a lot now,
and it can be combined with Examples: Heroku, Dropbox or
Problem / Solution. However, Github. Or, for example, I started
there’s a risk it’s been overdone. Foundersuite as a side project of
a consulting business, after
A variation on this is what I call the setting up dozens of Google
Hollywood Pitch, which is a mashup sheets for tracking investors.
of two different scripts, e.g.
“Jurassic Park meets Dirty Dancing”
It’s often very personal which
makes it engaging and memorable.
Especially when you present it live.
It’s also very effective if you know
the problem intimately + the VC has
experienced the problem + it’s a
universal problem.
Other Pitch
Archetypes
1. Ol du r / New es M l: 6. Piv r : essentially, you
you’re taking an existing technology describe how you tried several
or industry, and innovating on things, until you finally stumbled
monetization. E.g. Sunrun, WeWork, upon something that’s working.
Square.
For example Twitter was originally a
2. Con ri on E t ri : podcasting company Odeo, and
you’re applying approaches from PayPal was originally focused on
the consumer world to companies, cryptography for handheld devices,
and you win via cheap software that then a way to beam $$ among Palm
continually gets better. E.g. Slack, Pilots. Slack was originally an
Asana, etc. internal tool used for an online video
game.
3. Dre a : the entire pitch is
The archetype is explaining what
built around the jockey(s) and their
you did to run into a dead end, what
capacity to make something
you learned from that, and what
magical happen. For example,
new direction that set you off on. It
you’ve assembled a team of
helps tremendously if your Pivot
scientists with rare knowledge, or a
Story is also backed by a Traction
marketing team that built
Story and product/ market fit,
Salesforce. You’re essentially
otherwise investors may think you're
pitching that history will repeat
chasing another dead end.
itself.
5. Bre h u hT n o y: this is a
pure-play on an innovation--
something notable that has been
invented and patented, such as a
new solar film or a touch screen
interface.
You basically just need to cover the
10 topics on the next page. The
➔ 12 slides is long.
Pitch ➔
➔
10 slides is great.
5 slides is amazing.
6 Pitch
Structure
Keep your core pitch short, but feel
free to add more detailed slides in
the Appendix. And always, always
3. Sol o 4. Wh o ?
Your company's and customers Set up the historical evolution of
value prop to make the your category. Define recent
customers life better. Provide trends that make your solution
use cases. possible.
5. Mar S ze 6. Com ti
Identify /profile the customer List competitors & competitive
you cater to. Calculate the TAM advantages.
(top down) SAM (bottoms up).
7. Pro t 8. Bus s Mo
Product line up (form factor, Pricing, Revenue Model, average
functionality, features, account size or LTV, CAC. Sales
architecture, IP). Development and distribution model,
roadmap. Customer / Pipeline list
9. Te m 10. Fin al
Founders & Management, P&L, B/S, Cash Flow, Cap Table,
Board of Directors, Board or The Deal.
Advisors.
“If you can’t
explain it simply,
you don’t
understand
it well enough.”
- Al e t E t i
4
VC Elevator
Pitch Template
Pitch Nuts
& Bolts
Presentation Hacks:
Tips for the Live Pitch