EC Pitch Deck Teardowns

Sateliot’s $11.4M Series A deck • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 17, 2022Posted in EC Pitch Deck Teardowns, IoT, pitch deck, Pitch Deck Teardown, StartupsNo Comments

You know what really sucks? Your IoT devices not being able to phone home. Rarely a problem when you’re in the center of a well-populated urban center with oodles of cell towers, but think of that water temperature buoy floating around in the Atlantic, an autonomous drone flying above the rain forest or a glacier-creep measuring sonde high up in the mountains. The fact is that about 90% of the planet has no cell coverage at all, and Sateliot raised a €10 million ($11.4 million) round of funding to change that. The company shared its pitch deck with us to take a deeper look, and so we will! Here’s the good and the bad of this high-flying space deck. We’re looking for more unique pitch decks to tear down, so if you want to submit your own, here’s how you can do that. Slides in this deck Sateliot’s deck consists of 18 slides and is almost as pitched; the company redacted some of the info that goes into depth about how its tech works. Cover slide “90% of the world has no cellular coverage” — problem slide Team slide “To connect all NB-IOT devices from space under 5G standard” — solution slide “Near real-time connectivity” — value proposition slide “Standard protocol” — product slide “Sateliot is the #1 satellite operator” — “why us?” slide Market size slide Competition slide Business model slide “MNOs engaged and technical integrations ongoing” — traction slide “Early adopters program” — go-to-market slide Interstitial slide Benefit slide Progress slide NGO program slide Slogan slide Closing slide Three things to love It’s always interesting to see companies that are trying to have an enormous impact on the space they operate in. Sateliot is making space for an incredible opportunity, essentially removing the need for infrastructure to make IoT solutions work from pretty much anywhere in the world with a clear view of the sky. It’s a story that could be told in so many ways, and I was excited to see how the company launched into things. Clear vision of the opportunity [Slide 2] Crisp and easy. Image Credits: SateliotI love a deck that very clearly states the problem it is solving, especially if it’s also able to highlight the advantage of solving that problem. Sateliot does that fantastically on its second slide — 90% of the world has no cell coverage, and this company is promising to change that. There’s not an investor in the world that won’t be able to see the benefit and financial potential of that. As a startup, if you can distill your problem, solution and opportunity this elegantly, you’ve got yourself a great launchpad to start weaving your narrative for your pitch. “Why us?” This is why… [Slide 7] Being the right team for the job is a crucial aspect of pitching. This is hella compelling. Image Credits: Sateliot If you have some reason why nobody else can truly solve the problem as well as you can, shout about it. It makes you a far more tempting investment target. One of the big questions an investor will be asking themselves is whether a particular company is well positioned to take charge of a market. In other words: Is there something about this team or company that gives them an unfair advantage over the competitors? This slide is labeled as “value proposition,” which is a little confusing. The slide doesn’t describe a value prop but a competitive advantage. It describes the “number of contributions to the 3GPP Standard,” but it doesn’t say what that means. Wikipedia has an answer that seems to indicate that this is very relevant, but I’d love for the company to have contextualized it on this slide. Those caveats aside: If it turns out that contributions to the standard are directly relevant to the company’s success and show that it’s particularly well positioned to corner this market, this absolute design disaster and word soup of a slide might actually be a powerful storytelling device. Scanning down the lists of companies that have made more and fewer contributions, there are a lot of big-name vendors. Seeing Sateliot in the top 25 or so — ahead of many other well-known companies — could suggest that there’s a significant moat in place. I wish the company had connected the dots for me, but if this slide means what I suspect it means, it makes up for the distinctly subpar “team” slide (which we’ll discuss in a bit). As a startup, what you can learn here is that if you have a moat, or some reason why nobody else can truly solve the problem at hand as well as you can, shout about it loudly — it makes you a far more tempting investment target. Strong social mission [Slide 14] Having a social mission component can help give investors the warm-and-fuzzies. Image Credits: SateliotSome investors have a social responsibility mandate as part of their investment theses. That could go in your favor if your company is in alignment with doing good in addition to doing well. But what is also true is that all investors are human beings, and it can never harm to have a heart-forward aspect to your story. Sateliot explains that once its satellites are up and running, there is almost no marginal cost to being able to offer its services to certain customer groups. In other words: If you want to GPS-track rhinos, you can do so for almost no money. As I said, that doesn’t matter to all investors, but in this case, you’re creating a win-win. Zero marginal cost means that there’s no real downside to offering the company’s services to causes that improve the planet and plenty of potential upsides. In addition to making the world a better place, there are PR opportunities, ESG advantages and secondary benefits to the company. Sateliot could very easily not have included this in its story, but it makes me happier that they did. The lesson here is

Syneroid’s $500K deck • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 10, 2022Posted in EC Pitch Deck Teardowns, pet tech, Pitch Deck Teardown, StartupsNo Comments

Syneroid recently raised a $500,000 round of funding to bring something halfway between microchips and dog collars to market. The company is finding some interesting slices of the market, but the deck, overall, leaves a few things to be desired. We learn more from mistakes than from perfection, so I figured it’d be a great one to dive into for this week’s pitch deck teardown! We’re looking for more unique pitch decks to tear down, so if you want to submit your own, here’s how you can do that. Slides in this deck Throughout this pitch deck teardown, you’ll see the company referred to as Syneroid and GPC Smart — the company’s official name is the former, but the brand they are using for the pitch deck and its products is the latter. The company told me it raised this round at a $3.9 million valuation. The company used a tight, 12-slide deck for its pitch, and no information has been redacted or omitted. Cover slide Problem slide Competition slide Solution slide Competitive advantages slide History/traction slide Market-size slide Target markets/go-to-market slide Team slide Operational financials slide Ask slide Contact slide Three things to love Syneroid is entering a market that’s very easy to understand: Lost animals are something that most of us have an experience with in one way or another. That’s an advantage in that you don’t have to explain the market in detail. It also means that the company is facing a wall of potential competitors even as it is trying to gain traction. That’s a challenge, and it’s interesting to see how Syneroid is tackling it. Cover the gap between the perceived and the actual [Slide 2] The overview slide does a great job of getting investors up to speed. Image Credits: GPC Smart TagsBecause the company is throwing itself into a market that is relatively well understood, its challenge isn’t to explain what it is doing but how it is moving the market forward. The company’s second slide is labeled an “overview” slide, which rapidly helps get a picture of the overall challenge this particular market segment is facing. An investor likely knows at least some of this, but these bullets augment (or gently correct) any preconceived notions an investor might have, smoothing the delta between their perception of the market and the realities of being in that market. This slide — while fairly wordy — does a really good job of ironing out any misunderstandings an investor may have. Having said that, it also brings up some important questions. Lost pets are just one part of the challenge; stolen pets will have their collars removed, and animals that go astray are on occasion able to shed their collars. Syneroid doesn’t really address either scenario. Great competition overview It’s pretty rare to see a startup put its competitor overview front and center, but I think that was a really shrewd move in this case. Again, this is not a deep tech play or a market shrouded in mystery. I suspect that most would-be investors would be able to come up with the two major competitors. Tackling that head-on does seem a little defensive, but given the market, I think it makes a lot of sense in this case. Here’s how the company addressed it: [Slide 3] Tackling competitive alternatives this early in a slide deck is unusual but probably a good move in this case. Image Credits: GPC Smart TagsThere are a number of obvious competitors in this space, including the most common ones, existing engraved metal tags or injected microchips, which both have their own pros and cons. There’s also the latest generation of GPS-enabled dog collars, such as the ones from Fi, Whistle, Fitbark and others, which aren’t addressed in this competitive landscape. If the animal is stolen, the thief will simply discard the collar, and at that point, it doesn’t really matter what’s on the collar. This slide shows an understanding of the competitive landscape. I love that the company chose to tackle this upfront. I think it’s important, and it’s a great way to get out ahead of the most obvious pushback from investors. Like on the previous slide, although its presence is encouraging, it raises some questions. I think an NFC/QR code dog collar is interesting, but I’m struggling to see how they are inherently better than standard engraved tags. The exact laser-engraved tag in the photo doesn’t cost $15, as listed on the slide, but can be ordered from Amazon — fully personalized — for $4, with four lines of text on each side of the metal tag. Sure, you can’t “update” the information, but pet owners are probably able to afford the $4 every time they move or change their phone numbers. You can’t include location information, but someone who is willing to catch a stray pup is probably able to text or call the owner with an address and details. Again, if the animal is stolen, the thief will simply discard the collar altogether, and at that point, it doesn’t really matter what’s on the collar. As far as tracking goes, an Apple AirTag might be a good solution for those situations (but it’s as easy to throw an AirTag into the bushes as any other collar). This slide shows that the founders understand the challenges with their messaging and positioning, but it also shows that its answers are a work in progress. A beast of a market The pet market, both in the U.S. and globally, is fantastically big. Investors know that, but adding a reminder can’t hurt. You don’t have to capture that big of a market share to build a very significant business here. [Slide 7] Hellooooo market size. Image Credits: GPC Smart TagsOne of the things investors love more than anything else is a huge and growing market. Pet wearables definitely qualify in that world, and my gut tells me that smart wearables (especially GPS-type trackers) are going to be the value

I reviewed 1,000+ pitch decks. These are the most common mistakes • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in EC Pitch Deck Teardowns, fundraising, Pitch Deck Teardown, startup fundraising, Startups, VentureNo Comments

Over the last six months, I’ve written up 25 Pitch Deck Teardowns — the popular series of articles where I review a pitch deck in detail, celebrating the wins and gently (and sometimes not-so-gently) suggesting improvements. We’ve seen 74-slide decks (yes, really), decks that are riddled with spelling mistakes and bogged down by hideous design (but still work incredibly well), and decks where the founders don’t fully seem to understand what market they are in. For every deck I reviewed for my ZebethMedia series, I saw dozens of other decks as well. Don’t tell my bosses, but I have a side hustle as a pitch coach, and through that, I see a lot of decks. I also am friends with a bunch of lovely VCs and accelerators who often forward decks for me to take a look at. I have a folder with hundreds and hundreds of pitch decks, ranging from $10,000 angel rounds to multibillion-dollar deals in progress. People on occasion send me screenshots of slides, too (I like to think of those as “unsolicited deck pics.” Ahem.) In any case, I have long since lost count, but I’ve probably seen a few thousand pitch decks over the past few years. Suffice it to say: I have opinions about ’em. In this post, I want to break down the top 11 (yes, it had to be 11) most common mistakes I see in pitch decks, along with a bunch of examples of how these mistakes show up. Oh, and if you want to submit your own deck for a potential pitch deck teardown, you’re in luck: Instructions are here. Let’s gooooo. Not knowing your audience A pitch is a story, and stories have audiences. You wouldn’t put a child in front of Arnold Schwarzenegger hacking and slashing his way through various parts of the Predator. Similarly, the story you use to sell to your customers is not the same story that you need to get across to your would-be investor audience. You need to understand how VC works; that’s non-negotiable. If you don’t, it means that you have no way of knowing how to tell your story, and you don’t truly understand what they are buying. Get that resolved for yourself! Examples of decks that get this right: Examples of decks that get this wrong: Not fully understanding your market sizing It’s painful to read a pitch deck and realize that the founders have no idea how to size their own market. At the earliest stage, your company needs to prove exactly two things: Can you build a venture-scale business in this market? Is this the right team to build that business? The way you answer the first question is by having sensible things to say about the market you operate in, and how you see the size and trajectory of that market. If you fail to do that, guess what — you’re proving that you’re not a good founder, and you’re probably not the right team to build the business. Yes, calculating the TAM, SAM and SOM for your market can be really hard, and sometimes it involves assumptions and guesswork, but that’s OK — you’re not getting graded on how accurate your numbers are but on how you view and think about the market you are in. If the numbers are “wrong,” but you can defend why you thought about them this way, it tells your potential investors a lot about your quality as a founder. Examples of decks that get this right: Examples of decks that get this wrong:

Palau Project ‘s $125K deck • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 25, 2022Posted in Climate, EC Food Climate and Sustainability, EC How To, EC Pitch Deck Teardowns, pitch deck, Pitch Deck Teardown, Startups, VentureNo Comments

I get a lot of pitch deck submissions for this ZebethMedia Pitch Deck Teardown series from people who are raising friend and family rounds, and I mostly pass on them. Often, these decks aren’t very good, but it’s important to remember that they don’t have to be. For a small round (say $200,000 or below), most well-connected entrepreneurs will be able to find a group of people who believe in them and are willing to invest in them. It’s not about the product (there typically isn’t one), and it’s not about the solution (the company is still iterating). Such investors are usually betting on two things: Is this market big enough, and is the problem worth solving big or pertinent enough to give this company a possibility of success? Are the founders the right people to solve this problem? Do they have the connections, skills or experience that gives them an unfair advantage? Here’s the truth: When considering very early stage companies, if you can’t say “Yes” to both of those questions with 100% certainty, you shouldn’t invest. If the market isn’t big enough, don’t invest. If the founders are smart, friendly and amazing, but they don’t have something special that gives them a head start, don’t invest. It was against that backdrop that I received the pitch deck for Palau Project. Its founder, Jerome Cloetens, is a professional kite surfer (!) with an economics degree and an MBA, and he’s taking on climate change. Let’s take a closer look at how all those pieces come together in a pitch deck. We’re looking for more unique pitch decks to tear down, so if you want to submit your own, here’s how you can do that. Slides in this deck This pre-seed deck has 22 slides, but it could probably have been 10 slides or so. That said, it looks good, and although it jumps from topic to topic a little, I can see how the presentation would take shape. Cloetens notes that the slide deck has been slightly updated since the fundraise, and he mentioned it’s “not precisely as Pitched; some of the design and small content changes (Such as our traction metrics) have been updated.” Cover slide Problem impact slide Problem slide Solution slide Product slide Product slide Product slide Challenge slide Value Proposition slide Business model slide Market size slide Market slide Traction slide Metrics slide Milestones slide Team slide Founders slide “Seed round” Interstitial slide Mission slide The Ask slide Milestones slide “Equity for thrifthers” closing slide Three things to love As I mentioned in the intro, this is a pre-seed deck. As per slide #20, the founders were trying to raise $500,000, and they closed on about $125,000. That isn’t entirely uncommon at early stages. Slightly later on, your plan needs to match the funds, which needs to match the milestones you’re trying to hit. At this stage, “I just need some money to prove what we are trying to do” will work, and if the angel investors think it makes sense, you’ll raise money. Simple product, testable now [Slide 5] Palau Project’s product is super simple, but the power will be in the data. Image Credits: Palau Project Make your product demos this simple if you can — it’s easy to understand, visual and impactful. I mentioned earlier that all that matters is the market size and team, and I’ll get to that in just a moment. For now, I was really impressed at how simple the idea is, and how easy it is to imagine this in use. Scan a barcode, get information about a product and get nudged towards products that have less impact on the climate. As an investor, I would immediately have three questions: How good is the database and how many products are captured there? Will people actually use this when they are walking around, shopping? This use case appears to be in-person, but the business model refers to a commission. How would the manufacturers know that a user has changed their behavior as a result of using an app? You can learn two things from this slide: Make your product demos this simple if you can — it’s easy to understand, visual and impactful. The second step is to tie it to your value propositions: What’s in it for the consumer? What’s in it for the product manufacturers? What’s in it for your company (i.e. how does this help you gain or retain customers, and how does it help you generate value)? Traction! [Slide 13] A product this early with traction is beautiful. Image Credits: Palau ProjectWhen a company is raising its first round, it’s unlikely that it has a product at all, never mind a product with actual traction. If you do happen to have such a product, scream about it from the rooftops. Having 30 downloads per day is impressive, and 10,000 scans shows that the app is working and getting some user engagement. Engagement time is cool, too — there are a lot of early indicators showing up here that the founders may be on to something. Going from 0 to 700 weekly active users in a new market (Portugal) is impressive, too. Again, the slide raises questions for me: Scans are great, but I want to know what percentage of those scans were successful (i.e. had products in the database). If users scanned 10,000 items and ended up with 600 hits, and 9,400 “We don’t know this product,” that will make a lot of users turn away immediately. 25-30 new users per day is impressive, but show us a graph and the total number of sign-ups. TikTok videos are cool, but that’s a vanity metric that means nothing unless it moves the needle on the business side. Did the video result in downloads? More scans? More inquiries? What you can learn from this slide as a startup is to think about

Supliful’s $1m deck • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 13, 2022Posted in cpg, EC Pitch Deck Teardowns, fundraising, Pitch Deck Teardown, StartupsNo Comments

I don’t typically critique decks for fundraises we didn’t cover on ZebethMedia, but for Supliful, I had to make an exception because it’s a company that solves a spectacularly interesting problem. Consumer packaged goods companies can churn out products all day long, but marketing is an expensive challenge. Creators produce content all day long but don’t always have an easy way of monetizing their traffic. Of course, creators have access to affiliate marketing and/or promoting goods on behalf of brands, but Supliful comes along with another option: the ability to use their brand to promote white-labeled supplements and health products. Men’s Journal breaks down the simple genius of the business model, and TechRound has an interview with the founder that dissects the details of the company, its founder and its formation. Supliful also claims it raised $1 million with a really interesting deck, which was the thing that got my little ears to perk up. Plus, it was remarkably frank with its numbers and slides, without any redactions. Let’s dive right in. We’re looking for more unique pitch decks to tear down, so if you want to submit your own, here’s how you can do that. Slides in this deck This is one of the best decks I’ve ever seen, despite being butt-ugly and riddled with mistakes. On the first click-through of the deck, I couldn’t get past the fact that it is laden with typos and the design is god-awful. But after leafing through it more carefully, I reminded myself of my go-to golden rule: People are willing to suffer bad UX for good content, but they won’t suffer great design for bad content. This 22-slide deck ain’t perfect, but it’s a great example of how a company can use storytelling to make a point. It also uses a few slides I see very rarely in slide decks (financial levers and predicates, to mention a couple) that are used to great effect here. Cover slide Case study teaser slide Problem slide Solution slide Market size slide “Why now” slide “How it works” — product slide Financial levers slide Inside sales/market growth slide Case study slide Metrics slide Competition slide Predicates slide Team slide Investors slide Financial projections slide Use of funds slide Contact info slide Interstitial slide: Appendices Appendix: Suppliers Appendix: Adjacent market opportunities Appendix: Creator growth Three things to love This deck — design and typos notwithstanding — is extraordinary, and I’m unsurprised that Supliful raised money successfully. There’s a lot to love, but since there are a few opportunities to do so, I want to celebrate the more unusual slides that work really well. Financial levers slide High-quality founders understand what the financial drivers are in their company. I’m particularly passionate about this, and essentially, what it boils down to is “if we spend 5x more here, we get 15x more revenue over there,” or “if we spend 2x more on this aspect of product development, we cut time-to-market by a fifth.” Knowing how these things hang together is crucial. I explored that more a few years ago: Supliful has a whole slide that shows that it has a deep understanding of what it needs to do to get where it wants to go: [Slide 8] Financial levers. Image Credits: SuplifulThis slide is deceptively simple, but it does a few things: It shows that in the next 18 months, the company wants to hit $4 million of gross merchandise value (GMV). That’s what the industry refers to as a BHAG — a big hairy audacious goal. But it’s not just wishful thinking; Supliful explains that it knows how to get there — get average markup to a third. Ensure they get 5% commissions on storefronts. And roll out a subscription plan for creators. For people in the CPG space, those numbers will seem not just reasonable, but eminently achievable. The psychological effect of this slide is, “Well, I believe this company can pull this off.” This slide clearly shows what drives the growth and evolution of Supliful, and that’s a lesson startup founders should note. If you can’t elucidate how you’re going to hit your goals, is that because you don’t fully understand or because there’s some complexity you haven’t cracked yet? Super clear ask slide [Slide 17] This is how you do an “ask” slide, folks. Image Credits: SuplifulKinda similar to the above, but instead of talking about the specific goal, which is related to understanding the financials within the business, this slide discusses how much the company is raising and what it can accomplish when it does. It does two things beautifully — it breaks down how much Supliful is raising and shows what the money will be spent on. These are classic SMART goals: The company is promising 4,000 active creators, an education program, 15 suppliers and testing capabilities, and automation tools to make selling more efficient for creators, all for $2 million. It’s clear, and it’s easy to measure whether the company is on track. For startup founders, the takeaway here is that clarity sells really well. There’s no doubt what the company is promising. My favorite is that the goals are distinctly defined. This isn’t “we will get some more creators,” it is “we will get 4,000.” This isn’t “we will engage with some food suppliers,” it is “we will find 15, and we’ll come up with a testing lab to ensure that what we’re selling is actually living up to its promises. ChefsKiss.gif. Predicates! Yaaaaas! [Slide 13] Let’s talk predicates. Image Credits: SuplifulAs a startup, you’re occasionally caught between a rock and a hard place; yes, you want to upend a market and change something significant, but when you do, how do you know that the customers want what you’re flogging? A great way of telling this part of the story is by using predicates — relatable examples in adjacent markets — that show that what you are doing might be possible in your market. Supliful picked print-on-demand services. Creators,