Front’s Series C Deck is Brilliant

I originally posted this article on Medium here.

There are thousands of interpretations of what makes a great investor deck. Some of these include: Don’t go over 10 slides, focus heavily on the team, use a bottoms-up TAM approach, and so on. You’ll also find examples on the internet about what pre-seed, seed, and Series A decks should and should not contain in terms of content.

The reality is: Each funding stage is going to be different because you have different audiences and their content expectations vary.

The key for a great investor deck is to tell a compelling story and engage the reader emotionally. This means it needs to have a perfect balance of research, momentum and overall design. Spoiler alert: It’s not easy to pull this off. 

Instead of writing about the perfect outline of a great investment deck, I’m going to outline why I think Front’s Series C Investor Deck is brilliant. The full deck is located at the bottom of the post.

1.) The overall design is clean and approachable

The last thing you want is a potential investor distracted with clumsy design when you are trying to communicate an important message. I can’t say this more clearly: good design is now table-stakes. Hire a designer to clean things up if you need to.

2.) They do a great job of articulating the problem

You’ll notice that they did not try and describe the problem in one slide. They used two slides: 

• One to outline the broader problem of email management via teams;
• And another to illustrate that there are now more tools that provide communication (similar to email) about updates, real-time messages, etc.

In essence, they are driving at the root of the issue and have clearly articulated the pain point for collaboration in teams.

3.) They nailed the axes in the quadrant examples

Kudos to their team for this output! They absolutely nailed the axes for illustrating email workflow related to job function. In addition, they clearly show how Front is solving the pain point in one of the quadrants. (in other word’s, how it’s tackling the problem). They use strong words such as “This space is Front’s to own.”

4.) The deck’s flow is smooth as butter

They used the illustration of music in the deck and to show how Front pulls an orchestra (email in this case) together as the conductor. I think they did the same thing when creating the deck! Personally, I love how the flow goes: 

• Articulate the problem
• Visually show how Front is essentially a conductor bringing all communication together into one place
• Demonstrate via quadrants that they know where they fit in the spectrum of job function and workflow
• Jump to traction, but specific to the previous quadrant to show progress in that sandbox
• Expand on traction to show how the data is informing the growth strategy for 2019 (Assuming this deck was presented to investors in 2019)
• Demonstrate that they know how to scale sales (predictable & repeatable)
• Illustrate the bottoms-up TAM (Total Addressable Market) in a data-driven manner that is extremely compelling
• Put the cherry on top by saying “Oh, by the way, we can also tackle this other quadrant that we haven’t even talked about yet.”
• Walk the talk by showing why the users love the product and they are helping build the product, which signals strong engagement and usage

5.) Their metrics matter

So often you’ll see vanity metrics in decks that don’t matter. When you read through a deck like that you can totally picture the founders sitting there and saying “What kind of chart can we make from our data that goes up and to the right?!” Front chose the right metrics to show that hit heavy and strike up a conversation to learn more. Think of it this way: If shown correctly, metrics have the potential to better articulate your story of traction and add millions to your valuation. Take the time to nail these. 

Important ending note: It sounds so simple, but don't forget that the investor is investing in the business and the business model; not the investment deck. The goal is to clearly articulate a compelling story and drive emotion to want to explore more about the business to determine if there is an investment fit.