Getting the nuts and bolts of your company right

Welcome back to another look at what's happening in the world of fundraising. It seems like a lot of founders are working on prepping for funding season starting once all the VCs come back from Burning Man - so I'm silly busy today.

This week’s Pitch Deck Teardown

This week I put a spanner and screwdriver to Unito’s pitch deck, which it used to raise $20 million in Series B funding. From the positive side, this pitch deck is a perfect example of one that is clean, simple, and easy-to-read. It also has a brilliant team slide, a strong narrative structure, and explains where it intends to expand beautifully.

But, it’s missing some key information that I think it really deserves. An ask slide, detailing how much it wants to raise and how it intends to use it, is first. Second, it needs to look more deeply at its competition. And finally, as a SAAS company, it will have metrics available for every possible measurable dimension. You can use these to demonstrate your traction in any number of ways. Where are they? You can see the full tear-down here for a more thorough look.

3 top fundraising tips

When you walk into a meeting to pitch your early-stage company, the VCs in there are going to be looking, first and foremost, for founder-market fit. In other words: why are you and your founding team the right people to be leading this business?

Beyond that, they're going to want to see that you understand the landscape where you operate and how your startup fits into it. Here are three of the slides to help you do that:

1. Competition: Even if you think that you don’t have any competition, you do. Your competition might not be obvious, in which case you need to think laterally rather than literally to identify it - yet find it you must. If you can’t set out your competition, VCs will wonder if there’s any point in investing in a solution that isn’t really solving a problem. The point is that you need to solve the problem better than already exists, not inventing a new problem. In this case, this is how to think about your competition.?
2. Setting out your business model: You don’t need to go too deep into your business model on your pitch deck. But you do need to have a plan to bring in income and know some key numbers. Here, I break down the metrics that you need to have at your fingertips so that VCs will get a feel for your plans and the opportunity you’re giving them.
3. Why now?: Why is right now the moment for your company? What is it about today, rather than six months ago, a year ago, or even five years ago, that makes your business viable or necessary? Maybe the technology has moved on so your proposal makes economic sense. Perhaps you’re offering a solution to a problem that didn’t exist five years ago but is entirely pressing now. By anchoring your pitch with a why now slide, you strengthen the reasons for a VC to invest in you.

Need help with your fundraise?

If you are raising money for your startup, and you want a private pitch deck review from Haje, that’s possible! See haje.pub/pdr for more information.