tech-company, business-plan, pitchMy company is a gaming social network, with targeted advertising as our main revenue model. We just got shortlisted for an accelerator. There are 20 finalists and 10 positions, and I’m looking for the most effective way to start the pitch.
We have the following qualities:
I’m 19, founded my first business at 14, sold at 17. (16K members, 5M annual PV)
MVP was built on $10K cash, just raised an extra $40K (and a possible $30K from the accelerator)
2000 registrations without a launch and less than $100 spent on advertising
The current pitch deck structure is as follows:
Should I add anything else, and what is the most effective quality that I should outline early on. I had another Founder mention to me that I should start the presentation with “2000 Registrations”, as soon as I introduce the company.
Thank you.
The key to any presentation is to show that there is a legitimate niche and that you, or your product fill it. I really like the structure you have, and think it will make an excellent presentation.
You have an advantage that you do infact have people for whom you have solved their “problem” I would not, however, lead out with that. It makes you sound arrogant, and like an ametuer. You need to sound cool, collected, and professional.
A few things that I would suggest:
Dress professionally - I recognize that you’re a gaming company, but a professional appearance inspires trust.
Solve the problem - All to often I see presentations where there are gaping holes in the logic, or that don’t fully solve the very problem they present. Do yourself a favor and double check your material to ensure consistency.
Focus on how YOU solve the problem - Show them how you, and you alone, can fill this niche.
Build on the past - Investors want a sure win. They’re looking for someone who will give them the most “bang for their buck”. In a competition its no different. You have an “our achievements” portion of your presentation, just be sure that during that time you take the time to explain what your past achievements mean. Don’t leave them guessing on anything. They should know what you did, how you did it, and what that means to them. Don’t be ashamed to point out the things you’ve done in the past, but don’t assert that you’re better than anyone, just more qualified for this niche.
Have fun - People are drawn to humor. Don’t be a clown, but toss in a few well placed jokes. You want to be memorable, and humor has a way of doing that.
Good luck!
In general, I like your structure. However, based on the specifics both in the question and your comments, there’s another shape you could use.
Your chosen problem is something like this: “To see all the content I want to see, I need to visit several pages and use multiple accounts.”
That lends itself to a strong visual representation, and as importantly you can bring insight from the data you have on your 2,000 users - you will already have some ability to put some numbers to the problem, albeit you’re going to expect biases compared to the wider market. So I would make my lead-in a simple personal introduction without a slide (e.g. “Hi! I’m Riad, and I’ve been social gaming for 6 years”) then straight into visualising the problem.
There are clearly a lot of potential solutions to that problem, and I suspect that you’re not going to be able to make any credible claim that it’s only you who can see or solve the problem in a way users will love.
If there are people out there addressing this problem to reasonable sized audiences, I would go on to that. Showing solutions, what’s great about them and where they suck helps underline the problem as important, and you as having studied and learned from the market. If you can field some quotes from your users, so much the better. And if this is a meaty enough area, I’d have someone else lead it (again, the one line, no slide) intro.
That brings you into a richer presentation of your solution. Most solution pitches I see take one of two forms. Either they just say, “here’s how we’re going to solve the problem,” or they make a quadrant where most rivals sit bottom left, there’s a smattering of high-ish left and lowish right, and there they are on their own top right. Neither is convincing, so given that you’re in competition, you can do better. So I would look to present your solution as specifically designed to focus on the one, two criteria that matter most to users, and here they are saying that. That not only lets you do the quadrant thing (it is nice to be top right), but also to have in your Q&A what nobody will have - other quadrant diagrams where you’re in the pack, and where you’re happy to say, “on our data, the audience who values those criteria are X% of the market, and we’re not focusing on them, but on the Y% who value the criteria we showed you.”
So for the deck, you have solution criteria, then you have your solution visualised and contextualised with your achievements on the project right in there, along with something that shows clearly you’re an ad-funded project. (Some revenue models aren’t worth wasting a full slide on if you have more compelling content to excite the decision makers - show it on a screenshot, then as a line in some table, and you’re done.)
That logically takes you on to the near plan - the next one, two or three steps that you intend to do next. But in this suggested outline, the panel have seen and heard from some or all of the team, but there hasn’t been a slide. So here’s where I’d put in the team slide, and make sure that this connects really strongly to the plan slide that follows.
What that plan slide should be is going to vary according to the accelerator. I’m going to call it a business model plan, but you need to do a bunch of work to understand what kind of numbers you have to present to meet clear criteria, and what style of presentation seems to have worked best for past cohorts.
So that would give you:
That’s incomplete. For instance, I’m not worrying about “How we help our accelerator” - you’ll know what it is, what it’s for and where it fits. But some of these may lend themselves to two slides. It’s usually better in my view to build out the core, and then see how to use spare slide slots or time best. So you might have a demo you want to put in, or a live metrics read-out, or an Advisory Board to parade, or some slides that you can see have to be in so that you can be scored high against published criteria or expressed intentions.
Don’t take my word for any of this. But do test out some different approaches. What you have to be is stand-out, in a good way. And your enemy is the hard fact that most panels have seen so many pitches before that it’s easy for your great content to fail to make it into their brains except as examples of something generic.
Good luck. You’ve clearly already achieved a lot, and if you keep pushing forward with creativity and determination, you’re going to go way further.
The pitch deck you have is pretty much what i would be expecting. Put a lot of emphasis on your traction to convince them that investing in you will be a low risk high reward deal.
Thanks
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