Speaker 1: Hey guys, before you create any pitch presentation, you need to have these eight, or it's more like seven, eight specific slides. So that's what I'm gonna talk about today. All right, everyone, welcome back to my ninth video in my 100-day YouTube challenge. And today I wanted to talk about some just, you know, there's so many videos out there about different slide presentations, and you know, there's everything that you wanna know. But I just wanted to make a very brief presentation today and talk to you all about the eight bullet points that you should try to answer when making any presentation, whether you're pitching live, or this is just a presentation you're gonna share with people who are interested in your company. All right, you're wondering why do I know what I'm talking about? Well, I've been a venture capitalist for several years in London, investing in two unicorns, Farfetch and Vestia Collectif, which only recently became a unicorn. And also I run an investor accelerator in Oslo, Norway, where I taught investors, people who wanted to learn how to invest in startups, how to invest in startups. And also, of course, I've run my own company and I've also sold one. So I think I'm relatively qualified to talk about what to look for and what to include in a pitch deck. So today I'm just gonna go straight to it, you know, no fanciness, straight to the point of the eight bullet points that you have to answer when creating a slide presentation. All right, let's get into it. Slide one, this is one that's often forgotten or overlooked specifically, because, you know, hopefully when the world unlocks and you're pitching live again, if you're pitching at a demo day, or you know, you're at any event and you're sort of, you know, pitching in an order of 10 to 20 startups, right? One of the slides that stays on the longest is the opening slide. Because, you know, you're gonna walk on stage, the other startup walks off stage, there's a handover of mics and things like that. So the one slide that often stays on to the audience seeing the longest is your opening slide. It's your slide, that's your logo, and your one-liner. So that first slide is really important because you want to associate your startup's branding and logo with what you do, right? So you need to be immediately understandable. So it's really important to have a sexy one-liner. I'll give an example of what I used to have. I'll link it up right now. It was Lunicorn, a mobile media brand, right? So immediately I'm associating our company color profile, our logo, with what we do. So the audience immediately connects with what you do. And the reason that one's important is because those investors or those people in the room who are interested in that industry will immediately think, oh, okay, I should listen to this pitch because, you know, the last three have been in FinTech and I'm not interested in that, but I'm interested in media. And the Lunicorn is a mobile media brand, so I better pay attention, right? So you're just immediately kind of filtering the audience to those who should actually listen. That's number one. Number two, selling the problem and you won't have to sell the solution, right? You've probably heard this one before, but if you are pitching a medical technology company to an audience that aren't medical people, you should sell the problem because they probably won't understand the issue that you're trying to solve, right? So it's very important to sell the importance of the problem because I've had examples of that where people pitched presentations to me and it was a nurse talking about an incredible product, but I'm not a nurse and I don't understand how ERs, emergency rooms work. So they were just pitching to, you know, a completely ignorant audience. It was a brilliant idea, but it was lost on all of us, right? So we didn't invest and, you know, we lost out on a great company because the pitcher didn't know their audience. So you should always know your audience and sell the problem to them. Try to show the importance of that issue. Even if it's a complex one, try to break it down in a way that I would understand. So there's a rule of thumb I always tell founders and I've always used myself. You're pitching specifically when you're talking about the problem to a room of 10 year olds, right? So they have, there's not so much of a language barrier. They speak English, but there's a vocabulary limit, right? So you can't go in there throwing buzzwords that are like industry specific. You wanna go in there and just be as obviously understandable as possible. All right, number three is the solution, right? What are you doing to solve that problem, right? Now there's a really important element here, which is sort of the power of persuasion and the power of yes, where you basically psychologically convince the audience that they're right because you sell them a problem and obviously now you're gonna tell them the solution, right? So, and it's a win-win because if your solution is an obvious one, then they're like, oh, why didn't I think of that? Okay, brilliant for these guys and girls. Why are they doing that? And now I have questions. Are they the team to do it? What's their traction like, right? But even if it's a solution that isn't obvious, you're gonna surprise the audience. And actually you might put yourself in the seat of basically brilliant people who have come up with an inventive idea that's never been thought of. So either way, whether your solution is obvious or not, you're gonna win the audience onto your side. So think about that one. And again, same as selling the problem, sell your solution in a way that's easy to understand, whether it's just using simple diagrams, simple graphics. Just remember specifically when you're pitching live that people's attentions are mostly gonna be on you and then visual stimulation. So your presentation should be a visual stimulating support of what you're saying verbally. Don't read the same thing as the presentation. Don't put too much content on the presentation because the presentation ultimately is meant to be there as a visual aid to support what you're saying. All right, number four, there's a problem. You've sold them on. You've convinced them that your solution is the winning solution, but what's the size of the market? So number four is the size of the market. Now I call this the market opportunity slide because you wanna engineer the slide to convince the audience that your market is growing. Investors invest in hot teams and hot markets, right? So an example of a hot market is FinTech or for example, blockchain. Those are hot markets and hot sectors, right? Now, the reason that you can show that they're hot is their growth rates. So there's one simple term you can include in your presentation, which everyone understands in the startup industry, but for those who haven't seen it before, it's alienating. It's CAGR. Let me know in the comments if you've heard of CAGR before. It's compound annual growth rate. What it means is basically over the next 10 years, your industry is gonna grow at 25% every single year. So year one, it grows at 25%. Year two, it grows at 25% on last year's 25%. So it's compoundingly growing 25% every single year. Now this shows that the market has momentum. It's going in the right direction, right? So this is what you wanna get people in the audience or actually just reading this presentation to go, huh, wow, this industry is really growing. I should consider looking at this company and looking at this industry. Now there's a hack to this, doing research to try and find out your numbers because founders, you should always know your numbers. Trust me. I wanna ask a few probing questions, specifically when I meet founders and I'm interested in investing, whether from a VC perspective or a personal perspective, you should always know your numbers because if you don't know your numbers, then I'm thinking like, have you really done your diligence, your due diligence into this industry? Do you know how fast it's growing? Who are the players? All right, so I wanted to share a hack with you to find the compound annual growth rate and the momentum figures for this slide. As I said, you might have some competitors. You should know who they are. Go on their websites. See if you can find presentations that they've given previously at different demo days and events and things like that. A lot of videos online about this. And then they would have probably done the research for you. They would have found those facts and figures. So before you go and do acres and acres and acres of research, look at your competitors and see what they've done. All right, slide five is the traction slide. Now, this is a super important one because what the traction slide basically is, it's a startup buzzword, which I have in my startup buzzword dictionary. Yes, I wrote the dictionary on startup buzzwords. I'll link the shop below. Cartoon illustrated book of startup, 23 startup buzzwords from bootstrapping to exit. All you need to know. Anyway, so what traction basically means is it's momentum and it's proof of execution in your team and what you've done. So traction over time is basically just, you're growing over time, right? So the gold standard of traction is basically revenue or customer growth, right? Those are the ultimate either things you're out there to try and get. But often I have early stage founders come to me and say, hey, we just started. We don't have any traction. But no, it's about phrasing the traction. So traction, obviously the gold standards is revenue and customers and month-on-month growth, week-on-week growth and all that kind of stuff, right? If you don't have that kind of stuff, then traction is basically that you've found the perfect co-founding team. That's traction. You said, we've gone out there to find two co-founders. We knew the known unknowns. We knew that we didn't have a technical co-founder. We knew that we didn't have a marketing co-founder. We went out and found those people. We brought them in. That's traction. You put a willing team together. Traction is also sort of the early stage conversations with your audience, whether you've commissioned a research report, whether you've gone out there and asked 2000 people or 200 people or just 20 people what they want in this product area, what they're using. So you've gone, that's traction. That's showing that you as a team are executing over time because ultimately investors invest in great teams that can execute. What's the best way to show that? A timeline, simple timeline. So I'll give an example of a timeline I used in a presentation two years ago. You know, basically, you know, I wanna see that over a reasonable timeframe that you're showing momentum, that you're delivering on what you're saying you're gonna do in the long-term goal of what you're trying to sell me to invest in, right? And number six, the one thing we've forgotten to mention already is how do we make money, right? So the business model is an important one. If you leave it out, people will always ask that question. So I do wanna give you one tip if you're pitching live and you have a complex business model or, you know, you just find it very difficult to explain that in an easy way, leave it out because that's the first question you're gonna get when you're pitching live. They're gonna be, what's the business model? Because then you have engineered the questions you're gonna get, which means that you're ready and prepared with great answers for them, right? Don't give me a financial model that's five years forecast and your company's one years old. That's all just forecast, right? So just give me a realistic understanding of what industry you're in and how you can monetize on that industry. Do not give me a discounted cashflow. Do not give me a five-year forecast that's broken down line by line, 20 lines on a single slide. When I wanna see your financial models, I will ask for it, right? So just give me some highlight figures that you're being ambitious, that there is a business case here. So that's actually what you're trying to prove in a business model slide. There's a business case here that eventually, after a year, two, three, four, five, this company will turn a profit and will be a profitable business, basically. All right, this is probably the most important slide. This slide I've seen people open with after their one-liner logo pitch vision slide is the team. So in this slide, it's so important to show that you are the right team to solve this problem, right? Now, here's a tip. If you are a single founder trying to find those people, that's a known unknown. Something that investors who are well-educated look for is also founders who also know their weaknesses, right? Instead of pretending that they know it all, right? So if you're a single founder or a double founder who have the same background, talk about the fact that, okay, well, we know that we're just two finance majors or whatever. So that's why we are trying to hire people in the fields that we know we have weakness in, right? One thing you can convince me of that you're a great team is that you've already found some candidates, but you obviously need to raise the money to be able to hire them, right? So you've already been active to find the people, to solve the known unknowns. Because the last question I asked myself before I make any investment, whether when I was a VC and it was $10 million or when it's now personally and it's $10,000, I asked myself this question. If anyone is gonna do this and if anyone's gonna pull this off, is this the team that's gonna pull it off? That's what I asked myself before I make an investment. And even if that's a single founder, is this individual enough of a magnet? Has the grit, the perseverance to attract great people and convince them? Or is this team, do they have the balance that's needed to be a really strong team to hire and attract people, basically? So that's my tip on the team. And then the last one, the eighth one is obviously a simple one like the first one. It's sort of a half slide, really. It's the ask. Think about it. This is a story, right? What's the punchline at the end of it? What's the conclusion? You've gone through everything from what's the problem, how you're gonna solve it, why the market is growing, what you're gonna capture in that market, and why you have the right team to capture that. Now you're like, okay, but what can you do for me? What's the audience? What's the individual looking or reading at these slides can do for you? What are you missing? Do you need to, are you looking for just people in the audience or reading this to connect you to industry? Are you looking for expertise? Are you looking for investment? What can they bring to the table? So always finish with an ask, a strong ask. Startups forget that too often. They just go, thank you so much, goodbye. And then connect it. Thank you so much. I'm the team. Why do startup founders always pitch in the buddy company branded clothing? Because you're connecting a name to a person. So whether you're pitching live and then afterwards you go in a mingling session, you're connecting, hey, we're the guys in the blue tops. We're the girls in the yellow tops. Whatever it is, you're connecting a logo and a colour to a name, to a person, so that people will come up to you afterwards. Anyway, so that's really simply my eight bullet points you have to include when making any presentation, whether it's physical or digital presentation. I hope you enjoyed this one. Thank you so much for watching. I'll see you in the next episode. Please think about subscribing to our channel and I'll see you tomorrow in tomorrow's vlog. Thank you. Oh, ciao.