VC Reverse Pitching & Live Deck Review with Turks in Tech London
During London Tech Week, we were delighted to get together with the Turks in Tech London community at the VC Reverse Pitch & Live Deck Review event.
Spinning the pitching process on its head, we had the opportunity to hear from Selin Esin from 500 Global and Cem Okay from 212 VC as they pitched their investment theses, approaches and value propositions to the startups in the audience to attract the best founders to their ecosystems.
The VC pitches were followed by a Live Deck Review, moderated by our founder, Gokce Gizer Clover.
(GG was once dubbed the Pitch Wizard of Silicon Alley during her time in New York where she built her first company supporting hundreds of early stage startups with their business models, investment materials and pitches.)
VCs in the Room
500 Emerging Europe - 500 aims to help the talented entrepreneurs of the region in building explosive businesses. Their mission is to back defensible technology companies fueling talent arbitrage and help create global powerhouses.
212 VC - For the past decade, 212 has been the leading venture capital firm backing B2B tech startups. The key has been their extensive global network. Their success is built on helping daring entrepreneurs expand globally through their differentiated emerging market approach across many different market cycles.
Shifting the Mindset in the Tech Ecosystem
Our founder, Gokce Gizer Clover, addressed the challenges of the tech ecosystem, that 65% of startups are not making it past the Series A stage —if that. She talked about Beyond42’s mission to help founders build the skills and mindset to take their companies beyond that threshold.
She emphasized the importance of fostering ‘Leadership Resilience’ and prioritizing ‘Organizational Health’ in order for founders to beat the odds, navigate uncertainties, and build enduring, impactful companies that shape all aspects of our lives in an intentional way.
Live Deck Review
During the evening, some startups in the audience had cold pitch deck reviews where the panel flipped through the slides and shared their first impressions and feedback as if they received the deck in a cold email.
Going through almost a dozen decks, founders got lots of practical tips and a glimpse into the investors' perspective when going through presentations.
We aimed to help improve a startup’s ability to effectively communicate their vision and purpose through the pitch deck, especially when doing cold outreach and not presenting the deck itself.
Here are a few of the suggested practices:
Overall Considerations:
Your pitch deck needs to be memorable, engaging, and easy to understand for your audience. Include one clear message or key takeaway on every slide, especially since you’re not there to present.
The deck’s main goal: to get the targeted investor to take an action to start a conversation with you. So, do your homework to move the investor along to decision stage with as few barriers as possible. This means adjusting your deck to address their initial questions about your company regarding: stage, industry, positioning, round size, validation, traction, and how you fit in with their investment thesis and portfolio.
There’s an increasing expectations from investors to see the team slide in the beginning. Ideally, with links to profiles, key points of each person’s qualifications and focus, logos of past companies and schools (because we process visual information quicker) and why this is the right team. After all, people invest in people, not ideas.
Show your revenue and growth through charts and visuals - this is more engaging and easy to digest than listing your stats.
Show the product, the platform, and the app (if you have one), even if it’s a mock up as this will help people much better understand what they are looking and what you’re working on.
Suggested Slides and Content
When creating your pitch deck, there are certain topics and questions that need to be addressed.
We’ve broken this down into 15 areas, which can be used as a guideline. This is a common order and it is completely up to you to reorder to highlight your strengths and for your story to flow better.
As you craft this presentation, keep in mind that within the first 2-3 slides, you’ll need to clearly explain what you do, how you do it, and the problem you solve - keep this as long as a tweet. If it’s not clear to your audience immediately what it is they are doing, they will lose interest and close your presentation.
Pitch Deck Slides to Include:
Cover: Include your logo, tagline and main contact. Then, introduce your company with a clear one-line description.
Team: Run through your team, their unique skills and experiences, and why this combination of people form the perfect mix to deliver goals and solve this problem. Demonstrate your passion behind the problem you’re solving, and why it’s so important.
Purpose: This highlights what it is you do - your value proposition, vision, mission, and objective. This is where you can show what sets you apart from the rest. This could be that tweet-long description you need to make sure the reader has absolute clarity about what they are looking at.
Problem: Without making your reader care about the problem, don’t expect them to care about you solving it. Bare in mind, they might not be familiar with or personally affected by this problem but that doesn’t mean they won’t care. It’s your job to show why it’s an important problem and why they should care about solving it. Clearly articulate whose problem it is, how big of a problem it is, ideally quantified in terms of costs and pains.
Solution: Here, you can clearly and concisely explain how you solve this problem, and what the future will look like after you solve it. Concentrate on explaining your approach to solving the problem, rather than the product or solution itself. This should directly address the problem(s) you listed in the previous slide. Use this section to show how your solution is feasible, replicable, and scalable.
Why Now?: How has the space you are in evolved to signal an opportunity and make this an urgent issue to be resolved? What trends (beyond the obvious) have come up recently, and why do they matter? Have there been changes in consumer behavior? Are there new technologies now available that require this solution? Answering these questions will demonstrate the relevancy and urgency of getting your solution onto the market.
Market: Define the market and the category you’re going after, and your targets in that market. Include the size of the market, how it’s changing, and its growth rate, and the implications of these for your trajectory.
Product: This is the section where your product can shine. Show off the technology and its competitive advantage in the market. You can have a single slide with a high level overview that is easy to understand and have additional, more detailed slides to use as and when needed. Depending on where you are in the conversation or the subject matter knowledge of your audience you can have more details or less.
Traction: How well is your product being picked up? Use this section to show initial validation in the early stages and later your clients, users, growth and pipeline. This also demonstrates how well you understand your target audience and their behavior. Depending on your stage, you can have revenue and projections as well.
Milestones & Next Steps: Present the major milestones you’ve reached so far, and outline what’s coming next. This includes your go-to-market strategy (product roadmap, growth, partnerships…).
Business Model: How do you make money? Who pays you and for what? Explain the structure you use to generate revenue, and how it is scalable and replicable.
Competitive Landscape + Competitive Advantage: Lay out the market and your competitors (direct and indirect). You want to show an understanding of who else is in the space, and what advantage or USP you have over them. By running through the competitors, this also helps to validate the problem. Investors want to understand who else is in the space, how you’re positioned and will defend that position.
Financials: In this section, you need to demonstrate how your solution is feasible and scalable, and what you’ll need to achieve your goals. Show that you have a good understanding of your business with clear targets and the requirements to reach them. Again, have these ready and pull them up as and when needed: cash rate, burn rate, projections including revenue, costs and expenses, and breakeven and profitability.
These can be shared either as a part of the deck, or sent separately, depending on where you are in your conversation with a potential investor.
Ask & Use of Funds: If you are serious about the investor you are reaching out to we advise you to include how much you are raising so they can make an initial decision about whether or not they invest at that level, in that period. Feel free to include past funding or any commitments. Make sure to include what you plan to do with the funding, and within what timeframe.
Show a percentage breakdown of how you plan on spending the investment (team growth, product development, customer acquisition etc).
Final Slide: Include your logo, tagline and main contact again, as well as a clear next action.
We’re so happy we could connect with the tech ecosystem in such a unique way to share suggested practices and recommendations, meet new people, and provide actionable insights on one aspect of the founder’s journey — fundraising and cold outreach.
A huge thank you to Turks in Tech London for hosting this event, and for everyone in the community that took the time to come out and join us.
