What I have learned from participating in a startup battle. An analysis of my pitch deck and the 13 things how I would improve it.

In 2018 I was invited to participate in a startup battle in Riga during Tech Chill conference. I made it to the list of 50 selected startup. I decided to make a pitch that will attract attention among other by its design concept. Was it worth it? Let’s analyse.

I took a unusual pitch outline breaking some common rules.

1. One-liner which I divided in 3 slides — I think that was a mistake because I was clicking slides too fast and was distracted by clicking. I was presnting Bash Today — a p2p marketplace for event spaces.

Make 1 slide for your solution and 1 slide for the problem you are solving.

2. I gave a slide with more details on the product. What kind of events? Events of all kind. I think I could skip this part and instead tell about our secret sauce — that the marketplace was curated and only the best venues were available to book.

Tell about your speciality — why are you better that anyone else in the market.

3. I told where we were founded. Should I have make a separate slide for that? Naah, just wasting time of the audience. I would better show the chart with the growth speed that we have made in 3 years.

Show what have you achieved in a short period of time.

4. Team: 8! Not the best minds or nice folks. Just 8. I would better indicate that it is our 3rd project together and that we match well taking our recent results into account. Telling that we are a team of 8 people doesn't ring any bell for the investor and does not represent any confirmation that our team is best in what we are doing.

Share why your team is the best for delivering your solution.

5. I think this is not the worst slide although it would be best to say how fas we are conquering the market, what is our current share and where we are aiming at.

Show your traction in dynamics and provide the market share.

6. Geography of operations. I think that this was a bad slide. If you are operating in a vulnerable location where you encounter problems with fundraising and capitalization try to avoid emphasizing this and instead show the perspectives. Also try to highlight that you are able to easily replicate the solution in a new market. It was also important to include where we we scaling — it was to London.

Emphasize your ability to easily replicate the results you have achieved so far in a new geography or market.

7. Also a good slide about the number of bookings, but it also would be much better to show numbers in dynamics.

Always remember to show how fast you are growing and what are the perspectives so the spectator can understand the pace of your growth and the ability to grow further.

8. A slide that would be approved event my mentors at 500 Global. Showing our growth. Nevertheless, for a young startup it would be best to show higher growth numbers.

Try to find the best growth metric to share with a potential investor.

9. Traction. Again. Dynamics! Most importnat is to show the pace of growth.

10. Economics. I would say that it is a good point to mention that we were breakeven, but it would be better to indicate our CAC and LTV and tell that we were able to replicate it in a new location. And also I made a mistake — instead of Ecomomics I wrote Economy. Always double-check your deck!

Double check your spelling and also train and record your pitch deck and make changes after watching it.

11. It would be even better to indicate not only that we are expanding but also to show where exactly are we expanding and explain why.

Share the reason for the choice you have made for your expansion location, share that you have analyzed the market and even better — already made tests and got results in this location.

12. This is a very strange number to Shell because it is not even. Also I was pronouncing that we were attracting £1 million and the screenshot that it is 800,000 — meeting you USD but I forgot to indicate it. Telling one thing and showing an other was a mistake and the viewer was confused.

Do not let your design to confuse your viewers, do not provide the information that would contradict your speech.

13. I think that it is a good slide, but also I did not indicate the currency and it would be awesome to add the name of the market and the speed of the market growth. I thinkI think that II think that I was trying to keep my slides in the most simple way but this is the case where a design concept does not help the project, on the contrary it makes it only worse.

Always indicate the currency and when showing the market size indicate the growth pace. When the market is big it will become bigger, if the market is small show how fast it is growing. When Coinbase launched Bitcoin had a small market.

14. To show high numbers of growth is very end very important, but you remember in one of the previous slides I was telling that the growth was 2.5 times? And here I am showing 5X. This slide follows the information about the financing round but it would be better to say that with the additional investments we would increase our growth rate and make it 5 times instead of 2 by taking specific steps and measures — in that case I would show the reason why I was raising money and the way I would spend this money to make the investor happy.

Tell the potential inbestor why you are raising a certain amount of money and how you will use the funds to achieve a better growth results. Remember — the investor is happy when you earn a lot of money and can pay him off.

15. This slide was just good but today I would add a QR code with my Telegram ir Linkedin.

Always show your email in a huge font and it will be also good to add the email on each slide in a small font in the header or the footer.

Conclusion. I think that it was not worth subordinating the entire design of my presentation to certain standards, because in the end it did not play into my hands, but only made it difficult to convey information to a potential investor. I should have relied on the result I wanted to get and the message I wanted to convey to the viewer instead of focusing on the design of my presentation.

I am also attachign the video so you could watch the pitch itself.