This video features an investor scrutinizing a series of pitch decks, offering candid evaluations slide-by-slide. This exercise is portrayed as both an instructive and interactive experience, allowing viewers to gain insights into an investor's initial impressions of pitch presentations. Key highlights include organic reactions to pitch content, providing a thumbs up or down based on the pitch's effectiveness.

The video targets entrepreneurs and business starters, informing them about common mistakes made in pitch decks. These include excessive textual content, lack of clarity regarding the business model, and over-complicated details that miss engaging investors. The presenter emphasizes the importance of capturing attention from the onset and maintaining investor interest by presenting a clear, concise, and compelling business narrative.

Main takeaways from the video:

Please remember to turn on the CC button to view the subtitles.

Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. intrigued [ɪnˈtriːɡd] - (adjective) - Feeling curious or interested in something. - Synonyms: (interested, fascinated, captivated)

But already, it has me intrigued, because it does talk about a return on investment...

2. absorbing [əbˈzɔːrbɪŋ] - (verb) - Taking in information. - Synonyms: (assimilating, comprehending, understanding)

I'm not sure exactly where the founder wants me to start reading and start absorbing information.

3. disengaged [ˌdɪsɪnˈɡeɪdʒd] - (adjective) - Not interested or involved. - Synonyms: (uninterested, detached, indifferent)

I'm really disengaged.

4. revenues [ˈrevənjuːz] - (noun) - Income generated from goods or services sold. - Synonyms: (income, earnings, proceeds)

I don't  see any revenues

5. sustainable [səˈsteɪnəbl] - (adjective) - Capable of being continued with minimal long-term impact. - Synonyms: (viable, maintainable, feasible)

...not very sustainable.

6. resourcing [rɪˈzɔːrsɪŋ] - (noun) - The process of supplying resources and materials. - Synonyms: (supplying, allocating, provisioning)

And they're looking at resourcing, as opposed to hustling really hard...

7. projection [prəˈdʒekʃən] - (noun) - An estimate or forecast of future financial performance. - Synonyms: (prediction, estimate, forecast)

They've made a 5 year projection.

8. Mvp (Minimum Viable Product) [ˈmɪnɪməm ˈvaɪəbl ˈprɒdʌkt] - (noun) - The most compact version of a product that can work and serve its function. - Synonyms: (prototype, initial model, beta version)

...they're looking to raise $200k to build the MVP.

9. hustling [ˈhʌslɪŋ] - (verb) - Working energetically and resourcefully. - Synonyms: (working hard, striving, pushing)

...as opposed to hustling really hard and trying to get as much as they can done...

10. compelling [kəmˈpɛlɪŋ] - (adjective) - Evoking interest, attention, or admiration in a persuasive way. - Synonyms: (persuasive, convincing, captivating)

...years of experience is just not very compelling in terms of saying how you are better than the competition.

Why Your Pitch Deck is Getting Deleted: Mistakes Founders Make & How to Fix Them

Hi, Digital Chiefs. Today, I thought I'd do something a little bit different. I'm going to spend half an hour and open as many pitch decks as I can and go through them, slide by slide. Now, most of these pitch decks, I collected many years ago, so I don't remember opening them, and if I did open them, I don't remember what they were about. So you are going to get organic first impressions of these pitch decks with every single, slide deck. I will give it a roast or a toast. So a roast will obviously be a thumbs down and a toast will be a thumbs up. A thumbs up would typically mean that I would move to the next stage and actually ask the founders for a meeting, a roast will typically mean that I will just hit delete. Sometimes, if there is a little bit there, I will reply. Hopefully you will learn a ton from this exercise by me quickly going through every single pitch deck as an investor would with their inbox. I'll be obviously spending a lot more time on these decks than I normally would. Frequently, I will just not open the attachments when I get them, simply because the cold email or the warm introduction email was not very good. So keep that in mind, if you can't even pass that first hurdle, you'll not even get to the stage where the pitch deck is open. I'll bleep out any curse words and try to keep this very professional. But at the same time, I do want all you to get the organic experience. I'll be deleting or blanking out the personalized information on each of these, so let's go. Let's see how many we can get through in half an hour.

But this very first one actually doesn't have a title. It says a pitch deck that will return 500x with acceptable risk. So this is quite interesting and quite unique. I've not seen this before. But already, it has me intrigued, because it does talk about a return on investment, which most founders actually don't do in their pitch deck very well. The very first impression of this slide, straight away, there's a lot of text here. There's a lot going on. I'm not sure exactly where the founder wants me to start reading and start absorbing information. Words that have stuck out to me are eel and eel production. Not really the area I find particularly interesting, nor is it an area I really understand. So already I've kind of lost interest. I'm not really in the farming sector. Nothing on my profile says that I am. 99% of eel production is in danger of being extinct. More stats, more text. We're into what is it? Slide 4 already, and they're still on the problem statement. More data. I can see maps in Africa and Asia, again because I've lost interest on the first slide, I'm not really reading and there's still too much text. I'm really just skipping through all these slides. Now that there's a ton of slides on the market, I don't really know why it's taking so long to get to what the solution is. There's a ton of charts with data going back to 2009. All of this can really be summed up in the one or two slides at most. I think one thing that really bothers me about this slide is I'm not sure why I should care. There's no urgency in terms of, why does this matter? And there you go, there's no business plan. There is only nine slides, and most of it is data. There's no business model. I don't really understand what the business is from the entrepreneur, and I am not reading the text. And funnily enough, the email address on this is a Gmail account, so it's obviously a super early stage company. And then the very large slide has a bunch of images of more reports and more data. Again, don't know what the solution is. Don't know how they're going to make money. So it had a promising start. But obviously this is not a business pitch deck. It says in the title a VC pitch deck. This is not a VC pitch deck. This is literally a study paper. So this one was obviously a complete roast. I would give it a minus 10 for wasting my time.

This next one has 18 slides, probably a little bit on the heavier side, particularly with initial pitch deck to an investor, you don't know. My impression from the very first slide is there are stock images in this, and I don't know how it relates to the business itself. There's already way too much test. I'm seeing governments, institutions, content. That's all I've got from the first slide. I get a feeling this is just going to be the format of this one, stock images that don't make a ton of sense, and a lot of block text. Company purpose, mission statements, more stock images. I've zoned out. I into slide 4, I still don't know what the product is, and I still don't know what the market is. Something about content producers and content related media. There's a ton of logos and brands with text associated with it. Lots of big brands in there, but it doesn't say clearly if they're customers or target customers. This slide looks like a bunch of testimonials from their customers, except, again, on the right side, there is a stock image. I'm on slide 6, and I haven't seen any dollars. I can't still seem to understand what the product. So this slide has way too many target customers. Early stage companies have no time and no money, so a massive target market tells me that you haven't actually thought through your own challenges, and therefore it's not very sustainable. Clearly, they are trying to do too much with too little at this point in time. Something about AI. But again, way too many content verticals, way too many sectors. So this slide, the content buyer platform, there does look like there is some sort of business model here, but because it requires me to read, to understand exactly what it is, I'm really disengaged. Again, super complicated business model and different options for this particular business model. I sort of understand it is in the content space and is looking to target content producers by now. The team slide is way too long. With the profiles, the photos are actually not too bad, and there are LinkedIn bios, but I quickly cannot understand why these people are important to this particular business. They're looking to raise $4 million. There's no way in hell this slide is going to be raising 4 million, and they've got a three year projection. Again, way too long. You're super early seed stage company. I don't see any revenues. Trying to raise $4 million with no revenue, and this terrible slide deck is just not going to be happening. I've just noticed that they're looking to raise $200k to build the MVP. $200k to build the MVP is okay, it's up on the higher end. I typically would say about $50 to $100k but it depends on if you're building it yourself with sweat equity, or if you're asking a studio to help you build it. There are plenty of no code MVP builds now that you can do yourself. So $200k does sound on the higher end. So this is very clear to me, it's super early seed stage. They're looking for pilot customers, and they're looking to have pilot buyers as well. These revenue projections look completely off to me. But then again, I don't understand the business model and what the value they're hoping to provide is. This looks like a way too detailed a plan for a seed stage company. It's got way too many hires as well. In here, it's very, very complex, and obviously has been drawn up by someone who's spent a lot more time in corporate. And they're looking at resourcing, as opposed to hustling really hard and trying to get as much as they can done with very, very little money. Profit & Loss Statement. This should just not be in here. 1. I cannot read this text at all. And secondly, you haven't even built an MVP yet. Why am I getting a profit and loss statement? Again, they're looking for investment partner for a million. It was $4 million for that previous slide on the full 3 years, and then it was $200k to build each MVP, and now it's 1 million. Well, I'm little bit confused. How much do you want to raise? And they're asking for 20% no surprises here. I'm really just going through the numbers very quickly. I'm not really reading the rest of it. They're looking for $1 million for 20% of the company. That values the company at $5 million. There is no way this is worth $5 million, again, I don't know why I got this slide deck. I do have obviously a media background, but this is such a terrible slide for pitching for investment. There is no way I would have gotten through the first 3 slides even. This is also definitely a roast. It is also on par with the first one, a -10 for wasting my time.

Hopefully, this third one is gonna be a little bit better. This looks like a restaurant app, so straight away from the first slide, the name of it tells me it is focused on the restaurant industry. So that's a good start. And also, very quickly, I can tell it's data analytics for the restaurant industry. However, too much detail on the founder information. I don't need all that upfront. I certainly don't need addresses these days. But you know, contact information. One contact information is good, and I can see clearly it's the CEO. So, contact information, another thumbs up there. I don't really understand what the bottom left image is. It's too small to see. You probably would just take this out. I can tell it's a POS system. There's a couple of clear steps. I'd say, still a little bit too much text, but there are only really 4 steps. The idea is it's some sort of internal system for managing restaurants. So the idea is that it is hoping to save time and money for restaurant owners. I can see that very quickly, but the rest of text, I'm not really going through. I'm not sure I understand what the magic formula is, and I don't see really tangible ways that this is actually helping the restaurant, ie. how much time, how much money is it saving a restaurant? Okay, this next slide, I can see it has something to do with reservations and limiting overbooking. So I can see it's digitizing a restaurant and moving away from physical bookings. But I don't think many restaurants are doing physical bookings in a written book anymore these days. So, I think their problem statement is a little bit problematic. So there is a business model in this. I can actually clearly see that they are looking to make money. And how they plan to make money. At this point, I'm kind of curious to know how much restaurants already pay for their own systems. This pricing model does look a little bit on the higher end, but I can see there's different components. And the funny thing is, though it talks about an integrated component, but will be charging for extra components. So all up, it does look quite pricey if you add up the figures together, but obviously it depends on the size of the restaurants they're targeting. This positioning slide, I'm not a fan of. It can be used really well, but it's really saying it's sitting in the area that it's automated. Normally, this kind of competitor slide set up is okay, and it does give a clear indication on how it's better, but the way this one is done is all it's saying to me is their system is automated and they're first in the market. This slide really doesn't tell me why it's better than the existing systems. Again, it looks like pricing wise, there's different components, and it's quite expensive to have all the components connected. So I don't think this is a compelling enough competitor slide. I'm not sure I understand how it's automated compared to the other ones. Again, the only thing that's sort of registering for me is that it is a booking system. It handles other logistics and supplies within a restaurant. But other than that, I'm really not seeing why it is more automated than the other systems. It might be in there in the text, but the fact is, it's just lost. There's too much stuff going on, and I'm not enticed to read it, and as a result, I've missed that information. SWOT analysis, again, probably too much for this particular slide deck. You should probably just focus on one competitor slide and having that say everything. This is a investment pitch deck. It is not meant to be a full corporate strategy. Full SWOT analysis is probably not the right spot for a pitch deck. The pitch deck should really just show off exactly why your product is the best in the market and will beat the competition. That's it. That's the key message. This is the go to market slide, but it says the strategy of acquisition. So confusing language there. So I can see here the sales strategy is to use Salesforce and then social media. I'm not convinced that there's anything interesting and unique about that particular strategy. Again, this is more competitor slides. It's out of sequence. There's also different competitors in this particular slide than the other two. So it's not very coherent. It's a little bit all over the place. As someone who doesn't run a restaurant, I don't know what some of these terms are as well. Given it's in the section next to the cash register, I assume splitting has to do with splitting the bills, but I really don't know. And again, does it really deserve a full line? If its key selling point is that it's automated and a little cheaper, then all of these categories - not sure the narrative is consistent. This team slide, a lot of information on the years of experience. I've commented in the past with other slide deck reviews, that years of experience is just not very compelling in terms of saying how you are better than the competition. I think really you need to focus on the brands you worked for, ie. in a similar industry, or the actual outcomes of those particular positions and work experience. A lot of this is really generic. They've supported ideas. They've built strategy. It's really superficial. It's not particularly memorable as well, two charts on a slide. Which one am I meant to look at? First, they've made a 5 year projection. That is a little bit ridiculous, given that they're super early seed stage.

I don't think they've built the MVP yet. It looks like the first year they put in a bunch of zeros, $230. Given the slide deck is from Switzerland. What currency is this? They're targeting to make $30,000 in the fifth year, or 30, sales. Again, I really don't know what these numbers relate to. Straight away from this one, I can see a typo in the heading, so spell check, spell check, spell check. I drum on about this, but as you can see, people still forget to do it. Okay, so they've got the target market slide, except there's so many different numbers. The good thing is that they have started with their home country first, and gone wider. But it's way too many numbers at seed stage. They should just be telling me the story for Switzerland. They should not even tell me how much staff it is. Again, I just don't know what has been built. There's a risk assessment for the investor. If you are going out to raise capital, you don't want to give the investor a interpretation of the risk. This is quite dangerous territory. Finally, we've got some currency here. They have been talking to USD, so my guess was correct, but it says that they're raising $400k to $2 million. That is a huge range, and obviously they've broken it down to what they're looking to get done at each stage. You should really just stick to a number and tell the story based on that number. I'm super confused about what you're trying to raise and what that raising would achieve. So I can see here that some part of it has been developed, but have they gotten any customers yet? It gives me the impression that they're developing something that hasn't actually been tested and sold, even on a pilot customer level. The images on the right side with the little icons, I can't see them, they're really small. I don't know what they mean. Press and partners. So press doesn't have a huge amount of weight in a pitch deck unless it's consumer and that brings in a lot of visits to the website and app downloads. With a product like this that is B2B focus, partnerships are a lot more compelling. A lot of these brands do look like proper restaurant brands, so that's great, but it doesn't actually tell me how these brands will be useful for this particular company, ie. does it give it access to a ton of restaurants. Press, to me, should just not be combined with these partners. Partners means customers. Press also means customers, if it is a consumer product you are trying to sell. There's some excellence awards here. A lot of text, not reading it. Last slide, again, too much information. I can just see the LinkedIn. Then 4,000 members? Is that 4,000 followers of the company? LinkedIn? Or is it related to the actual founder? This one, unfortunately, is still a roast, but I would probably give it a -2. It would not be as bad as the first two that I've gone through, but it's still pretty bad, and definitely no meeting.

Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Business, Investors, Pitch Decks, Startup Evaluation, Fundraising, Venture Capital, Startups, Startup Funding, Women In Tech, Funding, Founders, Startup Pitch, Raising Capital, Raising Funds, Digital Chief