01. The Pitch

Estimated Time

Reading: ~22 minutes
Video: ~73 minutes
Activities: to be completed prior to next week

Insights

Everyone will have the opportunity to pitch to the Launch Investment team at the conclusion of Founder.University
Implement Jason’s rules for pitching (especially if you know you’ll pitch to him and his team!)
Treat your pitch like your product - pitch, gather feedback, iterate, repeat
Practice, practice, practice!
You want the audience to hear your pitch, understand what you do, and be able to then clearly repeat what you do to their colleagues

Episode Date: Sep 16, 2021 — Link to Video

Jason Calacanis | TWiST | Twitter | LinkedIn

This video is an overview of what it is like to pitch at our LAUNCH Accelerator

This video is a great preview of the next stage of your LAUNCH journey

We hope that the goal for several of you is to be a part of our Accelerator in the future

The format in the video above is similar to what you'll do for your pitch in a couple of weeks as a member of Founder.University
At our accelerator founders pitch for 3-minutes, then there is a 2-minute Q&A session with the judges

Afterward, the judges pick their top 3 startups
We keep score over the 16 weeks of the program

The week to week presentations are not live-streamed
This recording was from our Demo Day (the very last week of The Accelerator) and so it was streamed live on YouTube

So how will the 3-minute accelerator pitch compare to your 2-minute pitch for Founder.University?

We've pulled a few questions relevant to you from the FAQs that we provided to our Founder.University judges - found below:

Q: Who are the judges for the Founder.University pitches?

A: There will be 3 to 4 judges for each session. Most sessions will consist of 1-2 LAUNCH portfolio founders and 1-2 LAUNCH Investment team members.

Q: How far into the program are the founders when they pitch?

A: The pitches take place at the conclusion of the 12-week program.

Q: Will every founder pitch?

A: It is not a requirement that every founder pitch. We hope that the majority will opt to pitch during one of the sessions we have scheduled.

Q: Will every founder pitching have a product in market?

A: Not necessarily. Some founders will have a functioning MVP and their initial users.

Some founders will have a landing page, a waitlist, and the initial pieces of their MVP in place.

Founders will pitch based on what they have and what their vision is going forward.

Q: How many founders will pitch in a single session?

A: There will be ~12 founders pitching in each session in a process similar to what you see at the 2-day intensive Founder.University pitch sessions.

For example, 3-4 founders will pitch back to back and the judges will take notes. Judges will give feedback after each of these groups of 3-4. Then the next 3-4 founders will present and the process repeats until all 12 founders have presented.

Q: Do you have any examples of what this looks like with Jason as a judge?

A: Yes, here are the founder pitches at an intensive Founder.University in 2021.

Jason and Charles Hudson provided feedback after the pitches.

Q: How long will each founder pitch?

A: Each founder will pitch for 2 minutes. Pitches will be timed.

Q: How long will the session take?

A: Each session will be completed in one hour.

12 founders pitching for 2 minutes each = ~24 minutes

The transition between founder pitches = ~6 minutes

Feedback for each group of 3 to 4 founders = ~15 minutes

Ranking of the presentations = ~5 minutes

Q: Is there a Q&A after each pitch?

A: Kind of. The judges will provide feedback or ask clarifying questions after the 3-4 founders have gone from each group. The founders will answer in the chat.

Q: What types of questions will the judges ask of the founders?

A: Judges will provide general feedback on the pitch - what they liked or what they would improve based on their experience.

The judge’s priority will be to ensure that they understand the product. If the pitch is not clear they will ask questions to gather more details on what the product does.

If the judges clearly understand the product they may ask questions from an investor perspective (market size, competition, go-to-market strategy, etc.).

Q: Will there be a "winner" in the session?

A: Judges will select their top founders in each group of 3-4 presentations.

After all 12 founders pitch, the judges will identify their top 3 from the entire session.

Note: The overall top 3 from the session does not need to solely be from the “group winners”. For example, the 2nd place presentation in one group could be included in the top 3 overall pitches and therefore a “group winner” may not make the overall top 3.

Q: What criteria will judges be using to pick a “winner”?

A: A combination of founder credibility, investment opportunity, current product development, scalability of the idea, and clarity of the presentation.

Q: Do the “winners” literally win something?

A: A few of the top presentations will be selected by the LAUNCH team to pitch to Jason at a later date.

What to expect for your 2-minute pitch at the end of Founder.University

You will get an email prior to week 12 asking you to select a time to pitch

The availability will be on a first come first serve basis
If you are interested in pitching in front of the LAUNCH investment team we expect that you'll make one of the sessions work with your schedule

The format for the pitch session will be:

~12 founders per zoom session
Each founder will pitch for 2-minutes
Founders will pitch as groups of 3-4 during each session

You can watch examples of this format of founders pitching at an intensive Founder.University

The judges will make statements or ask questions of each of these 3-4 founders

Founders will respond in the zoom chat

The judges will identify their top startup from each group of 3-4
Then the next group of 3 to 4 founders will present in this same way

This process will repeat until all ~12 founders have pitched

After all the pitches, each judge will state their top 3 overall presentations

Judges will give a brief reason for why they selected their top overall company

These sessions will all be live-streamed and recorded so that the LAUNCH team can review the top pitches at a later date

A select number of founders will pitch in this same format to Jason at a later date

So what should you include in your two-minute pitch?

We alluded to this briefly in previous modules but will go into a bit more detail below

Jason's Rules for Pitching

One of Jason's favorite analogies for a good pitch is that you are making a trailer for your movie
He often tells LAUNCH accelerator companies, "You are making trailers that will get people to buy tickets to the movie - your product"
"Keep in mind that not every character gets into the trailer"

You need to tell the story:

Get to the main part (your product) quickly
Attract interest from the start

This could be for a sale, scheduling the next meeting, or receiving an investment

Be clear with the story
Leave them wanting more

"How many trailers start with a long back story? None!”
“A good trailer grabs your attention within seconds and makes you want to go to the theater right now!"
This gets us to Jason's 5 rules for pitching
If you have the opportunity to work with Jason and the LAUNCH team this will be drilled over and over until you get it right

If you can nail these from the start you'll stand out to Jason and the team
There are several examples of portfolio founders pitching (in the additional resources section) if you want to see examples

If you have the chance to pitch to Jason these are the five main criteria he will judge you on
1. Get to the product quickly

Give a quick intro (your one simple sentence is perfect for this) and then hook the audience with your product

For example, "Hi, I’m Sally founder of Acme Company, the office assistant for freelancers"

Jason believes the longer it takes you to show the product the worse the product must be
The best way to show your product is to embed screenshots or gifs right into your deck

Do not click out of your pitch deck while presenting to go to your product
Do not record your presentation
Ideally, you are explaining the user journey while your product is on the screen

2. Examples matter

Jason's stance here is that you should not make your audience guess or try and figure out who uses the product or how they use it
Make it clear with a story
To continue the example,

"Meet Beth, she is a freelancer that builds front-end web applications for mom and pop shops around Dallas...
Beth is typically working on 4-5 projects at a time and communication with her clients often becomes cluttered and hard to manage...

[Show the 3, 4, 5 communication tools she is currently using]

She often spends up to 15 hours over during a project just going back and forth through old emails, text messages, and mock-ups to provide her clients with the most updated progress and ensure she is working from the most recent designs...

[Show how cluttered and challenging current solutions are]

With Acme Company's AI, Beth can find all messages and designs in a single interface. Acme Company will even message her clients when she is working on their project so they have up-to-the-minute feedback on her progress.

[BOOM - your product on screen as you talk about it]
The audience has your one simple sentence to set the stage, understands Beth’s problem, and now sees how beautifully your product looks - all in ~15 seconds!

Let me show you how it is done."

The example you pick for your pitch should be based on real customers

Ideally, Beth is not a made-up persona
We have a unique situation at Founder.University in that we are pitching pretty early in your journey

We are aware a lot of you do not have users or customers at this point
So if you need to base this customer on your ideal customer profile at this point that is okay

You should still use a persona

For example, "Meet Beth (a perfect example of our ideal customer), she is a freelancer that builds front-end web applications... "
Being pre-revenue allows you to sell the vision a little more since you don't have the revenue data to point to
You may talk a bit more at this early stage about your beachhead market and tell that story about who your customers will be

It is okay if you quickly point to how this can expand to other markets but you want to make it clear the area you will attack to get your foot in the door

If you talk about too many ideas or customers you’ll lose the attention of the audience
And worse yet, you may give the impression that you don’t have a clear plan or customer to target

As soon as you have real customers you should update your pitch and base the story on them

Anytime you are using real examples you should always ask permission from the individual if it is okay to use their story as part of your pitch
You can always change their name and company name if needed

3. One slide, one message

Always error on the side of keeping your slides simple

People can either listen to you or read what you put on the slide

They can not do both
Especially when you only have 2 minutes and are moving quick

Identify what is most important and include that in your presentation

You'll hear Jason say - "slides want to move"

What he means is that if the slide is too complex you'll stay on it for too long
Slides want to move!

Let them move! ~10 seconds or less and on to the next slide

If you have more than one point on any slide you need to make a second slide and split up the content

For example, don't combine business model and revenue in the same slide
You do not want there to be any confusion about what you are talking about on a slide
This concept goes hand in hand with the next point, synchronicity

4. Synchronicity

You need to talk about what is on the screen

If you have more than one point on a slide that is impossible to do

Don't get excited and get ahead of yourself

Practice, practice, practice so you are always talking about what is on the screen
Make sure that you are only telling the story that is present on the current slide
We see founders get excited, nervous, anxious, etc. and begin to share content that is on future slides

Then when they get to a slide that they’ve already mentioned they click through it quickly
The audience doesn’t notice you’ve talked about it already

They notice you skipped a slide which gives the impression the content wasn’t important or worse that you are trying to hide something

Staying in sync will help build the credibility you are trying to portray to investors

If you have a demo video of your product embedded make sure your pace matches the action on the screen

If you say "...from the dashboard Beth can click into the graph to see deep insights..."
Your demo better be of Beth clicking on a graph and offering deep insights
Waiting on your demo to catch up, or talking about features that are not being shown on the screen is one of the quickest ways to confuse your audience

5. Show, don’t tell

Use your product to show the use case

Bring the example to life in your demo
Be specific about what is happening
Details, details, details

Jason will hammer on your presentations if you are speaking in generalities
The audience can usually assume general concepts - it is your job to be specific

People remember the stories, they won't remember a description without visuals
The main goal of your pitch:

You want the audience to hear your pitch, understand what you do, and then clearly repeat what you do to their colleague
You have 2-minutes to make this happen
You need to be clear and crisp in your presentation
If the person watching your pitch can not articulate what you do to their partner later that day, then you failed

The story will help them remember... "oh yea Beth the freelancer was able to navigate the dashboard and see all her client conversations in one place. She took on three more projects because of the time she saved using Acme!"
If you are clear, the investor may already have people in mind that fit Beth’s profile that they want to talk to about your product

Do not make the investor or the customer try to guess what you do or who your customer is
When showing performance data, customer traction, or month over month revenue use a graph

The audience can quickly consume a lot of information when presented in a graph over text

At all costs avoid lots of text on the slide and vague descriptions in your presentation

Suggestions on how to format a pitch deck

A good rule is to have 12-18 slides for a 2-minute presentation

That gives you ~7-10 seconds per slide
This is perfectly in line with Jason's saying, "slides want to move" - Keep it simple!

Things to include on the footer of every slide:

You never know what slide someone might screenshot to share - you want your info in it
You want them to have all the information they need to learn more or contact you
If you don’t have this format, Jason will surely point it out

If you have the chance to pitch in front of Jason you want the feedback to be of substance not on format!

The name of your company

The company URL

Make it easy for them to look you up and share your information

Company social media

Same reason as URL - make it easy for them to connect with you

Slide number and the total number of slides

Use this format: 1/15 (meaning slide 1 of 15), 2/15 (meaning slide 2 of 15), etc.
Investors will want to reference the slide during Q&A
It also helps to keep people focused if they know where they are in the presentation
It also helps you to pace your presentation and finish on time

Having the logo is a nice bonus

Below is a great example of a footer for your pitch deck

So what should you include in your 12-18 slides?

Your intro:

When you share your screen the first slide should have your company name, your logo, and your one simple sentence (also known as your tagline)
When we start the timer you lead off your presentation with:

"I'm Sally Smith, founder of x, and we [ insert your one simple sentence tagline ]"

"Let me show you how it works"

Dive right into the product - the sooner you show the product the better
If absolutely necessary, spend a few seconds setting up the problem

This is best done through the perspective of a customer

We saw an example of how to do this above in Jason’s Rules for Pitching

Include a detailed example of how it works

In the demo, show the product through the example of an actual customer
Or customers (plural) if it's a two-sided product/marketplace
Use your most compelling customer example and use specific details, never generics

Do not use generic language like,

"You (or a user) can go to our platform and choose any of our six features to do XYZ".
Jason may stop you in the middle of your presentation if you start this way

He will want\ you to show him which of the six features is most important and show him how a customer uses it!

Rather, use a compelling customer example with specifics of what that customer is actually doing.

Jason used the following example on a recent call:

"Meet Jane, a brand manager at Acme Company in Las Angeles.
She's hosting an online product launch party for 5,000 people next month and needs an influencer to promote it.
She hears about Acme from a friend and visits our site to find an influencer.
She chooses Brad, a graphic artist with 169k Instagram followers...”

Show the flow, describe exactly what Jane does in the app, and show the result of her picking Brad

As you are talking about what Jane does the demo should be in sync with what Jane is doing in your application

Follow the example until the end and resolve Jane's story.

She used our product and had X, Y, and Z results, saving x amount of time and y amount of money
Jane has 10 events in the next 3 months and signed up to our subscription service to accommodate those events

Bottom line: The more specific and compelling the example, the more memorable it will be!
Ideally, the demo should be a gif within your slide presentation

Don't use an embedded YouTube video, or use any video that has pre-recorded narration in it
Don't navigate away from your deck to open a new tab
Everything should happen in your single slide presentation

Briefly touch on your business model

Be very clear about how you make money

"We have an enterprise SaaS model for $150/month."
"We are a marketplace with X% take rate and Y margins"
"We are a consumer subscription and we charge $9.99/month or $99.99/year"

If you are pre-revenue it is still important to state how you will make money
If you only say “we are a subscription service”

The first question will be “how much do you charge?”

Be upfront with what you charge - the investors are well aware that it will probably change as your product evolves

Show your traction in a graph

Clearly state the growth in interest for your product if you are pre-revenue

This could be the number of people on your waitlist, number of users on your free tier, or number of paying customers depending on where you are at in your journey

If you have revenue then you definitely want to include this in your traction slide
The best way to represent this is with a bar chart over time, typically by month, but it might make sense for you to show week to week since we've only been together for 3-months

Normally, most investors will want to see the last 6-12 months of traction
You want to be honest with your numbers but also pick the model that best helps you tell your story

It is a good idea to include your anticipated growth on these traction charts (see roadmap)

Talk about your customers

You have the customer story going throughout this demo already this is a chance to expand...
You can say something like "Jane the brand manager is not alone in finding value with Acme...

As you can see we currently have ## customers. And it isn't just brand managers, it is also X, Y, and Z that are using Acme.

Include any prominent logos of well-known clients when appropriate

Customer testimonials are great

It is best to pick one or two of the best, give them separate slides, and read the quotes
Don't put a quote on the slide and then skip over it - this is a common mistake when presenting

If it is good enough to be in the deck, then give it the time it deserves

You can also talk to your churn and retention, but be aware that at this early of a stage you should be ready to defend the small sample size

For example, if you say “we have 0% churn” - although it may be true, investors know you only have three customers from a previous slide
They will call you on that every time

Competition

As we discussed in previous modules, being aware of your competition builds credibility
A great way to show this quickly and stand out is with one of the charts we showed in the competitive matrix module

The columns with the checkmarks or
The quadrant where you are in the top right corner are usually the best
Most investors are familiar with these formats

Listing key names and highlighting where you are better in these charts shows you are familiar with the space
Saying there is no competition is usually seen as a bit of a red flag in investors eyes

Usually, this means you are not aware of the space or others have tried your idea and there is no market demand
Be careful going this route

Current go to market strategy

How are you acquiring customers today?
What is your plan going forward?

Roadmap

Your road map does not have to be super detailed

You don't need to say we'll be adding X feature in quarter Y

What most investors are looking for is a rough outline of how you'll expand from the beachhead

When do you anticipate you'll do so
What impact will that have on your customer acquisition and revenue

This is where you can expand your traction slide

You showed your last six months of growth and now you can project out your next x months of growth

At LAUNCH, we often ask our founders what is your path to $10 million in revenue? To $100 million?
This is a great way of showing that you understand your market size and have a bottom-up approach

To continue the example from above with Jane the brand manager from Acme in LA you could mention how many more Jane's there are in LA that you can target this year

“We plan to bring on ~50 more Jane's in the next 12 months we'll hit $3 million in revenue.”

You can then show that within 2 years you plan to expand beyond LA and be located in Denver, Vegas, Dallas, Chicago, New York City, Miami, and Atlanta.

By getting into these cities and replicating your current success in LA you anticipate you'll be at $30 million in revenue.

Within 4 years you'll be in 50 more cities and will rollout your influencers affiliate program, where micro-influencers will be working under your company name

By the end of year 6, your revenue will be over $100 million
Additionally, the micro-influencers who are on your platform will result in another $10-20 million a year from your ~10-20% take rate

You want to build your credibility that you can deliver on these numbers so be intentional about how you calculate your road to these revenue numbers

This is why we spent so much time on your bottom-up TAM
This builds credibility for the opportunity of your business to scale

Highlight your team

You don't need a lot of text here
Usually, a picture with their name and title is enough
Include any logos of where they worked previously if it is relevant to their expertise and builds credibility that you are a team positioned to win

For example, if your CTO was previously a developer at Google or Amazon that is worth including on this slide

Point out any key distinguishing features

Jason is not a fan of “vanity accomplishments” like “Jill was a Forbes 30 under 30”
He would much rather know that “Jill has an extensive background in AI and has built an application that ranked in the top 10 for communication apps previously”

Your last slide should be exactly the same as your intro slide

Company name, logo, and one simple sentence
You should end with the same phrasing as your intro as well
“Thank you. I'm Sally Smith, founder of x, and we [ insert one simple sentence tag line ]”
This gives your audience an easily repeatable phrase so that they can tell your story

This one sentence will help spark the story of Jane and increase the chances of them remembering who you are and what you do

Venture Capitalist Stats

Jason discusses the average time VCs spend looking at slides with Russ Heddleston

The average VC will spend less than 3 minutes looking at a slide deck
They typically spend ~5 seconds on a slide
The decks that they look at on average have ~18 slides
An investor will rarely look at an entire deck that is sent to them via email

This is another reason it is so important to get to your product early and drive engagement from the first slide
You want the important information as soon as possible in case they don't make it to the end

This is why Jason is really leaning hard into sending Looms instead of sending slide decks if you are doing cold outreach or posting on social media
With Loom the founder controls more of the narrative and the investor can see that the presentation is only going to take 2-3 minutes

They may 1.5x or 2x your presentation, but the chances they watch to the end is higher from our experience
You still need to pique interest at the beginning and get to the product early, but this is a great tool to leverage how much of your presentation an investor may watch

Loom really is the movie trailer

It draws the audience in early, hits on the main points, and leaves them wanting to learn more
It gets the investor to go to the theater and ask you to meet
It does not show all the main characters, it does not show all the features

Trailers that give away everything or there is no reason to go to the theater

It is a great idea to have different length pitch decks and looms depending on the meeting and the situation

If you are going to email a deck you may want more text and an appendix
If the presentation is 2-3 minutes you’ll want to hit the highlights and if you have 7-10 minutes you may have a chance to go into more detail
A Loom posted on social media may have a different tone than one sent directly to investment teams as cold outreach

As mentioned in a previous module, Loom has some great tutorials on how to use their tool
All links are provided by support.loom.com

What is Loom?

Chrome Extension vs App

Getting Started Video Tutorials

Recording Settings

Recording Tools

We often have founders in our Accelerator ask how to make combination charts

Below is a quick tutorial
In this example, we create a Combination Graph (using Google Sheets) that will display both our MRR and New Customers

1. Add Data into a Google sheet

2. Highlight the data you want in the chart → Click "Insert" then click "Chart"

3. In the Chart Editor, Click the "Chart type" dropdown and then select "Combo Chart"

4. Still in the Chart Editor, open the "Series" dropdown and click "Apply to all series" to select "New Customers"

Keep Axis as "Left Axis"

5. Repeat this process but instead of "New Customer" select “MRR”

Still in the Chart Editor, open the "Series" dropdown and click "Apply to all series" to select "MRR" and now change Axis to "Right Axis"

6. You now have a Combination Chart that easily shows the correlation between new customers and MRR

Note: if you double click your graph it will open up the Chart Editor

You can adjust color, add labels, and customize the chart to your liking

Here is a link to a similar process for Microsoft Excel

Additional Tips for pitching to Jason (and his team)

If you have the opportunity to pitch Jason you will obviously want to hit on his top five rules outlined in this lesson

Get to the product early
Give real examples of people, don't makeup characters

Highlight your top customer and what impact your product/service had on their lives
This shows you know your customer too

One point per slide, don't overload the audience with information
Synchronicity when presenting is key,

What you're saying should match what the audience sees on the slides

Show, don't tell— stories go a long way

Other things you'll want to make sure you do to leave a good impression:

Avoid excessive use of buzz words
If you can be specific you should be specific
Always have footers that include company name, website, logo, social handle, and slide number (1/10).
Include commas with 4 digit numbers or more (i.e. 1,000 or 10,000)
If you're going to use a customer testimonial as part of your deck:

Put one customer testimonial on one slide and read it out
Do not put several testimonials and then not read any of them

During Q&A, address investors by their name

This may involve writing down their name and question while they are asking it

Summary

The goal of Jason’s 5 steps to pitching is to make it crystal clear to the investor what you do and why they should care
Anyone who sees your pitch, the trailer to your product, should be able to share the general plot with their friends well enough that those friends want to come to the theater with them
You want to stand out and be memorable

You do that by having a great product, a great team, and delighting customers
If you can't articulate that you have these three things then it doesn't matter how great your product is - investors won’t confidently invest and customers won’t buy

You do not want investors to have to do anything other than get excited about the opportunity to work with you

Don't make them try to guess what your product does
Don't make them try to figure out who your customers are
Don't make them try to estimate the opportunity

Use good examples, show the product, and be clear of the problem you solve

Additional Resources

Should a Startup Ever Pay to Pitch?
Founder.University Startup Tuneup: Jason & Brian Alvey dissect& perfect pitches in 7 verticals
Founder.University #StartupTuneup 10 startups get candid feedback from Jason & Monique Woodard
Candid Feedback on Startup Pitches at Founder University
Startup Basics: How to demo your product
A Guide to Investor Pitch Decks for Startup Fundraising
Pitch Deck Visibility Insights
Important ways that founders can leverage storytelling to turn their movements from ideas to reality [shorter version]
Additional recordings of portfolio founder’s pitches

Here are examples of clean, beautifully designed decks from 3-minute pitches at recent Accelerator presentations
Even though they have an extra minute the general concepts still apply for the 2-minute pitches you'll do for Founder.University

The videos also include Q&A from judges if you're interested in the type of feedback you'll get week to week as part of the LAUNCH Accelerator

Activities

Week 10

Create your 2-minute pitch deck

Start to practice your 2-minute pitch and iterate on your deck

Record yourself pitching and watch it back
Pitch to family, friends, pets, anyone who will listen
Try the pitch on customer calls

Bonus: update your 2-minute Loom pitch and use it on social media and for cold outreach

Week 11

Finalize your 2-minute pitch deck

Practice, practice, practice your pitch