1 I’ve reviewed probably 25 pitch decks this year for early-stage founders, and it is striking how 95% of the decks all look and sound the same, regardless of what the company is doing or who the founders are.
2 If those companies do get funded, they make enterprise SaaS websites that also look the same: quasi-diverse pictures of happy office workers, full-bleed photography and video of the same happy office workers in the hero spot, and three value prop callouts when you scroll down.
3 What is it that makes otherwise talented people decide to phone it in when it comes to branding and representing their work? If prospective investors and/or customers can’t tell the difference between your stuff and everyone else’s, you’re not going to get the deal.
4 Whether it’s your pitch deck or your website, please stop talking up the fact that you’re using AI. It’s 2018. “We use AI to do X” has not been meaningful for many years, if it ever was. You are taking yourself out of the running before you even get off the ground.
5 One of the best pieces of advice we got early on was when @roybahat pointed this out: We had an amazing and differentiated product user experience, but the marketing site we were planning looked the same as everyone else’s. We had a brand pov; why weren’t we embracing it?
6 This advice had a profound impact on us. When we raised our Series B, one AI beat reporter asked me what it was like raising money for an AI company in the current climate. I said that we hadn’t raised money for an AI company; we’d raised money for an augmented writing company.
7 If you sound the same as everyone else on the showroom floor, if your website looks the same, if your people look the same, if your pitch uses the same words… you’re hiding what might be unique + great about you. What EXACTLY is it that you’re the inevitable founder of?
8 Find your value prop + your defensible tech, which have to be different from other people’s. Find your language + your values + your brand, which have to be different from other people’s. In all cases, they have to come from something authentic that stems from who you just are.
9 Playing it safe with the way you talk about your company - looking and sounding like everyone else - you’ll never be embarrassed. But you’ll also never go big. That's ok if going big isn't your goal. But that's not true for most people making pitch decks.
