The Exact Pitch Deck I've Used To Raise Millions From Investors (#436)

Shaan Puri

Alright what's up y'all sean here and this is gonna be a different type of episode this is a I'm calling a master class so master class didn't invite me to do a master class because I'm not famous but f them I'm a do it myself I know how to do some things really really well one of which is pitching and so if you're listening to this on the podcast feed it's gonna be slightly not ideal because I'm gonna share my screen I'm gonna show I'm gonna give away one of my little assets which is my dummy pitch deck so this is literally a template for how I do my pitch decks that is for any business that's trying to raise money you want to send a deck to an investor and you wanna have them understand what you're doing be excited about what you're doing and cut you the check this is a deck that I have used to raise money I have sent to other founders to help them raise money I also in my power writing course this is one of the modules this is one of the examples one of the templates I give away so normally people pay $1,000 to take that course this is one of the little things in there I'm giving this away for free right now so if you're on the podcast feed you're not gonna be able to see my screen so what I recommend you do hit pause open youtube type in my first million that's find our channel subscribe to it and and now you you will be able to see the screen here because it's gonna be a lot better with the visuals but if you're on youtube already alright you're here so here's let's let me pull this up so this is my dummy pitch deck and by the way I'm doing this kind of live and improvise I haven't looked at this on a little while so there might be some some funky stuff going on but that's okay we'll we'll we'll improvise as we go so the first thing is your title and a small subtitle explaining what you do and as we go through this pitch deck I'm going to write in an example from that that I had done with a founder in our power writing course okay so for example here with the visitor title so they go we are shuni and I was like okay what the heck is that and they go you know first they said we are an app for people with insomnia and I said okay that's kind of you know that's that's okay what's a subtitle that says the outcome and maybe your special sauce and so this is where we landed on so we go they said we are helping millions millions of people fix their insomnia with skills parenthesis not pills so that took a little bit of workshopping to get that one liner but when you have that one liner feels so good when you get that one liner so I think this is great what are we doing we are out here trying to help millions of people fix their insomnia with skills not pills alright so that's your first line first slide now let's get to the good stuff so this is where you wanna you if you have credibility you wanna lead with it which is basically in the beginning of any pitch an investor is trying to figure out should I even care should I listen and should I listen is gonna come down to 1 of 2 things number 1 do you have something that I want so that's kinda what the title slide sort of hints at what do you what do you actually do and the second is or are you somebody that is legit are you worth listening to do you have credibility or some some gravity to you about what you've done so if you have accomplishments I like putting that as slide 2 so a bit of credibility if you have some accomplishments set the stage this is your quick intro which sounds polite but it's actually a place to humble brag and if you or a company doesn't have accomplishments then skip this slide don't put this here you don't wanna lead with I'm not that interesting so in suney's case I go why you know do you have any credibility and they go well our cofounder or our partner is this guy matthew walker who wrote this book why we sleep it's a you know I was like oh I've heard of that book it's like a bestseller they go yeah exactly so I go perfect so our title became we literally wrote the book on sleep and then basically I explain our cofounder's yeah our founder's book why we sleep is a new york times bestseller with over x 1000000 copies sold or whatever the thing is so that's like one of them and then you know the other person and I'm a ai research scientist who has who was responsible for a $500,000,000 + biz you know business unit at accenture we built this app in 5 weeks and have over you know whatever x x x downloads with 0 paid spent right so something like this you're trying to show that you were highly highly credible and then you know I would put the you know the the like the title of the book you know the the the recognizable image or some image here in in big words and again forget the formatting right like I'm not working on slide design right now that's why I just took the times new roman black font white slide because I'm not worried about design that will come at the end we'll do that later for now it's what is the story what is the storyline that's gonna get somebody hooked so here we're saying we have a compelling initial thing we're helping millions of people fix insomnia with skills not pills secondly we're we're legit you should listen to us we literally wrote the book on sleep one of the best sellers we wrote that I'm a good business person and engineer that's the dynamic duo that's gonna build this thing okay great so now you're gonna say most customers have this problem and it's gonna be backed by either really compelling data or a personal story and so you know I'm gonna just copy paste kind of what I did for them here so most customers have this problem for that we did 25% of americans have have insomnia that's 75,000,000 people right and then we added to that the personal story so that became including me I had insomnia for years I tried pills but felt yucky I tried to send some oils it did nothing finally I found something that worked okay so this is your problem slide your problem slide with a big headline number that punches you in the face shows how big of a problem it is and ideally maybe a personal connection to it I had this problem I knew this problem I either I had this problem or I was a doctor and I saw thousands of patients who had this problem I've helped treat thousands of patients who had this problem right so something like that that connects you to the problem is ideal and then you wanna do the current solution so before what what people are tempted to do is say here's my solution here's why we're so great instead you wanna say here's how they try to fix it today so what we did for this was we said so how we solve it today we did americans spend $75,000,000,000 per year on sleep aids to try to fix their sleep problems they barely work they have side effects and they're mostly using fake science right so that's what we put as the the secondary thing here and then here I would maybe put some images of the categories right so I would put like you know whatever some shape here so let me get a little shape I'd be like you know pills or you know sleeping sleeping pills is $1,000,000,000 whatever you know nasal strips is this you know what whatever the whatever the other sleep aids you know essential oils or whatever people use to solve this problem so I would kinda show they try a b and c none of that shit works and this is where you now come in with the steve jobs moment you get your turtleneck on and you say but what if instead there was a simpler solution a beautiful solution a solution that totally fixed this problem with no downsides whatsoever right this is essentially what you're gonna say and so you know this is where for them we basically came in and we said you know instead here's our solution you know instead we built an app that will teach you how to sleep without having to take medicine so that's the headline that would come here and then beautiful picture of your product and then you you kind of reinforce it right like that's us we do that thing you know so if you if you gave a hypothetical here like what if there was an app that did blab blab blab blab blab blab blab blab blab blab then you say that's us we do that thing or in this case just put it all on one side that's fine now here's a key thing that most people miss so what they do typically is they go solution and then they just go solution solution solution they start talking about how the solution works under the hood everything about the solution as an investor you don't need to know how the whole product works yet you instead need to know is this big am I going to make money right that's what the receiver of this presentation really wants to know am I betting on credible people are they solving a big problem does their solution make sense and how big can this get so now we go here we state the dream so we explain the big plan the big vision for how big this company could become you know this is where you might say we're we're building uber for freight trucking right that's like we're building this big thing in this big industry that's a $100,000,000,000 industry that's totally broken you know so I so as an investor I'm thinking wow if they actually fix this problem that would be a big deal so you know for these guys what they did was we said this our dream what calm and headspace you know $2,000,000,000 company $1,000,000,000 company did for meditation we are gonna do for insomnia depression and anxiety and then you know we then added the the sort of subtext these are $200,000,000,000 annual markets it's 50 times bigger than meditation and then we we follow on again we make this even more persuasive so you wanna anchor it to something that they already know and then you want to so why did we use headspace and calm or why do we use it's uber for x because it anchors it to something they understand something that they know right we're building yeah we I built an esports app and I said we're building little league baseball for fortnite or for esports okay little league baseball produces x $100,000,000 a year we're gonna be able but but more people play fortnite than play baseball this is gonna be a bigger business than even the little league is and so we were able to take this something that sounded very niche right like youth esports but make it sound a lot bigger by pitching it connecting it to something that's already big and then saying we're doing that but in this big space so so you know here's here's where the slide landed people with these illnesses are sick of taking pills for every problem we can get clinically verified results with habit based app therapy and I think the key here is what this thing you recognize did for the x we're doing for y y is much bigger than x 50 times bigger than x and people really have this problem alright so now you're gonna get to your traction slide again as an investor I'm trying to figure out is this actually going to work the easiest way to answer that question is to say it's already working look at this shit so so far so good and this is where you put an impressive chart so your what is your hero chart how can you show that this thing is working so what is your what is your most hero metric and this is where pitching can't save you if your chart sucks your pitch is gonna kinda suck you know no pitch can fix a terrible business you shouldn't be pitching a terrible business you should be pitching a business that's working or going to work and so you wanna if it's already working you wanna show that if it's going to work you wanna say why you believe it's gonna work maybe you have a wait list that's really big maybe you have a track record of doing this with other products you know what can you show that would give me faith that this isn't all just talk there's some evidence so this is where you put your hero chart now you go back to under the hood so now you're gonna say alright now you're interested correct I told you the problem the solution the big vision of how big this can be and the evidence that we're on our way so now what you're gonna do is you're gonna say let me tell you how we're different right does this already exist is this really that different than anything else and this is where you're gonna highlight your differentiator what most people do is they just explain their features that's not what you wanna do you wanna say everybody does x and we do y right that's the core differentiator so let me tell you how our approach is different yet sensible others do x we do y and this is where you're talking about either your product strategy your business model your growth strategy etcetera right everybody else charges for this stuff we give it to them at cost but we have a annual subscription that's costco it might be product you know everybody else tries to solve this problem with pills we do it with skills through this app that teaches you daily habits right everybody else tries to grow through paid marketing but we do youtube content that gets millions of views and therefore we're able to you know acquire customers for pennies where everybody else is paying $10 right this is the the type of thing that you're gonna do product business model or growth strategy how are you different than everybody else

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Shaan Puri

Now we zoom out. Is there a bigger trend that you're a part of? Again, this is all about instilling **confidence**—confidence, confidence, confidence. One way to instill confidence is to show that we're not alone in this. This is something that you're seeing; the whole world is moving remote. You know, the way that Peloton did this for fitness, we're doing this over here in this other space. So, you want to be able to zoom out and show that you're part of a bigger trend. In their case, I asked them this question: "What bigger trends are you guys a part of?" They ended up telling me, and we didn't design the slide, but there are three big trends. 1. **App-based coaching**: Calm and Headspace have proven that people will engage with app-based coaching. 2. **Telemedicine**: There are now billion-dollar companies where people are comfortable getting doctors' advice over the phone. 3. **Rising mental health issues**: Insomnia, depression, and anxiety are increasing due to technology overload, the pandemic, the recession, and whatever else. So, we are surfing these big waves; we're not the big wave ourselves, we are surfing the big waves. Now, you want to answer the "why now" question. Can you explain why this idea would work today but wouldn't have worked three years ago, five years ago, or ten years ago? What has changed? Did a rule change? Did technology change? Did social behaviors change? For example, in their case, when we brainstormed, and again, it's not about slide design, it's about being able to make a persuasive case. Each of these slides is part of your persuasive case—this is your "why now." So, why now? Well, this wouldn't have worked five years ago because regulation did not allow for digital therapy with licensed doctors. So, there's a regulatory inflection.

Shaan Puri

Also, in the last two years, due to COVID, everybody had to have a telemedicine experience. We went from 10% of people having tried telemedicine to 80% in just two years. So, the whole world got to sample this and now has experience doing this. They ought to be more comfortable today than they would have been, you know, X years ago. Okay, why are you the one to do it? What's your track record, your credibility, your expertise? You want to reinforce what we did up top, or if you didn't write that up top, you want to write it here. So, this is your "why." Why you? Now, the business part: how do you make money doing this? If I give you some money, you know, what will happen? This is where usually I actually kind of left one out here. So, what I would do here is separate these. I would do how the money gets made. This is where you do your unit economics. You show that you've actually thought this through and that the business is sensible. You know, we put in X dollars, it costs us Y to produce the product or service, and Z is the net profit at the end of it. For these guys, they were able to say, "We make $100 per session at a 25% net margin." Here's our... and then they had a graph of their unit economics and their payback.

Shaan Puri

So they their payback. Was they acquire users for x dollars and that means they break even in 3 months on that user so so for 3 months is a good good payback. So that's the unit economics side now you're gonna do the what milestones will you hit so if I give you this money how will you make this the how will you make this the the big you know the the big big results so you know here's you know you know how will you make progress so that the valuation goes up and my shares become worth more so you know this is what we came up with for them which was they're raising 2,000,000 to do their pilots to get our first 5,000 paying customers key drivers allow people in from the you know what are we gonna do to get there we're gonna allow people in from the wait list we're gonna hire 3 more coaches and we're gonna roll out our company plan that lets corporations buy this for their employees so those are the key things we're gonna do to get to 1,000,000 arr and now I'm telling you if you give me $2,000,000 I'll turn that into 1,000,000 of annual recurring revenue also on the yu we had a good version of it for them so you know I'm a fan of being bold with this stuff so we're the team for this we're world renowned sleep experts and ai engineers instead and then we wrote this instead of trying to get people to play 8 hours of candy crush per day we've decided to help people help everyone get gets better sleep at night right so I kinda like this this vocal style of being a little bit ballsy not everybody loves that and sure it could turn some people off but you wanna attract the type of investor that likes you and so you know as long as you attract as long as some people love it it's okay that some people hate it you you you know as long as just not everybody hates it alright now this is one thing I see a lot of people miss out on sweeten the pot so you wanna take some of your good news and move 15% of it to the end of the end of the show so what can you say for the end it's like your little good news dessert at the end of the at the end of the thing so for them their pot sweetener was this whoops they said one last thing we just secured a partnership with nih they're gonna be giving us 500,000 in this round no dilution there's over 2,000,000,000 in sleep funding grants available and we will tap into this as we grow nice just a little bit of good news at the end that shows more momentum more progress a key partnership you just had maybe it's a revenue milestone or it's you know some some key thing that's that you didn't put in your main traction you just took a little bit of good news out saved it for the end to leave them on a high note and this is at the end call to action so get in touch you know we're closing out this round if you're interested email me here here's my email address and that's the that's my dummy pitch deck I kind of messed up my template here I can I can make this available so if you just go to I'll make a a link for this so just go to seanpuri.com / deck d e c k I'll put a link to this here so you can go and download this and have a copy of this for yourself and you can edit it with your stuff so I'll clean this up I'll I'll revert all these so that it goes back to the template and then you can use this for your stuff so try this out let me know what you think it's pretty battle tested so you know I've I've definitely been there the hard part for most of you is gonna be you don't have good stuff to put on some of the slides you don't have a differentiator or you don't have traction or you don't have a pot sweetener or you don't have a great track record and that's where you you you will learn what part of your business is weak why would a smart investor not invest in this and you need to go fix those problems because it's if you do use this deck you will be able to raise money as long as you actually have good content to put inside if your business is not very good then don't worry about the deck make your business better first then go raise the money so anyways that's it that was my master class if you liked it let me know if you want me to do more of these I got I got tons of these things so go get this deck seanpourri.com/deck and and try it out let me know let me know how it goes for you alright that's all