Master VC Pitching: Vinod Khosla's Guide to Raising Startup Capital

[00:00:05]Well, good afternoon everybody. If we can settle down, I warn you ahead of time this will go at a blistering pace. So, I'll walk you through how to present to ACS. This is roughly the agenda. What are the axioms? What does prep involve? Too many people skip that step. What's the narrative arc of your storytelling? And that's sort of the crux of it.

[00:00:38]Uh so you you you'll see each of these. So starting with axioms first, prep properly before they start a presentation. Here's the big advantage of doing prep, right?

[00:00:58]you team can get on the same page. It's shocking how often different parts of a management team will give very different answers and if you're inconsistent between team members, it's really bad signs. So just preparing the things I will talk about is really important.

[00:01:22]It's also a great time for the team to express its doubts and like what if that happens or what if that there's lots of hidden ideas that are risks for your business. You either discover them very early by getting the team to talk about it or you discover them late as you're halfway through your startup. So there must be a culture of speaking up in the team. This is probably the most important piece of culture. It's why Andy Grove went away from formally dressed people and reserved parking slots. So engineers would speak up in front of executives and he said exact ties because it means implied authority. So every anxiety in the team encourage them to surface it. What if that's a problem? really important to get all these things and it will get the team on the same page. The number of times after going through a thorough process, people have come to me and said we really actually understand our business better just for internal purposes. It's amazing. So, one of my favorite authors speak spoken at this conference before is Margaret Hefren.

[00:02:44]She has a TED talk called Dare to Degree Disagree. She has a couple of books I highly recommend reading about how to get this culture of people within the company speaking up because almost all the risks you'll run into. Somebody's thinking about it.

[00:03:04]Whether they have the courage to speak to the founder or the senior management or the CEO is what's missing.

[00:03:12]Keep in mind investors have only two emotions, fear and greed. If you keep that in mind and address both, you'll be uh in the right place. As logical as things sound, almost all investors make emotional decisions and then they use logic to explain their decision. Almost always the explanation comes after the emotional decision. So keep things simple. U I'll talk more about it. Generally complexity induces fear. And the more you try and explain the nuances especially early in your pitch to investors the more you will scare them away. I don't want to deal with this complexity.

[00:04:08]Everything you do, you're being judged by an investor. If you hide things, they will say, "I don't trust this person." The number of times this comes up u is important. You get to the point, how clear a thinker are you? It becomes so evident after a presentation, way more than in entrepreneurs ever figure. it's it's evident whether they're clear thinker or not. So be clear and I'll get to more of this later. One of the critical questions they ask is even if you have a great startup, if you can't raise money in the future, they're stuck as an investor with you. So they're judging all these aspects of whether you'll build a successful comp company in many areas.

[00:04:57]This last bullet is the reason investors are passing on opportunities. So you have to convince them you'll be able to do it better. So this notion of confidence but transparency becomes really really important. Here's an important one. You say something and I have a blog on this. The message sent what you're saying is not often the message received you. They are filtering it through their vernacular. They're filtering it through their recent experiences and you have no visibility into that. So the more homework you do the better. That's where you need to know your audience and what they value.

[00:05:55]So do homework on the investor. What have they done recently? What do they like? Don't like, don't look at things they did five or 10 years ago because they will have changed. And of course, if an investor feels spun a little thing, we had a recent case where somebody described a $500 billion market, which was okay. It just wasn't five billion. It may have been 10 billion.

[00:06:23]And it would have been more than sufficient. But the worst thing was when they were asked this question and the presentation got hung up on this, they tried to explain why it was 500 billion instead of saying, well, at least the 10 billion is direct market for us instead of trying to defend something that wasn't true. So meters is the first thing investors judge and they are better at judging it because they hear so many pitches. So don't be flippant with the numbers. So what's your goal after your presentation? Somebody will write a takeaway something like this. The details here don't matter. You don't need to read it. uh but they will write a takeaway email and everything you're doing during the presentation is to engineer this takeaway. Keep that in mind. You're getting them to write down what's good or bad about you and hopefully it's the way you want to express it. Paul, you don't have to try and read it. Um I'll come back to font size in presentations.

[00:07:41]I have real strong beliefs. You make some things not readable on purpose. Uh so their thought process is pretty simple. I won't spend time. I'll talk about each of these uh directly. This is logical order.

[00:08:02]And keep in mind, you'll have a sponsoring partner and you're really trying to help him engineer that takeaway that he can then sell to his other partners. People don't think about this. That partner is going to be selling and defending your in this investment to others. Keep that in mind. So, what does prep involve?

[00:08:33]Identify the pros and cons of your business. If you don't identify the cons, the investors will make up stuff on the cons. So, I'm a big fan of disclosing it. What are the reasons to invest or not invest and get the team on the same page? A misaligned team is often a reason for a retraction if they're talking to multiple people in your team.

[00:08:58]Start with all the reasons to invest.

[00:09:00]And again, you don't need to read this, but there's three to five LS you have to have to get them to want to do this. This is great example. The largest ever deployment of patientf facing agentic AI and a map to illustrate it.

[00:09:22]clinical validation start to take away start to entice them with why this is different. Here's what an investor is looking for. Will you get the next round at an up valuation? So your objective is to derisk what it takes. In each stage of company, it's different. And I won't go into what uh it takes to do this in each of these companies, each each of these stages, but be clear what it takes to get the next round. And that's your objectives. And I'll come back to it. Equally important, get in front of the risks directly. Address the investor's fears. If you don't, they'll make it up themselves. You don't get a say in that. And you can prepare contingency plans for your risks. So many entrepreneurs are afraid to address their risk. Uh it's like sticking your hand in the head in the sand. It won't go away. And investors know that. You can also defang each of the reasons.

[00:10:40]One of the things in mental health, it's just another chatbot. A hundred people have it. But you can turn a negative into a positive by saying it's the only clinically evaluated and approved by X-regulatory body. This is how you defang and I won't go through each of these uh concerns.

[00:11:05]So even acknowledging the risk is a good idea. This is one of my favorite slides from the original Square deck. Jack started with 140 reasons to not invest, why this might fail. And he talked to a couple, but it really made you like him and say, "I want to invest with this guy. He's thinking through all the reasons Write down the objections. And I apologize I'm going super fast, but I have a simple message on each slide. And every time you meet with a new investor, they come up with reasons they worry about or the hard questions they ask. Add them to your list of hard questions and find answers for them when a future investor asks. I'll come back to this near the end. Develop all the burning questions.

[00:12:05]Again, you're not meant to read this and keep adding to them. But then you start with your 30 secondond commercial. Have a clear reason. This is one. It can be textual. This is too much. I would use this in words when starting the presentation.

[00:12:30]not in writing but you can have visual reasons also. Here's the last part uh the next part. The narrative art storytelling is what people will listen to. It's not the logical reasons unfortunately. So you will have to budget your presentation. You should be relatively complete, but completeness is not as important as telling a great story. And the way to do that, and I always encourage people to take the reasons to invest and the reasons not to invest, write them in a word document, not a slide document, as headlines. The headlines alone should tell a complete story. like I want to be an investor in this. If this is true, this is without a single slide, just the headlines. And it should look something like this. Again, not meant to be read, but you go through the 20 and you say, I want to invest as an investor. If this is not right, nothing you do on the slides will matter. And this is truly about through English literature, storytelling, and writing. This is not about logical completeness. If you need to omit things for that need for completeness, omit them if they interfere with the narrative arc. This is example. The headline is everything. Frankly, all the graphics just distract from the headline. The headline is the reason.

[00:14:21]So this is a much better way of saying the same thing because your eyes were wondering what to look at. And for an investor, make it easy, make it low cognitive load to look at this. And frankly, this is even better even without this graphic. This is another example of same company. You don't know where to look.

[00:14:45]That's a bad sign.

[00:14:49]This is a way to say there's three terowatts of clean energy globally. A much simpler way. Not a lot of reading, not a lot of cognitive load. This is another way to explain uh a simple idea. Even this has too many words and graphics for me. So I'll come back to this idea of simplifying.

[00:15:14]Don't subvert your story in the service of logical order. People go logically. You'll have all these slides in this video. So, u this is a mistake often made by entrepreneurs. They get into the nitty-gritty that's boring. that takes away from the excitement of I really think this is tempting and I'm lord and I want to invest follow the story not the completeness put everything else in the appendex and I'll come back to why the appendix is important brevity is really really important this simple explanation of how you start and you're really saying if I can at the beginning if I can prove X then you should want to invest and your last slide should be did I prove X to you that's the narrative arc There's many many reasons to invest and you have to figure out your own but go through that and you have to convince people on the fear side. Greed comes before fear on the fear side that you know how to handle the risks.

[00:16:52]This is my point and that's the key takeaway. Start with the big headline at scale will be Glideways will be the most cost effective mass transit system in the world which is what cities want. Now they have a bunch of numbers down here and I'll come back to these numbers but they're pretty damn good reasons. this could be your reason to invest. You could start here even if it's out of order and then say if I can prove this, this is a good investment for you. This is another one.

[00:17:39]Something bold that tempts investors and simple and then your job is to prove that you can do this and you can handle the risks. This is an example of something that is trying to say something important but it gets lost in the details. Too many different things. More data, less emotion. Much better way to save the thing. If we detected early emergence of disease and stopped in its tracks, would you want to invest? That's the way to explain it, not the previous way.

[00:18:29]And if you're five minutes into a presentation, the investor doesn't know what you're doing, you're completely sunk. It really has to be simple and compelling. You're doing one presentation, you worked on it for a month, you sweated over it.

[00:18:51]In that month, the investors heard 30 presentations. They don't want the cognitive load of figuring out whether they should be interested. Start with the basics. Start like you're talking to kindergartens and make it increasingly more complex because they want to know you understand. Jargon is the worst thing.

[00:19:20]And people assume the investor knows your jargon. They don't. It's not among the 30 business plans they looked at recently. Each slide. Moving on to the next bullet. Should be a message. It shouldn't be a topic.

[00:19:43]We just created the highest temperature fully simulated EGS reservoir in the world with some very fancy looking pictures. This detail on the side can be there but it really distracts from the key message. The message is at the top and the pictures are no cognitive load.

[00:20:02]Stay visceral. Think about it viscerally.

[00:20:07]I think of it as left hook, right hook, punch him in the face with every single slide. An emotional punch. Sizzle does matters and simplicity matters, but clarity on the messages matters. It's the narrative arc of storytelling and hooking a viewer that's important.

[00:20:34]I showed you one slide from the square deck. A year later, I called one of our associates and said, "Why the heck did we invest? Uh, can you get me the deck from a year ago?" And he sent me this message, the square deck. Absolute seduction. There wasn't enough meat to really have invested, but the seduction seduced us.

[00:21:02]That's what you're trying to achieve.

[00:21:04]So, this is one way to think about it.

[00:21:07]My favorite on any slide is the 5-second test. Put the slide up in front of a viewer that doesn't know your business, is a smart investor, another entrepreneur, and take it down. What do they say the message is? Five seconds. If they can't tell you what the message is, your slide is way too complex.

[00:21:33]So often when you put up a slide, the viewer's eyes are wondering which element, which graphic, which text should I look at? That's a losing proposition. Destroys the storytelling. If a element in a slide doesn't convey something, and I'll give you some examples, you really should take it out. and one message per slide. Don't try and do two. You can in fact have more slides and go faster. And I'm going pretty damn fast um if your message is simple and it's less cognitive load.

[00:22:14]I'll give you some examples. Less is more is so important. No gratuitous graphics or distractions.

[00:22:26]So this is script. Um there was a psychology test where they described a task and then changed the font from clean simple font to script and asked the viewers to estimate how long this task was, how difficult it would be. Going to script doubled the estimated time to do the same task. in the same words. Why? Because it was more cognitive load. That's how human brains are.

[00:23:01]That's what you ought to keep in mind.

[00:23:03]Keep it simple. So, make everything punchy.

[00:23:08]Think of a punch every single time you put a word down. There's no simple jabs, just a punch, a left hook, and a right hook. Uh, that's how I think of presentations.

[00:23:20]And graphics only come when they add something. If you saw my presentation this morning, it was no more than five to 10 words per slide and very crisp.

[00:23:34]They don't have to be complete sentences. So take this 4x more wallet share than unsecured credit cards.

[00:23:41]That's an important clear message. What does the graphic do? Illustrate the same. But isn't this a better way to do it?

[00:23:51]In 5 seconds, isn't this message clearer even though the other one has more data? That's what I mean here. Graphics actually add to the story. So, sometimes they're warranted. Aging is the n number one risk factor for chronic disease. And you're sort of showing a graphic that goes up exponentially. This is storytelling.

[00:24:21]This is another example. Really bad way to explain really powerful messages. So take something out. This is simpler. 1.6 billion people have a diagnosible mental illness and 70% of people with mental illness will receive no treatment. Now that's powerful. This got lost and I would argue you can still reduce it further and the big message on the first slide really was we are scaling AI therapists and that got completely lost.

[00:25:04]How many people got that message? Nobody picked it up because your eyes were wandering from graphic to graphic. Don't do that.

[00:25:17]And this was the key message. We can do clinical staffing for all the people who are not getting mental health by having AI therapists. It's such a powerful message. This is another slide from the same deck. Apologies.

[00:25:38]Uh complex. The message is getting lost.

[00:25:43]What's the message? We can do intake. We can do triage and assessment and we can do therapy. We can do all parts of mental health. But that got lost in the previous slide. More less is more. This is another one. Powerful messages. It's pretty clear, but this is clearer.

[00:26:12]nothing like 96% week-over-week growth. That message got lost in the previous slide. This is one of my favorites.

[00:26:27]Simple way to convey a message. This is emotion. This is visceral. So you got that visceral illustration. when you're talking about organ age, this is way more powerful than any words you could use. So after your headlines are done and the story is written, decide when you need to add text.

[00:27:00]mostly decide not to and then pick every word and try and delete it and say what does it take away when you delete a word or a graphic sentences don't have to be complete I even hate periods I anything that distracts is a bad idea in breaking that narrative that visceral engagement with the story put things on single lines So the body of your slides, let me get to that. You notice I have a marker for you where in the story that I laid out on the purple slide I am. That's important to reorient people because they haven't seen your presentation. They don't know the sequence.

[00:27:58]And always look at where people's eyes go first. And does the slide meet the 5-second rule. Don't clutter your slides. Don't go to the edges. All that adds to cognitive load. If there aren't enough clear space on the sides, it'll be perceived as more different difficult even if it's not. I made this point. Delete everything you can.

[00:28:28]Also, superlatives are not proof. Always show don't tell. You've heard that before. But the number of people who have things like worldclass team and then they show a not so interesting team. If you have a not so interesting team, what do you do? You say, "Here's the team I want to build." when we have the funding to build it. That's perfectly okay. You're being honest. You don't have to say you have a great team.

[00:29:04]Just say you can't afford it, but you will afford it once you have funding.

[00:29:09]There's a reason to get funding instead of pretending you have a world-class team.

[00:29:18]So, I've already said this, lots of white space, reduce complexity, one bullet per line. There's some rules here that you can study on your own. You get the idea. Here's another slide. What do you get out of it?

[00:29:44]Your eyes are wondering like what's the message here? Much simple. We do superhuman diagnostics. We have a graph to prove it. This got lost. How many people picked up that they did superhuman diagnostics and superhuman therapy and we are learning and improving. These messages got completely lost on one slide because you tried to put three messages on one slide and you can go much faster in your deck if you have fixed amount of time.

[00:30:20]It's not a fixed number of slides. It's a fixed amount of time and with simpler messages people get it. So you can go faster. This is another example of a bad slide. some pretty interesting things if you read the text but gets lost. The message is on the left. The Ftune 500 lose combined 31 billion on employees failing to share knowledge effectively.

[00:30:53]Now you framed what you do automatically by stating the problem and you can have details on the right or skip them. This is a clear way of saying your initial wedge is a digital twin for every employee and this is a way of enticing them. What if your digital twin is around long after the employee has left? This is continuity of knowledge.

[00:31:29]These are much more effective ways of saying what was said earlier. I can't emphasize this enough. This is another slide. I don't know. It doesn't do anything for me. I don't know where to look, what to read.

[00:31:51]too complex. It's much simpler and tells you what you're doing. Human organs can dramatically increase supply and reduce the weight list better. Even better, something emotional. Organs can save valuable lives. That's all you need to say if you're doing organs.

[00:32:19]same company. I don't know uh what to make of this slide. Deeply technical and this should be in the appendex. The details are important and I'll come back to the appendex. This is a way of saying the organ is better. But again, the graphics makes it get lost. Clear example of too many messages. much better to have one graphic that says our survival is higher than an FDA approved therapy. That's what matters. That says you should be interested and you can do the diligence later. This says we are executing in a complex area. One clear message. This is my favorite really complex area like fusion explained so simply even a viewer who doesn't understand fusion can say this makes sense. I'll figure out the rest. This is worth learning about. It's a complicated deep tech message that makes it look simple.

[00:33:42]So I can't emphasize enough this idea of remove anything extra. This is the message about weather forecasting. But what do you see? The key messages get lost. A thousandx data advantage. A thousandx compute advantage. Did you get that from the slide?

[00:34:12]better, easier to read. This is much more clearer statement. Our smart balloons with a thousandx data advantage. But the next slide is one of my favorites. Shows a map of the world with thousands of balloons. 5x more data than the rest of the world combined. Each dot is a single balloon. I don't need to say anything else. I have a huge advantage.

[00:34:42]This is the emotional way to express it.

[00:34:45]Everybody gets this. And this is the follow on slide.

[00:34:52]Here's the path of,200 different balloons we've launched. It's basically saying we cover the world without saying it. That's why we have more data than the rest of the world combined.

[00:35:06]This is an actual presentation. I love high signal to clutter ratio. Can't emphasize is enough. Your fonts matter. Your colors matter. I obsess about every word, every spacing. Uh to the chagrin of many people, this is okay.

[00:35:36]real world, real time brain imaging, but you don't know where I needs to focus. It's okay. Much better. Here's what we do. I can skip past this slide after five seconds and you'll know what my device looks like and how you use it. And suddenly the brain imaging method message is very clear. We can image your brain. These are complex ideas conveyed simply. Again, budgeting is for completeness, but doesn't trump the narrative. So, you should budget your presentation. I'm going to skip through these relatively fast.

[00:36:35]Sex appeal is more important than technical accuracy. As long as the technical accuracy is there in the appendex and the details are there after you've convinced somebody it's worth going through the appendex and the details and spending investing the extra time because they already want to invest otherwise I get lazy.

[00:36:59]This again from Square simple idea of what's missing in today's payments immediiacy, transparency, approachability. There's no confusing the message of what the value proposition of square is. Most people would make this slide so complex. Jack did a masterful job of that. Here's an example of complexity.

[00:37:31]This is a much simpler way of stating it. The benefit and only the benefit is stated and it changes the narrative on geothermal as energy organ shortage. You saw that complex verbiage before. 41,000 transplants, 106 people on the weight list, million people with weight stage disease. This is an even better way of oops I'm on the wrong button.

[00:38:12]Uh, it shows you the magnitude of the problem. By the way, this is a circle that gets lost.

[00:38:22]That's how many people with 44 million people with chronic kidney disease. This is the better way of saying it. Of the 106,000 people on the wait list, only 40% will receive a kidney. The rest is our opportunity. That's how I would state it.

[00:38:48]This is another way to show in fusion why the competition is way more complex than me. You don't need to understand fusion. Know that this is much simpler what others are doing. That's the only message you're going to convey to a non-technical investor. This is another example.

[00:39:12]less than 1% of the cells we need can be reliably produced. This is about stem cell differentiation. It's clearly stated. The problem is clearly understood very quickly in 5 seconds.

[00:39:36]The search base is unfathomably large is the key message unless you do it our way which is the implied statement here. Uh oops there's an important message here with the same company. Current methods cannot economically scale but this key message and I should have gone in sequence gets lost. It would take a 100 million wells these are biology pipetting applications to do this task to generate enough data.

[00:40:22]better way to state it. Instead of a 100 million wells, we can do it in 400 wells. We have a data advantage in generating a model, a foundation model for this. And I would even simplify it further. Keep remembering what you're trying to convey. Keep remembering those headlines telling a story.

[00:40:54]and keep connecting into emotion and greed. If you want an investor interested, how will they make more money is the only question they're mostly asking. Uh the number of things that start with numbers. It's not only the numbers are It tells me the entrepreneur isn't thinking clearly about what's important. Who cares about a 4 trillion healthcare spend market? It's in at least half the healthcare decks I see.

[00:41:34]That same statement and it doesn't mean anything. What does it mean to the billion dollar of revenue you're trying to generate? It's too large a number to matter. Every single inch of a slide is valuable real estate. So treat it that way. And blank is better than clutter.

[00:42:00]So always ask what does it do for you? So this is that old thing. This 500 billion number again sees feels like Even though in this case it isn't the case, but if you state it as since 67% of patients needing therapy don't receive it, real demand is 500 billion. Now that's a better way to make a very large number not sound like This is saying you're building a foundry for manufacturing cells. It's okay. You take detail away and it becomes clearer. Number of scientists needed per year for manual production to treat 10,000 patients. Much simpler when you put less detail there. That's the key message.

[00:43:02]The way we do it currently, you need too many scientists and they can do just one patient a month per scientist. That's a clear statement of the problem.

[00:43:14]Um this is another example of a different company. Important message but a number of important things get lost. The 90 billion spent on failed drugs gets lost. That you're trying to make trials higher probability of success gets lost.

[00:43:45]This is another example of glide waves. You get lots of numbers, but the key message gets lost. You can do bottoms up numbers when the numbers seem too large to be credible.

[00:44:02]But here this key message of it's worth 250 million per mile lifetime value gets completely lost. This is a better way of saying 215 million per mile. And if the investor challenges you, you're gold because you have details in the appendex on why this is true. Because it sounds implausible.

[00:44:30]250 million per mile. Turns out they get 50-year contracts. So there's there's revenue per mile for 50 years. Exclusive contract. So you get to explain your advantages if you hook the investor into asking you this question. I'm going to try and move a little bit faster here.

[00:44:55]um focus on your advantages and the unfair advantages restate them whether it's IP or some unit economics or clever strategy there can be lots of reasons this is an example of a robust IP portfolio but again this little message a robust IP portfolio is better done differently right at the The details don't matter what patents you have. They'll get to later. They'll hire an IP attorney. You just want to have them hire an IP attorney to ask the question. Then you get to go through the details. This is one where detail actually matters. Here's the five things we have that make us unbeatable. That's a clear message. And so sometimes details actually help. But this is a much bolder statement, much clearer. Still more data than needs to be on there.

[00:46:12]This is a very clear statement that one of the most efficient credit card companies in the world and compares it to the best, right? Same company. You see these graphs and the focus is on less than 12 month payback. But the key message I bet none of you got was they have 40x greater revenue per user than the other guy. 40x and that got lost. And I'm giving you real examples of how you have to say what are you trying to say with each slide. Same idea again too much complexity.

[00:47:08]We're really trying to answer these questions. But to be honest, this is a much simpler way and much more powerful way of saying this. Another example, three messages and again the key gets lost.

[00:47:35]It asks the right question simply. What makes an ideal human testing pipeline?

[00:47:41]Many human tissue types, massive AI scale throughput, exceptional robotic consistency, way easier and faster to get through these slides than the original slide, which will just confuse investors. You could even make it more powerful. That's how I would have phrased it.

[00:48:14]So when you don't have advantages, you can be transparent, show how clever you are, how you will build an advantage because nobody has advantages when they start. They have hypothetical advantages.

[00:48:31]But again, being transparent says you're thoughtful. Risks are key. They show you you understand your business. Trying to gloss over them says you haven't thought about your business.

[00:48:57]clear statement of why a separate device is needed because the biggest question is do you need a device other than your phone? Right or wrong, they're addressing it up front and then trying to convince an investor that makes sense. It's addressing the elephant in the room.

[00:49:21]So the more you address risks, I think the better investors think you're capable of building a successful startup. This is another way of handling risk. This was an actual slide. We basically said even if we fail at Fusion, we'll have the most powerful magnet company which is worth billions of dollars. That was the actual excuse we used for our first round in fusion because everybody assumed fusion was not possible. Said fine, we still have something really valuable because nobody else can build a 20 Tesla magnet. We can use it in nuclear medicine. We can use it in wind turbines. We can use it in lots of places that have nothing to do with fusion. That's a different kind of d-risking. Those are offramps.

[00:50:18]So I can't emphasize enough if you're pitching to me versus David Widen, you're going to do a very you should do a very different pitch. We have different priorities that we get lowered by so understand how to do it. And if you are a technical startup and have technical risk, you have to prove you have lower market risk.

[00:50:48]There's no risk in the market for fusion. If you solve it, it is trillions of dollars. And the framing is I have an off-ramp, it doesn't work. If it works, we got a home run beyond any home run scene. And each series there's increasing specificity and more risks eliminated. That's how investors think about it. That's how you should think about it. What do you risk with each series? So, think about the segments in your market because you want to prove you can be successful in some segment before you're successful in the whole thing. That's derisking.

[00:51:41]Where can you find an easier path to get to base camp on the way to Mount Everest? This is a bad way of explaining value. You see many examples of these and I'm illustrating them because they're incredibly common in entrepreneurial decks. The business model gets lost.

[00:52:04]What's the key message here?

[00:52:08]Um let me go back that there's clinical trials revenue which is smaller there's downstream value in deployment but that comes much later either way we have a way to start. This is a much better way of explaining we go after large new co-brands and then we go for conversions where in so it's explaining the different types of things. One has more card holders the other has more loans and and segmenting is important.

[00:52:57]What's special about your team? I hate slides like this that say founders. It's not a message. It's not saying anything. This is a team from Thumptac that is scaled to big business. Say something like successful founders have scaled Thumptac to three billion in valuation. I got lost in that slide.

[00:53:22]real strength that got lost. This is another one. Way too many people, too many founders want to include all their team. Well, that doesn't say anything for do anything for the investor. You're trying to be inclusive. That's a really bad idea. Could put it in the appendix, but pictures don't say anything. Why the team is appropriate for your task and who on the team is critical to your task is what matters. Another really strong team, the message completely gets lost. What are the key points about this team that's going to be relevant to what you're building? Founders introduction. The key message is at the bottom.

[00:54:18]Making a headline that says the team is appropriate for this task. Much better way to say what the team is, why the team, and that you're thoughtful about the team. This is another better way to say that got completely lost. Talent density is the message here.

[00:54:44]There's reasonably good message. I would have taken out all the graphics on the right. Doesn't add anything. It's a good team. This is another way of expressing the story. It's part of storytelling. And I like this format because it says I've done this conversational interfaces before.

[00:55:12]So it says the team is appropriate for the task financials stadium clearly not too much detail not too little cash flow revenue that's what people care about limit the number of rows and columns there's just a sample But this is much more powerful. It's really saying scale drives continuously moving economic uh improving economics.

[00:55:51]Like that's much more powerful than just the financials on the previous slide.

[00:56:02]It's also amazing to me people will use one number in one slide and a different number somewhere else. If you aren't consistent, you're making up. Whatever your numbers, whatever is relevant, really make sure they are consistent and you have complete command. And I'll just get to the appendex.

[00:56:31]And you can do a lot when you're early and don't have a lot to sell. You can sell how thoughtful you are about eliminating and going after all the risks with the least amount of money. That's what investors like to see.

[00:56:56]And you may be a conceptual startup and that's fine. You can change that reality. But how you present it, you can change pretty dramatically. There's many ways to address competition. You can keep knocking him throughout your presentation. I like that style. By the way, I'm not opposed to a dedicated competition slide if it's simple to understand. A bad way to explain a slide I'll is just coming up. But if you're not acknowledging your competition, people will think you're naive. So acknowledge it. This is the bad example of competition. It doesn't say you're better. Just too much stuff to read.

[00:57:53]This is a much better way for the same company to say our competitor takes $105,000 per discovered cancer and it takes us a $184. Now that's a powerful message and the explanation is there.

[00:58:12]You could even reduce the explanation, but this is powerful. And if you had that advantage, press it over and over again.

[00:58:23]There's another number. Our competition, which is recognized by everybody, has discovered 1,800 cancers. We've done 50,000 at a$184 at discovered cancer. I can't imagine anything more powerful than that.

[00:58:41]But in the previous slide, it got lost. Also important to state when you're raising money, what you're going to achieve with it. Bad way of saying what you're going to achieve. I don't know what to make of it. Sorry, Paul. What is the risk you're retiring by the end of your runway? That's the most important question. What's this financing for? This is a clearer statement though still a lot of complexity on the staff. It says with each amount spent, what am I derisking?

[00:59:24]much better though complex and seed stage is okay to explain what you're d-risking and that you haven't spent a lot of money so you haven't derisked a lot but you have a clear plan and finish with a flourish start with your 30 secondond commercial finish with it it's really powerful way to complete the story even asking have I convinced you of this. That's the 302 commercial. So, let me get to the appendex. And um I'm sorry I'm rushing through this. Uh appendex is very critical to show you're prepared. You've simplified the messaging along the way as I've explained. Put all the detail in the appendix. And if they don't ask you questions to go to the expense appendix, make an excuse because you're trying to prove to them that you're prepared for any contingency.

[01:00:39]I don't want I want a entrepreneur who understands the key concepts but then has the detail behind it and it's all in the appendex and no matter what question I ask they already have a slide. Having a slide in the appendix is way more powerful than talking to it even if you understand it because it says you're prepared. You think about contingencies. It's judging you again which I talked about earlier.

[01:01:10]And every time you get a hard question, add an appendex slides so you can offer it next time with that detail. Every single meeting update your appendex with the additional hard questions which brings me to the last part of what I want to say beyond the appendix.

[01:01:44]Who should you pitch? Most people pitch the investors they want first. Wrong idea. Pitch the investors you don't want first and have them poke holes in your presentation so you can your appendex can grow. the five least important ones first. You know what first you're practicing your pitch, but you're also getting hard questions from people you do don't really care about.

[01:02:24]So, get to your targets after you know you can fluidly pitch and you've collected all the hard questions any investor might ask. what works as a cell. So, in conclusion, I want to say it's stories, not facts that lure investors. That's the key to nailing your race. Thank you. By the way, I don't know if you felt it. I went through 186 slides, but the pace didn't feel unnatural. At least to me, it didn't. I rushed through a lot. We only had an hour. I could have gone on for two hours. But I budgeted my time and I said to myself before I started, I'd do three slides per minute.

[01:03:21]and I tried to convey it and leave out the detail that was too long to fit in three slides a minute. I put a lot of things in small font because I didn't want you to read it. I wanted more a picture of preparation than the details. So either make everything above 20 points of font font size so it's readable or smaller than 12 so it feels like a picture.

[01:03:49]Thanks a lot.