Piktochart has a post on classic pitch decks from 30 startups including Facebook, AirBnB and Lyft. Some of these have been around a while but it’s a fun blast from the past to see them gathered together!
Some fun observations:
- Facebook: Facebook’s deck references addiction in that very first pitch. That was standard for the day though: no-one could have predicted how incredibly successful this would really be.
- Buffer: an example of an early deck which already had really solid traction numbers.
- Square: This is Series-C and has a great, well-articulated defensibility and growth story. In the the C-round ended up being $100M from Kleiner, and the D round $200M. Way more than the $20M they were seeking (even though that was probably a low-ball..)
- LinkedIn: a great example of a company that visibly blew out their Series A projections in network growth. It really was the era of unbounded viral growth if you could jump on that train.
- Youtube: Love the flashback here… “video files are too large for email” was a key argument. Yes, videos used to get sent by FTP and email and they weren’t amazing hi-fidelity as they are today.
- Manpacks: Invest now and get your next year of underwear free :-). Genius pitch argument.
- Wealthsimple: Slides 15 and 16 are a great example of market-gap analysis + market existence proof.
Every pitch is different, but in almost every case you can see the key business drivers shine through.
Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash.