slidebean: https://starthouse.xyz/slidebean
looks like... powerpoint only better design functions? maybe they want to get bought out by ms
once again you have sparse text, no talk of market. They do have a revenue plot but it's very small font can't read the numbers. Just shape = up up up.
seems they want to make three core pitches: their product is being used (15000 slides), they are growing, and the third being that their product is good. I think it's okay, the colors are pretty bad.
Still, if they can make a better powerpoint... powerpoint is widely used. One wonders why they never analyzed the addressable market. How much would be 5% of the powerpoint market? I'd have liked to see that.

#starthouse #slidebean #pitchdeck

rapid api: https://starthouse.xyz/rapid_api
- This pitch deck has little text: mostly images and a few words
- So basically this thing has pre-fabbed dev blocks. okay. No talk about addressable market no talk about financials. It's a demo day pitch deck.
- Not really useful, although it's of interest that they'd have this different ui with the few text. Interesting that this is so different from what the successful companies did... more modern?
#starthouse #rapidapi #pitchdeck

Foursquare: https://starthouse.xyz/foursquare
Notes:
- The concept is somewhat difficult to explain.
- It's some sort of... tell me what is nearby, app?
- gamification and social baked in
- business model: lead generation
- It doesn't seem like anything impressive now (2020) but this pitch deck is from 2009, on what looks like the first iphone, and I'm sure that gamified social was a revolution then.
#starthouse #foursquare #pitchdeck

WeWork: https://starthouse.xyz/wework_series_d
- Fun fact: I was a member of WeWork in Tokyo at their flagship building when they launched it.
- So basically this WeWork Series D pitch deck is saying that by 2020 people increasingly more people lose their jobs and end up freelancing to make ends meet. How prescient.


Notes:
- Start with financials. Num employees, revenue, growth. Impressive numbers.
- One of their chief advantages is that they are "well-capitalized".
- Essentially they argue that increased remote work will lead to demand for coworking spaces. I agree with this. Indies to go up from 30% to 40%. This is convincing to me.
- Their numbers all look great. They partner with landlords and get great deals, they have very nice margins (30-40%), they are growing, and yes I agree this shift is coming.
- They explain the concept, their market, drop the leadership at the end. It's a great set of slides.
#starthouse #wework #pitchdeck

uber: https://starthouse.xyz/uber
- problem: they don't label it problem, they write, "cabs in 2008". Two slides, essentially they say: digital hail reduces dead time, and we break the taxi monopoly. Looks good.
- concept: they go into detail about this. wall of text but much more readable. they list the core differentiators between ubercab and taxis. essentially it's chauffer service the app at this stage. taxis for nyc software engineers.
- demo: they post their app as it looks on phones (e.g. bb running the app, a screenshot). Write about the features e.g. gmaps integration
- use cases: typical taxi use cases
- benefits: they list the advantages uber has over taxis
- tech: they talk about some sort of intelligent scheduling. It seems to be a luxury car service except it's an app except it's cheaper at this point. they can do for example demand forecasting.
- market: Very interesting slide. Total taxi revenue was 4.2B but it was highly fragmented. Seven US cities make up 50% of the taxi market.
- potential: market leader is 1B. Perhaps. but top four together is only 1B. but yeah best-case.
- optimizations: they talk again about their tech, I understand that uber has a strong CFO and dev team at this point
- marketing ideas: they pitch a few ideas like invite-only and branding strategies
- location-based services: they pitch the idea of using the cars to deliver packages during downtime
- progress to date: lmao "reserved domain name, filed LLC" but then whoa "15 clients" okay that's on another level, are those the guys on the team?

Notes: This uber looks very different from where it is today, but, you can understand why. The very core of it remains: that taxi plates are overpriced compared to what taxi drivers are willing to be paid, and that customers want premium call-service quality. It reads like a VERY early pitch deck: they are talking about how they reserved a domain name. There is a lot more tech in this paper, talk about optimization, etc. If having optimization is how you break in then it's a bad advantage imho. But, it's very interesting they talk about their potential market and break it down according to how fragmented it is. For sure I can understand that if the top four are less than 22% of the market that the industry is fragmented, and so brings an opportunity for strong branding. They didn't have a revenue model like airbnb did, but instead an optimistic/realistic/worst case model. They didn't write how much they are asking to raise specifically, instead: "raise a few million". Key notes IMO are that they write heavily about optimizations, devoting 1/8 of their cards to them, and that they have specific niche: professionals in certain cities. Instead of writing Problem/Solution/Market they write more targeted titles.
#starthouse #pitchdeck #uber

intercom: https://starthouse.xyz/intercom
- they start with team first
- problem: dense text. essentially, they describe what their tool aims to solve: end-to-end relationship management SaaS.
- solution: dense text. they describe their product. it is... a chat app? with bus and customers on it? why would a customer join this...? Is this some web chat like amazon's support chat?
- market: they quote "SaaS providers". How much of this is SAM?
- competitors: many listed, in different niches. Some big names like MailChimp.
- progress page: this is new. "ready for public beta"... has it been privately beta tested? They provide a url and a bunch of text. one user saying a good thing. paid user or free?
- pitch: they want 600k for 18 mo. to "work on product market fit". I suppose this explains why they put the team first: you're investing in them more than in the product.

Notes: This one was next to facebook and airbnb in the featured list. Perhaps I can see why: it makes them shine. Here they have walls of text everywhere. To showcase their product they give a url... am I supposed to go to it on my phone while I watch your talk? fb and airbnb had screenshots. They have one user testimonial, my initial thought is: is this the only one? Their numbers are... well airbnb's were off by 1000x but this is probably off by a million. The market is saturated with competitors, and it's not clear there is any adoption at all. Still, the team seems capable... if they've been working "since Jan" and are already ready for public beta then perhaps depending on what month this was pitched they are quite skilled. Still, they should be able to tell this will go nowhere, so it might be good to invest. When i look at the 600k number I remember how airbnb gave a "to get to 80k users in 12mo = 2M revenue"... here there is nothing. What even is their business model? A good contrast.
#starthouse #pitchdeck #intercom

airbnb: https://starthouse.xyz/airbnb
- start with the problem: price/experience/opportunity
- solution: save/earn/share
- they quote couchsurfing (600k users) and CL as market validation. interesting.
- market size analysis: compare available market to serviceable market, take 15% for their share of the serviceable market.
- they have some photo of the product (webpage screenshots)
- business model: take 10%
- adoption strategy: partner with events, travel sites, and some sort of CL intergration
- competition: they have an interesting four point plot. price vs online tx. Note it's about where the tx takes place (e.g. craigslist is offline tx, orbitz is online, despite orbitz having a physical office and CL being a website). I wonder why this distinction.
- competitive advantages: look good
- team/press/testamonials: look good. fb had one team member the CFO, here they name four. Much more "broadly appealing" pitch deck as well.
- financial: the ask for 500k, to get to 80k users which will net them 2m revenue.

Notes: A longer and more broadly appealing pitch deck I would say. Here, they start with the problem, discuss the validity of the solution, do some basic analysis and discuss in more detail what their strategy will be. The competitive analysis on a four-point plot is quite interesting. I should like to add such a visualization to my own work. Their market validation metrics are somewhat unconvincing, especially since that user count (660k) is nearly 1000x less than the serviceable available market (560m). The numbers they post (80k users = 2m revenue) suggests 3 nights average stay.
#starthouse #pitchdeck #airbnb

facebook: https://starthouse.xyz/facebook
- explain what is the product... what it gathers, and who its users are
- extremely high engagement -> show product market fit
- profit model at the end -> highly targeted advertisement
- big emphasis in the case of fb on the target demo, college students -> it captures a high value demo

Notes: Facebook appears here to be a very targeted niche: access to college students. Such access would be highly appealing to recruiters for example. They spend the first part of their deck explaining just how much access you would have to the stuents, and the second part explaining the quality of the access. A great example of how you make a pitch about the person you are pitching. One wonders if, in general, facebook had always considered their "users" (or "useds" as rms put it) in this way.
#starthouse #pitchdeck #facebook