Epoch-making insights are probably not available via a Google search; show you won the knowledge. so that the link to other markets is extremely clear.
When it works. In this guide, we’ll focus on the first act. It requires a leap of both reason and faith, which means that an effective pitch must instill confidence and inspire belief. To do so, show how your offering is sparking undeniably new customer behavior, or uniquely benefitting from it. Let’s begin. And, if so, how can you make that clear to an investor? The 4th & King team shares pitch plots, sample decks, and field notes to help early-stage startups prepare to raise capital. It draws from six years of building pitches that have led to $4.5B in raised capital. If there is any inconsistency between your market and its analog, investors will start poking holes. Investors are bored to tears of founders forcing themselves in as the hero of the story.
This plot works best if you are educating investors on a market that’s unfamiliar to them.
Imagine Airbnb in its earliest days pointing to the emergence of temporary housing listings on sites like Craigslist as evidence that people were interested in non-hotel accommodations.
Maybe the software hasn’t gotten better since 1980. This is your chance to pay off the analogy.
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This plot might be the first choice for an earlier-stage Github or Figma.
So avoid Gartner studies and consumer surveys and look for data or anecdotes that reveal a trend that is hidden in plain sight.
Your startup may not yet generate revenue, but it must generate conviction. Once you’ve settled on the stats and insights that you plan to share, first validate that they’re truly unique. In recent months, we’ve seen pitch after pitch leverage COVID-19 as the tipping point for their market or their product. It requires a leap of both reason and faith, which means that an effective pitch must instill confidence and inspire belief.
Driven to help his children, he’s spent decades working at and founding biotech and pharma companies. The last thing you want to do is to get dragged into an argument about a market that you don’t even operate in. Whatever the answer, it should neatly set the stage for the key insight you’re about to unveil. Educate your audience.
These are the stories that resonate with investors and give them the confidence that you are committed to solving the problem in front of you. They’ve helped companies raise $4.5B in capital.
Check out the pitch deck a serial founder used to raise $10 million from Stripe for cap table management startup Pulley. The next step is to connect your unique insight to the business opportunity in front of you.
Before you pitch, experiment with different pitch plots to find the one that allows you to authentically explain the best, most resonant case for your opportunity. This is less of a plot than it is a rhetorical device, but it can be an incredibly effective way to open a pitch.
Wipe the slate clean and show how your company has a distinct advantage precisely because you are a new entrant. How long did you spend iterating on your idea? Give investors a sense that you’ve discovered the inevitable.
The idea is to go one level deeper than your opening fact or statistic to reveal a hidden truth about your market. Read our privacy policy. The next step is to connect your unique insight to the business opportunity in front of you. Imagine Airbnb in its earliest days pointing to the emergence of temporary housing listings on sites like Craigslist as evidence that people were interested in non-hotel accommodations. Or perhaps economist Joseph Schumpeter, as this plot unleashes the “gale of creative destruction” through which an industry evolves by leveling and recreating itself. This could be early traction, customer testimonials, or any other indication that you are resonating with early adopters. The startup world has a lot of lore—and deep archives—on pitching.
Stripe Atlas has additional resources to help with your fundraise.
Make the solution seem simple, straightforward, and inevitable.
If you need help, watch the recording of our AMA, where we go into more depth on fundraising pitches. Maybe the software hasn’t gotten better since 1980.
This plot opens with an underlying trend that sets the foundation for your company.
If you don’t know what an interested observer of your field definitely knows, you don’t know your field.
This is less of a plot than it is a rhetorical device, but it can be an incredibly effective way to open a pitch. If done well, you’ll create a sense of inevitability.
But if your origin story is core to the narrative you share with customers or employees, it’s a good indication that it will resonate with investors, as well.
Learn more about 4th & King and reach us at hello@4thandking.com. It’s also important to consider what it is about your approach that makes it unique. Today, they’re more likely to be artificial intelligence, real-time decisioning, or any number of trends that are reshaping markets.
These three acts represent the essential movements of every pitch and give founders a clear sense of what needs to be proven at each stage and how to prove it.
Founded in 2019, long before COVID-19 forced millions of students around the world to switch to remote learning, Sora is effectively an online private school, which offers students one-to-one tutorials and helps them design their own personalized curricula.
Use caution. These examples are powerful because they prime your approach before you introduce it. Ideally, this statistic is unexpected, counterintuitive, or just plain interesting.
So first-time entrepreneurs often struggle to craft a story—their story—that will end in a term sheet.
Introduce your business in this context. Walk your audience through how your product works, with a focus on the tangible differences that result from starting from scratch: is it faster, cheaper, more delightful, less onerous, or simply better than what’s out there? Most early-stage startups map to one of five pitch plots.
"We don't believe schools are in the business of content creation anymore, just typing in Google search engine search specifically you'll probably find world-class resources to learn a subject," Smiley told TechCrunch. Show that you’re at the cusp of the opportunity that you’ve prepared for for years, not because of an accident but because you’ve been planning it.
Explain clearly how everything about your company—from the product to the go-to-market—has been designed to exploit this unique insight.
If there is any inconsistency between your market and its analog, investors will start poking holes. But quickly transition to the value that your product can bring to the market at large.
Plus, there’s a good chance investors have spent time—and capital—getting smart on your analog markets. How long did you spend iterating on your idea? He has spent over a decade reimagining email as a founder (Rapportive, Superhuman), investor (sendwithus), and advisor (InboxVudu). Stripe will host the 4th & King team for an online AMA about crafting, designing, and delivering fundraising presentations.
For example, this plot could have been used by John Crowley. Help them to understand why the market looks the way it does. Business Insider got an exclusive look at the pitch deck Sora used to bring investors on board.
Investors are bored to tears of founders forcing themselves in as the hero of the story. Use caution. If it’s an observation that insiders know, then your insight should offer a perspective that is exclusively yours. Give investors a sense that you’ve discovered the inevitable. If either your “interesting fact” or your “unique insight” are already familiar to your audience—or if they are intuitive to most people—this opening falls flat and your rigor or credibility may be in question. When it works. Who did you talk to? An investor needs to see you are an expert in your space, a master of your own data, and the kind of storyteller who can convince customers, employees, and the next round of investors to join you on an improbable journey.
Your deck’s first act—or first few slides—must hook an investor.
Run them by colleagues, industry insiders, and friendly investors. or "The physics of sharks.". But not the trends you see in every other pitch.
If done well, you’ll create a sense of inevitability. Is it dominated by incumbents with no incentive—or ability—to innovate? This could be early traction, customer testimonials, or any other indication that you are resonating with early adopters. A precise and powerful analogy goes a long way, especially when your analogs are valued in the $1B+ range.
The last thing you want to do is to get dragged into an argument about a market that you don’t even operate in. To stay current on similar posts for startups, sign up below. Has there been a big technological challenge that is yet to be solved? manually reviewing mortgage applications).
Instead of thinking in terms of slides, we recommend that you separate your pitch into three basic “acts” and work through each of them one-by-one. The idea here is to paint a picture of a market, an industry, or a workflow that is stuck in the past.
Nobody starts a company because they love fundraising.
Has there been a big technological challenge that is yet to be solved? Even if your story is authentic, it only works if it’s relatable.
Once you’ve chosen your pitch plot, you’ve taken a significant step in defining your fundraising presentation. For example, don’t hinge your pitch to fintech investors on the challenges of the unbanked.
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Your startup may not yet generate revenue, but it must generate conviction. The idea is to go one level deeper than your opening fact or statistic to reveal a hidden truth about your market. Focus on the pain points created by these forces not being reflected. Introduce your business in this context. This is where founders set the tone of the pitch and the framing for everything that follows, whereas second and third acts lean into company-specific proof points.
Take your audience step-by-step through a transformed experience and its implications for users, for your industry, and for the company that can deliver that experience. There’s a misconception that you must follow a strict sequence of slides to make a compelling case.
Your goal is to make the audience feel this criminal level of inertia—whether it’s with statistics, images, or a powerful anecdote.