Anonymous messages and local context were the perfect mix to make the popular social network, YikYak, come to life in 2013. They were also the poison to kill it and to write on its tombstone the epitaph of: died too young and too soon.
Throughout this article, we will present practical ways to fix the insertion of storytelling for a pitch deck. If that is not what is happening in your business presentations already. Improve your presentation
In this article, we will analyze the story behind WeWork, their rise, and downfall, and of course, what lessons we can learn from them.
Is starting a business that directly competes against a player as big as Microsoft a good idea? Maybe. I hope our story sheds some light.
Join us in this casual conversation with Caya, Slidebean CEO and Steve Barsh, Managing Partner at Dreamit Ventures as they talk about how to create compelling pitch decks and how to effectively pitch to VCs.
In this article we are going to look into: What startup accelerators are, choosing a program that is worth it for you (or deciding if you should skip them altogether), and finally how to get in.
We get dozens of questions from people interested different topics. From starting a business to measuring KPI's of a successful company.
An Elevator Pitch is a succinct 20-30 second speech geared to convince someone about a product or company. We've collected some startup elevator pitch examples like Airbnb, Facebook, Buffer, for you to get some inspiration out of it!
In this article, we are going to talk about how to grow a small business. If you don't know me, my name is Caya. I'm one of the founders and the CEO at Slidebean- a venture-funded, profitable, multi-million dollar startup.
What if I started a new business today? How would I approach it?
In this article I am going to talk about the startup mistakes I made, the hard lessons I had to learn, and how they translated into the success of this new company.
9 out of 10 startups fail; that's just the hard truth. The most common reasons, according to founders themselves, are related to the 5 Startup Myths that we covered in this article.
This Uber pitch deck that successfully raised the company's first round of funding. It's a fantastic example of a perfectly defined problem/solution combination.
Coming up with a compelling pitch deck is an essential instrument for getting a startup off the ground. How to make a pitch deck, therefore, is crucial, and startups need to nail this part of the funding process.
Each minute of this video costs around $150. Based on this numbers, what's a good YouTube content marketing ROI?
Pitch Deck Examples that made companies like Airbnb, Uber and Facebook, the giants they are today. A pitch deck is usually a 10-20 slide presentation designed to give a short summary of your company, your business plan and your startup vision.
As we've scaled Slidebean and had the chance to connect with hundreds of companies, one of the most common questions I get is around how to find a cofounder.
How to get seed funding: Just as a seed needs unconditional care and water to grow, a startup business needs crucial nourishing of finance to expand and grow.
Startup business funding: Going into business for oneself is always a daunting decision especially if you cannot personally fund the launch.
Your company profile is a marketing tool that showcases your brand’s products, services, and activities. A powerful company profile presentation should be more than just a brochure.
You’ve started up, and gaining traction. You’ve put your seed money to good use, you’ve got a small but sustainable customer base, made your first couple of million and it feels like you’ve got something good going.It’s time for Series A pitch deck.
What is a Startup Financial Model and how does it work? We reviewed the full financials of Slidebean for our most important year.
Discover three powerful alternatives to deliver a powerful pitch deck design to your potential clients or investors. A pitch deck that stands out can say a lot about the stage your company is in.
Caya, CEO at Slidebean, answers questions from the YouTube audience. These are frequently asked questions when fundraising or starting a business.
If you're a freelancer applying for a contract job or a company proposing a new vendor agreement, learning how to write a business proposal properly will guarantee that you showcase your skills and close more deals when making your pitches. Also, get access to our business proposal template for free.
Startups Pitch deck templates can serve very different purposes, from trying to get a meeting with a new investor, to presenting in front of a stage, and each one of them should follow a different structure! Here's a few pitch deck examples every startup founder needs.
Not all businesses are created equal. There are many differences between starting a small business vs starting a startup.
In this article, we to look into the workflow of how to raise money for a business. Today we are going to look into the process of raising capital.
We have decided to open a new pitch deck design business segment within Slidebean – Pitch Deck Content + Design. We can help your create a killer pitch deck.
Startup CEO roles are a demanding and mentally exhausting job. The decisions you make, affect the future of your company and your employees.
Heini Zachariassen is Vivino’s Founder and currently serves as board member and chief evangelist. Largely credited with bringing a technology revolution to the wine industry, Heini founded Vivino because he was frustrated by not knowing which wine to buy. It’s been his passion project ever since. During his tenure, Vivino grew into a community of 30 million users, raised $57 million in funding and rolled out a worldwide wine marketplace. Prior to starting Vivino, Heini co-founded several startups, including global internet and mobile security company BullGuard.
Sam Wilcoxon, CEO and co-founder of Ask Lorem, a two-sided marketplace connecting SMB/e-commerce businesses with a network of pre-vetted freelance web developers and designers.
The main goal behind presenting your pitch deck is to get investors excited about your product and confident enough to spend on your startup. Here are some essential guidelines on how to create a pitch deck, that will make your startup stand out and pave the way to your company’s success in today’s competitive market.
In this article, you are going to learn how to embed a Youtube video in your presentation. We are going to compare how to do it with Slidebean and a couple of different Powerpoint versions.
A pitch deck is one of the most important representation that a startup could have. If you get this first step wrong you could jeopardize startup funding opportunities before investors even take a look at the 2nd slide. Here are some of the most common startups fundraising mistakes.
Stock Options explained: basics for startup employees and founders. You started a business and you want to compensate your early employees. Or you've joined a startup and were offered company stock options as part of your compensation. How do those work?
You're an entrepreneur and want to start your US company. You found this online platform that handles everything for $500 or so. Should you go for it?
There's a lot to consider when starting a business, but the relationship with your co-founders is probably one of the most critical parts.
Keeping a product alive often seems like the sole purpose of an entrepreneur. So much of your time is dedicated to figuring out how to keep the ship from sinking and moving it forward, that you can quickly lose perspective of why you began the journey in the first place.
Slidebean’s fully automated AI software can create stunning slide presentations in seconds, saving users time and delivering a beautifully designed slide presentation.
Running a startup has been one of the two most amazing experiences in my life (the other being raising a kid). It's an everyday problem-solving challenge. It's an everyday brainstorm. It requires you to reinvent yourself every other week, to try and outsmart the smartest people, who also happen to have more experience and more money. Holidays and weekends are but an illusion when the fate of 25 co-workers and hundreds of thousands of users rests on the decisions you have to 'sleep on.'
We are thrilled to tell you about our new product release, coFoundrr: the new and simple way to find entrepreneurs to partner with.
Demo days are often the first chance a startup gets at getting in front of investors. For most startup accelerators, this is your graduation event, and a lot of work goes into preparing those slides and those pitches.
What is a Pitch Deck Presentation: it is usually a 10-20 slide presentation designed to give a short summary of your company, your business plan and your startup vision. Pitch presentation also serve very different purposes, and each one of them should follow a different structure.
If you are an early-stage startup in the tech space and you are looking for money to grow your company, the official term is raising capital, the most commonly recommended instrument to raise funds is a convertible note. However, to understand how those work, we first need to understand how equity (or stock) works.
This Valentine, we asked each staff member to let us know which is their Valentine’s song and created a playlist to share with the world.
Today we wanted to talk about accelerators. Slidebean/FounderHub, as a company, went through Startup Chile in 2013, through DreamIt in 2014 and through 500 Startups in 2015. Why so many accelerators, you ask? Well, great question.
We’ve created this list of the best presentation software tools to ensure you make the right call in the platform you select. This articles is the result of several weeks of research and review of 50+ presentation tools currently available on the web.
Here are three products we swear by in Slidebean, if you are starting a company, these products may be exactly what you need.
MailChimp is THE standard email marketing campaign platform. To give you an idea of our stack, here's what we use in Slidebean
This we were looking into Ahrefs one of my favorite marketing platforms.
Stripe along with Square are the two main billing processors for startups. While Square focuses on point of sale devices, Stripe is mostly used for digital purchases.
The Elevator Pitch can be used in many situations faced by startups. It can be used in any scenario where we need to grab our audience's attention and pitch a product quickly. Use this article lo learn how to write an effective elevator pitch!
Starting your own business requires a lot of new knowledge. And most of us didn’t have Entrepreneurship 101 in Middle School So sometimes, you have to take learning into your own hands. Thankfully, today is not that day, as we’ve done the heavy lifting for you.
Raising money is hard. It's so hard most companies fail at it. In this article, we'll look into traction requirements, pitch decks, alternative funding sources and on how to find investors and raise venture capital as an entrepreneur. This is seed funding for startups.
Cryptocurrency is booming, and it's going mainstream. Bitcoin broke $10,000 per unit in November 2017, and since then, more and more people have become interested in this internet 'curiosity'.
Times New Roman Alternatives: A slight change in your typography can go a long way in making your documents stand out. Fonts are a powerful design element, as much as color and image use, and so I’ll share with you some of the alternatives I often use in my work as a visual designer.
A presentation outline is a roadmap to a more successful business pitch — a general plan that summarizes what you want to say to prospective customers, clients or investors. This presentation outline template will help you cover the key points of what to include in your slides.
Do you have fear of public speaking? In this article we’ve covered some practical ways to turn public speaking into something you can face, rather than fear!
A third of startups end up closing shop for the simple reason that they run out of money. That’s why it’s important to know where you can afford to spend your money, and where you can’t afford to. In this article, we’ll show you the best practices to keep up with your SaaS budget!
Think of FounderHub as tools for starting a business, all conveniently located in the same place, and curated by the same people that used them to build and grow their startup.
The Airbnb pitch deck has become an increasingly popular reference for entrepreneurs around the world. The company founders, Brian Chesky raised $600K in 2009, from Sequoia Capital and Y Ventures. The company has since become a giant in the Travel Industry.
90 percent of startups fail. Most of them can’t make it. It is a sad reality. Lack of capital, inadequate training of customer support teams and failure to comprehend the needs of the customers are a few of the reasons why startups don’t prosper. In the highly competitive business environment of today, we cannot afford to ignore their customer needs. Delivering a delightful customer experience can make the difference between success and failure of our businesses.
A single mistake can make or break a company. As a startup, you need to be very careful with every modification that is applied to the product or service. Although there are countless examples of startup common mistakes that have caused them to fail, I've compiled four known cases, so we can learn from them.
A pitch deck outline is the standard document used by startups to present their case to investors; it’s a brief deck comprised of about 10 to 20 slides. There’s a standard pitch deck outline because it’s what an investor expect to see before meeting a prospect.
Recently have come up with implementations that you'll love! Lear in this article about our new themes and palettes and other significant changes.
I recently came across a founder database Nathan Latka created where Founders and CEO’s share their customer count, revenue, funding data, and more. Learn all about it in this post!
Lead generation is one of the ultimate business goals of our era, but with so many competitors wanting the same thing as you, it is getting increasingly difficult to hit the bull’s eye. It leaves most marketers wondering – how can I increase the number of leads?
Digging deep into what is a pitch deck and how to create a pitch deck for investors. There is a pretty standardized outline that most presentations follow, so we'll look at each slide and dig into what content you should include in each one of them.
We are considering the option of opening our product once again, and have started a few experiments and case studies to understand the real potential of a freemium business model, and how it could reshape our business in the months to come.
You need to know how to introduce yourself in a speech or presentation to make a great first impression. With an outstanding introduction, you'll be able to break the ice and generate interest in your audience. Follow these 11 guidelines to make your next presentation a success!
Keywords were widely regarded as the main ingredient in running a web marketing campaign. What is that they used to say -- “keyword is king” or was it content? In any case, people used keywords as a basis for evaluating results and making quick judgments about whether a campaign is profitable or not.
Slidebean will continue accepting guest post submissions for our blog. We are working to organize our content according to our followers interests, and have condensed our blog into the following sections.
You only get one chance to make a first impression. Using these sales deck template and examples will be the tipping point that decides between a closed deal or a prospect passing on your product or service.
We started experimenting with Youtube as a content marketing channel a couple of years ago. Came up with a few series concepts, including; Startups and Spirits: conversations with investors and key startup people over drinks. Blog to Vlog: a video-version of our most successful blog articles. The Good, the Bad and the Tip: inspired by the legendary (and discontinued) ‘Winners and Losers’ by L2Inc, but adapted to presentations and design- related topics. The (Startup) Office: A weekly 3-minute sitcom of mostly real stories from our office. All of these FAILED. Why? The views weren’t there. There was no organic visibility, needless to say virality. No direct route to conversion. Expensive compared to other brand awareness campaigns
It's essential to have well-thought-out slide deck presentation design before facing not only customers but also investors, who are the ones that will help you secure seed funding. In this article, we'll show you how to build an effective deck.
The Fyre Festival pitch deck it's a 43 slides presentation that managed to receive $26 million in investment. In this article, we’ll show you the specific reasons that made such an anticipated festival an epic failure.
Landing pages are the most important thing for your business right now. Get your landing page right, and it’s basically a money generator. Get it wrong, and you’re leaving money on the table. In this article, learn what you might be doing wrong with your page and how to fix it!
Nowadays, customers have become smarter and more discerning regarding products and services that are being sold every day. The rise of this new breed of consumers, has changed the traditional sales presentation into a more personable and customized selling experience. Here's how you can create the ultimate sales pitch!
I definitely do think that it makes a difference or at least, we should be aware that there's a difference but I don't think that investors, or the VC community is deliberately trying to be racist or deliberately holding people back, deliberately being sexist or things like that.
It would probably be spend more time with our target customer in the very beginnnig before building the product and before investing our time and effort into the product.
It would probably be spend more time with our target customer in the very beginnnig before building the product and before investing our time and effort into the product.
"That's a great question man. Actually know exactly what I would do."
"I think remote works really well for some types of roles. I think it depend on the type of product."
That's about the only strategy. And keep doing that: keep trying to grow ourbusiness, improve our product, bring on more customers and make our customer as happy as we can possibly make them.
I think every company's is to decide for themselves, whether it's in their best interest, I suppose. Some of our customers do it, but yeah, it hasn't been an emphasis.
Well, there's pros and cons, right? Right now, we benefit from lower costs in Berlin, and being maybe, one of the coolest SaaS companies in Berlin.
Doing on average is half of them raising their next round within six to nine months and then usually an "A round" or a seed extension a heavy seed extension. if I'd had two standouts, plus another three or four doing well, still had a chance of also becoming standouts that would have been a good if not great group.
Series A it's different. You can raise a little bit on the dream, you could raise on the potential. By the time you're getting for A around a lot of the investors are looking for a $1M-$3M annual recurring revenue, and also the slope of the line, right?
I still feel like there's a slightly different mindset. Like I joke around that there are these the "West Coast A rounds", "East Coast A rounds" and the"Midwest A rounds".
Andrew Ackerman is a successful serial entrepreneur, startup mentor, and occasional angel investor. He runs Dreamit's UrbanTech Accelerator and see over 2000 startups each year, selecting fewer than 20 to work with. He works with partners such as Jeff, Vinik's SPP, Penn State, and Blackboard to develop and execute on their strategies for sourcing external innovation and encouraging internal innovation.
"It's very interesting, I was actually more active as an angel before Jordan DreamIt. It's weird so, I still haven't figured out a way to invest in one of my companies without that sending a signal to others that, you know..."
Even if you raised five million dollars? It's a brutal pain to try to get it at fifties and hundreds. You can argue Demo Day doesn't work at all... period. I do believe that if you're not one of the top ten, or top five even, accelerators, demo date doesn't usually deliver.
If it is the best, you want to be in the best, so, they get their choice of the best. So, that's great and I don't envy them that at all. In fact, part of the reason DreamIt went later stage, is because we're all pretty competitive guys, and well you know we could be top five and our fund would do really well, we could make good money... F*ck it, we wanna be number one.
So one of the things that really makes a difference is your ability to bring customers to the table; customers who are ready to partner, and want to do it quickly, that's basically air to a startup.
If they're not top five, top ten, maybe top twenty or if they're not really deep in your industry, and no bullshit, but really can make those custom introductions.
This week, we cover public speaking examples from the most recent iPhone and Samsung Galaxy launch events- and what we can learn from each one of them.
Stock photography is a multi-billion dollar market, expected to reach $20B by 2020, but your standard Google search will still yield watermarked iStockPhotos and Shutterstock and they are all pretty much the same crap.
It's imperative as a company to measure the success of a pivot in order to accurately know if the path chosen was the right one. Slidebean has gone through two major pivots in the past year, the first took place during 500 Startups and the second one was more recently. Take a look at or MoM Growth since then!
CEO at Slidebean/FounderHub. TEDx Speaker. 500 Startups Alum. 40-under-40.
