In a parallel universe where SlideRocket wasn't acquired, we would have been direct competitors. We will share their insights on how to sell a company for 2x its price.
It is undoubtedly the most popular channel for professionals in all areas right now. How to find investors on LinkedIn?
An overview of financial models is a critical review of any business owner’s journey. Going into financial modeling permits forecasting the future of a company, for instance, which is especially useful in terms of startup performance. However, there are quite diverse examples of financial modeling.
Most startups are obsessively focused on finding investors to back their idea. Someone to take a chance on them. Someone who wants to get behind the “next big thing.” But often founders are perplexed on how to find those investors, why it’s taking so long, and how to speed up the process. Let’s dive in.
Raising venture capital is no easy task; many variables need to come into play and align for a round of funding to happen. We've covered extensively what a pitch deck should have and what your financials should answer, but today we are going talk about the deal-breakers. The stuff that (ourselves included) didn't know was working against us until it was too late. Let's do it.
The backbone of Slidebean's growth has diligently and accurately tracking our customer acquisition costs. It's really easy to track where a customer came from when you are using digital channels. Some channels, however, are much harder to measure. We'll go over the tactics we've used to track conversions over the years, and a few hacks that might be useful for harder-to-track channels like YouTube.
A financial model is an essential tool for every business owner that’s built in Excel or any other spreadsheet processor to calculate their business’ financial performance into the future. The calculation is typically based on the company’s historical performance, or assumptions about the future. How to build a financial model is usually answered into its sections SG&A (Selling, General, and Administrative Expenses), COGS (Cost of Goods Sold), Revenue, and CAPEX (Capital Expenditure).
We deal with thousands of companies in the process of fundraising. Last year, I spoke to over 1,000 founders, and I've set a personal goal to beat that this year. These companies mostly come to me for office hours, and most of the time, their questions revolve around fundraising. One thousand people are enough to detect some patterns: the mistakes these companies are making when approaching their fundraising.
Knowing how to create an excellent presentation doesn’t necessarily have to be a nerve-wracking exercise. It can actually be a measurable practice. So much so that we’ve narrowed the process down to give you at least 8 steps on how to prepare a business presentation deck.
Mastering how to write a pitch presentation requires practice and improvement with time. This is not a skill to hone overnight. However, there are indeed 10 steps on how to write a commercial pitch that we can provide you. And we’ll throw additional tips at that, as well. Following all of these will undoubtedly help a better start as you set out to accomplish an excellent business presentation.
We have a policy of sharing some of our finances and our lessons as part of our transparency marketing. We started doing this back in 2015, inspired by companies like Buffer and Baremetrics, whose own blog posts and materials were an inspiration for us. We are taking a trip down memory lane to understand how Slidebean was formed, where the first money came from, and how we spent it.
If you are new to our brand or our YouTube channel, you might assume I am just this guy that makes videos on failed companies. But no. Our company, Slidebean, actually, around 30 people, is a venture-funded startup. And our core business is not video, but presentation design.
We've created an easy-to-follow guide on how you can choose the best pitch deck template, based on your company's stage and use case. Pick the best set of slides and skyrocket your business!
Everything changed for us recently. The new coronavirus came around, and we needed to switch many of our routines. How we work and interact, where and how we shop are all part of that list. Especially how we tend to our medical needs shifted! Are we ready to go 100% virtual, though? We’re taking a look at changes across tech, health care, and real estate to give that answer a try. Stick with us!
Just like we gave you a summary of America’s seed fund for startups hoping these will help your US-based businesses, we now want to bring our European audiences a list of European seed funds for startup founders and entrepreneurs.
On March 25th, 2020, the Division of Innovation and Industrial Partnerships (IIP) of the Engineering Directorate opened up the option for US-based small businesses (SB) to submit proposals. They’re asking for just the initial pitch to the first phase as a proposal for “the development and deployment of new technologies, products, processes, and services with the potential to positively impact the nation’s and world’s ability to respond to the COVID-19 crisis.” Here, we give you a summary of America’s seed fund for startups.
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. Here you'll find the Best Pitch Deck Examples that made companies like Airbnb, Uber and Facebook, the giants they are today.
If you're starting a business, a Financial Model is a critical tool to estimate the potential of your company. How much do you plan to charge for your product? How much do you expect you'll pay to acquire a customer? How much time do you need to finish development, and how much will those salaries cost?
A relatively common question we get revolves around business plans. A good amount of our customers asks us if we can write a business plan for them, and we always respectfully decline.
Everyone’s going remote these days. With that change come online meetings. Zoom is currently one of the most mentioned online meeting software out there. But how exactly do you practice the most efficient and appropriate online meeting etiquette? Here are six tips on how to run a remote meeting. If you’re part of the people needing to call out on virtual gatherings, these are a must. Be the type of meeting holder people love contrary to one they wish is over with a meeting soon.
Slidebean has come in contact with over 30,000 startup investor deck designs. Either created through our presentation design platform, using Slidebean AI or through our consulting services, we've pitched that much. So we think there's something we can share about investor decks and financial models during these trialing COVID-19 times and beyond. We'll start with why now is the time to build a top-notch pitch deck and financial model.
The dynamics of how to pitch investors investors and fundraising are likely going to change drastically in the next few months. I have always believed that real-life interaction between humans is critical in the decision-making process for an investor.
Entrepreneurs are going to be the key to economic reactivation. We are the spearhead of innovation. We are accustomed to the rollercoaster of starting a company, which has taught us how to move faster, work faster even in complicated circumstances.
Why not go over the 35 best pitch deck templates for startups we could think of to dig deep into every single company that has made their pitch deck a legacy?
In this webinar recording, Caya, Slidebean’s CEO, develops a step-by-step financial modeling tutorial, using a spreadsheet that can be easily downloadable and customized
A slide deck is just another way to refer to a presentation deck or pitch deck. The term was perhaps first used in Silicon Valley.
Have you ever considered what business trends led pitch decks to become a standard? Well, we have. And it’s time we put something out on the web about it. So we’re getting to that next.
Our Founder's Edition plan gives you access to our company founders, who are available to answer your questions around fundraising, growth marketing, and design.
Balancing burn rate and runway in a startup is probably one of the most critical tasks a CEO must deal with. That's why we're giving you an insight on how we spent our startup funding and the mistakes and lessons we learned throughout the way.
Having a good grip at an investor pitch deck outline is a definite advantage in the way we deliver pitches during business funding rounds. For this article, we will not even make you read long. Catch our recap of what slides to include in your upcoming pitch deck for your business presentation next.
You might not immediately think about a site such as BuzzFeed in terms of business pitch decks. However, this social news/entertainment site (that is foremost an independent digital media company, really) has not only raised millions of dollars in funding rounds as part of their trajectory, but it has also been deemed to have fostered a new definition of content marketing.
Let’s say you wanted to ship something to the other side of the country, and you didn’t want to look for a box big enough, or queue at the post office. None of that. You just wanted to have someone come and pick up your package, from the comfort of your home. Well, Shyp did just that.
Mastering how to do fundraising without making mistakes comes with a great experience. But knowing the basics of how to raise funds the right way can certainly get you off on a much-needed good start. So we’re sharing 5 critical steps with you today on the art of raising funds. By following up on these, we hope your next or first round is successful!
Having an MVP doesn’t prevent you from failures to find an investor. You need to back up your idea with extensive data like a marketing strategy and a business plan. This post aims at finding out how to get funded with just an MVP and don’t get insane in the process.
We’re focusing on unicorn startups today, defining what makes a startup worth more than $100 million in 2020. As times change, so does business, markets, startups, and investors. Let’s see what key aspects drive startup valuation above the first hundred million in today’s business world.
We gathered some healthy assumptions to help you deflate the false sense of security many new entrepreneurs might have when launching a product or service startup.
As marihuana becomes more popular worldwide with legalization, so do cannabis startups. So let’s take the opportunity to check what the state of these plant-centered businesses are and the entire new industry they’re building into 2020 and beyond.
The fundraising platform, akin to KickStarter, IndieGogo or GoFundME, was an online crowd-funding site aimed at helping users raise the funds they needed from a group or community for whatever projects they outlined. The company would only tilt, meaning collect and distribute the funds from users, if the targeted money was fully raised. It ended up tilting in other senses a bit too much, if you ask me.
The recent truth about tech companies is that many of them are funded by VCs nowadays; especially those that focus on software. So, if you’re considering building up a new tech company, here are 9 tips on what to know before starting a business.
You’ve chosen the grant or grants to which you’ll apply. Or maybe you plan on doing that next. Either way, you’re here now, which is already a great start to your applications. But, before you fire your plea out into the business world, let’s see how to make the best use of a grant proposal template by covering its very basics and a bit more.
At this time of the year, many of you might be wondering how to start a business in 2020. Fortunately, discussing startup topics is one of our main areas of interest and expertise. So we couldn’t wait for a more appropriate time to discuss how to start a business this new year.
Creating a thorough marketing plan is an essential part of any new business’s ground considerations. If you’re looking for guidance on how to create a marketing plan to accelerate the process or even if you’re just looking for a trustworthy and free marketing plan template, Slidebean’s always here to help. Enhance your startup’s marketing strategies with our key facts and resources to create the perfect marketing plan.
Multiple theorists have written about how to craft the most successful pitch decks for startups. We will cover a few of the most famous startup gurus you can consult today to give you a solid idea about pitch deck theory basics.
Great presentations captivate an audience right off the start. For that, having an excellent hook as an attention-getter is the most effective business presentation opener. So let us give you a good set of pitch deck hook ideas along with the best pitch deck opener tips for you to take into consideration before your next startup pitch.
When we hear the term “pitch deck”, we usually think of what can be considered a general or main deck, a presentation used to pitch investors. However, there are pitch decks variations, depending on where you post them, how you share them, and what use you give to them.
As we close 2019, we wanted to share with you the Slidebean content that attracted more visitors during the year. Is your favorite video, article or template here? Find out!
A crucial part of getting your pitch deck right is having a strong story to tell. In that sense, how we tell a story and the ways in which we allow our audience to navigate the flow of that storyline, will set a reliable foundation for pitch deck success. So, let’s go over a few tips on how to improve your pitch deck storytelling.
Whenever you hear talks about series A, B, or C of funding rounds, the discussion has to do with outside investment as a means of growing a business. These are truly just usual stepping stones in the path towards building a global company.
In today’s episode of Startup Forensics, we’re going to throwback to Vine and dig into some key aspects of its rise and fall, including Twitter’s acquisition of the company, along with some product, and competition analysis.
What makes a pitch presentation great is a combination of the following: A compelling story, An appropriate tone Engaging slides, Relevant figures and data We will cover each area to an excelling pitch deck over the course of this article, starting by the relevance of a compelling story.
In this article, we will analyze the story behind WeWork, their rise, and downfall, and of course, what lessons we can learn from them.
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.
If you’re wondering how to write the perfect pitch deck or how to craft the right story for it, you have come to the perfect place!
Giving an effective presentation has its tricks, yet that’s exactly where we draw 5 tips on presenting and public speaking for today.
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.
What are the essential elements to a successful pitch deck? For any investor (honestly, serious or not about doing business with you), these are just crucial pieces of information to have for an investment decision to be made. So, keep them in there, and do make the best of them that you can.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A company CEO should probably be working on their financial model 2-3 times per week. It is a key decision-making tool for any business. In this article, we explore the financial model template that we used to get our startup to profitability.
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!
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.
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!
Multi-billion-dollar companies such as: YouTube, Airbnb or Foursquare, have one thing in common: they used a pitch deck to secure millions of dollars' worth of investment, transforming them from startups to scale-ups in mere minutes.
Although you might have secure funding for your startup, you need to build and nurture a relationship with these investors. An essential part of that involves sending regular updates on your company performance, better known as investor updates.
As a startup, it's essential to secure seed funding at early stages. Yet, the final decision is not only based on data and metrics, often times is thanks to a very human ‘I like this team’ variable. That process of liking someone takes time and the best way to develop it is with investor updates.
Balancing growth vs profitability is a delicate science and it can literally make or break your business. It’s a choice startup founders need to make and it’s very much related to the direction that the company is headed; you’ll probably hear/read hundreds of stories of which path works best… this is just ours.
Snapchat is considered one of the favorite photo messaging apps among millennials. It was created by Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy and It presently garners eight billion video views every day from its 100 million active users. Here's the teardown and redesign of Snapchat pitch deck for you to check it out.
During our time at 500 Startups we went from an average transaction size of $5 to $159, that’s 30x!! By changing and re-focusing our target audience, we found a new set of users that was willing to pay a premium price for our product.
As a startup, you are constantly racing against time to become profitable before you run out of money, so every second you can spare by improving how you do things truly makes the difference. That's why finding the right startup tools to optimize productivity is key.
After a successful pitch presentation to investors, were you manage to convince them to say they're interested, you need to know what to do next. In this article, we'll help you succeed through a startup fundraising process!
This article is focus on figuring out how to present your startup, without being too simplistic. That way, you can have great conversations with everybody regarding your startup's story and avoid jargon at the same time!
Getting ready for an investor meeting? As a startup, we've learned some tips and tricks along the way of how to properly handle investor meetings and we're here to share the most important key principles with you.
The dangers with convertible notes when raising capital.
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