Last week, we celebrated our 100,000th subscriber on YouTube- we had pizza and beer and fun... on a Google Meet session. Our office has now been pretty much empty for the last three months, and there is no sign of when we'll see it full of people again. But, hear this, we are not considering canceling our lease.
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.
You may have heard the argument that this company was meant to be what Netflix is today. But it may not be all that simple. So, let's talk about Blockbuster, the movie rental giant that dominated the market and delivered home entertainment to virtually everybody in the US during a couple of decades, reaching its pinnacle in the late 1990s; and then succumbed to the changes that the new millennium brought.
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.
Slack has become one of the preferred tools for organizations, big and small, to communicate between teams and individually. As more people turn to remote work, Slack has seen a considerable increase in paid memberships and simultaneous users connected. But just as the software is successful, it’s also divisive. Some love it, others, not so much. With so many productivity tools out there, Slack seems to stand out. So, is there a secret to their success? We’ll tell you in this episode of Company Forensics.
When creating presentations, we tend to look for help and inspiration in online templates. In doing so, we usually come across terms we probably hadn’t ever heard before. And they might be a bit confusing, too. For instance, when people talk about PowerPoint deck or slide deck instead of a pitch deck. To help clear a few basic queries, we came up with 7 facts about a Powerpoint deck that we’d now like to share with you. Let’s start off with a basic one.
We talk about SpaceX, and today, we dive deep into its history, filled with crazy anecdotes and valuable lessons, to see where the company aims to be soon.
We usually cover a lot of news and data on how to write a business pitch. Yet, there’s always tons more to learn before an excellent business presentation can be at the top of its game. So we made room for more!
When you start creating a pitch deck, you have to think about the ultimate goal behind it. A great pitch means getting potential funders interested in your idea. It also involves being able to engage in a conversation with them regarding your company. For that, a pitch deck format can make it easier to follow the steps of a proven successful presentation.
Are you having to give a presentation and looking for a PowerPoint online alternative? We'll throw around the main differences between Slidebean and PowerPoint to help you create an excellent presentation. Especially if you're after a solid pitch deck, give our templates and platform a try! We'll explain here a bit of how that goes.
Chances are you heard the news, but in case you haven’t, Hertz, one of the biggest rental companies in the world, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
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.
Businesses are starting to reopen, and, as the world carefully comes out of the stay-at-home phase, the process can be daunting and stressful. That’s a new normal! At this point, no one knows how everything’s going to play out. To help, we put together 5 tips on how to create a reopening plan. We hope this eases how you prepare to go back to business.
This starting a business checklist can be helpful for any startup founder and entrepreneur. That's why we're giving you a business startup checklist divided by categories. The idea is to make it easy to follow up with your progress as you start a business.
Zoom vs Skype: A face-off! Our Company Forensics episode about Zoom has now over 200K views. In it, we not only tried to tell the story of Eric Yuan’s success with this video conferencing platform but the reasons why it defeated others like Meet and Skype during these pandemic times.
Today, we talk about traveling. Before all of this happened, chances are we used Airbnb to find a place to stay, and we discovered that some of those options were great and others, well, not so much.
Mastering a business pitch can take an entrepreneur a considerable long time. Experience gives many lessons along the way, yet sometimes it does so in the hardest of ways. We hope these 8 thoughts on how to write a project pitch can ease a bit of that learning curve and help you prepare for your upcoming business presentation.
I am going to show you how to estimate the business scale for an eCommerce platform with our financial model template.
Starting a business is no easy task. Its demands of time, smart strategizing, much hard-earned expertise, measuring, and effective translation of needs into solutions along with considerable efforts in terms of startup funding are only a relative part of all it takes to start a company. To help, we bring our best advice on how to start a startup. We'll begin with the topic of having a great business idea.
Raising venture capital can be so hard that most companies fail at it. Seriously! According to CB Insights, “nearly 67% of startups stall at some point in the VC process and fail to exit or raise follow-on funding.” That fact alone is a good enough reason for us to now focus on sharing our company’s experience with you aimed at how to raise venture capital.
All of a sudden, video calls have become a part of our daily lives. From university classes and business meetings to birthdays and yoga. Online is the new normal and will be for a while. Fortunately, there are plenty of options, Zoom, Meet, and Microsoft’s own Teams. But, there’s a name that seems to have disappeared. A name, mind you, that no so long ago was the go-to program for video calls. It’s safe to say that, if all of this happened, say, in 2010, we would’ve been Skyping. But now, we’re doing anything but Skyping. What happened? We’ll tell you, in this Company Forensics.
Pitching a business idea requires something out of the ordinary. The difference between raising funds or going home unfunded can lie in how well a business presentation is delivered, or an outstanding pitch deck. For that, a fantastic pitch PowerPoint template is more than a handy tool, especially for those who don’t precisely have top-notch designing skills - or the right tools for it.
The fundraising process for a startup requires a crash course on some terminology that you've probably never heard of. So, to better explain all of this, we are going to tell the story of a startup company, from funding to IPO. This is Startup Funding Explained, part 1.
In high-tech, moving at a high pace is a natural part of its rhythm. And, while this global pandemic has many businesses at a regretful halt, the latest news on Silicon Valley startups is an interesting catch-up. If you're familiar with the valley and startup concepts altogether, feel free to jump ahead to our Silicon Valley news update. If not, let's get to a bit of basic before we jump over to the news, shall we?
Some states in the US are already looking to reopen business and reactivate the economy safely. As that happens, entrepreneurs might be battling to do so safely, and we want to help them achieve that. Here’s a summary of the most significant aspects outlined by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as we attempt to answer “What are the CDC reopening guidelines?” For the full set of them, you can always visit the official CDC website directly.
This is a rare occasion. I am going to pitch you a new business today. It's a real business; I made a real pitch deck for it. I am going to assume you guys are investors, and this is our first call. And I'll pitch it. Then- I'll breakdown some of the key slides and how I solved them. Let's do it.
We’ve all probably given hundreds of presentations over our lifetime. Even so, we’re still most likely making some of the most common presentation mistakes out there. That’s why they’re common as most people keep on making them.
Today, we take to the skies. This plane broke grounds with its technology, speed and looks. But it was a financial failure. What seemed to be the future of aviation instead became a luxury item for a select few. And though it was very safe for most of its history, one crash sealed an already bleak fate, as to how we fly changed.
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!
There is no clickbait here. The backbone of our company success has been Google, and by extension, Youtube. Hear me out. Our website gets around 250,000 organic visits per month. I'm excluding all paid and all social media traffic from that number; those are visits to our website that came from somebody looking for an answer in Google and stumbling upon our content.
A market analysis is a tool to understand your customers better. With it, you should be able to learn critical aspects of your target audiences. As an entrepreneur or business owner, you naturally want to know who your buyers are.
Towards the end of March, the world’s leading provider of vacation rental data & analytics, AirDNA, tweeted about rising Airbnb host cancellation rates. With a foreseeable spike towards mid-April, the new update on April 16 was an average length of stay increase in global bookings of 133%. Airbnb’s newsroom claimed hosts were playing a critical role in longer-term stays, as well.
We’ve created the best presentation software list with 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.
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.
Boosted boards: skateboards have always been cool. But when someone decided to put a motor in them, they became even cooler, all hazards aside, of course. And with this latest trend of micro-mobility and “last-mile” vehicles, it might come as a surprise that the first motorized skateboards exist since the early 70s. But, in recent years, millennials have taken to electric skateboards and scooters to move about and upload Tik Toks while doing so.
Of course, we want to use a thank you slide to end our presentations. After all, it has been shared sometimes among the tips for effective slide decks. Somehow, it seems like an instinct or a legacy from good old PowerPoint presentation days. Yet, not all of us have that tendency. And there’s also a natural explanation as to why that’s the case. So, here, we bring to you 3 main reasons why you shouldn’t add a thank you slide.
With mandatory confinement, especially, many might be wondering how to start a small business from home right now. That fact alone is why we’re sharing 5 tips on how to start a small business at home.
The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and Health Care Enhancement Act passed by the House of Representatives on Thursday April 23rd, 2020 just restocked a lending program for small businesses with a new set of 310 billion dollars.
You’ve probably been thinking or talking about home office improvements for a long time now. Maybe you already have a space you’ve thought about turning to a superb home office one. Or maybe you’re ready to have a proper setting to pitch investors remotely in COVID-19 times. But you know there’s still action to take on that.
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.
To help entrepreneurs raise funds during these times, we just listed early-stage funding options for U.S. based startups. We're focusing on three programs this time; WeFunder, SeedInvest, and Republic. Throughout this article, we'll give you details on each platform, their sets of requirements, and any implications that the use of them might have for startup entrepreneurs.
We already addressed the question of how to make a presentation interactive in a previous article. Today, we’ll include more pointers with briefer references to expand on our given tips for public speaking and captivating audiences.
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.
Motorola was a pioneer in mobile communications and helped shape entire markets with groundbreaking products. But now, it’s gone. And, yes, we can summarize this episode and say that it was a giant failing to act upon change. But we’d be lying because there’s more to it. It was the culture and management that killed Motorola.
This article is not about the next Unicorn startup, $1B business idea. If I had that, I wouldn't be here, probably. This article has new business ideas for everyone. They might not become unicorns, but can certainly provide a job, a lifestyle, and the potential to grow if you are good at it.
A SWOT analysis is an important analytic tool. Business owners use it to help themselves in making essential decisions. In this article, we’ll expand on how to use a SWOT analysis template and the eight tips you should consider.
Amidst this ever-changing crisis, companies -startups included- are trying to come to grips with the new realities of workspaces. If you are a founder who has already built a team of co-founders, consultants, and even employees, here’s what to expect as we shift towards a predominantly virtual landscape.
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.
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.
It’s a Kodak moment! That’s what we said when our cameras capture something special. The phrase was popularized in the 80s, but Kodak was already engraved in our hearts.
The Best 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.
There are many reasons why you’d want to learn how to make custom PowerPoint templates. These range from merely expanding your online tool knowledge up to customizing resources to your specific taste for branding. And, as an entrepreneur, you naturally want people to remember your startup quickly. So learning how to create PowerPoint templates makes profitable sense.
In our article How to write a business plan template, we covered what a business plan is. We also included information as to when you’ll need it. And we touched upon when it won’t be requested and what that involves. Now, let’s go deeper into how to write a startup business plan template. We’ll start by revising a business plan’s traditional structure step by step.
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?
Learning how to write a business plan template doesn't have to be tricky. It's one of the first things on any business founder's list when reaching third parties about a startup. But it doesn't need to be complicated. Let's get you covered on business plan template basics, and a bit beyond that.
We've gathered our all-time top 10 pitch decks presentation templates. These templates will come handy when starting your company. Craft your message with our editable version.
If there was one big and powerful tech company that could dethrone Facebook from its social media kingdom, who would that be? Think about it, there aren’t really a lot of options.
A pitch deck is a brief presentation used to introduce your business or business ideas in front of an audience, typically of investors. What is a pitch deck template, then, do you wonder?
At some point in their lives, every student should care about having a successful elevator pitch they can pull up with great ease. That’s why we’ve picked out a set of the best elevator pitch examples for students. We’re hoping these will help you deliver impressive elevator pitches to further your career when needed.
You have an idea for a business and you know it’s a great one. You also know you want to approach potential business partners in a way that’s compelling. Are you wondering how to pitch a business idea to investors now? Being able to build a winning business pitch is a major part of scaling a startup - and it can be very stressful. To help, we’ve lined up eight great tips on how to pitch a business idea. We hope these drive you to successful fundraising.
Decades ago, Atari was THE videogame console. It helped develop the gaming world in the U.S., with its great 2600 console and games such as Pong and Space Invaders. But then a little alien came along, the market crashed, and chaos ensued. Gamers all over the world owe a lot to the once successful brand, which is why we’re going to talk about Atari in this episode of company Forensics.
Our CEO, Caya, covered elevator pitch examples from successful startups with a very clear explanation of what an elevator pitch is. If you’re unclear on the concept of a sample elevator pitch, we suggest you start off by checking Caya’s explanation in the mentioned source.
How do you build a startup pitch deck? This question often torments startup founders and most entrepreneurs when starting up a business. But it does not have to be a fully laborious task of something you start from scratch. In fact, building a startup pitch deck can be an easy step-by-step process with the following guide.
How to get funding might just be one of the most concerning areas for any entrepreneur during a company’s initial stages. To help out, we’ve listed the seven great tips for startup funding we could come up with for this new year. Let’s get around to them.
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.
Nobody is born knowing how to start a business. Setting up a company takes much effort, measurable steps, and tons of experience. That’s why a free course and resources on how to start your own business never hurt anyone. So we’re putting together a list of items destined to help you in that endeavor.
Start a tech startup vs. a small business? The first ones may have it easier now as brick and mortar shops face highly tricky times. But why is that? Here, we’ll go over 5 pros of tech startups during critical times to maximize the view we have of our tech industry
For as hard as these times are to face, industries that are thriving during the COVID-19 crisis do exist. And we’ll define them for you next in case this information helps your business endeavors. Online learning, online events, conferencing call software, and telemedicine are already evidently visible industries that are thriving right now. So we’ve focused on a bit less apparent markets that are equally seeing a peak in sales right now. As an example, let’s check out our first!
These are strange times and, if you are in your house (which you should be!) chances are you’ve used some sort of videocall to talk with family, friends or even go to school. And, most likely, it’s been Zoom.
Do you know just how much we love to take care of starting entrepreneurs? We love helping startups out in the process of starting a business, which is why we’re giving you info today on how to start up a business: 5 videos you need to watch.
Isn’t quarantine the best to get ahead on our pending readings? Juice your confinement, boost your business leisure, and crank up your overall reading time by looking at the best 5 books every startup founder should read.
These isolation times are difficult, especially for those of us who aren’t used to being home all the time. While it’s OK to be worried, as our Caya, Slidebean’s CEO said, all that we know for sure is that we need to take care of ourselves and those around us. Therefore, we’re listing a set of advice on effective ways to beat social isolation.
What would be the best presentation slides example out of all the possible slides you can craft? We think it’s possible to come up with perfectly-crafted slides that make your startup pitch a successful event.
How does the biggest toy store in the world end up in bankruptcy? It’s a question worth answering. In its 70-year history, Toys R’ Us rose from humble beginnings to become the first category killer, a term we’ll explain later.
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.
Unemployment is hitting every country and industry right now. We can already foresee how a high unemployment rate will affect some businesses. This reality needs all of us to be creative; even a startup CEO roles during COVID-19 times change.
2020 caught most of us off guard. A seemingly booming economy now seems to be headed towards a recession, which will inevitably leave a lot of people unemployed across many industries.
You probably have many remote presentations or remote pitches scheduled on a variety of topics these days. Whether on the receiving or host end, the number of online activities is flourishing with the current global pandemic. Yet, you might, more importantly, be wondering how to create an excellent presentation that keeps people focused while they’re at home. So many things can be distracting in that setting! So here are the best design tips for effective remote presentations that we put together for you.
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.
Our current economy is certainly in times of flux with COVID-19 generating a pandemic. For some, this may mean the final blow to a lethal corporate state. For others, this situation might signify an opportunity. Whichever is the case, startups must certainly be considering what a VC is looking to invest in these days, so they can take it into consideration in their pitch deck.
In this episode of Company Forensics, we’ll talk about one of the coolest clothing brands in the world: The North Face. That’s right. It seems like the brand has existed for decades and that their high-end products last forever. And this is true.
A pitch website can be an excellent idea for any entrepreneur or business that needs to engage online web browsers, turn them into visitors and convert them into new clients.
The world will not be the same after the COVID-19 pandemic. And we sense in different ways how that’s affecting our economics, the way we can relate to each other, and how we conceive business in the short and long term from now on.
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.
If you’re thinking about how to virtually pitch a VC, chances are you’re offering such a meeting amidst challenging physical conditions for whatever reason. You could also be saving up on quickly escalating traveling costs and sparing up on your business meeting times by resorting to a video chat or phone call every once in a while. Or you can easily be playing the card of presenting your pitch deck VC’s quickly as your chance to make it into their portfolio.
It’s completely understandable, these days more than ever, that startups and other companies try to save money and protect their operations. That’s why these options for the best free presentation software in 2020 come in handy.
Today’s episode of Company Forensics is about live-streaming apps, something that we all take very much for granted today as we’re not impressed anymore by seeing anyone going live on social media, to broadcast whatever from their phones. Literally, whatever... which is probably part of the problem here, but we’ll get into that later on.
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.
These times demand a more conscious approach in terms of our startup’s investments and expenses. In case you’ve been exploring the possibility of signing up to one of our plans, we know you are wondering what the Slidebean pros and cons are.
Well, it's here. Both of our Slidebean offices, New York and San Jose, are in areas with active coronavirus spreading, and we were forced to take action.
Delivering a live pitch online is not the most common of all business practices. We’ll grant that. However, it’s getting more and more common for people to sort their lives online, which lately includes diverse reasons why someone might forcefully need to give or send a presentation via the web versus pitching live on stage or at a potential business partner’s office.
Presentation templates are a quick and safe way of producing new material. When looking at those on which to start crafting a presentation, it’s good to know which ones work best. Hence, and to ease your troubles, we’ve created a list of 5 of our best presentation templates for 2020, and we’ll justify our choices appropriately. Join us and see what you think!
This episode starts with a basic problem: people love going to the cinema but it’s very expensive. And, in order to solve this, one company wanted to disrupt an entire market.
When we need to give a presentation, it’s worth asking what presentation software to use. And it’s best to ask yourself that early in the working line. Doing so spares disappointment and time, and it also takes a load off entrepreneur business days. So, to help make that decision, we’ve dared compare Slidebean vs. Prezi in various ways.
How does your company fail after raising $50MM? This was a real comment/question on one of our Company Forensics videos. For someone outside the startup ecosystem, the amounts of money these companies raise just seem obscene.
If the time has come for you to look into presentation design companies, you’ve probably already noted the high flux of businesses that are trying to captivate your attention to fulfill your presentation needs. How can you tell where to go or from whom exactly to request a business presentation design? What can you expect from these services?
Knowing how to improve your pitch deck in 2020 can be a tricky question. So much has happened this year and we’re not over the first quarter yet! What is there about the new year that could enhance a startup pitch deck?
2012 saw the release of an outbreaking future tech product: Google Glass; a gadget in the style of an invention you might have seen previously on any Mission Impossible movie. Its primary aim was to bring you the information you need into view when you need it, with a hands-free system for a bigger facility.
Let’s face it. Social media management seems to be all fun and games until you have to involve tasks as strategy, planning, and reporting. What once was thought of as a completely creative work, comprised of nice copy and cool images, is now a complex part of the marketing mix of almost every brand.
