Fyre Festival Pitch Deck: How we knew it was doomed.

If you haven't heard of the infamous and chaotic Fyre Festival it’s because you don't use the internet. This failed music festival has generated two documentaries:

Fyre Fraud by Hulu and Fyre, by Netflix.

Not to mention the countless memes and jokes:

But it wasn't until last week that the fyre festival pitch deck that started this whole mess was released on LinkedIn by Alvin Hussey. It's a 43 slides presentation that potential investors saw before the festival and that ultimately managed to receive $26 million in investment. How crazy!

In my (almost) 4 years of working for a presentation software company, I hadn't seen a pitch deck like this one. I mean, this presentation somehow managed to pull a ridiculous amount of money from brands, influencers, and investors, even though it contained more nonsense than real information.

After carefully looking at the Fyre Festival deck, here're the parts that should've raised some concerns and questions from the viewers back in 2017:

QUESTION SLIDE:

Dismissing the whole section of the business app, the festival part of the deck poses this question:

Sure, it's an interesting concept, but where's the business plan behind that? The whole structure and execution strategy is missing in the pitch deck.

BRAND STRATEGY SLIDE:

Then, the deck features a flow chart detailing a so-called "brand strategy" in four simple steps.

A brand strategy is a long-term plan for the development of a profitable brand to achieve specific goals. You can't simplify a procedure in only 4 steps; it should be a clear guide that is executed accordingly.

LAND OWNERSHIP SLIDE:

In this slide, the Fyre team claims they had been given $8.4 million worth of market value land on the Black Point Exuma.

The reality was that the maps of the site had been altered along with the whole social media material since it was promoting the falsehood that the Festival was being hosted on Pablo Escobar's private island.

FINANCIALS SLIDE:

“Please see appendix"

HUGE red flag.  If you go all the way to the end of the deck, there isn't an appendix section. To have a better idea of how a financials section should look like, check these Pitch Deck Examples.

Here’s the complete Fyre Festivalpitch deck deck, in case you want to check it out:  

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