How it started

In first few weeks, I spoke with 23 Pre-seed to Series A founders and 3 investors I met via:

Extra crunch events
Founders' happy hour in SF
Intro via other founders

There were several pain points in the space. Founders spend weeks, if not months, in fundraising. While fundraising is a significant matter in startup lifespan, founders say they rather focus on building their company.

User quotes

“Pitching in person and creating the pitch deck is different. When I meet other founders, their story is amazing when it’s told in person, but doesn’t come through in their pitch deck.

Priyank S.
Co-Founder at Stilt

“I already have all the data to put together, I just need to find the way to form stories around it. It’ll be cool if I can just answer questions and it shows me the the story.”

Kanchan K.
Co-Founder & CEO at Truly Financial

“ Founders really don’t have excuses to bad pitch deck design. With the world of Canva, if you can’t even figure out to make a good pitch deck, what kind of leader are you?”

Nihar N.
Investor at Menlo Ventures

Problem statement

Although there are lots of tools available in the market, founders are having a tough time creating the good pitch deck.

Initial prototype

I created a rough prototype to see how founders reacted to the concept.

Hypothesis

Founders were using multiple tools to create pitch deck, which was inefficient and time consuming.
Founders are good at pitching in person, but it doesn’t reflect on the pitch deck.

Solution

Having a specialized tool for creating pitch deck should help founders to come up with the good story.

All-in-one for pitch deck creation for content and automate the design
Cut down the time spent on research
Once the data about their researches are being collected, the tool can suggest how to form the story.

The prototype shows the concept of reducing the time spent on researching and designing so that founders can focus on telling the story.

Market

Source: CB Insights

Global funding to startups rises to an eye-popping new record

Q2'21 shatters previous record for unicorn births, up 491% YoY

Median valuations for US Series A deals reach a massive new high

Timeline: Rapid prototype & iteration

The timeline shows prototypes and tested messages with landing pages to find the value props that resonate with users in parallel.

User research: Identifying the problem

Feedback synthesis

Above is the synthesis of research after speaking with founders and investors.

Tools founders use

To clarify the pain points that founders describe, I looked into the current tools they use during their fundraising. Most founders already knew how to pitch their idea, but the pitch didn't come through on the pitch deck. There was an overlap in forming the pitch deck's story and researching what investors are looking for.

Prototypes iteration

I created two different prototypes to demonstrate the workflow. Both prototypes were meant to support forming the storyline and had the concept of design automation. Although the feedbacks were negative, it still did not solve the core pain points, and the value was unclear.

Iteration from the V1

Build your story structure and content

Sequoia capital pitch deck with framework Q&A

Answer main questions, we will create the deck for you.

Finding the correct value props

The feedbacks from the prototypes were negative. Before moving to design another prototype, I showed three value props instead to figure out what they cared about the most. I came up with the list of the values and asked which ones they would pay for.

Build better content faster and easier

‍Put beautiful design on autopilot

Co-founder matching

3 guaranteed introductions with matching investors (95%)

Founder coaching and mentorship program (56%)

Increase conversion of your pitch deck (72%)

B2B Negotiation for lower price on software purchases

Find the story that will increase probability of funding (83%)

Co-working office spaces discount

Automatically update Fundraise CRM

Securely share the pitch deck with links

Founders' user journey

I mapped out the activities taken during fundraising and thinkings and feelings of the process to clearly understand founder are going through.

As fundraising is a highly stressful and nerve-wracking experience, founders need to trust the product to rely on it, get assurance in the direction, and confirmations through feedbacks. They are analytical and data-driven and hungry for information and knowledge.

The focus of the value became about getting the quality information to find the story to pitch. It was the tool that filters out the noise and gives them personalized data with actionable direction.

Experimentation to validate the idea

As an attempt to figure out the product market fit, I ran Google ads experimentation to see the traction and responses to the messaging.

Problem statement:

Using current tools, founders didn’t know which investors will be interested in investing
There’s no platform to do A/B test and analyzing the pitch
Founders couldn’t tell which story will give them funding

Solution:

Provide personalized data on similar companies, funding amounts, and the investors
Generate pitch deck or suggest how to modify or add
Once data is collected, the tool can analyze the pitch
Once data is collected, the tool can analyze the pitch

Growth hacks

Posted on Founder’s Slack Communities
Reached out to founders on LinkedIn
Intros via founders
Provided free consultation for pitch deck design to get connected to founders

Google ads experimentation (8 days):

Impression: 38,000
Click Through Rate: 0.4% (161)
Conversion(Submitted forms): 4.3% (7)

Final prototype

Below is the final prototype for the MVP. The prototype shoes the onboarding steps for founders to provide the relevant information to match the information about investors.

Conclusion

Used Lean Startup process and iterated on the business idea

Learned end-to-end product strategy

Iterated 4 prototypes within 5 weeks based on user feedbacks 

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Mode analytics

SQL, Python and R - all in one.

Brand & Website

I lead Mode brand refresh, launched new website and redesigned and applied to product sign-up flow, growth experimentations such as SQL Challenge and more.

Elec