Pitching Masterclass - 2023 Edition: The definitive guide to startup funding (FREE SAMPLE)

The slides from the Pitching Masterclass - 2023 Edition: The definitive guide to raising money for startups. Available here: https://pitchingmasterclass.com

It covers:

1. Who am I
2. Funding Basics
3. How to find investors
4. How to contact investors
5. The Funding Game
6. Startup Financing Sources
7. What investors are looking for
8. The Three Types of Pitches
8A. High-Concept Pitch
8B. Elevator Pitch
8C. Pitch Deck
9. Addendum: Know Your Metrics - The Basics
10. Addendum: Pitching Tricks
11. BONUS: Airbnb’s first Pitch Deck (went on to raise over $6B to date)

Transcript

1. Pitching Masterclass 2023 Edition
2. 1. Who am I 2. Funding Basics 3. How to fi nd investors 4. How to contact investors 5. The Funding Game 6. Startup Financing Sources 7. What investors are looking for 8. The Three Pitches: 
 8A. High-Concept Pitch, 8B. Elevator Pitch, 8C. Pitch Deck 9. Addendum: Know Your Metrics - The Basics 10.Addendum: Pitching Tricks BONUS: Airbnb’s fi rst Pitch Deck (went on to raise over $6B to date) THE 
 CONTENTS
3. 
 FULL VERSION 
 pitchingmasterclass.com FREE SAMPLE
4. SOME 
 HAPPY MASTERCLASS CUSTOMERS
6. vidarandersen.com VIDAR ANDERSEN • Startup Founder • Educator • Corporate 
 Innovation 
 Whisperer MEET YOUR TEACHER
7. PEOPLE I PITCHED IN PERSON
9. PLACES I HAVE BEEN FEATURED & RECOGNIZED
11. CO-FOUNDER THE RHINELAND PITCH 
 GERMANY’S LARGEST PITCHING EVENT - FOUNDED 2013
12. I HAVE TRAINED OVER 3.000 STARTUPS 
 HOW TO 
 PITCH
13. SOME 
 HAPPY MASTERCLASS CUSTOMERS
15. FIRST THING FIRST
16. ARE YOU A 
 NEW COMPANY OR A STARTUP?
17. REALITY CHECK: 
 IF YOUR COMPANY CAN GET A 
 BANK LOAN 
 YOU ARE NOT A STARTUP
18. BOTH AWESOME BUT DIFFERENT
19. FINANCING EXECUTION 
 SCALABILITY 
 DIFFERENT
20. THIS IS FOR PRE-SEED, SEED, TO 
 SERIES-A STAGE STARTUPS
21. IF YOU ARE A NEW COMPANY WRITE A BUSINESS PLAN
22. THAT IS YOUR VEHICLE TO GET A BUSINES LOAN
23. IF YOU ARE A STARTUP THIS IS FOR YOU
24. THE 
 BASICS
25. An investment 
 is the next step a ft er fi rst having done some interesting sh!t on your own. Not the fi rst step…
26. …unless your name happens to be Zuckerberg, Jobs, 
 or Musk 
 - aka you’ve 
 done sh!t before.
27. Investors 
 do not exist to give permission to start anything or to make gold out of crap ideas nor sh!tty teams.
28. source: steveblank.com SHOULD I RAISE MONEY NOW?
29. REALITY TODAY
30. WARNING
31. REALITY CHECK: STARTUP PITCH COMPETITIONS ARE SUCCESS THEATRE BULLSH!T
32. STARTUP 
 VANITY THEATRE
33. TRUE 
 NORTH
34. REVENUE 
 GROWTH EXIT
35. BUT… WHERE ELSE ARE YOU GOING TO GET THE TRAINING
36. PRO TIP: NEVER MISTAKE COMPETITIONS FOR PITCHING INVESTORS
37. HOW TO FIND INVESTORS
38. OTHER FOUNDERS 
 Reach out and ask about their experience with their investor, possibility of a warm intro of you to them. 
 
 ANGEL LIST Look for startups in your vertical and fi nd out who’s investing in it (and see above). 
 
 CRUNCHBASE 
 PitchBook, CB Insights, and your local / national listings, e.g. Deutsche Startups (and see all above). 
 LINKEDIN 
 Beware that people w/ “investor” in title o ft en aren’t and that “cold calls” usually won’t fl y, so better get a warm intro. 
 EVENTS 
 Local demo-days, LAUNCH, SxSW, WebSummit, etc where investors are out to meet new founders in-person already. 

39. HOW TO CONTACT INVESTORS
40. “There’s a virtual line 
 of thousands of startups wanting to get a meeting 
 with an investor, so a warm intro helps you bump to the top of the list” — VENTURE HACKS
41. ABOUT NDAs
42. FORGET 
 NDAs
43. Investors see thousands of di ff erent pitches (many similar to yours) a year and won’t sign anything that will make them legally liable for any information your share - they will think you’re a n00b if you ask them to sign an NDA - so don’t
44. WARM INTRO From other founders From other investors From Domain Experts 3 2 1
45. Pick up the phone and call everyone you know, 
 who knows investors well, and will listen to you. 
 
 Email everyone. Ask! Call in all your favours to get the attention of middlemen, someone who can give you 
 a warm introduction: “Can you suggest just one person we should be talking to? We’ll fi nd our own way to him or her, 
 we won’t use your name.” 
 — VENTURE HACKS
46. COLD CALL One-Line Ping Lead with Traction Done the Research 3 2 1
47. ONE LINE PING 
 Reach out per mail, LinkedIn, or Angel List with your High Concept Pitch and ask if you can keep them updated on traction / signi fi cant milestones as a one-liner say once a month - if yes, build a relationship over time 
 
 LEAD WITH TRACTION If you already have interesting traction, you might want to do a cold call leading with your traction numbers and bluntly asking if they’ll take your deck and a meeting 
 
 DONE THE RESEARCH 
 You might be sh!it out of luck, not connected, alone on a virtual island - then do your research about who would be your ideal investor, reach out to them and explain the hell out of why they are right to invest
48. REALITY CHECK: COMPETITION 
 IN THE PAST VS TODAY
49. PAST
50. IVY LEAGUE 
 You were where and what you graduated 
 
 SPECIAL CONNECTIONS See above and below 
 
 FROM RELATIVE WEALTH 
 No money in pocket already, no startup 
 - much less investor capital available 
 MOSTLY HARDWARE 
 Di ff erent costs to set up startup 
 - a lot of $$$ needed
51. TODAY
52. ANY IDIOT 
 Hardly anybody cares if you’ve graduated 
 
 NO SPECIAL CONNECTIONS Almost everybody’s got the Internet 
 to connect and build a network 
 
 FROM NEAR ZERO WEALTH 
 No money in pocket, much less of a barrier 
 - never been more risk capital available MOSTLY SOFTWARE 
 Di ff erent costs to set up startup 
 - close to zero costs
53. REALITY CHECK: CAPITAL AVAILABLE VS COMPETITION TODAY
54. COMPETITION CAPITAL
55. WARNING
56. REALITY CHECK: 
 THE 
 INVESTOR IS NOT YOUR FRIEND
57. REALITY CHECK: INVESTORS ARE 
 COMMODITIES YOU ARE 
 THE PRIZE
58. THE FUNDING GAME
59. YOU LEAD
60. INVESTORS FOLLOW
61. STAY IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT
62. THIS IS A 
 NUMBERS 
 GAME
63. “I did eighty pitches to di ff erent venture capital fi rms. Eighty. 
 
 All of them failed.” — Tony Fadell, iPod/iPhone/Nest
64. SHOP AROUND
65. ANYTHING NOT YES IS NO
66. MOVE ON TO THE NEXT ONE
67. DO NOT 
 MARRY THE FIRST YES
68. LEVERAGE THAT YES
69. PLAY INVESTOR AGAINST INVESTOR
70. MAKE THEM FEAR MISSING OUT ON YOUR ROUND
71. FOMO FTW
72. AND 
 THEN…
73. BOOM
74. PARTY 
 TIME
75. CLOSE YOUR 
 ROUND
76. AT A VALUATION YOU CAN LIVE WITH
77. ON YOUR TERMS
78. BUILD YOUR DREAM
79. DECK SENT 
 EVERYBODY KNOWS 
 Once you’ve sent a pitch deck to an investor, you should assume any and all investors know you’re raising the round - the investment world is a small one - and don’t be surprised if your pitch deck ends up somewhere you didn’t intend it to. REALITY CHECK:
80. DECK SENT 
 CLOCK RUNNING 
 Once you’ve sent a pitch deck to an investor, the round is uno ff i cially running - you’ve now got ca. 3 months to close, a ft er which it is going to become exponentially harder (investors wondering why you haven’t closed yet and thus getting cold feet). REALITY CHECK:
81. STARTUP FINANCING SOURCES
82. SELF- FUNDING YOUR OWN 
 SAVINGS
83. FFF FRIENDS FOOLS FAMILY 
 NOT EQUITY, NOT LOAN
84. GRANTS PUBLIC & PRIVATE
85. ACCELERATORS *The real kind that gives you money (10-500K) - in exchange for a small piece of your equity (0-10%) - as a lump sum payment up front, 
 not in rates, not for services, not depending on milestones.
86. BUSINESS ANGELS INDIVIDUAL INVESTORS
87. VENTURE CAPITAL / VC INSTITUTIONAL INVESTORS
88. CORPORATE 
 VC / CVC CORPORATE INVESTORS
89. STRATEGIC PARTNER A COMPANY 
 OR A CVC
90. CROWD FUNDING & CROWD FINANCING
91. CROWD FUNDING No equity changes hands, also known as “pre-sales”, depending on the platform you get to keep all the money (minus their rake) raised - even if you don’t reach your funding goal 
 
 CROWD FINANCING 
 Equity funding through a large pool of smaller cheques from average people (unsophisticated investors) represented by (hopefully) a single point of contact and contract for you, terms may vary (wildly)
92. BOOT- STRAPPING FINANCING 
 THROUGH 
 REVENUE
93. FINANCING FOR STARTUPS •Self-funding (Your savings or trust fund) •Friends, Fools, Family (Not a loan, no equity - usually) •Grants (Public & private) •Accelerators (That provide funding) •Business Angels (Well-todo individual or syndicate of such) •Venture Capital (VC) •Corporate VC (CVC) •Strategic Partners (Usually a corporate or CVC) •Crowd Funding (Pre-sales) & Crowd Financing (Equity, pooled) •Bootstrapping (Funding through revenue - Crazy idea, right?)
94. VENTURE CAPITALIST / VC VS BUSINESS 
 ANGEL
95. VENTURE CAPITALIST / VC 
 Glori fi ed funds manager, invests other people’s money, gets paid if you die or not (2 & 20), 1 of 10 bets must pay o ff - you’re just a number, can write much larger cheques than Angels, but must see +10x returns potential, most o ft en in later rounds because of this - investment thesis more risk averse, must be able to purchase signi fi cant stake for it to play out, doesn’t like to co-invest (won’t admit it), usually does follow-on.
96. BUSINESS ANGEL 
 Individual investor investing own money - o ft en exited founders - and because it hurts losing own money, their bets must be spread into more baskets and into smaller cheques than VCs, Angels must be in early round to get enough equity for their smaller cheques, may not need to see potential 10x return, may or may not co-invest, may or may not follow-on (o ft en not).
97. ANGEL SYNDICATE 
 A group of individual investors investing their own money but pooled together in a single investment, can write larger checks than individual Angel, invests in early rounds, may also co-invest with lead VC investor(s), may or may not do follow-on
98. THAT’S THE DIFFERENCE EVERYTHING ELSE IS NOISE
99. WHAT 
 INVESTORS 
 ARE LOOKING 
 FOR
100. TTT
101. TEAM 
 Compelling persuasive people 
 TRACTION Exciting results so far 
 TREASURE 
 Something special here 

102. WHAT FOUNDERS PITCH
103. WHAT WE PITCH Problem / Need, Solution, Market Size, Goto Market, Team, Competition, Financials, Ask, 
 BLAH, BLAH, BLAH…
104. WHAT INVESTORS HEAR
105. WHAT THE VC HEARS 1. Can f*u money be made here? 
 - Is the problem or market size f*ing huge? 2. Are these the right people 
 who can make me f*u money? 
 - Right obsession, mindset, & skillset? 3. Will these people be able to raise money from other investors if I don’t say yes? 
 - Do I fear missing out on this round?
106. “Most VCs are looking for extreme outliers, and when evaluating your startup, they’re asking themselves if this business is one of the 15 businesses that year that will get to $100MM in revenue.” — Marc Andreessen, a16n
107. TL;DR THE ONE SINGLE TAKE-AWAY
108. TL;DR 
 What problem / need 
 are you solving, (for whom), and how are you solving it?
109. THE THREE PITCHES
110. THE THREE PITCHES High-Concept Pitch Elevator Pitch Pitch Deck 3 2 1
111. 1. The High-Concept Pitch gets people’s attention, gives them incentive to let you keep talking 2. The Elevator Pitch convinces investors to ask for (and hopefully read) your Deck 3. The Pitch Deck sells investors on taking a meeting 4. A Meeting will lead to a funding decision THE PITCH PROGRESSION
112. A high-concept pitch 
 introduction captures an investor’s attention, a great elevator pitch 
 gets a meeting, in the meeting you present using your pitch deck.
113. THE HIGH 
 CONCEPT PITCH
114. “Summarise the company’s business 
 on the back of 
 a business card.” — SEQUOIA CAPITAL
115. THE INTRO
116. HIGH CONCEPT PITCH - Distills your startup’s vision in a single sentence - Also the “We are the X for Y” pitch - The “ice-breaker” when introducing yourself - A shareable “twitter pitch” 
 
 Also the perfect tool for fans, intermediaries, and investors to help spread the word about your startup
117. BE BRIEF 
 One short sentence… BE FAMILIAR 
 …that a 6 year old can understand DON’T MAKE ME THINK HIGH CONCEPT PITCH
118. IF I DON’T UNDERSTAND I WON’T SHARE IT
119. PRO TIP: 
 What problem / need 
 are you solving, (for whom), and how are you solving it?
120. HIGH CONCEPT PITCH EXAMPLES - “Facebook for dogs.” (Dogster) - “Flickr for video.” (YouTube) - “We network networks.” (Cisco) - “The Chrome of media players.” (Songbird) - “Massively Multiplayer Online Learning.” (Grockit) - “The entrepreneurs behind the entrepreneurs.” (Sequoia) - “Create your own social network.” (Ning)
121. THE ELEVATOR PITCH
122. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Elevator_pitch HISTORY
123. THE INGREDIENTS
124. PATTERN 
 RECOGNITION The 4 topics most 
 salient to investors
125. THE ELEVATOR PITCH Traction Product Team Social Proof 3 2 1 4
126. KEEP IT 
 SHORT
127. PRO TIP: DON’T OVERDO IT 
 The Elevator Pitch should be somewhere between 30 and 60 seconds - max. Practice, practice, practice.
128. TRACTION
129. TRACTION NUMBERS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS “Traction is a measure of your product’s engagement with its market, a.k.a. product/ market fi t. In order of importance, it is demonstrated through pro fi t, revenue, customers, pilot customers, non-paying users, and veri fi ed hypotheses about customer problems. And their rates of change [over last 6-9m].” - VENTURE HACKS
130. PRO TIP: GOT EPIC TRACTION? 
 Then you’ll most likely be able to raise funding regardless of product, team, or social proof - so lead with that.
131. PRODUCT
132. PRODUCT NOT YOUR PRODUCT MANUAL “High-level” - from 10k feet description - of the product, where it lives (web/mobile/ cloud/physical/combo, etc), what status it is in (PoC, MVP, Alpha, Beta, Version 4, etc), now is not the time to demo (a ft erwards if asked to do so by the investor)
133. TEAM
134. TEAM WHY YOU ARE THE RIGHT FOR THIS Highlight past accomplishments of the team (if your team has been successful before, investors may believe it can be successful again, focus on the team’s complimentary skill-sets and why you are the ones that will succeed, and mention yourself last to segue into you telling the story of how you discovered the problem you’re solving
135. SOCIAL PROOF
136. SOCIAL PROOF PROVE YOU’RE NOT JUST A CRACKPOT TALKING SH!T Investors do not want to be the fi rst to fi nd out that you are full of sh!t. That’s why they’d like you to show that someone else already took a look at your stu ff - Be it in the form of testimonials from paying customers, rave user reviews on social media, publications, patents, domain expert quotes, winning awards - anything that will prove that you have already exposed your solution to the world and the world has already reacted to it. 
 Any founder can talk about their own sh!t - fewer can show other people talking (positively) about their sh!t.
137. PRO TIP: An Elevator Pitch is like a cake recipe - you need to have the right ingredients to make a tasty one, (and in this case it doesn’t really matter in wich order you add them). 
 
 To make it your own, you can emphasise the ingredients than makes you special; Got a unique personal connection to the Problem? That’s your main ingredient right there! Add the wrong ingredients, 
 and it becomes tasteless & forgettable.
138. REALITY CHECK: BE QUICK 60 seconds tops (the amount of time at a cocktail party you can talk about yourself before it becomes socially awkward). NEVER FORGET THE 4 INGREDIENTS Add to the 4 only if it adds signi fi cant value (never subtract, still keep the max 60s time).
139. ELEVATOR PITCH EXAMPLE PRODUCT 
 “Ning lets you create your own social network for anything. For free. In 2 minutes. It's as easy as starting a blog. Try it at: https://ning.com THE WHY (Bonus Points) 
 We built Ning to unlock the great ideas from people all over the world who want to use this amazing medium in their lives. 
 TRACTION 
 We have over 115,000 user-created networks, and our page views are growing 10% per week. TEAM + SOCIAL PROOF 
 We previously raised $44M from Legg Mason and others, including myself. Before Ning, I started Netscape (acquired by AOL for $4.2B) and Opsware (acquired by HP for $1.6B)”
140. THE PITCH DECK
141. THE 
 PITCH DECK IS WHAT YOU SEND TO INVESTORS
142. THE 
 PITCH DECK IS WHAT YOU PRESENT IN A MEETING
143. SHOULD 
 BE TWO DIFFERENT VERSIONS
144. THE 
 PITCH DECK IS NOT A BUSINESS PLAN
145. IF AN INVESTOR ASKS FOR A BUSINESS PLAN…
146. ASK IF THEY MEANT 
 A PITCH DECK
147. IF THEY INSIST ON A BUSINESS PLAN
148. RUN 
 RUN RUN
149. PRO TIP: No sophisticated early-stage startup investor worth your time will ever ask you for a “Business Plan”
150. DATA 
 PITCH 
 VISION PITCH
151. VISION
152. DATA
153. PRO TIP: PRE-LAUNCH = CREATE A VISION PITCH 
 Sell your vision like no tomorrow 
 - it’s all you’ve got right now. 
 POST-LAUNCH = CREATE A DATA PITCH 
 Be prepared to show all your current metrics 
 - so help you god if you don’t know them. 
 or don’t have any
154. REALITY CHECK: THE PRE / POST LAUNCH PARADOX 
 
 Most times shortly a ft er a spike at launch absolutely nothing happens - that means that at an early stage, you might not have much data, much traction to show an investor. Yes, that means that it sometimes easier to raise money just before launching instead of immediately a ft er launching.
155. ALL TEXT 
 30PT FONTS OR HIGHER PRO TIP:
156. 3-5 BULLETS 
 PER SLIDE IDEALLY ALL YOUR TEXT PRO TIP:
157. REALITY CHECK: PRAGMATIC REASON 
 Thou shalt not commit biblical proportions of text on each slide. 
 SAD REASON 
 Most investors are (still) older males 
 - and we don’t see that well.
158. PITCH DECK CONTENTS
159. END OF 
 FREE SAMPLE
160. 
 CONTINUES ON 
 pitchingmasterclass.com