Pitching is storytelling, and decks are a tool to tell the story. The email deck gets to meeting, the pitch deck gets the investment.
About SpringTime Ventures SpringTime Ventures seeds high-growth startups in healthcare, fintech, logistics, and marketplace businesses. We look for founders with domain expertise, forging a path with a truly transformative technology. We only invest in software-based businesses in the USA. We bring a people-focused approach, work quickly, and reach conviction independently. Our initial check size is $400k to $600k. You can learn more about us and our approach.
About Rich Maloy Rich's mission is to rebuild the American dream through entrepreneurship. He works with early stage startups transforming the world, giving all people the opportunity to grow, learn and earn. With prior careers in finance and sales, he's now focused on startups investing through SpringTime Ventures where he is a Managing Partner. He's a father of two young children and loves sci-fi, skiing, and video games.
Rich:
I mentioned before about having two different decks, your email deck and your pitch deck. Here's what I meant by that. The email deck, the one that you send ahead, this is meant to grab people's attention. It's short, it's concise. It's powerful. It gets you the meeting. And when you get the meeting, you pull out the pitch deck. This one has more detail and lets you tell a fuller, more complete story. You can really dig in using this deck. If the whole purpose of the email deck is to get the meeting, the purpose of the pitch deck is to get the investment. Maybe in that meeting, maybe not. But here's where you show the depth of your expertise and your obsession with building this business. At SpringTime, there've been a few founders that have absolutely blown us away and a lot had to do with how they pitched. I'll never forget this one. Founder that had a slide for every question we asked. I mean, Hey, VCs are all asking you the same questions anyway, right? He walked us through the initial deck, and then we started asking questions. For every question we asked, he pulled up a slide from the Appendix and answered us. I swear he had 60 slides in there and an answer for everything. Another time this came up, we asked a founder about his growth plan, and he pulled up a separate deck that was his growth strategy deck. He had multiple decks to discuss different aspects of his business. These are founders that have thought through their business so deeply and so completely that they've committed their thoughts to slides, and they're just ready to talk to them. What it comes down to is that pitching is storytelling, and decks are a tool to tell the story. The email deck gets to meeting, the pitch deck gets the investment. And even makes a good followup that you can send after the meeting.