262. Justin Izzo on the Art and Science of Pitch Decks Artwork

VC Minute

Quick advice to help startup founders fundraise better. Founders, do you feel like you're fundraising on an uneven playing field? You are. The VC minute is here to help you level up. Venture capitalists navigate pitches and negotiate investments every day. They know the ins and outs and are up-to-date on the current funding environment. But as a founder, it may be your first foray into fundraising, and no matter how much success you've had in other areas nothing truly prepares you for the fundraising journey. The VC Minute was created to help founders close this gap. While it may seem like securing an investment at the seed stage is mostly driven by luck, there are steps founders can take to increase the odds of successfully raising a round. And that's what we're going to cover on the VC Minute through a series of short episodes. I'm going to share with you insights to help navigate the seed stage financing dynamics. I'm Rich Maloy, Managing Partner at SpringTime Ventures with 25 years business experience a dozen years in the startup ecosystem. I've applied my experience from sales, finance, and venture investing, to help startup founders fundraise better.

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VC Minute

262. Justin Izzo on the Art and Science of Pitch Decks

October 15, 2024 • Justin Izzo • Season 4 • Episode 262

Text your thoughts directly to Rich.

The author of Dropbox DocSend's pitch deck analyses shares his insights into building a "snappy" pitch deck.

About Justin Izzo
Justin is the Lead Data and Trends Analyst at Dropbox Docsend and trusted insights professional with 15+ years of research and leadership experience. He is the driving force behind DocSend's pitch deck metrics and annual slide-by-slide analysis reports, also hosting pitch deck teardowns to provide founders with actionable next steps. Justin loves designing research and strategies that leverage his unique Ph.D. background in the humanities and social sciences. He has an expert understanding of narrative, language, and culture coupled with a talent for deriving human insights from the social world.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-izzo/

About DocSend
DocSend enables companies to share business-critical documents with ease and get real-time actionable feedback. With DocSend's security and control, startup founders, investors, executives, and business development professionals can build business partnerships that have a lasting impact. Over 30,000 customers of all sizes use DocSend today. Learn more at docsend.com.

About AVL Growth Partners
AVL Growth Partners, founded in 2009, is the leading fractional Finance and Accounting firm supporting organizations in pivoting from growth to scale. AVL brings an experienced team of CFOs, Controllers, and Accountants to your organization, delivering transparent, strategic actions for short and long-term success. Transform your financial approach affordably with AVL, supporting companies coast to coast - get to know AVL Growth Partners at avlgrowth.com. (Sponsored)

About SpringTime Ventures
SpringTime Ventures seeds high-growth startups in healthcare, fintech & insurtech, and logistics & supply chain. 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 $600k. You can learn more about us and our approach.

Rich: 0:01

This is Rich Maloy with SpringTime Ventures, bringing you the VC Minute, quick advice to help startup founders fundraise better. Hey everybody. For the next seven episodes we're going to hear from Justin Izzo. Justin is the lead data and trends analyst at Dropbox DocSend. He is the driving force behind DocSend's pitch deck metrics, an annual slide by slide analysis. He's the one that's letting you know how much time, or how little time, VCs are spending on your deck and on your slides. He also hosts pitch deck tear downs, and provides founders with actionable next steps on how they can build a great pitch deck. But first, founded in 2009, AVL has fueled the success of over 1200 early stage companies. Specializing in raising capital, M&A, financial modeling, scaling, and bringing financial transparency and a disciplined approach to the companies they work with. AVL works seamlessly as a member of your team and has the experience to support both VC-backed and bootstrapped companies. Head to AVLgrowth.com and explore how they can be pivotal to your growth. AVL Growth Partners. Your success. Their expertise.

Justin Izzo: 1:18

My name is Justin Izzo and I run DocSend's Startup Fundraising and Founder Advisory Programs. I've been at DocSend for almost four years now. prior to joining DocSend, I was a professor at Brown University, actually. so I left academia to join What I thought was the startup world. We were quickly acquired by Dropbox. but my focus was always building out, data that DocSend had. About startups and fundraising, and turning that into a thoroughgoing research engine, where we had our own data, but also widened that scope to, founder advisory sessions, webinars for early stage founders, research aimed at emerging VCs, the goal being to help founders raise smarter and not harder. one of the reasons I took to this really well is because. For me, it wasn't a sales play. I don't come from the tech world. I don't come from a marketing background. I'm interested in research, ideas, and in taking founders, taking anyone from little to zero knowledge, to something. That's the professor in me. And why this has worked really well, is because, I can convey that sense of what I call academic freedom, in context. So, founders know that I have their best interest at heart, and that this isn't some kind of sales or marketing play, and that you can, within the confines of your own narrative and fundraising scenario, follow data points and trends and trends and keep certain tenets in mind, to tell the best story about your business, to stand the best chance, a lot of caveats here, but it's true, of raising a round in the shortest amount of time

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