VC Minute
VC Minute
266. From Three Sentences to the Structure of a Solid Pitch, feat. Justin Izzo from Dropbox DocSend
Text your thoughts directly to Rich.
If your pitch deck should form an argument, the best way to formulate that argument is by writing it out in three sentences.
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.
This is Rich Maloy with SpringTime Ventures, bringing you the VC Minute, quick advice to help startup founders fundraise better. We're going to continue this week with a theme of pitch decks. We'll hear a little bit more from Justin, and then I'll wrap up the week with some of my thoughts. But first, 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:All you can do is build the best possible narrative for your business, for your raise, for a given macro environment. This may come down to having a very solid company purpose statement, a very solid problem statement, and a very solid solution statement. These can be done on three distinct slides. Usually company purpose comes first. It's a little more than a slogan and a little bit less than a problem solution, explanation, I like to think of it as a sentence and a half, maybe not two sentences, that communicates, at a high level what you want to achieve, but also much more directly, the kind of problem you're solving and what the stakes are. These three slides, all taken together, present The broad stakes of an argument for a pitch deck. Our company has a broad purpose. We want to do X. If we are wildly successful, make hundreds of millions of dollars, this is what we can achieve in the world. In so doing, we are addressing a specific business problem and proposing a very specific business solution. Period. These are three sentences that one could, frankly should, write out by hand. I like to write things by hand. But these can be your thesis statement for the pitch deck, but really about your business as a whole. it's also about focusing your thinking about the business, and many founders also need that, especially at the earliest stages, where they might be running with an idea and a prayer and a good team. Now, from there, what founders should do is, okay, what are the best points of support for this argumentation. Well, our team is perfectly set up to solve this business problem because we worked at x company on these kinds of problems before, and have spun out to do a completely different, company, but solve similar problems. if that is your best selling point, start with the team slide, and go from there, but make this architecture apparent. to yourself before putting it in a pitch deck. I always suggest writing it up by hand, simply because you can see very visually, the relationships between the parts of the pitch deck and the sections. So we start with three sections up, top. This is our main argument. And then traction. Traction says this. How does it relate back to the argument? Team says this. How does it relate back to the argument? What you put on these individual slides might vary, but it should relate back architecturally, to those three sentences that really set the tone for the deck and shape the argumentation to come. One reason I really advise founders to do this by hand, is because it forces the information into your brain and you can see, and you are invested in drawing out the relationships between these sections in ways that many founders, don't always think of in advance. For the same reason that they aren't necessarily thinking about, their own assumptions about the market side. They're too close and they take for granted that everyone sees their argument about their business as clearly as they do. And this is why, really forcing that pen to paper moment, to happen helps founders get it all out, onto a page, but also shows them that there are clear relationships, between these pitch deck sections and sub arguments, through which founders can draw a narrative thread.
