VC Minute
VC Minute
267. Too Much or Too Little on the Team Slide feat. Justin Izzo from Dropbox DocSend
Text your thoughts directly to Rich.
The Team slide is your chance to answer the question, "why you?" A handful of logos is no more helpful than two paragraphs of text.
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.
Founders are caught between trying to do either too much or too little on their team slide. What I mean by that is, this is a deck section that 100 percent of startup teams have in their deck. This is non negotiable. Where it goes in the deck can depend, according to what kind of narrative you're trying to tell, what kind of team you have in place, what kind of problem you're trying to solve, etc. That is very much business dependent. On the one hand, I see founders often do much too little on their team slide. What this means is they might have a couple of pictures, A couple ex companies, or universities that the founding team has been associated with, and not much more than that. And it leaves the work, entirely to the reader to spin together a web of connections that makes this team make sense. And founders, unfortunately, can't assume that any reader in this day and age, 2024 has enough time to do that critical work. Or even if they can do that critical work, and anyone reading their deck probably can, the inclination. Because they have 100 other pitch decks waiting for them to look at. And founders should go two or three extra steps, from this, what I would call a bare bones model of a team slide, and explain why their team makes sense for their problem. The trick, as always, is to do so without inundating their, slide with words. Logos can go a long way toward doing this, but it really is a question of trial and error and getting the right amount of words to show that there are relationships between the founding team that make sense, and that position you perfectly to solve your given business challenge, but that don't force anyone to get too in the weeds about who you are and how you know each other. By the same token, I see many folks do way too much with these slides. They will often include, ancillary members of the team or advisors, or too many past affiliations, for a clear narrative of the team to stand out on a given slide. On the one hand, there's no narrative because there's not enough information. On the other hand, there's no real narrative because there's too much information. And there's a lack of clarity about how all these moving pieces of the team fit together neatly to solve a problem. I want to know who the main founding team members are, how they know each other, where they've worked together, and why they're really positioned to work well together on the problem they're setting forth in their pitch deck This is something that you don't need to go into too much depth with logos or universities to convey. Universities can make sense, of course, especially if you're right out of college. Don't get me wrong, but if You are putting three or four logos for each person, for four people on a team slide, that gets very busy very fast. I would think about pairing those down, and using a few words to simply convey why you make sense as a team. And actually spelling that out rather than assuming logos or past affiliations will do all that work. Anything you can do to take the onus off the reader, off the investor, of deciphering why a given slide makes sense, will help you in your fundraise.
