
YC Seed Deck Template - craigcannon
https://blog.ycombinator.com/intro-to-the-yc-seed-deck/
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pilingual
Fred Wilson’s perspective:

[http://avc.com/2010/06/six-slides/](http://avc.com/2010/06/six-slides/)

[http://avc.com/2011/09/six-slides-three-slides-or-no-
slides/](http://avc.com/2011/09/six-slides-three-slides-or-no-slides/)

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keyle
This made me snark loudly

> No money raised means companies are forced to surive on revenue

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CharlesMerriam2
Other references for pitchdecks:

The statistically recommended pitch deck breakdown:
[https://docsend.com/view/p8jxsqr](https://docsend.com/view/p8jxsqr)

The original FaceBook pitch deck, including a keg stand:
[https://slidebean.com/blog/startups/facebook-pitch-
deck](https://slidebean.com/blog/startups/facebook-pitch-deck)

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zxcvvcxz
I've seen a lot of seed decks and quite frankly while they may have many
similar slides (summary, problem, solution, team, etc) I've noticed that the
ones that get funded have one of the following:

1) Social proof

2) Significant Traction

That's it. In fact I'd go as far to say that without either of those, you
won't get funded period, except through lucky angel connections. In fact I
can't think of a case of something getting funded without one of these.

Social proof is typically something of the form of the founders being 3 PhDs
in something hot from insert-top-school, or there's a co-founder with a
previous successful exit, or there's a top notch advisory board of semi-famous
or at least provably successful people. So when Mr. VC throws his money at
this startup, hey it's in the hands of the best.

Traction is the other option, and is the typical desired hockey stick graph of
users, revenue, deals, whatever. The traction metric often maps really well
onto software startups specifically, because very limited labor and capital
can lead to real results. Meanwhile for larger enterprises that require
legitimate development and manpower to get traction - it's going to be tough
to show traction before you have the resources to deliver something. So
something like a "nuclear power startup" (which YC has funded for instance)
would probably rely more on social proof.

It's a tad disheartening because it makes something like non-consumer hardware
a very difficult spot to be in if you're a younger entrepreneur. Maybe an
incubator/accelerator (plus personal savings) can get you on the order of
$100K, but that's often not enough to prove real traction. And unless you have
significant social proof (often not the case for a younger first time
founder), then it seems you're going to be stuck in a vast fundraising chasm
between $100K and $1M, e.g. between accelerator and seed financing.

In particular I'd be interested to hear people's take on hardware startups in
this respect. Consumer hardware has the recently developed option of
crowdfunding to bridge this gap. But what about industrial hardware, like a
piece of smart machinery, or something in robotics that isn't a sub-$1K
developer kit? Maybe then traction looks like a big deal or two that the
crafty entrepreneurs are able to hustle.

Anyways, good overall deck template but I don't think people should be under
the impression that a good deck is a huge piece of the puzzle. It's social
proof and/or traction, plain and simple.

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lima
"Forced to survive on revenue"

that's a bad thing?

~~~
CharlesMerriam2
The basis of venture capital is the simple statement:

"For every buck you give us, we will give at least two bucks back next year."

You take this extortion because the benefits are ludicrous. "If we get EBay
into every country before anyone else, we make silly money" or "We need want
<mumble> million to make <mumble> billion in the next few years." The hardest
part to get investors to understand that exiting in two years with _only_ a 3x
return is still a win.

~~~
chrisweekly
>"exiting in two years with only a 3x return is still a win"

Not for traditional VCs it isn't.

As a rule of thumb, 90% of the startups they bet on will fail outright, and
simply burn through the investment. If you're looking to raise, you need to
convince them not only that you are in that remaining 10% (ie, those that will
generate any revenue at all, let alone profits), but that you're going to
generate massive returns to way more than subsidize and justify all the other
losses. Pitching VCs with "3x in 2 yrs" is saying you are not what they're
looking for.

(That said, it'd be a huge success from a business mgmt perspective.)

~~~
dustingetz
Philly VCs want 3x, I pressed this q on a panel in Philly, they literally
spelled out that they want founders to show them a validated formula where
they insert $10mm into adwords or something, press Scale button, wait a couple
years, $100mm IPO of which they get 30%. It just didn't really jive with what
I know about tech and hypergrowth startups.

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dm8
I'd like to add two more points - unit economics, and bottoms up market
analysis. And these are helpful to founders, these 2 give an important insight
into viability of business before you start the multi year grind in to make
your business work -

Unit economics - what it'll take to make this work with healthy profit
margins? This is crucial in case of online-offline startups, infra heavy
products, or hardware products. May not be critical in consumer startups until
they start monetizing.

Bottoms-up analysis of market - what will be your CAC (cost to acquire
customers), ARPU/LTV (avg. rev per user/lifetime value) etc.

Both of these things are quantifiable and it'll answer an important Q - how
much money will it take for the biz to reach whatever milestones that are
decided.

~~~
mrkurt
Those are important, but very difficult to know with any certainty at the seed
stage. They've never really come up for me until later rounds.

~~~
dm8
I agree that it's difficult to know exact numbers at the seeds stage, but it's
good to do some sort of exercise on user/customer acquisition costs, expected
margins (particularly important in case of h/w products or online-offline work
startups) etc.. It will help - 1. to know how long will this money last 2. can
you build good business (even though it may not be profitable) before next
round of financing.

And founders who do this exercise really set themselves apart as they know
their business and gives strong signal to investors. Moreover, investors that
I've spoken to often talk that they fund startups not only based on growth, or
existing business but also ability to raise next round.

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jph
Seed deck notes that complement the YC info:
[https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/pitch_deck](https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/pitch_deck)

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artur_makly
I took the liberty of making it more presentable by remixing the 'wire-frame'
template with some minimal color, typography, and images.

enjoy: [https://goo.gl/u3gZuE](https://goo.gl/u3gZuE)

updated ::

Dark Theme: [https://goo.gl/tcLkWY](https://goo.gl/tcLkWY)

White+Orange: [https://goo.gl/i4e724](https://goo.gl/i4e724)

~~~
louisswiss
I think it's great that you wanted to help others and posted this here for all
to use. Thanks!

Personally though, I found the original version to be more presentable.

Perhaps that's just me.

~~~
miguelrochefort
I can't tell whether it's a joke or if the person truly believes his version
is better.

~~~
sctb
Please stop.

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sebleon
> No money raised means companies are forced to surive on revenue

The opposite seems more true: insufficient revenue means companies are forced
to fundraise.

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jaequery
I like how simple that deck is. Why do people go overboard making it look
fancy?

Are there any investors that will take a look at the plain deck and think it
is highly unprofessional, turning them down?

I like that YC don't care about the fluff. But I do wonder how "other"
investors feel about it.

~~~
anthonyshort
How do you define "fluff"? If you think design (how the story is told) or
quality (how easy it is to understand) doesn't matter, then I strongly
disagree.

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artur_makly
ok this is freakier than that FB audio spying system...But I was JUST about to
google for "Seed Deck Template"...and boom!

I think YC's stealthy AI is finally on to me..

~~~
davebryand
Or you are a wizard that has mastered the Law of Attraction.

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dalbasal
my 2¢ addition: careful with your abstraction.

Our instincts tend to be all wrong. When making general statements about a
business, most try to make the most general statement possible. Otherwise we
feel like we're selling it short. It's like when people write resumes. All
trees, no forest.

That's why "X of Y" is so common, it's a formula to get past your bad
instincts to a better, less accurate abstraction.

People are bad at going to abstraction without passing through specifics. If
you'd never heard of jobs, it'd be hard to explain without examples. Fireman
would be easier. Policeman would be even easier after that. Once we have two,
the concept of job gets easier. Starting from the abstract... we'd be talking
about, wages, specializations, uniforms, sick days... hard.

Case in point here, can we see this deck for an actual startup or startupses?
It'd be easier to grasp the good/bad points in context.

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tnolet
Totally off topic, but this thread shows that sarcasm and irony do not always
translate that well over the internet. I had a chuckle at the deck and the
comments it generated.

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AJRF
"VP of Eng who doesn't sleep".

Would be really great to remove that description, no one should lionize that
behavior.

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biot
Given that the CEO is a muppet, you don't think this is meant to be fun?

~~~
AJRF
I do think it was meant to be fun.

My point was that joking about that kind of culture is not a good thing and
proliferation of the sleepless founder/employee/programmer that permeates
startup culture is a bit ugly.

~~~
brianwawok
I thinking worrying about how every little saying could possibly harm the
world causes more harm vs leaving the slide as a funny joke.

~~~
AJRF
"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was
not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was
not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

~~~
dang
Please don't do this here.

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artur_makly
btw, for those who are design illiterate..you will find that Canva's free
pitch-deck creator should solve your needs:
[https://www.canva.com/learn/pitch-decks/](https://www.canva.com/learn/pitch-
decks/)

~~~
benjanik
Another plug for those who are design illiterate: My startup
[https://www.beautiful.ai/](https://www.beautiful.ai/) is working on providing
great design for presentations

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rman666
"$50,000,000 in seed decks per month?" Prove it, said the VC.

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fairpx
I’d like to add one more tip: good design. I’ve seen and designed many decks
for startups and some engineers pay zero attention to design. Sure if you have
insane traction or other extraordinary data points it becomes less of an
issue. But the investors, like yourself, are human beings who want things to
look clean, neat and be clear. Nice design doesnt mean add nice colors. It
means to make it a joy to go through with visuals of your product, clear font
and font color selection, consistent branding etc. don’t waste too much time
on the design but do treat your deck as a product of its own.

If you need any advice, feel free to ping me.

~~~
benjanik
Tackling great design for presentations is what I'm working on with my
startup, [https://www.beautiful.ai/](https://www.beautiful.ai/)

We focus on exactly the types of things you're mentioning, but we try to
automate it for those who don't have the design skills (or time to invest even
if you do have design skills)!

~~~
kingkongjaffa
What is "AI" about it? assuming AI means artificial intelligence? What is that
connotation supposed to represent?

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benjanik
Here is an article we wrote about our thinking:
[https://blog.beautiful.ai/designai](https://blog.beautiful.ai/designai)

The shorter answer is that we don't have any ML in production at the moment,
but we will as we grow. The core of our product is similar to video game enemy
AI.

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mozumder
Now I'm wondering if there's a viable "seed-deck development" business model
that can scale to IPO..

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m_ke
A reinforcement learning based pitch bot would be much better.

Blindly pitch investors random ideas then build whatever they fall for.

~~~
DenisM
Great, now I have to guess if you are a human or a bot that’s both pitching
and retelling it’s own inception in the same sentence.

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podinatutorials
Sooper

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logicallee
If it were a real company, I wouldn't invest in the seed template making
company based on the seed template shown. What does that say about the ability
of the seed template making company to make templates? It proves they have an
inferior product.

Now if a different template making company had a version that was exactly the
same in every way but included machine learning, suddenly it's a no-brainer
(literally: no thinking required.) The fact that I would invest just shows how
effective that template would be.

The above is a very real thought process. If you want a real template, litter
it with the buzzwords you need. In 2018 that is AI/machine learning, and for
at least a few more months, ICO and blockchain.

~~~
jcadam
Not sure what all the downvotes are about. I tend to respond positively to
sarcasm and cynicism. So, one (1) upvote for you.

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anoncoward111
Where can I find an investor that will give me 1.5 million so I can hire my
insomniac friend as VP of engineering?

