
Show HN: A curated library of venture capital investment pitch decks - chdaniel
https://www.chagency.co.uk/getstartupfunding/
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chdaniel
Hi all,

We’ve needed this for ourselves since we saw these pitch decks pop up on
LinkedIn every few weeks. We wanted a library with all these pitches curated,
but what we found was either: not going deep enough or a 404 return of a now-
defunct website.

Personally, that's what I find the most interesting: the early days. Not how
big companies look like today and what decisions they take now — but rather
what decisions got them there from the early days. Because when we start,
we're in that position.

I hope it will inspire you but, more importantly, I hope you’ll do something
with it.

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skrebbel
This is very cool.

That said, the fact that Theranos is in here without any commentary puts me
off a bit. That's not a pitch deck, it's a fraud deck.

This is like putting Al Capone in a list of "inspiring stories about hardball
entrepreneurs".

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chdaniel
The headline of the website is "helping founder craft successful VC pitches".
Emotions and controversies aside, Theranos _did_ raise capital.

No, I don't think it's nice to do what they've done (or smart, for that
matter). But you want to see both ends of a spectrum, otherwise we'll fall
prey to the survivorship bias. Hence, we've put up the "failed" category and
didn't really want to give Theranos a category in itself called "fraud".

Again, controversy aside, I think there are lessons to be learned from them.
People can misinterpret what I'm saying here and say I'm pushing them to
commit fraud, but from my end it's more of a "This is how you should not do
it"

We need to know both ends of an interval

~~~
skrebbel
The argument here seems to be "to raise capital, tell investors whatever they
want to hear, irrespective of how true it is. Pass DD by covering up your
lies, then cover up the coverups".

This is supposed to be a _curated_ list of VC pitches. I honestly don't
understand how Theranos, a company that raised and grew _solely_ by spreading
lies and then covering them up, can end up in a list like that, except if the
authors of said list think that this is a good way to raise money.

I don't understand how it is that everybody agrees that stealing a painting
from a museum is bad, but when you steal billions (!) from investors then
suddenly it's "inspiration".

EDIT: I hadn't yet realized you're the author.

> but from my end it's more of a "This is how you should not do it"

This is a good point, and with that I think it makes more sense. But IMO it
needs a much bigger "fraud alert! don't do this, these people are evil" note
:-)

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tnolet
Useful, but a shame none come with any extra context. Just the “from 300k to
9billion” blurb.

Have a look at Buffer. Already had around 5 investors before going for a big
round. Not dissing this at all. This is totally normal, but the less
experienced might think one nice pitch deck will get you from 0 to Billions in
one round.

~~~
chdaniel
Hi Tim, glad to see you here. In other places where I've posted this, I've
also added the following bit "We've added the "early days" only on some of
them, let us know if you find it valuable and we can cover the rest as well."

Wasn't sure whether people would want it. Glad to read your comment and to
learn that people do want it.

@Buffer — For MySQL or Monzo, for instance, we've added how it wasn't the
seed. I understand what you're saying — I guess if someone does believe that
they would... assume... by themselves that they're all "seed stage pitches"?

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vmurthy
Great resource! Thanks for compiling this. From the _other_ side of the table,
Scott Kupor (a16z) has written a new book[1] "Secrets of Sand Hill Road". I
look around and find mostly positive reviews for this. Yet to pick it up.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Sand-Hill-Road-Capital-
ebook/...](https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Sand-Hill-Road-Capital-
ebook/dp/B07KLJQ13R/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1560841825&sr=8-1)

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dstick
Thanks for compiling this. Too bad Uber makes up 4/5th of your title’s claim
;-) Read Lost ans Founder a while back so nice to see Moz in there!

~~~
chdaniel
It's like half isn't it? Heard ONLY good things about Lost and Founder — is it
that good of a book you reckon? What stood out for you?

~~~
dstick
His openheartedness about the startup myth and the downsides of accepting VC
money. What I really liked as well was his growth as an entrepreneur and how
he valued his team. All in all it was a really relatable honest story about
his journey.

It definitely made me more aware of the pros and cons of VC and what the
relentless pursuit of growth above all else does to an entrepreneur
emotionally. And it made me do a second take of the “Why”. I think about his
story quite a bit actually, more than most of the bio books I’ve read.

There’s no chestpuffing or sugar coating at all :) Refreshing read.

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founderling
The headlines all seem totally wrong.

    
    
        Uber: $1.25M VC capital turned into $84.2B
    

That sounds like the guys who invested $1.25M now own $84B worth of Uber
stock. I don't think that is even remotely true. I would think there came many
more investors who put in more money. And that's how the vast majority of the
$84B market cap was created.

~~~
chdaniel
Sad to hear the mark was missed - I'm looking at it from the founder/s'
perspective since this is a place where founders hang (less so investors)

They made a $84.2B company and started with that investment. Yes, the story is
longer, multiple investment rounds were gathered but in a nutshell, we can
look at it from this angle

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luminati
This is certainly a helpful resource but quite conflicted on whether Theranos'
deck should be in here (along with the disclaimer) even if it's just for
historical purposes.

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jjeaff
Why wouldn’t it be? These aren’t examples of how to run a company. They are
examples of pitch decks from companies that successfully raised venture
capital. Raising a ton of venture money is the one thing that theranos
succeeded at.

In fact, even labeling some companies as failed doesn't help much. Might be
more useful to see pitch decks from companies that failed to successfully
raise any money.

~~~
chdaniel
Hi J, maker here. I would love to death to have pitches from those who have
failed to raise money as that would actually fix the "survivorship bias" for
raising money.

What we put there would be eliminating the bias for... running a company I
guess. Thanks for adding the comment, it was what I had in mind when we added
Theranos.

In fact, maybe Theranos teaches us what kind of behaviour/talk "slips" through
VCs, thus making us understand how we, the founders, will pick the VCs. I
know, not a popular opinion for US to pick VCs — but we need to start
spreading this idea of selectivity.

Not stupid selectivity ("I deserve this. Give me that"), but rather the one
that makes us weed out those who don't have the acumen to tell between
Theranos, a fraud, and a real startup

Sequoia didn't invest in Theranos. Index, Benchmark or Andreessen Horowitz
didn't.

Maybe we can learn from Theranos' deck how we can pluck out those VCs.

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outofoffice
Very cool!

