
The pitch deck that helped us get an $865M valuation - suhail
https://mixpanel.com/blog/2014/12/18/open-sourcing-our-pitch-deck-that-helped-us-get-our-865m-valuation
======
Xorlev
Mixpanel helped Mixpanel get their $865M valuation. Mixpanel is solving a huge
problem with a bunch of software, gobs of data, and smart people. Beyond that,
they're pulling in revenue. Regardless of how good, or how brief your deck is
at the end of the day your value comes down to your organization, your ability
to execute, and your future revenue potential.

I'm not going to say their deck doesn't have value, but I will say it doesn't
seem like it has much of one. Maybe that's the point.

~~~
fnayr
I still am not sure why to choose Mixpanel over their competitors though. I
use Flurry and Google Analytics right now, and (as noted in their slides),
they are free. What does Mixpanel bring that they don't?

If you say real time, then I'm not sure the 15 minutes it takes GA to add new
data is really worth it. I have 20+ million data points a month but the
percentage of my profits that Mixpanel would cost for that is crazy.

Also, Parse is now letting you track analytics real time completely for free
in unlimited numbers.

~~~
DigitalSea
I personally use Clicky Analytics which costs me like $12 a month. Gives me
real time tracking, Twitter campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff in a no
nonsense interface that is easy to use. Of course, I don't need detailed
analytics nor need to action particular events like sales, etc (because I just
track simple apps and blogs). Google Analytics falls into the same category as
Clicky and other basic analytic platforms, they show you the views, but don't
really let you dig deep and query it.

I've always seen Mixpanel as a mixture between an analytics tool and a data
analytics platform. Seeing the number of visitors is one thing, but being able
to action specific events and drill down in the data is where a product like
Mixpanel really pulls away from the pack. I like how Mixpanel allows you to
query your data like you are querying a MySQL database.

A perfect use-case for something like Mixpanel is online media. Say for
example you are Youtube. You don't want to just know what videos the most
popular or which videos make the most money, you want to know where the people
are coming from and what is driving them to consume specific media. If 15% of
your revenue is coming from say the top 5 Youtuber's, you want to know how
those Youtube channels are getting their traffic, is it subscriber count or
something else? You want to ask questions like, "Of the top five Youtube
channels, how many of them received their views from Google Plus shares?"

~~~
fnayr
Thanks for the explanation. It doesn't sound like something that would be
worth it for my company, but I can at least appreciate the value to some other
companies now.

------
nlh
This is a terrific deck (and thank you guys for open sourcing it, even in
redacted form - an excellent compromise that's totally fair.)

Take note of a few things:

* They don't use BS "corporate speak" \-- no synergies of optimizing user solution metric analysis.

* There's no fluff. Just, none. Problem. Solution. How We're Doing. Why We're Better. What We Want To Do. The Landscape.

And it worked. This should be the baseline for every pitch deck.

~~~
chrisseaton
> They don't use BS "corporate speak"

I don't know: "penetrate organisations", "sales enablement", "widen our lead
flow to lower cost per acq. long-term". I'm not sure I'd call that plain
language.

You might say 'but I know what they all mean, they're not BS', but then a MBA
might say that he knows what 'synergies of optimizing user solution metric
analysis' and it's not BS to him.

One person's rational and precise technical language is another person's BS
corporate speak.

Not saying it's not a good slideshow - sorry! I mean 'deck'!

~~~
sriramk
That's not corporate speak - that's very precise language in different
domains. For example, anyone in sales knows exactly what that means.

~~~
chrisseaton
Yes that's exactly my point. To some people 'synergies of optimizing user
solution metric analysis' sounds like BS, but I'm sure to the people who use
it it's actually very precise language with a specific meaning. And to them
'penetrate organisations' probably sounds like corporate BS.

~~~
nocman
Perhaps, but there are _definitely_ people who just stick in a string of
verbized/adjectivized nouns in order to sound sophisticated or intelligent. In
reality they just sound like they are full of hot air.

It's one of the many reasons people are so put off by salesmen.

~~~
slgeorge
Totally agree. A lot of technical people miss this. Sales people often (but
not always) do this because they don't understand the product - they tend not
to have a deep technical background. They compensate by picking up the
language - most sales people spend a lot of time in conversations with other
customers, product managers and technical people where a range of words are
used. It lets them pick up the words, and get a shallow understanding of the
concepts.

So most commonly you should just assume the sales guy is confused rather than
being a tricky genius!

------
todd3834
The slide that helped them get an $865M valuation:
[https://image.slidesharecdn.com/v1-classified-141218103325-c...](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/v1-classified-141218103325-conversion-
gate01/95/mixpanel-our-pitch-deck-that-we-used-to-
raise-65m-7-1024.jpg?cb=1418921966)

~~~
suhail
That slide looked very similar 2, 3, and 4 years ago. It was not enough, many
people still passed on us. Raising any amount of capital (in part due to the
risk at each stage) is more complex than showing a single graph.

~~~
mchusma
Yes but executing at a high pace for 2, 3, or 4 more years dramatically
changes one's opinion of the company and its opportunity to reach scale. If
you've grown MRR from $10k to $100k, that still doesn't answer the "will it
scale" question. If you've grown MRR from $500k to $5M, totally different
story. Good work keeping up momentum!

~~~
suhail
pmarca: if you're reading this, feel free to chime in ;)

~~~
pmarca
On this topic, Mixpanel at this stage is the magic blend of:

* Track record of consistently impressive revenue growth. * Impressive current level of revenue. * Comprehensive plan and organization in place to continue growing revenue. * Large and expanding market. * And bonus points, doing all that while simultaneously generating vs burning cash!

------
suhail
Happy to answer questions if other founders have any on the topic of
fundraising, pitch decks, etc.

~~~
brandonb
Thanks for sharing this deck!

I think the most striking thing to me and others in this thread is how austere
and matter-of-fact this deck is. Obviously your growth and scale is great, so
the numbers speak for themselves.

How has your deck changed from when you were series A, still unproven, and
presumably needed the pitch to fill in the gaps in belief that the business
hadn't yet filled in reality?

~~~
suhail
Not a whole lot. In 2012, the most important thing I realized while making a
deck was to state your problem, solution, and vision at the beginning.

Your deck shouldn't tell the whole story. YOU should be telling the story. And
your slides should function as bullet points to tell that story.

In 2012, the only addition to our deck was a clearer sense of how we'd use the
money with a use of proceeds section. I think that's unnecessary though. I
think a "what we plan to do in the next 12-18 months" is more specific.

~~~
talltofu
Thanks Suhail. It is reassuring to hear from someone who has clearly had
success pitching to VCs. I am big fan of the 10-20-30 Kawasaki rule for slides
and yours is pretty close to that

------
timdorr
Regardless of the "open source" nomenclature, this is actually pretty helpful.
Not a lot of sizzle and flash in these slides, just hard numbers and facts.
That can be harder for a younger company, where there is less data to pull
from. But the matter-of-fact nature of the deck is key. You should have a
vision, but you need to back it up with an actual execution plan and reasons
for why that plan is achievable.

~~~
btrautsc
agreed Tim. A lot of it seems obvious, but it is so easy for young co's to get
caught up in wordsmith'ing.

VCs want the clearest picture in the fewest amount of words.

~~~
mbesto
Wordsmith'ing becomes a necessary evil for a lot of young co's when you _don
't_ have MixPanel-like numbers. If you don't have metrics, you have to have
vision and pedigree and those are extremely hard to articulate.

------
DigitalSea
I wish more companies released their pitch decks like this. Creating a great
pitch deck is an artform in itself. Even in redacted form, I think it goes to
show you don't need to use technical terms and corporate speak to raise money.
Of course having a steady stream of growth also helps as well. Look at that
growth graph, impressive.

Seems being concise, using facts and getting to the point quickly is the way
to go. I've seen a lot of companies who go as far as creating pitch videos
with fancy production, graphics, voiceovers and a soundtrack to try and use
fancy visuals to get funding.

Congratulations on the recent funding round. You have a great product
Mixpanel.

------
ravensley14
Wow awesome exactly what i was looking for , i will use it as guide to create
my own pitch deck for my company Pingmergency .
[https://medium.com/@ravensley14/pingmergency-ycombinator-
win...](https://medium.com/@ravensley14/pingmergency-ycombinator-
winter-2015-2432e052845c)

------
haberdasher
Wouldn't it have been nice to hear what they actually said while they went
through this deck with potential investors? Something like this would be a
better share/embed IMO:
[http://presentio.us/view/p1tcHs](http://presentio.us/view/p1tcHs)

------
capkutay
The only thing I would really read into in that pitch deck is their revenue
and growth rate. VCs are not swayed by hip fonts and background colors (as
much as we would all like to believe).

------
droob
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_F9jxsfGCw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_F9jxsfGCw)

------
jgalt212
Interesting to see that Marc Beniof funded them. Salesforce has so much inside
info on corporate America, I wonder if he's secretly running a hedge fund on
the side that just trades on the info it can glean from its users on the state
of the US economy.

And will at some time in the future, will MP be able to do the same thing?

------
lukasm
Why do you hide your growth rate when you show your graph?

~~~
myth_buster
Assuming this is a genuine question, its done to not provide information to
competitors. Hence when startups are asked about numbers they reply using %
instead of absolute values.

~~~
lukasm
The first number is shown, so you can extrapolate what are the others. I'm not
talking about absolute values.

------
colinrand
Mixpanel getting this money at this valuation has more to do with the market
conditions than anything else.

~~~
princetontiger
Completely agree.. Using the word 'bullshit' in a deck and not seeing people
flinch is pretty crazy.

This slide deck is very basic.

~~~
curiously
well I disagree...their deck could've been one or two slides with the numbers
they are pulling. I almost feel like they knew the rest of the deck wouldn't
be as important.

------
curiously
Let's take a look at their pricing plan

[https://mixpanel.com/pricing/](https://mixpanel.com/pricing/)

I wonder how much of their MRR X 12 months is multiplied by to reach $865M
valuation.

    
    
        AVG MRR X 12 X ?? = $865,000,000
    

I can't fathom what the ?? will be, it would have to be significantly crazy.
It isn't 1000.

Is it 100 ($8.6m ARR) ? Is it 50 ($17.2m ARR) ? Is it 25 ($34.4m ARR) ?

What is the average valuation multiple for SaaS? Is it higher or lower than
other Startup models (consumer, yearly subscription)?

If one was to replicate a similar valuation with their SaaS what would it
take?

~~~
drewinglis
Their average MRR per customer is four or five digits (see slide eight), and
they have 2,814 paying customers according to their homepage, so their MRR is
at least ~three million, which puts their ARR at at least 36 million. This
implies a multiple of 25 at most. (I think 20 is a common multiple for SaaS
companies at this stage.)

~~~
curiously
Do you remember groove? They had 14 as a multiple for their SaaS but it
could've been at the time they had 70k MRR.

ARR at 36 million....and 25 the multiple...gotcha now I have a solid number to
gun for.

------
espace
You can't open source a pitch deck can you? Open sourcing is for source code,
hence the name. This would go under a Creative Commons licence.

~~~
dang
All: we took "open-source" out of the title. Let's stay on topic now.

~~~
suhail
I changed it on the blog too! :)

~~~
SeoxyS
You could say "we're opening" or "we're opening up." Ambiguity removed, while
keeping the original meaning.

------
abannin
Where do I submit a pull request?

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pekk
Let's hope it was the company which got them the valuation, because no
Powerpoint presentation is worth $865M

~~~
brettkc
The title says 'helped'..

~~~
floody-berry
Unless they did a study with various presentations and found this version
resulted in higher numbers, I doubt they have any clue how much it 'helped',
or if it helped at all short of just being _something_ to toss up with their
revenue/business numbers.

------
ojbyrne
I understand that VCs value succinct, but not sure what the value of this is
to anyone else. Other than to beat home the point that VCs like succinct.

