November 19, 2025 • 36 mins
When you are working on a technical or scientific innovation, pitching a specialized VC firm may seem like the light at the end of the tunnel. Finally, someone who will get it. Or… will they?
Today’s guest, Steve Molino, is Principal at Synthesis Capital based in New Jersey. And today’s episode asks: How can founders with complex tech craft pitch decks that help them get there, past the initial interest? Ironically, having cutting-edge technology may make it harder, not easier.
Steve Molino works across food tech and biotech. Previously, he led investment activity at Clear Current Capital as Partner and Head of Investments. He focused on early-stage investments and now covers Series A, B, or later.
You are listening to Scaling Nerds, the podcast covering all things communications for science and tech founders.
Links
Connect with Steve Molino:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenmolino/
Check out Synthesis
Connect with me:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/schmidt-marina/
marina@r2g.media
Resources Mentioned:
Granola AI
Slidebean
Slidesgo
Canva
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
When you're working on technicalor scientific innovation,
pitching a specialized VC firm may seem like the light at the
end of a long tunnel. Finally, someone who will get
it. Or will they?
We'll have 1235 meetings that godeep into the tech.
We'll do that at some point, butwe have to get there first.
(00:22):
This is today's guest, Steve Molino, an investor specialized
in food tech and biotech. And in today's episode, we ask
the question, how can your pitchdeck help you get there past the
initial interest? Ironically, having cutting edge
technology may make it harder, not easier.
(00:42):
Just feels like you're shooting yourself in the foot to start.
And who would want that? Steve Molino is principal at
Synthesis Capital based in New Jersey, where he's focused on
series AB and later stage investments.
Previously, Steve focused on early stage companies at Clear
Current Capital as partner and head of investments.
(01:05):
You're listening to Scaling Nerds, the one and only podcast
covering all things communications for science and
tech founders. My name is Marina Schmidt.
Let's jump right in. I'm really glad to have you
here, Steve. I mean, I've known you for many
years. I always heard from so many
people who are just like, Steve is just a really great person to
(01:27):
talk to and super helpful and really like, open to support.
So yeah, it's been probably a dozen people that have told me
that by now. Oh, wow.
Well. Thank you for that, that's the
best intro ever. What have you observed in terms
of how you're being approached and the kind of expectations
that founders have versus the reality of what it's like within
(01:51):
the VC firm? Yeah, Yeah, it's a, it's a good
question. And I mean like the reality is
yes, as a specialized VCI or anyone at our firm, we're much
deeper on the technical side across the food tech categories
than a generalist firm. Whereas A generalist might look
at a company in precision fermentation or bio
(02:12):
manufacturing once or twice a year and maybe kind of consider
it. We look at it non-stop.
So yes, we know the technical parameters much more deeply than
a generalist. That said, most of the people on
our team, actually everyone except for one of us, is not a
scientist. So when it comes to initial
conversations with founders, theones that go the smoothest are
(02:35):
the ones that basically understand we're probably deeper
than a generalist firm, but we still need to understand the
business case. Like what problem are you
solving? What is your solution?
Why is this innovative? Why will this win in the market
timelines around getting to market where you're at right
now, etcetera, etcetera. And then when it doesn't go as
smooth, it's the ones that kind of come out and throw a bunch of
(02:57):
charts and science and all that towards us, which we can do our
best to understand, but it dilutes the story and the
initial conversation. When I think of a pitch deck, I
think good communication should be a bit bulletproof, so that,
like the archetype of an investor on a Friday at 5:00 PM,
having had three cups of coffee,being tired from a long week,
(03:22):
looks at it and it's like, we don't want the brain to hustle.
Exactly, exactly that. I mean, that's a really helpful
way to think about it. Like empathy for the the
audience. If we're talking about a pitch
deck, what's the purpose of the pitch deck?
It's not to have someone read itwithin 10 to 30 slides and say I
(03:45):
understand the science and the tech perfectly.
It's to get a conversation goingwhere you can then dig in to the
science and the tech. Or maybe that's the second or
third conversation. But to get to that point where
you're truly, truly digging in deep into the science and the
tech. But I always say to the
technical founders, like when they're thinking about a pitch
(04:06):
deck, yes, think about the audience.
But like any audience wants to understand what I call the So
what? And it's OK, you have this great
tech, it does a bunch of stuff and there's an outcome to it.
So what it does it increase yourability to generate revenues?
Does it decrease your cost considerably, making the the
(04:26):
company have a higher likelihoodof profitability?
Does it completely open up a newmarket?
Like I always need to understand, OK, you have cool
tech. What's the outcome?
How does it actually push forward the business?
Like So what, what is your So what?
And in a pitch deck, the goal ofthe pitch deck should be for
someone to quickly look at it and understand what the problem
is. Not that meta problem of like
(04:47):
the climate or anything, but like what is the industry
customer problem that you're solving?
How important, how big is that problem?
What is your solution? Why is it better than everything
else? And how are you going to build a
business off of it? And like that's like, if they
can't take a pitch deck and comeaway with that, then you're not
focusing on the So what enough. You're focusing on the
(05:10):
technicals way too much, which that should be a deep technical
conversation, should be a futureconversation.
And with that doesn't matter if it's me who's not a technical
science educated individual, I'mon the business and the finance
side. Or it should be like someone
like internally at Synthesis. One of the Co founders of
Synthesis, David Welch. He's a PhD, he is a scientist.
(05:32):
He probably can understand the science at a very close level to
that founder, but he still wantsthe first pitch deck to tell him
the So what, so that he has an interest in digging into the
science at a later time. Yeah.
So I think to an extent, right, Like the idea of wanting to show
(05:52):
all the technical details comes from a good intention of like, I
don't just want to make claims, I kind of want to prove that
this is real and like why it's working and why do we have a
reduction of the cost of the medium or whatever, you know?
But you are allowed to make claims to a certain extent
(06:14):
knowing that you will back it upduring due diligence with the
claims are OK in the pitch deck because they are the.
So what that you're talking about, right?
And focusing overly on the technical details is just a
means to an end. So describing the iPhone by
describing its hardware and likehow the how it's put together
(06:35):
and how small the different pieces are in their efficiency.
But it's like, yeah, well, what can I do with that?
Do you remember an example of a founder doing a really good job
there where you felt like, OK, Ireally it's just a coherent
story? I mean, what comes to mind more
is a founder that verbally couldspeak to why this was going to
(06:59):
be so impactful. They can speak to it so well.
And I remember every time talking to them, I'd leave the
conversations being like men, I got to dig into this more.
It's super interesting. Like it's like, let's have
additional conversations. And then the materials that I
would receive from the first oneto, to the last ones, I'd be
(07:20):
like, I don't understand what I'm looking at.
They would be like stream grabs charts and graphs from a
biomanufacturing process or likedifferent tests that they would
do and lines and charts and colors and all that.
And I'd be trying to be like, OK, so like very cool.
I can see that this line is muchhigher than that line, but like
(07:40):
OK, like what does that ultimately do?
Trying to understand it. And yes, maybe if I give it to
our in house science expert, maybe they would.
But often times I see that even those people are like, OK, this
is good data and helpful, but like I need to dig into this
deeper. So with that founder, ultimately
it was like your deck or your documents in the data room and
(08:03):
all that. It needs to reflect how you
speak a lot more, right? Sure, they need maybe like make
those claims, put up those charts, but put the take away at
the top. All of this below results in a
50% reduction in cost of goods sold.
But like then you know, OK, whatever's below, we can dig
into that at a later time. But I know what all of this,
(08:25):
what the outcome or the, So whatof all of this is?
I, I worked with that founder tohelp them on that.
And it's, it's relatively subjective after a certain point
of how you design the slides, how you design the messaging,
It's a story, you're telling a story.
So there's not an absolute perfect way to do it, but there
is a wrong way. And it's to just throw data and
charts up there and not help thereader understand why it's
(08:48):
impactful. You know, there's this saying
like, confused people don't buy men.
It's of course, like, in this case, sometimes less is indeed
better, right? Because the issue there is like
if it creates more questions than it answers, it actually
drags down the strength of the communication.
(09:09):
For sure. And like with like written
stuff, like you don't always have the opportunity to answer
those questions, right. So like with that founder
specifically, like at some pointI was just like, I was asking
questions verbally in meetings and their answers were just
like, oh, that's so helpful. Now I fully understand what you
were trying to say. And like they're visionary.
They're a great speaker. Like it really was fantastic.
(09:29):
And some of them just like do like you realize, I keep asking
questions. I'm like, what does this mean?
Why do I care about this? You have to answer that in the
materials more because then at some point in the diligence
process, we'll have 1235 meetings that go deep into the
tech and whether it's using in house expertise or even
(09:50):
leveraging outside expertise like third party services to
help us. If we don't have that in house,
we'll do that at some point. But we have to get there first.
Yeah. How did you end up working with
him? So how did you end up helping
him to translate that into into the deck?
Yeah. So it first started with myself
and others on the team working through maybe call it like a
(10:13):
skeleton deck of like this is this is like what the first two
few slides should be in the takeaways, the next few slides
and the next few slides. So it's basically like, what is
the message, the story that we want to get across?
And then building the content ofthose slides afterward and
trying to leverage what we had seen previously to say, OK, this
one should go here, this should go here.
(10:34):
Ultimately they, they knew somebody that was able to make
it all look nice. So create the structure of the
story, put in the content, and then make it actually look good.
That was kind of the process. It took a while.
This is like a very short a certain version of that, but
that made it something that was valuable moving forward.
And then they kind of knew for any document they make going
(10:56):
forward, they could kind of leverage the learnings from that
to apply it to future information that's shared.
Actually, that got me thinking. All of the conversations that
you have, these can be incredibly useful data, but they
have to be captured for you to be able to use that data.
And here's an idea you may have heard of Granola AI.
(11:19):
Granola is an incredible meetingnotes app.
And no, this is not sponsored. Unlike most meeting recorders,
Granola does not join your meeting and it doesn't record
video or audio. It just gives you meeting notes
and a detailed transcript. Bonus points, you can even
directly chat with your transcript.
(11:41):
So here's my suggestion. You could use the transcript of
your investor calls to look at how you actually pitch your
company and apply your best catchphrases to your deck.
Or you can put these transcriptsinto your AI of choice to
analyze which investor objections or misunderstandings
keep happening time and time again.
(12:04):
Granola has a pretty generous free version and if you try this
out, I would love to hear from you and love to know, yeah, what
your insights and what your experience was.
You can reach me on LinkedIn at Marina Schmidt with DT.
In the end, all of my links and my e-mail is going to be in the
(12:25):
show notes alongside the link toGranola.
So in terms of adjusting the pitch to different investor
types, what would be your guideline for deciding whether
there should be different types of pitch decks for different
types of investor audiences? Yeah, it's a good question.
(12:47):
I think if the company's solution has applicability in
different industry verticals, like for instance, if someone
has a solution to speed up the amount of time that it takes to
go from R&D to pilot scale in biomanufacturing and I don't, I
don't even know what that solution would be like.
I'm just like that idea that would be applicable to companies
(13:08):
in biomanufacturing, companies creating food, using
biomanufacturing, cosmetics, chemicals, biofuels, so many
different industries. So if you're trying to raise
money from VCs and the VCs that might be specialized in some of
those industries and they might find it interesting if there's a
heavy emphasis on food, but you go to a non food investor,
(13:29):
they'll be like they might, theymight not realize how applicable
it is to them. So in those cases where the
solution could be applicable to many verticals, maybe that's a
time it makes sense to kind of emphasize the different
verticals more or less dependingon the audience.
That's probably the most obviousadjustment to make in my mind.
(13:52):
Yeah, I mean, some like a slide that would be essential, right
for every climate BC would be how does this impact CO2
emissions? Whereas for a lot of journalist
BCS, it would be like, yeah, nice.
But by now, given the the struggles of the public
narrative around climate and everything that's going on with
(14:13):
the economy, that actually may kind of make them worried or
this company is trying to justify their existence just
through being more sustainable, right?
But yeah, I think it's like a personal preference probably or
a personal case. But I find that sometimes that
little bit of personalization, if even if it's not for the
(14:33):
specific EC, but you're having like understanding what are my
archetypes of VCs that like we're trying to reach and then
maybe having like a bit of an adjustment.
And I wish there would be some kind of super easy neat solution
where you could like. The issue is then if you update
something in your general deck outline, you'll have to go in
(14:55):
and update it throughout all your versions.
I wish there would be a really neat way of managing that.
And if anyone has a solution, please do reach out to me and
tell me. My e-mail and my contact is
another show notes so I would love to find it.
That would be cool. And I mean, I will say this
happens very infrequently because like we talked to
(15:16):
hundreds, if not possibly over 1000 companies a year.
But there have been times when I'll get a pitch deck that's
tailored to synthesis capital. And there would be random notes
throughout that they very clearly said, OK, this would be
very relevant to synthesis. And then put a note in the
actual slide deck of like applicable to one of your
(15:36):
portfolio companies or to what you said you were trying to do
in an article or something like that.
And that's obviously not a scalable approach, right?
But it is very differentiating. I'm not suggesting that everyone
does that because if you have totalk to hundreds of investors
for a fundraise, it might not beworth it for many of them,
(15:59):
right? But that idea of personalization
either through the vertical of that firm that they look at or
climate or non climate, that is helpful.
Yeah, it's like the middle ground in between like over
personalizing and not personalizing at all.
That's yeah. Like funnily, you know, like a
decade ago I had a company helping scientists and like
(16:20):
professionals apply for jobs. So it's actually still operating
because we got a government contract to reposition people
into new jobs, right. And so I never was involved in
actually helping people with jobapplications.
I mean, I my team did. I was like marketing and comps
specialized, but I did learn so much through that process
(16:42):
because of course our metric would be how quickly can we
place a person into a new job and how successfully can that
process look like. The issues that a lot of them
would by default just try to spray and pray and they just
send their generic CV and a generic motivation letter to a
(17:03):
lot of different companies because it seems like it's more
effective. But it would never was like, it
never ever was like the way thatapplicants would think about it.
They'll be like, yeah, but I just get to like get the
numbers. And the answer was like, no, you
just need really relevant interviews that actually land a
(17:25):
job versus dozens of unfitting interviews that don't lead
anywhere. So I think that there might be
also the a parallel approach here.
For sure, and I mean a lot of that also comes down to like if
you get a big list of investors,it's prioritizing those
investors and saying like, who are the ones that feel like the
(17:46):
best fit, right? Forget about the if it's
technical or they're not technical or whatever your pitch
deck looks like. It's like out of a list of 100
investors, they're probably 5 to10 where it's like, man, they
feel like a perfect fit there. There is no reason now with like
where like various AI tools, whether it's like ChatGPT or
others that a founder couldn't take their deck that exists and
(18:09):
just say, I'm going to have a, I'm trying to have a meeting
with this firm. Here's their website, here's
what they say they do. Are there any areas within the
deck that I could call out that it might be directly linked to
that firm in some way? Maybe that doesn't take that
much time and effort to say liketo see make it seem really,
really personalized. Yeah, yeah.
(18:30):
And like if it's reserved for like the top, top relevant VCs
where like a personal touch can really make a difference, right.
Then maybe before we can take a step back and think about the
process of how founders tend to get in touch because you did
graciously share an analysis of the data that you collected, a
(18:51):
clear current capital. And in terms of your conversion
from like people reaching out cold being introduced or
actually being found by you. And I'm going to link the
article in the comments for everyone who wants to have a
read, but we can maybe go through like the main messages
there and. I'd also be very curious to know
(19:14):
how it would be at Synthesis because when I was at Clear
Current, I was basically doing most of the deal sourcing and
all that by myself versus we have a broader team at
Synthesis. It's a collective effort.
So whatever biases I might have that I didn't even know about,
maybe that would be offset by others on my team or maybe it
would be the exact same result. I'm not sure.
(19:35):
So yeah, so this is this is for mostly early stage companies.
And so where would you get your deal sources from?
Yeah. So I the, the three buckets were
like me reaching out to companies, me getting referrals
to talk to companies by people that I know in my network and
companies reaching out cold to me with no referral.
(19:57):
And essentially like the key take away was I seem to talk to
more or less like an even numberof companies across those 3
categories. But then when I looked at
ultimately. Where I ended up making
investments, like to your .96% of them, no investments were
made. But the ones that I did
(20:18):
ultimately pull the trigger on and make an investment in, it
was like almost 5050 split between companies that either I
reached out to proactively because I found them interesting
or ones where I got a referral from somebody in my network.
So there was literally 0% invested into companies that
reached out cold to me. And I'm sure there's a million
reasons of why that might be, but that was what the data said.
(20:40):
And I was, I was surprised by that.
And I felt like like I wasn't doing that analysis to share
with the world, but I was like, this might be helpful to to
founders. How can founders increase the
likelihood that AVC will actually proactively stumble
upon them and reach out to them?That's a good question.
I mean, that's a hard one because ultimately, like I, I
(21:03):
did and I and I still do with synthesis, we take it a thematic
investment approach where we're like in the background, we're
building out like we have thesesof what we think could work or
or not work in our respective space.
So like at the intersection of food, tech and and biotech.
And we ultimately try to like create a thesis around that,
(21:25):
right. So sometimes like the outreach
really just came from like I was, I was and am very targeted
about what I would love to see. And I am looking for that.
And then when I see that, then Ireach out right away.
Doesn't matter what stage of thecompany that they're at.
We're constantly talking to other investors or startups or
yes, we read news articles and newsletters.
(21:47):
Like I'm subscribed to probably every newsletter at the
intersection of food, tech and biotech and I read every single
one every single week. No, but I try to, right.
So if an investor's looking for a solution somewhere and there's
just a website sitting somewhereand no thought pieces, articles,
(22:08):
you never on any panels, never doing anything like that, it
will just be more difficult to find that company than if they
were doing that stuff, I guess. The key take away is there are
many ways to actually be out there and be present and it just
has to fit in terms of what the company's aiming to do, the kind
(22:30):
of investors 1 is trying to reach.
And then hopefully being on those newsletters and those
media articles and the feeds that are relevant for the
investors who are looking into the space 1 is operating in.
Right. Cool.
So maybe we can cover a little bit more how founders can make
(22:52):
sure that if they convey what they want to convey in the 1st
place, how? But do you know like a test that
founders can do to check whethertheir story does come through?
I mean, that's a good question. Like a test.
Grab a friend, grab a family member, walk them through it
with someone who actually will give you real thoughts though.
(23:15):
Like that's probably the best test because there's an almost
guaranteed likelihood that they do not know what you're working
on or understand what you're doing.
And if you walk them through it or just give them the deck
without even verbally walking them through, because that's
what how it works with most investors.
You're not immediately speaking to them if they come away and
they're like, this is super cool.
(23:36):
I have questions around this andall that, but I like it.
That's a good outcome. If they're like, I honestly have
no idea what what this is. What are you doing?
I don't know what any of this section meant or all these
slides and like exactly is the company selling or doing that's
valuable feedback. You know, if if you think of a
(23:57):
song and you tap the song, wait,let me, let me do it just just
for illustration, OK, I'm going to think of a song and I'm going
to do it. Do you know what song that was?
I don't know what song that was.Yeah, no wonder.
But like for me, it's super clear, right?
Like it was. We will.
(24:19):
We Will Rock you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Now, right now that you have my voice over to it.
And I think that's the that's the challenge.
Like, so for me, for example, ifI do decks right, I'm a
communications professional and I still need to have the
feedback from other people who are not as close to what I'm
(24:41):
trying to explain to tell me whether they get my tapping
sound because they don't have the song in their heads.
And it's impossible. Like once you have the song in
your head, it's impossible for you to hear the snipping without
having all this background context.
(25:01):
And I think it's just like a fundamental thing.
It's there's nothing wrong with founders for having to do that.
I think it's just the basis of communications that if we're ex
experts in an area, we're just struggling to convey it.
I feel like my own work, communications work for myself
as the hardest and I'm like, I need to like RIP myself out of
(25:24):
my own body and just like hire myself as a consultant.
But please, without all of that background knowledge.
Yeah, no, that's, that's, that'ssuch an interesting point.
And like what a great example. I, I feel like I'm going to use
that in the future. I, I, I love the snapping
example, but it's, it's very true where like if someone's not
in that mental state of that founder, it, it might be
(25:44):
impossible for what they're offering to resonate and get the
message across if they haven't set that audience up to be in
that same mental state. I really like that hearing that,
that would adjust. My suggestion earlier, give your
pitch deck to friends or family is maybe say here, take this and
would you invest? Obviously they're not investors.
(26:06):
They're not all VCs that I thinklike a typical VC, but if
they're going into with the mindset of like, I'm trying to
learn this story from you and with the the idea of do I want
to give you my money after work like that, that I think might be
a helpful way to frame the review.
(26:26):
So it's not just like cool or but it would be more of like a
yes, no, maybe yes because I love this and I understand it
perfectly or no because I have no idea what I'm even looking at
after going over this because itwas just a bunch of snapping.
I don't know what it meant. It actually is really impressive
(26:48):
if somebody is able to convey the importance of a solution
that is of course, still technically complex and nobody's
questioning that in a way that'ssuper accessible and just like
clicks. That's like the, it's just like,
wow, you know? Then you can nod along with the
song. Just imagine like a Steve Jobs
or a Tim Cook being on stage in front of everyone wearing their
(27:09):
black turtlenecks or whatever. It's on the stage holding an
iPhone. And then they dive into the
details of the tech. Like, would that be visionary?
Would everyone be like, whoa, I need this.
They'd be like, no, this is not helpful.
But they have the ability to know everything in detail, but
still convey the message to a broader audience and get that
(27:31):
buy in with that broader vision.Like that's hard to do.
And that's very impressive. And that's what ultimately gets,
in this case, billions of peoplebuying their product.
And the one thing that always socomes up is like having a short
deck, right? And having a long deck.
Just wondering see what you think about that because I've
(27:53):
seen founders kind of use the long deck as what in content
production we call B roll or a trash can sometimes.
No, no, this it's, it's an interesting idea and I've seen
that more and more over the years.
Like this idea. We like like a short deck or a
teaser deck. And then there's the longer deck
(28:14):
later. It's, it's not uncommon for for
me to see like teaser decks sentin like in an intro e-mail so
that it's like, it kind of gets the interest from the, the
investor by offering them something that's you're not
going to know really what's happening underneath the hood
from that. But like you understand, like
the, the So what it's basically like, just like this is the So
(28:36):
what? At a high level, I think it
makes sense to have a short or long deck, or a teaser deck and
a long deck and you just use it in the appropriate settings.
I think those are actually the three tiers.
There's like the teaser deck, which is really short, there's
the normal size deck, and then there is the B roll deck that is
(28:58):
just like, I don't know, like 100 slides or something.
I would say like I would rather,I would assume that there's so
much content in there that I would rather that be broken down
into different documents and categories within a data room.
Like afterward where like that Broll deck, 100 slide deck, like
maybe 40 slides is goes into thetech.
There should be a tech, a technical section of the data
(29:20):
room that has maybe those slidesplus a lot of other things to
back up the technology. So I don't know about 100 slide
deck. At least that's objective.
I'm one person, but that would be a lot to go through.
Yeah, I'm not condoning it. I'm actually questioning it.
The idea is behind it is like, Oh well, it's just more context
(29:42):
they can click through and then there are lots of these crazy
graphs and what we've discussed earlier, it's this idea of like,
well, we have that data anyway, so might as well maybe it's just
going to help and more is more. My intuitive approach to that is
no, more is not more because it actually can just overwhelm and
(30:04):
bring up more questions than it answers.
But in your case, you would say,well, it's because it's like
kind of in between like a pitch deck and going into due
diligence. It's kind of just like a backup
edition if anyone has questions.Yeah.
It's not my preferred approach because I even just think of it
as like I've seen that before. I don't know about 100 slides,
(30:24):
but a longer, longer decks. And like at some point, like
let's say it hits an appendix and everything in the appendix
is kind of just thrown in there because they have the data.
What I've seen is like the storytelling completely stops
and it's just like a bunch of data and slides.
But like as people, we don't want the story to stop.
We want to still understand why are you showing me this slide?
(30:45):
What is what is the point of it?Why are you showing me now
versus 3 slides from now? Like, and it just makes it
harder to keep the So what message understood?
You start to get bogged down in the details and for a founder,
like you should be storytelling at every point in the process,
(31:09):
whether it's in a verbal meetingor the data room.
Even in the data room, if there's a text section, you
could have like I've seen documents where it's like
overview of the text section. So before you go into any of
these documents, this is how we laid it out.
This is what this shows. This is what that shows like.
That's a form of storytelling ina different way.
But a deck that's 100 slides, it's like the story's going to
(31:30):
get lost. And if you think about it, is it
easier to write a book with a good story that's 10 pages or
100 pages? Probably 10 pages, because you
could just get right to the point and tell the story the way
you want. 100 is there's going to be a lot of details that
could take the reader in a different direction and mess up
the whole point, if that makes sense.
Yeah, I have this metaphor of a narrative leash.
(31:53):
So imagine like your narrative, what you want to say is a little
dog on a leash and you want the dog to be kind of close to you
because you don't want it to attack people or bark or like
run off. It should be going right
alongside where you actually want to go.
Certain formats like having a random appendix with tons of
(32:18):
additional slides, it's like letting the dog loose.
You have a very specific destination in mind.
It will just go where the hell it wants.
You don't know. You have very little control,
then over how this information is interpreted and used and
looked at. And it can actually end up
causing you trouble when you have to take care of like the
(32:40):
dog biting a little kid. You know, like a weird metaphor
that just came to me. But you want a clean, short
narrative, a tight narrative. No, I, I full alignment on that.
And yeah, you don't want to let the dog off the leash.
Yeah. Well, we kind of didn't get to
(33:02):
the design part. How important is the design,
right? Like I've even heard people say
that they think that having a very good design of their deck
is going to be seen badly like that.
It's going to be like a minus point even for VCs who are going
to be like, oh, this is so shineand no substance and that having
(33:22):
a badly designed deck is actually a great way to raise.
I literally just heard that fromsomebody like 2-2 days ago.
And it's like, I don't think that's actually the case.
Because I think even if we see say, like, I don't care at all
about design, marketing and branding in its essence wouldn't
work if like colours don't matter and typography doesn't
(33:44):
matter and like visuals don't matter, right?
That's the entire basis of of entire industries.
Yeah, I mean, whoever told you that idea that like design
doesn't matter and that if it's not done, that VCs like it more,
that it's easier to raise, I just strongly disagree.
Yeah, maybe if your tech or whatyou're building is just that
(34:07):
unbelievable. Yeah, maybe you could definitely
raise without it. It's not an absolute
requirement, but like just feelslike you're shooting yourself in
the foot to start. I can't imagine that being more
received better than something that looks a little bit nicer.
So as you move up the value chain to precede and see it
again, put in some effort, at least in my mind, like it could
just help. It couldn't hurt in my mind.
(34:29):
I But then as you get later stage Series A, series B and
beyond, you're probably a more legitimate company.
You have some capital. Find a good designer for 1002
thousand, $3000, whatever it might be.
You could easily spend 10 + 1000on this type of stuff.
But for a couple thousand, I've seen things go from like, oh, it
(34:49):
looks good to like, wow, this feels unbelievable.
Like then it's valuable because you're trying to raise, you're
not trying to raise $1,000,000 or a couple 100 grand.
You're trying to raise 1020 a $100 million like tape design
very seriously at those stages. Yes, absolutely.
And I think you know where it comes from, images from like old
(35:11):
slide decks, from Airbnb, from Uber, you know, when money was
just laying around on the San Francisco streets ready to be
grabbed. So I think like there's this
idea like, oh, I've seen these successful decks, but they are
by now so old and things have really changed in terms of the
standard and AI designers are increasing like the baseline of
(35:35):
what is expected. Canva, they're incredible
platforms like Slides Go or Slight Bean, or you can get
templates on Envato. There's so many options to get
good templates to start with. And from my experience, like
just picking a good template spends a good amount of time
(35:55):
picking a good template. Just trying to design from
scratch is so hard. Sure, but also like, are you the
next Airbnb or Google? Like maybe, hopefully, hopefully
you are, you know? Like fingers crossed, right?
The likelihood is that you are not that and it's going to be
much harder to raise. And maybe just like this is like
(36:16):
a low hanging fruit easy thing to adjust on the design side
that you shouldn't. Yeah, that's just a crazy idea.
That's a crazy idea to not take any put any effort into design.
I invite you to think of just one person.
You might be interested in some of the tips and insights shared
in this episode, but you can easily share this podcast with
(36:40):
them by clicking on the three dots next to the episode.
Thank you so so much.
When you're working on technicalor scientific innovation,
pitching a specialized VC firm may seem like the light at the
end of a long tunnel. Finally, someone who will get
it. Or will they?
We'll have 1235 meetings that godeep into the tech.
We'll do that at some point, butwe have to get there first.
(00:22):
This is today's guest, Steve Molino, an investor specialized
in food tech and biotech. And in today's episode, we ask
the question, how can your pitchdeck help you get there past the
initial interest? Ironically, having cutting edge
technology may make it harder, not easier.
(00:42):
Just feels like you're shooting yourself in the foot to start.
And who would want that? Steve Molino is principal at
Synthesis Capital based in New Jersey, where he's focused on
series AB and later stage investments.
Previously, Steve focused on early stage companies at Clear
Current Capital as partner and head of investments.
(01:05):
You're listening to Scaling Nerds, the one and only podcast
covering all things communications for science and
tech founders. My name is Marina Schmidt.
Let's jump right in. I'm really glad to have you
here, Steve. I mean, I've known you for many
years. I always heard from so many
people who are just like, Steve is just a really great person to
(01:27):
talk to and super helpful and really like, open to support.
So yeah, it's been probably a dozen people that have told me
that by now. Oh, wow.
Well. Thank you for that, that's the
best intro ever. What have you observed in terms
of how you're being approached and the kind of expectations
that founders have versus the reality of what it's like within
(01:51):
the VC firm? Yeah, Yeah, it's a, it's a good
question. And I mean like the reality is
yes, as a specialized VCI or anyone at our firm, we're much
deeper on the technical side across the food tech categories
than a generalist firm. Whereas A generalist might look
at a company in precision fermentation or bio
(02:12):
manufacturing once or twice a year and maybe kind of consider
it. We look at it non-stop.
So yes, we know the technical parameters much more deeply than
a generalist. That said, most of the people on
our team, actually everyone except for one of us, is not a
scientist. So when it comes to initial
conversations with founders, theones that go the smoothest are
(02:35):
the ones that basically understand we're probably deeper
than a generalist firm, but we still need to understand the
business case. Like what problem are you
solving? What is your solution?
Why is this innovative? Why will this win in the market
timelines around getting to market where you're at right
now, etcetera, etcetera. And then when it doesn't go as
smooth, it's the ones that kind of come out and throw a bunch of
(02:57):
charts and science and all that towards us, which we can do our
best to understand, but it dilutes the story and the
initial conversation. When I think of a pitch deck, I
think good communication should be a bit bulletproof, so that,
like the archetype of an investor on a Friday at 5:00 PM,
having had three cups of coffee,being tired from a long week,
(03:22):
looks at it and it's like, we don't want the brain to hustle.
Exactly, exactly that. I mean, that's a really helpful
way to think about it. Like empathy for the the
audience. If we're talking about a pitch
deck, what's the purpose of the pitch deck?
It's not to have someone read itwithin 10 to 30 slides and say I
(03:45):
understand the science and the tech perfectly.
It's to get a conversation goingwhere you can then dig in to the
science and the tech. Or maybe that's the second or
third conversation. But to get to that point where
you're truly, truly digging in deep into the science and the
tech. But I always say to the
technical founders, like when they're thinking about a pitch
(04:06):
deck, yes, think about the audience.
But like any audience wants to understand what I call the So
what? And it's OK, you have this great
tech, it does a bunch of stuff and there's an outcome to it.
So what it does it increase yourability to generate revenues?
Does it decrease your cost considerably, making the the
(04:26):
company have a higher likelihoodof profitability?
Does it completely open up a newmarket?
Like I always need to understand, OK, you have cool
tech. What's the outcome?
How does it actually push forward the business?
Like So what, what is your So what?
And in a pitch deck, the goal ofthe pitch deck should be for
someone to quickly look at it and understand what the problem
is. Not that meta problem of like
(04:47):
the climate or anything, but like what is the industry
customer problem that you're solving?
How important, how big is that problem?
What is your solution? Why is it better than everything
else? And how are you going to build a
business off of it? And like that's like, if they
can't take a pitch deck and comeaway with that, then you're not
focusing on the So what enough. You're focusing on the
(05:10):
technicals way too much, which that should be a deep technical
conversation, should be a futureconversation.
And with that doesn't matter if it's me who's not a technical
science educated individual, I'mon the business and the finance
side. Or it should be like someone
like internally at Synthesis. One of the Co founders of
Synthesis, David Welch. He's a PhD, he is a scientist.
(05:32):
He probably can understand the science at a very close level to
that founder, but he still wantsthe first pitch deck to tell him
the So what, so that he has an interest in digging into the
science at a later time. Yeah.
So I think to an extent, right, Like the idea of wanting to show
(05:52):
all the technical details comes from a good intention of like, I
don't just want to make claims, I kind of want to prove that
this is real and like why it's working and why do we have a
reduction of the cost of the medium or whatever, you know?
But you are allowed to make claims to a certain extent
(06:14):
knowing that you will back it upduring due diligence with the
claims are OK in the pitch deck because they are the.
So what that you're talking about, right?
And focusing overly on the technical details is just a
means to an end. So describing the iPhone by
describing its hardware and likehow the how it's put together
(06:35):
and how small the different pieces are in their efficiency.
But it's like, yeah, well, what can I do with that?
Do you remember an example of a founder doing a really good job
there where you felt like, OK, Ireally it's just a coherent
story? I mean, what comes to mind more
is a founder that verbally couldspeak to why this was going to
(06:59):
be so impactful. They can speak to it so well.
And I remember every time talking to them, I'd leave the
conversations being like men, I got to dig into this more.
It's super interesting. Like it's like, let's have
additional conversations. And then the materials that I
would receive from the first oneto, to the last ones, I'd be
(07:20):
like, I don't understand what I'm looking at.
They would be like stream grabs charts and graphs from a
biomanufacturing process or likedifferent tests that they would
do and lines and charts and colors and all that.
And I'd be trying to be like, OK, so like very cool.
I can see that this line is muchhigher than that line, but like
(07:40):
OK, like what does that ultimately do?
Trying to understand it. And yes, maybe if I give it to
our in house science expert, maybe they would.
But often times I see that even those people are like, OK, this
is good data and helpful, but like I need to dig into this
deeper. So with that founder, ultimately
it was like your deck or your documents in the data room and
(08:03):
all that. It needs to reflect how you
speak a lot more, right? Sure, they need maybe like make
those claims, put up those charts, but put the take away at
the top. All of this below results in a
50% reduction in cost of goods sold.
But like then you know, OK, whatever's below, we can dig
into that at a later time. But I know what all of this,
(08:25):
what the outcome or the, So whatof all of this is?
I, I worked with that founder tohelp them on that.
And it's, it's relatively subjective after a certain point
of how you design the slides, how you design the messaging,
It's a story, you're telling a story.
So there's not an absolute perfect way to do it, but there
is a wrong way. And it's to just throw data and
charts up there and not help thereader understand why it's
(08:48):
impactful. You know, there's this saying
like, confused people don't buy men.
It's of course, like, in this case, sometimes less is indeed
better, right? Because the issue there is like
if it creates more questions than it answers, it actually
drags down the strength of the communication.
(09:09):
For sure. And like with like written
stuff, like you don't always have the opportunity to answer
those questions, right. So like with that founder
specifically, like at some pointI was just like, I was asking
questions verbally in meetings and their answers were just
like, oh, that's so helpful. Now I fully understand what you
were trying to say. And like they're visionary.
They're a great speaker. Like it really was fantastic.
(09:29):
And some of them just like do like you realize, I keep asking
questions. I'm like, what does this mean?
Why do I care about this? You have to answer that in the
materials more because then at some point in the diligence
process, we'll have 1235 meetings that go deep into the
tech and whether it's using in house expertise or even
(09:50):
leveraging outside expertise like third party services to
help us. If we don't have that in house,
we'll do that at some point. But we have to get there first.
Yeah. How did you end up working with
him? So how did you end up helping
him to translate that into into the deck?
Yeah. So it first started with myself
and others on the team working through maybe call it like a
(10:13):
skeleton deck of like this is this is like what the first two
few slides should be in the takeaways, the next few slides
and the next few slides. So it's basically like, what is
the message, the story that we want to get across?
And then building the content ofthose slides afterward and
trying to leverage what we had seen previously to say, OK, this
one should go here, this should go here.
(10:34):
Ultimately they, they knew somebody that was able to make
it all look nice. So create the structure of the
story, put in the content, and then make it actually look good.
That was kind of the process. It took a while.
This is like a very short a certain version of that, but
that made it something that was valuable moving forward.
And then they kind of knew for any document they make going
(10:56):
forward, they could kind of leverage the learnings from that
to apply it to future information that's shared.
Actually, that got me thinking. All of the conversations that
you have, these can be incredibly useful data, but they
have to be captured for you to be able to use that data.
And here's an idea you may have heard of Granola AI.
(11:19):
Granola is an incredible meetingnotes app.
And no, this is not sponsored. Unlike most meeting recorders,
Granola does not join your meeting and it doesn't record
video or audio. It just gives you meeting notes
and a detailed transcript. Bonus points, you can even
directly chat with your transcript.
(11:41):
So here's my suggestion. You could use the transcript of
your investor calls to look at how you actually pitch your
company and apply your best catchphrases to your deck.
Or you can put these transcriptsinto your AI of choice to
analyze which investor objections or misunderstandings
keep happening time and time again.
(12:04):
Granola has a pretty generous free version and if you try this
out, I would love to hear from you and love to know, yeah, what
your insights and what your experience was.
You can reach me on LinkedIn at Marina Schmidt with DT.
In the end, all of my links and my e-mail is going to be in the
(12:25):
show notes alongside the link toGranola.
So in terms of adjusting the pitch to different investor
types, what would be your guideline for deciding whether
there should be different types of pitch decks for different
types of investor audiences? Yeah, it's a good question.
(12:47):
I think if the company's solution has applicability in
different industry verticals, like for instance, if someone
has a solution to speed up the amount of time that it takes to
go from R&D to pilot scale in biomanufacturing and I don't, I
don't even know what that solution would be like.
I'm just like that idea that would be applicable to companies
(13:08):
in biomanufacturing, companies creating food, using
biomanufacturing, cosmetics, chemicals, biofuels, so many
different industries. So if you're trying to raise
money from VCs and the VCs that might be specialized in some of
those industries and they might find it interesting if there's a
heavy emphasis on food, but you go to a non food investor,
(13:29):
they'll be like they might, theymight not realize how applicable
it is to them. So in those cases where the
solution could be applicable to many verticals, maybe that's a
time it makes sense to kind of emphasize the different
verticals more or less dependingon the audience.
That's probably the most obviousadjustment to make in my mind.
(13:52):
Yeah, I mean, some like a slide that would be essential, right
for every climate BC would be how does this impact CO2
emissions? Whereas for a lot of journalist
BCS, it would be like, yeah, nice.
But by now, given the the struggles of the public
narrative around climate and everything that's going on with
(14:13):
the economy, that actually may kind of make them worried or
this company is trying to justify their existence just
through being more sustainable, right?
But yeah, I think it's like a personal preference probably or
a personal case. But I find that sometimes that
little bit of personalization, if even if it's not for the
(14:33):
specific EC, but you're having like understanding what are my
archetypes of VCs that like we're trying to reach and then
maybe having like a bit of an adjustment.
And I wish there would be some kind of super easy neat solution
where you could like. The issue is then if you update
something in your general deck outline, you'll have to go in
(14:55):
and update it throughout all your versions.
I wish there would be a really neat way of managing that.
And if anyone has a solution, please do reach out to me and
tell me. My e-mail and my contact is
another show notes so I would love to find it.
That would be cool. And I mean, I will say this
happens very infrequently because like we talked to
(15:16):
hundreds, if not possibly over 1000 companies a year.
But there have been times when I'll get a pitch deck that's
tailored to synthesis capital. And there would be random notes
throughout that they very clearly said, OK, this would be
very relevant to synthesis. And then put a note in the
actual slide deck of like applicable to one of your
(15:36):
portfolio companies or to what you said you were trying to do
in an article or something like that.
And that's obviously not a scalable approach, right?
But it is very differentiating. I'm not suggesting that everyone
does that because if you have totalk to hundreds of investors
for a fundraise, it might not beworth it for many of them,
(15:59):
right? But that idea of personalization
either through the vertical of that firm that they look at or
climate or non climate, that is helpful.
Yeah, it's like the middle ground in between like over
personalizing and not personalizing at all.
That's yeah. Like funnily, you know, like a
decade ago I had a company helping scientists and like
(16:20):
professionals apply for jobs. So it's actually still operating
because we got a government contract to reposition people
into new jobs, right. And so I never was involved in
actually helping people with jobapplications.
I mean, I my team did. I was like marketing and comps
specialized, but I did learn so much through that process
(16:42):
because of course our metric would be how quickly can we
place a person into a new job and how successfully can that
process look like. The issues that a lot of them
would by default just try to spray and pray and they just
send their generic CV and a generic motivation letter to a
(17:03):
lot of different companies because it seems like it's more
effective. But it would never was like, it
never ever was like the way thatapplicants would think about it.
They'll be like, yeah, but I just get to like get the
numbers. And the answer was like, no, you
just need really relevant interviews that actually land a
(17:25):
job versus dozens of unfitting interviews that don't lead
anywhere. So I think that there might be
also the a parallel approach here.
For sure, and I mean a lot of that also comes down to like if
you get a big list of investors,it's prioritizing those
investors and saying like, who are the ones that feel like the
(17:46):
best fit, right? Forget about the if it's
technical or they're not technical or whatever your pitch
deck looks like. It's like out of a list of 100
investors, they're probably 5 to10 where it's like, man, they
feel like a perfect fit there. There is no reason now with like
where like various AI tools, whether it's like ChatGPT or
others that a founder couldn't take their deck that exists and
(18:09):
just say, I'm going to have a, I'm trying to have a meeting
with this firm. Here's their website, here's
what they say they do. Are there any areas within the
deck that I could call out that it might be directly linked to
that firm in some way? Maybe that doesn't take that
much time and effort to say liketo see make it seem really,
really personalized. Yeah, yeah.
(18:30):
And like if it's reserved for like the top, top relevant VCs
where like a personal touch can really make a difference, right.
Then maybe before we can take a step back and think about the
process of how founders tend to get in touch because you did
graciously share an analysis of the data that you collected, a
(18:51):
clear current capital. And in terms of your conversion
from like people reaching out cold being introduced or
actually being found by you. And I'm going to link the
article in the comments for everyone who wants to have a
read, but we can maybe go through like the main messages
there and. I'd also be very curious to know
(19:14):
how it would be at Synthesis because when I was at Clear
Current, I was basically doing most of the deal sourcing and
all that by myself versus we have a broader team at
Synthesis. It's a collective effort.
So whatever biases I might have that I didn't even know about,
maybe that would be offset by others on my team or maybe it
would be the exact same result. I'm not sure.
(19:35):
So yeah, so this is this is for mostly early stage companies.
And so where would you get your deal sources from?
Yeah. So I the, the three buckets were
like me reaching out to companies, me getting referrals
to talk to companies by people that I know in my network and
companies reaching out cold to me with no referral.
(19:57):
And essentially like the key take away was I seem to talk to
more or less like an even numberof companies across those 3
categories. But then when I looked at
ultimately. Where I ended up making
investments, like to your .96% of them, no investments were
made. But the ones that I did
(20:18):
ultimately pull the trigger on and make an investment in, it
was like almost 5050 split between companies that either I
reached out to proactively because I found them interesting
or ones where I got a referral from somebody in my network.
So there was literally 0% invested into companies that
reached out cold to me. And I'm sure there's a million
reasons of why that might be, but that was what the data said.
(20:40):
And I was, I was surprised by that.
And I felt like like I wasn't doing that analysis to share
with the world, but I was like, this might be helpful to to
founders. How can founders increase the
likelihood that AVC will actually proactively stumble
upon them and reach out to them?That's a good question.
I mean, that's a hard one because ultimately, like I, I
(21:03):
did and I and I still do with synthesis, we take it a thematic
investment approach where we're like in the background, we're
building out like we have thesesof what we think could work or
or not work in our respective space.
So like at the intersection of food, tech and and biotech.
And we ultimately try to like create a thesis around that,
(21:25):
right. So sometimes like the outreach
really just came from like I was, I was and am very targeted
about what I would love to see. And I am looking for that.
And then when I see that, then Ireach out right away.
Doesn't matter what stage of thecompany that they're at.
We're constantly talking to other investors or startups or
yes, we read news articles and newsletters.
(21:47):
Like I'm subscribed to probably every newsletter at the
intersection of food, tech and biotech and I read every single
one every single week. No, but I try to, right.
So if an investor's looking for a solution somewhere and there's
just a website sitting somewhereand no thought pieces, articles,
(22:08):
you never on any panels, never doing anything like that, it
will just be more difficult to find that company than if they
were doing that stuff, I guess. The key take away is there are
many ways to actually be out there and be present and it just
has to fit in terms of what the company's aiming to do, the kind
(22:30):
of investors 1 is trying to reach.
And then hopefully being on those newsletters and those
media articles and the feeds that are relevant for the
investors who are looking into the space 1 is operating in.
Right. Cool.
So maybe we can cover a little bit more how founders can make
(22:52):
sure that if they convey what they want to convey in the 1st
place, how? But do you know like a test that
founders can do to check whethertheir story does come through?
I mean, that's a good question. Like a test.
Grab a friend, grab a family member, walk them through it
with someone who actually will give you real thoughts though.
(23:15):
Like that's probably the best test because there's an almost
guaranteed likelihood that they do not know what you're working
on or understand what you're doing.
And if you walk them through it or just give them the deck
without even verbally walking them through, because that's
what how it works with most investors.
You're not immediately speaking to them if they come away and
they're like, this is super cool.
(23:36):
I have questions around this andall that, but I like it.
That's a good outcome. If they're like, I honestly have
no idea what what this is. What are you doing?
I don't know what any of this section meant or all these
slides and like exactly is the company selling or doing that's
valuable feedback. You know, if if you think of a
(23:57):
song and you tap the song, wait,let me, let me do it just just
for illustration, OK, I'm going to think of a song and I'm going
to do it. Do you know what song that was?
I don't know what song that was.Yeah, no wonder.
But like for me, it's super clear, right?
Like it was. We will.
(24:19):
We Will Rock you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Now, right now that you have my voice over to it.
And I think that's the that's the challenge.
Like, so for me, for example, ifI do decks right, I'm a
communications professional and I still need to have the
feedback from other people who are not as close to what I'm
(24:41):
trying to explain to tell me whether they get my tapping
sound because they don't have the song in their heads.
And it's impossible. Like once you have the song in
your head, it's impossible for you to hear the snipping without
having all this background context.
(25:01):
And I think it's just like a fundamental thing.
It's there's nothing wrong with founders for having to do that.
I think it's just the basis of communications that if we're ex
experts in an area, we're just struggling to convey it.
I feel like my own work, communications work for myself
as the hardest and I'm like, I need to like RIP myself out of
(25:24):
my own body and just like hire myself as a consultant.
But please, without all of that background knowledge.
Yeah, no, that's, that's, that'ssuch an interesting point.
And like what a great example. I, I feel like I'm going to use
that in the future. I, I, I love the snapping
example, but it's, it's very true where like if someone's not
in that mental state of that founder, it, it might be
(25:44):
impossible for what they're offering to resonate and get the
message across if they haven't set that audience up to be in
that same mental state. I really like that hearing that,
that would adjust. My suggestion earlier, give your
pitch deck to friends or family is maybe say here, take this and
would you invest? Obviously they're not investors.
(26:06):
They're not all VCs that I thinklike a typical VC, but if
they're going into with the mindset of like, I'm trying to
learn this story from you and with the the idea of do I want
to give you my money after work like that, that I think might be
a helpful way to frame the review.
(26:26):
So it's not just like cool or but it would be more of like a
yes, no, maybe yes because I love this and I understand it
perfectly or no because I have no idea what I'm even looking at
after going over this because itwas just a bunch of snapping.
I don't know what it meant. It actually is really impressive
(26:48):
if somebody is able to convey the importance of a solution
that is of course, still technically complex and nobody's
questioning that in a way that'ssuper accessible and just like
clicks. That's like the, it's just like,
wow, you know? Then you can nod along with the
song. Just imagine like a Steve Jobs
or a Tim Cook being on stage in front of everyone wearing their
(27:09):
black turtlenecks or whatever. It's on the stage holding an
iPhone. And then they dive into the
details of the tech. Like, would that be visionary?
Would everyone be like, whoa, I need this.
They'd be like, no, this is not helpful.
But they have the ability to know everything in detail, but
still convey the message to a broader audience and get that
(27:31):
buy in with that broader vision.Like that's hard to do.
And that's very impressive. And that's what ultimately gets,
in this case, billions of peoplebuying their product.
And the one thing that always socomes up is like having a short
deck, right? And having a long deck.
Just wondering see what you think about that because I've
(27:53):
seen founders kind of use the long deck as what in content
production we call B roll or a trash can sometimes.
No, no, this it's, it's an interesting idea and I've seen
that more and more over the years.
Like this idea. We like like a short deck or a
teaser deck. And then there's the longer deck
(28:14):
later. It's, it's not uncommon for for
me to see like teaser decks sentin like in an intro e-mail so
that it's like, it kind of gets the interest from the, the
investor by offering them something that's you're not
going to know really what's happening underneath the hood
from that. But like you understand, like
the, the So what it's basically like, just like this is the So
(28:36):
what? At a high level, I think it
makes sense to have a short or long deck, or a teaser deck and
a long deck and you just use it in the appropriate settings.
I think those are actually the three tiers.
There's like the teaser deck, which is really short, there's
the normal size deck, and then there is the B roll deck that is
(28:58):
just like, I don't know, like 100 slides or something.
I would say like I would rather,I would assume that there's so
much content in there that I would rather that be broken down
into different documents and categories within a data room.
Like afterward where like that Broll deck, 100 slide deck, like
maybe 40 slides is goes into thetech.
There should be a tech, a technical section of the data
(29:20):
room that has maybe those slidesplus a lot of other things to
back up the technology. So I don't know about 100 slide
deck. At least that's objective.
I'm one person, but that would be a lot to go through.
Yeah, I'm not condoning it. I'm actually questioning it.
The idea is behind it is like, Oh well, it's just more context
(29:42):
they can click through and then there are lots of these crazy
graphs and what we've discussed earlier, it's this idea of like,
well, we have that data anyway, so might as well maybe it's just
going to help and more is more. My intuitive approach to that is
no, more is not more because it actually can just overwhelm and
(30:04):
bring up more questions than it answers.
But in your case, you would say,well, it's because it's like
kind of in between like a pitch deck and going into due
diligence. It's kind of just like a backup
edition if anyone has questions.Yeah.
It's not my preferred approach because I even just think of it
as like I've seen that before. I don't know about 100 slides,
(30:24):
but a longer, longer decks. And like at some point, like
let's say it hits an appendix and everything in the appendix
is kind of just thrown in there because they have the data.
What I've seen is like the storytelling completely stops
and it's just like a bunch of data and slides.
But like as people, we don't want the story to stop.
We want to still understand why are you showing me this slide?
(30:45):
What is what is the point of it?Why are you showing me now
versus 3 slides from now? Like, and it just makes it
harder to keep the So what message understood?
You start to get bogged down in the details and for a founder,
like you should be storytelling at every point in the process,
(31:09):
whether it's in a verbal meetingor the data room.
Even in the data room, if there's a text section, you
could have like I've seen documents where it's like
overview of the text section. So before you go into any of
these documents, this is how we laid it out.
This is what this shows. This is what that shows like.
That's a form of storytelling ina different way.
But a deck that's 100 slides, it's like the story's going to
(31:30):
get lost. And if you think about it, is it
easier to write a book with a good story that's 10 pages or
100 pages? Probably 10 pages, because you
could just get right to the point and tell the story the way
you want. 100 is there's going to be a lot of details that
could take the reader in a different direction and mess up
the whole point, if that makes sense.
Yeah, I have this metaphor of a narrative leash.
(31:53):
So imagine like your narrative, what you want to say is a little
dog on a leash and you want the dog to be kind of close to you
because you don't want it to attack people or bark or like
run off. It should be going right
alongside where you actually want to go.
Certain formats like having a random appendix with tons of
(32:18):
additional slides, it's like letting the dog loose.
You have a very specific destination in mind.
It will just go where the hell it wants.
You don't know. You have very little control,
then over how this information is interpreted and used and
looked at. And it can actually end up
causing you trouble when you have to take care of like the
(32:40):
dog biting a little kid. You know, like a weird metaphor
that just came to me. But you want a clean, short
narrative, a tight narrative. No, I, I full alignment on that.
And yeah, you don't want to let the dog off the leash.
Yeah. Well, we kind of didn't get to
(33:02):
the design part. How important is the design,
right? Like I've even heard people say
that they think that having a very good design of their deck
is going to be seen badly like that.
It's going to be like a minus point even for VCs who are going
to be like, oh, this is so shineand no substance and that having
(33:22):
a badly designed deck is actually a great way to raise.
I literally just heard that fromsomebody like 2-2 days ago.
And it's like, I don't think that's actually the case.
Because I think even if we see say, like, I don't care at all
about design, marketing and branding in its essence wouldn't
work if like colours don't matter and typography doesn't
(33:44):
matter and like visuals don't matter, right?
That's the entire basis of of entire industries.
Yeah, I mean, whoever told you that idea that like design
doesn't matter and that if it's not done, that VCs like it more,
that it's easier to raise, I just strongly disagree.
Yeah, maybe if your tech or whatyou're building is just that
(34:07):
unbelievable. Yeah, maybe you could definitely
raise without it. It's not an absolute
requirement, but like just feelslike you're shooting yourself in
the foot to start. I can't imagine that being more
received better than something that looks a little bit nicer.
So as you move up the value chain to precede and see it
again, put in some effort, at least in my mind, like it could
just help. It couldn't hurt in my mind.
(34:29):
I But then as you get later stage Series A, series B and
beyond, you're probably a more legitimate company.
You have some capital. Find a good designer for 1002
thousand, $3000, whatever it might be.
You could easily spend 10 + 1000on this type of stuff.
But for a couple thousand, I've seen things go from like, oh, it
(34:49):
looks good to like, wow, this feels unbelievable.
Like then it's valuable because you're trying to raise, you're
not trying to raise $1,000,000 or a couple 100 grand.
You're trying to raise 1020 a $100 million like tape design
very seriously at those stages. Yes, absolutely.
And I think you know where it comes from, images from like old
(35:11):
slide decks, from Airbnb, from Uber, you know, when money was
just laying around on the San Francisco streets ready to be
grabbed. So I think like there's this
idea like, oh, I've seen these successful decks, but they are
by now so old and things have really changed in terms of the
standard and AI designers are increasing like the baseline of
(35:35):
what is expected. Canva, they're incredible
platforms like Slides Go or Slight Bean, or you can get
templates on Envato. There's so many options to get
good templates to start with. And from my experience, like
just picking a good template spends a good amount of time
(35:55):
picking a good template. Just trying to design from
scratch is so hard. Sure, but also like, are you the
next Airbnb or Google? Like maybe, hopefully, hopefully
you are, you know? Like fingers crossed, right?
The likelihood is that you are not that and it's going to be
much harder to raise. And maybe just like this is like
(36:16):
a low hanging fruit easy thing to adjust on the design side
that you shouldn't. Yeah, that's just a crazy idea.
That's a crazy idea to not take any put any effort into design.
I invite you to think of just one person.
You might be interested in some of the tips and insights shared
in this episode, but you can easily share this podcast with
(36:40):
them by clicking on the three dots next to the episode.
Thank you so so much.
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