How To Build an Effective Fundraising Pitch Deck
There's no universal approach to great pitch decks, but there are key elements. We break those down and include example slides from portfolio companies.
Elena Verna drew from her experience at Dropbox, Miro, Amplitude, SurveyMonkey and more in this product-led growth presentation to BCV portfolio companies.
When we asked our portfolio companies for webinar guest ideas, one of the most requested was product-led growth master Elena Verna — and so we made that happen!
Elena is the interim head of growth and data at Dropbox and a partner at 20VC, and her career also includes experience at Miro, Amplitude, SurveyMonkey and many more startups. She’s also a program creator and partner at Reforge, and she drew from those learning materials for her webinar on her perspective on what she considers the B2B growth standard, based on PLG.
We’ve also collected some key takeaways below.
Historically B2B companies relied on sales and marketing to drive growth. In today’s landscape, however, where marketing channels are highly competitive and saturated with redundant messaging, and enterprise buyers want to see value before purchasing, this strategy is becoming less and less effective. PLG pushes product teams to take accountability over growth levers in acquisition, activation, engagement and monetization, delivering customer-centric, self-serve end-user experiences that sell themselves. Marketing and Sales still play critical roles in the growth model accountability, but so does the Product team.
A growth loop is a closed system designed to ensure every input goes through a series of predefined steps to generate an output that can be reinvested into input. A flywheel of sorts. A funnel, on the other hand, is a linear process that starts with acquiring customers and ends with them making a purchase. The fastest growing companies implement loops and drive growth to build predictable and sustainable businesses. Funnels at best are a fuel to ignite the loops, but not as the primary method of growing.
The three motions of what Elena calls the “Motions x Levers” growth model are product-led, marketing-led and sales-led.
The three levers of this model are:
To be successful, your growth model should evolve across all three motions by three levers.
You can find more of Elena’s writing and work on her website.
There's no universal approach to great pitch decks, but there are key elements. We break those down and include example slides from portfolio companies.
An early-stage startup’s success or failure is contingent on its go-to-market approach.
We’ll explore how to deliver a magic experience for customers early in your technical product’s life cycle, which is crucial for scalable traction.