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Welcome to Phase Three of a four-part Splitting Equity Series. If you missed it, start your journey here: Introduction - Early Startup Equity — Getting it Right before continuing on if you haven’t already, and go in order from there.

Phase One - Startup Equity - Avoiding Early Mistakes

Phase Two - How Startup Equity Works

Phase Three - Part 1 - How to Split Equity

• Part 2 - Splitting Equity Today ( ←YOU ARE HERE 😀)

• Part 3 - Splitting Equity in the Future

• Part 4 - Calculating Startup Equity Splits + FAQ

Phase Four - Equity Management

Let's continue!

Startup founders have been trying to figure out a fair equity split for the founding team since the dawn of time. Sadly, dividing equity between each co-founder tends to be one of the biggest mistakes w...

Continuing in Phase Three of a four-part Funding Series:

Phase One - Structuring a Fundraise

Phase Two - Investor Selection

Phase Three - The Pitch

• Part 1 - Anatomy of a Pitch

• Part 2 - Market Size

• Part 3 - Revenue Model

• Part 4 - Operating Model

• Part 5 - Customer Definition

• Part 6 - Customer Acquisition (←YOU ARE HERE 😀)

• Part 7 - Funding

• Part 8 - Key Pitch Assets

• Part 9 - Traction

Phase Four - Investor Outreach

Let’s dive in!

Our Customer Acquisition Slide in our pitch deck details our acquisition strategy for new customers. For many startups, defining a marketing growth strategy will be inherently linked to our customer acquisition cost for new customers and the key metrics in how we convert them.

What does a Customer Acquisition Strategy look like...

Continuing in Phase Three of a four-part Funding Series:

Phase One - Structuring a Fundraise

Phase Two - Investor Selection

Phase Three - The Pitch

• Part 1 - Anatomy of a Pitch

• Part 2 - Market Size

• Part 3 - Revenue Model

• Part 4 - Operating Model

• Part 5 - Customer Definition

• Part 6 - Customer Acquisition

• Part 7 - Funding

• Part 8 - Key Pitch Assets ( ←YOU ARE HERE 😀)

• Part 9 - Traction

Phase Four - Investor Outreach

Let's dive in!

Our investor pitch deck is just one of a handful of assets we need to have prepared for potential investors. A compelling startup pitch deck is just part of the package — if we're going to raise money and impress investors we'll need to prepare everything from our elevator pitch to our financial projections to a comprehensive...

Continuing in Phase Three of a four-part Funding Series:

Phase One - Structuring a Fundraise

Phase Two - Investor Selection

Phase Three - The Pitch

• Part 1 - Anatomy of a Pitch

• Part 2 - Market Size

• Part 3 - Revenue Model

• Part 4 - Operating Model

• Part 5 - Customer Definition

• Part 6 - Customer Acquisition

• Part 7 - Funding ( ←YOU ARE HERE 😀)

• Part 8 - Key Pitch Assets

• Part 9 - Traction

Phase Four - Investor Outreach

Welcome to part 7 of “The Pitch” — where we look at the funding ask section of our pitch deck or plan and how to get potential investors excited about our business idea.

Let’s dive in!

The real purpose of our pitch deck.

Most business plans and pitch decks are a long preamble to one question - will you fund me?

Ah, the age-old question. 🙋 It'...

Continuing in Phase Three of a four-part Funding Series:

Phase One - Structuring a Fundraise

Phase Two - Investor Selection

Phase Three - The Pitch

• Part 1 - Anatomy of a Pitch

• Part 2 - Market Size

• Part 3 - Revenue Model

• Part 4 - Operating Model

• Part 5 - Customer Definition ( ←YOU ARE HERE 😀)

• Part 6 - Customer Acquisition

• Part 7 - Funding

• Part 8 - Key Pitch Assets

• Part 9 - Traction

Phase Four - Investor Outreach

Let’s dive in!

A company in the early growth stages should concentrate its efforts on a particular segment of customers whose needs most closely match that of their best current customers and not a broad universe of prospects for expansion.

Customer segmentation works for companies that started yesterday, and mature companies as well. In the...

Continuing in Phase Three of a four-part Funding Series:

Phase One - Structuring a Fundraise

Phase Two - Investor Selection

Phase Three - The Pitch

• Part 1 - Anatomy of a Pitch

• Part 2 - Market Size

• Part 3 - Revenue Model

• Part 4 - Operating Model ( ←YOU ARE HERE 😀)

• Part 5 - Customer Definition

• Part 6 - Customer Acquisition

• Part 7 - Funding

• Part 8 - Key Pitch Assets

• Part 9 - Traction

Phase Four - Investor Outreach

Let’s dive in!

What is an operating model?

If the Revenue Model is all about the clever ways you’re going to make money, the Operating Model is all about the clever ways you’re going to manage costs and efficiencies to earn it.

Operating Models Shouldn't Be Afterthoughts

Often the Operating Model gets the least amount of love. That’s because ...

Continuing in Phase Three of a four-part Funding Series:

Phase One - Structuring a Fundraise

Phase Two - Investor Selection

Phase Three - The Pitch

• Part 1 - Anatomy of a Pitch

• Part 2 - Market Size

• Part 3 - Revenue Model ( ←YOU ARE HERE 😀)

• Part 4 - Operating Model

• Part 5 - Customer Definition

• Part 6 - Customer Acquisition

• Part 7 - Funding

• Part 8 - Key Pitch Assets

• Part 9 - Traction

Phase Four - Investor Outreach

Let’s dive in!

What is a revenue model?

Your Revenue Model is simple — how are you going to make money? More importantly, how are you going to be profitable someday? Don’t let the Silicon Valley myth of “valuable companies don’t need a revenue model” become part of your pitch. All companies need a real revenue model that can be reasonably ex...

Leadership is a popular topic these days. To become a true leader, you need a combination of skills and attributes. Some of these are inborn, to be sure. However, you can develop your leadership abilities as well.

Entrepreneurial success stories often tip a hat to the literature that supports busy business owners through the thick of the business building experience so, of course, we wanted to share books with actionable advice that aspiring entrepreneurs will find helpful on their journey to building a successful business.

Business books that have already helped millions of entrepreneurs can guide you along the way to obtaining a sustainable business, and being the best leader you can be. After all, being a great leader takes effort — and a ...

Our "How it Works" slide is where we begin explaining the mechanics of our solution in a pitch deck presentation. It's notably different than the Solution Slide of a pitch deck which sometimes confuses startup founders. We'll explain how the best pitch decks walk venture capitalists and angel investors step-by-step through their products.

How Potential Investors view the How it Works Slide

When raising money from potential investors, a successful pitch deck focuses on the needs of the audience first (read: investors). Every word in our pitch deck should be tailored to the 2 unique selling point goals they have.

Investor: "Do I understand how it works?"

In our solution slide, we explained what the product does. Now we have to begin convincing in...

Of all the slides in a pitch deck, the Market Size slide is what potential investors use as a make-or-break decision. Our "Total Addressable Market" (which is often referred to as the "TAM Slide") is how we calculate the market size of our opportunity. Yet how we present the market size slide and how we do market sizing takes a special approach.

Why do Investors Care about Market Size Slides?

The one rate-limiting factor for a startup is the total addressable market. A startup cannot scale to a size that exceeds the number of potential customers it has in an overall market. Therefore, if an investor can easily see that the total market size for our business is $50 million, then they know even if we had zero competition, we could be no more th...