FRUSTRATING PRE-SEED Startup Pitch Deck Reviews (Weekly Ep. 05)

all right Founders it is time for another pitch deck critique and review and this time we have two pitch decks and they are both extremely challenged in fact I am quite frustrated with the second Pitch deck let me tell you I've got some frustrations going on I'm going to show you how to fix it but both of these pitch decks have the same issues and we're going to learn some really deep lessons and some harsh truths in this pitch deck critique and review before we continue my name is Zed Kang seven time finding f with

two exits just to fanasy way of saying I failed a bunch of times to your benefit because I use videos like this and I do these pitch that critiques and reviews to help you avoid the catastrophic mistakes that I have made during my early phases when I've been trying to raise preed and Seed Capital I'm giving all these lessons out because I do not want you to struggle the same way that I do not to say you're not going to make mistakes but I try to minimize the damage and the time that it takes for

you to learn these lessons I literally look at dozens of pitch decks per week we at startups we help Founders raise money the team here has raised over $700 million in funding for Founders so I've seen it all and I try and give you an outside perspective to try and give you that proper approach to try and tell the story for the investor so you can communicate your idea it's tough enough as it is to raise preed funding which is what these decks are trying to do now if you are joining us from stars.com thank

you very much for your support I try and use all this material to supplement what we're doing in our accelerator community while you're here you might as well leave a like comment and subscribe if you have not done so already it is very courageous for these Founders to keep sending me their pitch decks and for me to get a little cranky because I just want these pitch decks to improve but hats off kudos to you Founders that are putting yourself out there to get this type of feedback please take it in the spirit in which

it is given it is with the utmost respect but you have to learn these lessons if you have any chance of building a startup and raising funds for it let's take a look at this first startup it's called nuraa if I'm pronouncing that wrong I apologize says helping millions of Africans improve diabetes management okay very straightforward I know where I'm going I'm going to help Africans with diabetes management now we're going to read these problem statements it says High prevalence of diabetes one and two adults in Africa has diabetes with 54% undiagnosed leading to untreated

complications and it's set to increase by 134% then you got this economic burden this bullet point here diabetes care costs expected to reach 47 billion in Africa and then inadequate management out ineffective care means preventable deaths severe complications are rampid this is not a problem statement you literally have the word problem up here at the top and then you've got three bullet points going on here and that is not a problem statement it's a problem word with three bullets we need to fix this the good news is is you've got the three bullet points that

we need to combine together for an actual problem statement all you have to do is combine these together so first off you got this is one in 22 adults in Africa I want to know what that actual number is and here's what you do I am literally going to go into chat jpt right now and I'm going to find some exact numbers to help this problem statement let's go back here and say there are 50 million adults with diabetes and then you're going to say 27 million adults are undiagnosed UD what are we solving for

the people who have diabetes or the people who have diabetes but don't know they have diabetes let's just say we're going to factor in on the 27 million that are undiagnosed so then we are going to say 27 million adults in Africa have diabetes but are undiagnosed notice how we made it simpler just by getting straight to the number leading to untreated complications that cost Africa $47 billion to treat because there is outdated ineffective care you see how all these points can come together in a solid problem statement 27 million Africans have diabetes yet are

undiagnosed leading to complications that cost $47 billion because of outdated and ineffective care I'm doing this right on the fly but let's test it out but if you're an investor and I pitched you and I said did you know there are 27 million adult Africans with undiagnosed diabetes that left untreated lead to $47 billion in cost to the healthcare system in Africa because there are outdated systems and ineffective treatments that could easily be solved and prevent deaths how much stronger is that pitch than looking at this slide right here where I just see problem and

then I have to read all these different bullet points so what's good about this startup and these Founders what they did is they found the size scope and severity of the problem they just put it in three separate bullets that you don't have to that could have been Consolidated into one effective problem statement now this is pretty common for the majority of pitch Decks that I see I see a lot of bullet points and not one overarching statement that really communicates the problem and captures the attention of the investor now let's look at the solution

we've got the same issue here we got three bullet points and we don't have an overarching statement but we can get there and we don't even have to read these bullet points we can say continuous monitoring personalized plans and preventive care so the problem is if there are 27 million undiagnosed Africans with diabetes that are causing all this damage $47 billion of damage when there's ineffective care we can say we offer continuous monitoring personalized plans and preventative care for those Africans so that they do not cost the Health Care system that amount of money that's

just off the top of my head let's Workshop this a little more what if we said up here neuropa is an app that helps with early detection of diabetes through continuous monitoring and creates personalized plans for preventative care on top of which you can make it 10x solution you could say at the fraction of the cost and the time that it would take to treat diabetes if it was undiagnosed and causing unexpected consequences such as health care risk and costs you see how I did it all I did was take the points from the problem

statement and I reverse engineered and I solve them one by one by using all the points of the solution statement you can bring them together into cohesive sentences and you just keep working it down using your logic and improve moving it just a little bit more every single time now I fully realize I did this on the Fly and I look at pitch decks all day so this kind of happens a second nature Founders you're not going to be able to do that that's the reason you want to write it down use tools like chat

GPT and keep iterating and then get it tested and talk to other people and say what do you think about this is it getting better I always say Founders should only be responsible for 50% of their pitch deck meaning that you should be collaborating with someone else and using them as full length mirrors to bounce off your problem statements that's how you boil things down and you make sure your pitch deck makes sense now let's continue and I'm going to be very brief with the rest of this pitch deck because 80% of the work has

to do with problem and solution the next slide that you should actually have here is Market you should not be putting traction as the third slide why you don't have enough traction if your traction is impressive sure move it up but this is not traction that is impressive it is pre-c traction and I get it you're not going to have that traction but if you are going to put this slide together and put the traction there let's look at these bullet points our app is fully developed and ready for initial user testing that's good progress

weight lless strong Demand with a weightless already exceeding capacity that's just your opinion this looks like a complete hyperbolic statement strong demand how do you know how are you going to prove strong demand how do you know that your weight list is already exceeding capacity that makes no sense to me how does a weight list exceed capacity because a weight list keeps going on and on and on what you should be doing is explaining the percentage growth of your weight list and you should be going and showing the growth of your weight list in terms

of how many people are being added so you can show Traction in the marketplace if you really have this much strong demand exceeding capacity well your growth graph should show it you should be able to show it instead of saying it in these words Partnerships secured six deals with Nationwide pharmacies for seamless medication delivery but if you got some logos that would be extremely helpful here and testing Labs partner with Nationwide Testing Lab to ensure reliable efficient diagnosis give me names give me social proof that's what you want to put in this type of traction

slide if you had these numbers and you had really strong traction maybe move it up but right now it should be moved near the end if not the end right before your ask how it works this seems pretty straightforward I'm not going to make comments on that other than then make it simpler in here is that sections like this the app analyzes using machine learning I don't know what that means and then you've got other inside language in here Advanced cgms for realtime glucose tracking I don't know what that is just say it tracks all

the signals for diabetes make it simple Market size this is where I'm going to give you Kudos you actually did a bottomup market slide analysis you said assuming the average subscription cross is $75 and then you got 24 million Africa and you got 73 million in the Middle East I finally know what Mina stands for as you spell it out and then you've got your Tam how many people times $75 and you got to these numbers good for you bottom up analysis now the next thing you're going to have to prove is you battled tested

your assumptions are people actually going to pay $75 well hopefully you got your team that has given you validation that way competition analysis right here you've got a matrix let me explain what you put down the column and across the top is so important so now I've got traditional Healthcare that makes sense and you got pharmacies okay Public Health Nos and neur the problem I have is that you are assuming that there are no other apps or no other services that are trying to solve this the way that you are you are looking at competition

that is so far different than you I don't necessarily believe that this is the only competition that you've got what I do appreciate is you're showing how people treat it right now so this might not be a competition slide this might be a why now slide or it might be something like the state of what is going on how individuals are solving the problem this might even be a market analysis slide in terms of why now why us what's different and if you do it that way then this makes sense but if you do it

the other way make sure you include competitors that are close to you I'm pretty sure other companies are trying to solve this other apps other websites and other services unless you stumble over the secret that everybody else has been ignoring I don't believe this is your only competition you have your Revenue model this is how you make money very straightforward I appreciate the Simplicity we're going to charge $4 to $150 a month depending there's a wellness program and there's distribution okay I got this now we've got the team and we're missing some really important information

there are absolutely no bullets to explain the domain expertise how have you worked on the product before how do we know that you are the experts how do we know you've all worked together it looks like some extremely important people but you're going to have to put more information in Meet the team to help us understand what's going on if you have a chief medical officer well what are they a chief medical officer of what qualifies them to do that procurement and Regulatory Affairs that's a really fancy title you're not packing it up with enough

information for us to believe that this team is truly together and this team is the one that can be trusted with the investment and I'm not saying your team isn't any good I just don't know you could have the best Nobel prize winning Olympian team out there I don't know until you tell me then you have the ask we are asking for 500k to improve the product finalize distribution channels protect our IP and fill our weight list in the next 18 months all right pretty good this is an ask that includes the amount of money

that you're asking for to achieve the milestones in a specific time frame and then you have your use of funds over here and then we get to the contact slide now let me explain to you the biggest missing piece of this deck I have no idea how your app works in the sense of exactly how is it different how is it coded if you said you have an app that's ready to go you didn't mention the app anywhere you didn't show me you didn't explain to me how the app is laid out now I don't

need a ton of details I just need to know your app is going to do what you say it's going to do let's go back and review I created a problem statement for the pitch check that might not even be the problem statement but I just started making it up based upon the information that I see the fact that I even got there and I need to create a problem statement is the big issue and the major weakness of this deck you didn't Define it for me and I had to make it up in my

mind if you make the investors do the work and they have to fill in the vacuum of information then they are not going to invest in you it is not their job to be the expert and it's not their job to interpret your pitch Tech it is your job to be the expert and create a pitch Tech that they understand right there on the spot so I bet you if you took your deck and you took this feedback and you showed other people and you said what do you think about Ed's feedback they would completely

agree with you that we are missing information and they would agree with you on my improvements you need to go back and rework this story and explain it straightforward that everybody understands and fill in the gaps of missing information because when I see gaps of missing information I think Founders are lying or they're hiding the truth and you don't want to be in that situation when I see hyperbolic statements such as we have strong demand and we exceeded demand and we're Beyond capacity I believe you're lying or that you're hiding the truth so be very

straightforward and get this information in there and rework this deck and you'll be fine I wish you luck in the future now we're going to get to the deck that is frustrating me to no end and I say this with all the respect in the world hoping that I ring these Founders Bells enough that they actually sit down and they create a better pitch teack or rework their business model so they can create a pitch teack that works this is party now I'm pretty sure this is like the fourth version of this deck that I've

seen we're going to start right here and it says Marketplace that lets groups ride a party bus on demand I want you all to remember this because this is the tagline I'm expecting us to go in that direction and immediately you're going to see where it does not work and it creates more confusion here's the problem statement party bus providers offer their service as rentals to all customers resulting in complex booking inefficient economics limited availability we're going to go back to the cover and it says a Marketplace that lets group ride a party bus on

demand if I'm seeing Market Place this is where people who want to rent party buses can come and find a party bus that's what a Marketplace is so as a customer I'm expecting to come to a Marketplace and get access to a party bus now our problem starts right away with the party bus provider now we've got a gap and this Gap is going to get wider and wider are we solving for the bus provider or are we solving for the customer start thinking about these questions because immediately I've got complex booking that is a

problem that the customer is going to face the customer does not want complex booking and it says so right here customers manually contact providers weeks in advance for service let's make this problem a problem B is there's inefficient economics three-hour minimum for 15minute trip leads to high cost for customers I'm paying way too much because it's a three-hour minimum for a 15-minute trip so wait a second if I want to go 15 minutes I got to pay for a 3-hour minimum and this doesn't make sense what does it mean inefficient economics you just want to

put high prices but now you're adding limited earnings for providers then you have limited availability most groups have to split into multiple boring Vehicles what you have to do is start talking about this problem from the customer perspective all you have to do is say x amount of people want to rent a party bus but it's too complex too expensive because they're paying for three-hour minimums when it's only 15 minutes and there's such limited availability that a lot of times they have to split into multiple Vehicles you see how we have the same problem as

the other diabetes pitch deck we've got multiple bullet points that should be Consolidated in one statement let me say this one more time let's say that there are 40 million people who would rent a party bus but they don't because the booking is too complex it's too expensive for the time that they need and there's always limited availability so now we got the solution that says it's an app where party bus providers offer their service on demand to all customers enabling streamline booking again for the customer efficient economics and unlimited availability I appreciate you've addressed

the problem Point by point in the solution all you have to say is take this out and say we have an app where customers can book party buses using a streamline booking process get good rates for what they want to pay for and get access to unlimited availability let me focus on one point right here as an investor you are telling me unlimited availability I'm going to say I don't believe you but I'm going to also say if you solve this problem in a unique and novel way then I'm going to believe you and I'm

going to give you lots of points because you surprise me because this seems like a problem that cannot be solved how do you solve for unlimited availability when you're using a finite number of Party Bus providers let's continue to explore we got Market validation at.com fa.com I don't know what that is has a million total customers so what what does this actually mean I don't even know what this website is Charter up.com is number two on the Inc 5000 USA 23's fastest growing private company for what this means nothing this doesn't validate anything this slide

needs to leave and you need to get better Market validation and explain how many potential customers are out there how much they could pay and how much money you could be making tell me how big this Market is tell me that is a market worthwhile for investment then you've got this product page explains how it works let's look at this customers book a ride okay I'm going to enter where I want to go my pickup drop off location Etc there's QR checking customers scan the QR code on the bus to pay for themselves and up

to 20 friends and then enjoy the ride you see what I'm missing here how do you get unlimited availability I don't understand how this works with the party bus rental providers if you're saying there's a Marketplace how does the marketplace work and missing this information I'm starting to not believe that this is a solution that will actually work this sounds like just a really great idea that you've come up with but it hasn't been validated and so I'm not having confidence in this pitch at all then we have the 98 billion Transportation worldwide Market this

is a top- down analysis this is not bottom up that is not the market that I'm looking for 6 billion ride share that's not your Market you're renting out for party buses ride share is everything it's the Ubers people going to work all sorts of driving ride share goes in here and you got 1 billion ride share of young adults that's not for party buses again that's all a ride share this is not your Market redo this slide recalculate we take 20% of each ride total customers 50 million customers average $20 each customer 5 million

total rides $200 each and then 1 billion in Revenue projected by 2034 you're telling me in 10 years you're going to make 1 billion in Revenue but let's get to these next slides you say you're going to launch in Los Angeles this map of Los Angeles means nothing to me how does this actually work how are you going to get inventory there's so many questions that you are not answering next adoption strategy this is go to market Greek life University ambassadors what's the Greek life inside information I do not know you got discounts Etc is

this like sorority life is that what I'm looking at Partnerships with influencers and content creators okay that's a strategy I can get behind event SEO this is just standard go to market strategy stuff you haven't shown me any insights of how this might work and then we have our two Founders it looks like I've got two young guys who understand the industry they're driver at one of these competitors or one of these Market validating companies and you seem like you understand the party scene this is where I'm going to stop this review and I want

to talk to the founders if the rest of my YouTube audience has checked out by this point in time so be it let me talk to you two Founders stop trying to make your startup be bigger than what it is I want you to figure out how to solve one problem and do it really well using technology to me you're spending way too much time thinking and dreaming about startup glory and how big it's going to be and making a billion dollars forget all of that take it out of your mind and boil it down

and say what is one problem that our users the people that we know that we have founder market fit with that we understand the industry what's the one problem they have and how can we go solve it so if you came to me and you say Ed we studied our market and our personal experience we wanted to get a party bus and we had to overpay wasn't available and the booking was terrible for a group of 20 then what I want you to do is tell me how you can make one group of 20 happy

make one customer happy get them to pay you $1 that's metaphorical find out if they'll pay you for it and then go from there you don't even have to build an app go and get a party bus rental provider and say we're going to bring you groups of 20 if you make yourself available and you figure out a way to get party bus rental providers using up their inventory and making extra money maybe it's off hours maybe there's a certain way that you book maybe you prepay them and you get a credit with them and

because they have the money they're going to be available on demand I don't know how you're going to solve the problem because it seems like a really difficult problem when you've got a party bus driver or a party bus operator and you've got all these people that want to book this time there's a reason they charge for 3 hours when you just want a 15-minute ride go and prove to me you understand how to solve the problem in a unique way and your solution actually works because right now your deck is saying all these hyperbolic

things and I don't believe you you seem like two enthusiastic guys but right now you're playing as Founders you're just of Faking being a Founder go do something about it Go and actually act like a Founder solve a problem do the work and then tell investors about that work instead of sending me Pitch decks over and over again and I know I'm sounding harsh but if you are the type of founder that's going to be successful you're going to listen to my words and you're going to go make it happen and I hope you prove

me wrong I hope 10 years from now I see you on the cover of some big magazine and you say that Ed he treat us like a jerk on his YouTube video but he pushed us and we did something about it and now we are billionaires I really sincerely hope that happens because everybody has a better than 0% chance of making their dreams come true and that's what I want to represent I want to represent hope and I want to give you advice that you're probably not getting in other places go and put in the

work that's it for this set of pitch tech reviews I apologize if I got a little too intense and a little too cranky I assure you I have complete respect for all you Founders that send me your pitch decks but as I always say you'd rather a face PL fall flat on your face and experience the consequences where working with me giving you feedback then having to go through this with investors you only get one shot with those investors so make sure you make it count if you're founder out there and you have a pitch

deck and you want your own critique and review I want you to leave a comment I want you to tell me what type of venture that you're going to be sending me I don't have a lot of time to these pit check critiques and reviews if you're noticing the frequency is starting to go down because I got so much workload I'm going to try to get to them so we have a process to determine which pitch checks we select I appreciate everybody your support leave some comments for these Founders hopefully it's encouraging and I'd love

to know what you think I'll see you in the next video