What Part of Team Did You Miss?
Team Slide into home base a hero, not a zero.
Once Upon a Pitch Problem #7
You secure a triple PhD, a former Presidential appointee, an Olympian, and a retired Fortune 100 CEO to advise your startup. Your Team Slide glows in the halo of this who’s who of accomplished people with sparkling Ivy League degrees, twinkling Forbes’ accolades and shiny medals. As you click to that showstopper, you turn to your audience, pausing to watch the gravitas of this team endorsing your business wash over the investors. Holding your breath, you wait for the wide-eyed and gleeful “ohs” and “ahs” that the investors are sure to exclaim. Instead, they glance at it and wait for you to move onto the next slide. A whole lotta of nada.
Solutions
All that glitters is not gold. Whether you fundamentally understand how to build a startup is communicated loudly on the Team Slide. Even if you had the investors leaning in prior to that slide, they are now leaning out because you communicated you do not know how to build a startup. You chose famous over tactical. If you are launching an e-commerce site, for example, you need experts in that function and former Presidential appointees are not known for digital shopping cart abandonment recovery strategies. A faceless, generic [E-Commerce Expert] placeholder is a vast improvement. If you are intending to sell the product in complex B2B sales, [Experienced B2B Salesperson] better be on that Team Slide, not three academic doctorate degrees. Leadership communicates strategy and the Team Slide reflects the founder’s leadership. A Team Slide that only has you and a couple of [strategic placeholders] demonstrates you understand what you are building, who it will take to build it and how you are in motion against these needs. Although not glittering, that [placeholder] Team Slide tells the story investors need to hear.
“Until finally . . ..” There is no “Until finally . . .” or “And ever since that day . . .” to your story if you do not deliver the product to your customers. The team is responsible for that delivery which means they must be experienced and blessed with a startup temperament. No former Fortune 100 CEO is waiting on hold with the company’s Internet service provider because the website is down. Investors bet on the team managing the day-to-day. Move these advisors to the bottom of the Team Slide, underneath the people managing key company functions, and then you can revel in the glory of those “ohs” and “ahs” when investors see legitimate heavyweights supporting a qualified delivery team.
Every minute counts. Investors can immediately sense whether the idea and the founder are the real deal. This Team Slide invites the investor quick exit. The math underpinning the time management alone displays questionable judgment: 4 people x 3 meetings each to secure the endorsement x 60 minutes per meeting = 12 hours or 1.5 workdays (assuming 8 hours/5 day workweek) then tack on another 8 hours for pre-meetings preparation and approvals for use of those names and images, you end up with 50% of a workweek wasted on tasks unrelated to either the customer problem or the business solution. Not a good look plus it begs the question why wasn’t that time spent finding key employees instead? The level of the founder’s decision-making skills are reflected in the pitch deck. Make sure the Team Slide gives investors confidence in yours, not an easy way out.
What They Said
The biography is where a lot of people get it wrong. Many people will write generic bullet points with each person’s achievements. Some write long bios that have little to do with how their skills and achievements apply to the business. Our research shows that the average Team slide in a pre-seed deck has 80 words (compared to the 50-word average on most other slides). This would explain why investors spend 15% of their time on this slide — and it should reinforce the importance of making a concerted effort here.
One of the most common mistakes founders make in their startup pitch decks is viewing the Team slide as a check box. Just don’t do this. It’s an important way for investors to get to know who they have the opportunity of working with. And it’s a simple way to put in a little more effort in order to stand out from the crowd. - Katy Jensen, “In your startup pitch deck, you need to get the team slide right,” Founder Advice on Dropbox DocSend, May 28, 2020.
See You on the Track
Rafferty Jackson
Author The First Principles Pitch, startup storyteller, board member, advisor and investor. Once Upon a Pitch is a weekly newsletter looking at one business pitch problem and offering storytelling solutions to help solve that problem.