Laoshi’s $570K deck • TechCrunch

largely A breakdown of our pitches to date (here’s a quick list of the 30+ we’ve published so far) is typically for multi-million, tens of million, and sometimes hundreds of million dollar institutional rounds. It is intended for

Of course they are interesting to watch, but we also know that many of you are much earlier in your journey. I was looking for a good example of an angel deck to share with you, and I found it in Laoshi’s Angel Deck. The language learning app has raised $570,000 with a cap of $5 million.

The deck isn’t fancy and it’s not perfect, but the company claims it succeeded, so let’s see what got it right and what could be improved.

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slides for this deck

Laoshi’s deck consists of 11 main slides and 4 appendix slides.

1. cover slide
2. problem slide
3. market slide
4. Solution slide
5. competition slides
6. Roadmap slide
7. team slide
8. teacher growth slide
9. teacher holding slide
10. Summary slide
11. “Contact Us” slide
12. Appendix cover slide
13. Appendix I: Viral Impact Slides
14. Appendix II: Business Model Slides
15. Appendix III: “Question” Slides

3 things to love

The decks are sparse, simple, and fairly fresh — a lot of the early decks don’t seem very woven with story, and try to cram too much information (that doesn’t really matter) into the deck. . slide.

The most important thing to remember about Angel Deck is that investors know they are in the business of high risk investing. So make it clear why your company is a good bet, that you have a path to solving a real problem and capturing a huge market, and that you have the team to pull it off.

Team slides are A+

It is often said that early stage companies need hackers, hustlers and hipsters (H³) Build a great founding team. A hacker is someone who has the technical know-how to build the first few versions of a product. A hustler is someone who sells and invests and understands how the market works for this company. A fashion conscious person is someone who can combine designs so that the product looks fresh and cool and is easy to use.

I’m not sure I agree 100% with H.³ Founding team building ethos — having the right deep domain knowledge and motivation (often described as “founder market fit”) is far more important, Also Building a great startup requires a wide range of skills. H accepts³ It’s often a good template for a quick checkout of your team’s skill set and determining if there are any major gaps in your team.

This team slide does two things. It shows that the team is international and distributed. It is diverse and experienced. And we manage in the bottom box to show that the team has market-related experience. Now I still need the narration to find:

• How did the team meet?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of each team member?
• What is your team missing?
• What makes this team able to deliver in a way no one else can?
• What are your current hiring plans for funding?

But as a base-level team slide, this ticks a lot of boxes. But what it doesn’t show is past success in startups, and I’d like to dig a little deeper into that as well. Basically, just stick the Stanford and Tesla logos on the bottom of your photo and you’re done in one day.

What you can learn from this slide as a startup is that your team’s slide should be there with the most important slide and make it count. Tell your story and why your team bets on you Use it to convince yourself that you are part of the

good summary slide

Summary slides are a great way to attract investor interest. I would recommend putting this slide at the beginning of the deck instead of the end. This is very useful for correcting company progress and time stages. Yes, this company is small and on its feet, but it also shows that it’s making real, measurable progress.

as important as the number itself Which A number measured by a company. Displays monthly and daily active users (MAU/DAU). This is a key metric to see how sticky your app is.indicates the number of teachers When The amount of time they stay on the platform also speaks to the stickiness and reach of the company. We are talking about active user engagement. This shows that people are actively using the app.

To get a perfect score, I’d like to see these numbers as graphs, not just matching numbers. Having over 200 paying subscribers is great. This is impressive for a pre-funding company. The earnings numbers are probably very small, but it’s also important to see those graphs. If you don’t put it on the slide, investors will question why and go for it anyway. You can even skip that conversation and provide what you need right away.

As a startup, what you can learn from this slide is to be deeply aware of the metrics that help build and deliver your business.

Business model front and center

I have to say, I don’t like the dark gray on light gray design and I’m curious that this is in the appendix and not the core deck.As an investor I think this will be one of the most important slides . I would also like to see the current state of the business. For example, if a company says their TAC (tutor acquisition cost) is $50, what do they actually see as TAC right now?Assuming each tutor he has 5 students, How is it actually displayed?

That being said, these numbers are very important in conversations with investors. Basically, you show how you think about your business and your market, and that you understand the levers of your business. In other words, what if all tutors had 10 students instead of 5? What if it cost $100 instead of $50 to get all the tutors? Put it all into your model and run experiments to increase your confidence in your model so you can build a numerical picture of your business. You can go a long way.

For the rest of this teardown, we’ll look at three things Laoshi could have improved or done differently, as well as the company’s full pitch deck.