 Hello, everybody. My name is Ajay Swamy and I am a Senior Product Leader for Amazon Web Services, specifically focusing on small and medium-sized businesses where we build solutions to help them succeed and scale and discover new competitive advantages. Thanks for joining me today. Today, I'll be talking about how to position your product for investors. Essentially, I'll be going through the framework and a sort of criteria that you should adhere to when you want to raise funding through VCs or through angels and one of some of the key things to keep in mind. So let's quickly go through the agenda. There are four key topics here. The first one is about the general macro environment today. What is the rate attrition and what is your opportunity? Why is it the right time to sort of really lean into your entrepreneurial bug and start to build something? Number two, I'll go through the framework of what investors care about in terms of your product or your venture. Number three, I'll go through a quick storyline as to what the key topics you should address in your investor deck. And by the way, this is in no means shape or form that you should follow the same exact thing, but these are the key topics you should definitely cover in your deck. And then lastly, I'll run you through a fictional example. And I actually think it's a pretty good idea that'll give you an example or actually give you a notion of how to actually pitch this to an investor. Awesome. So let's get started. Okay. So a couple of quick points here. One is this webinar is not about how you want to execute the build of your product. It's not really about agile product management either. I'm going to assume that you're here because you're interested in pitching your idea or your venture or maybe even your bootstrapped product to investors. You want to ensure that you have a framework that you can fall back upon to make sure that you're answering the right questions for your investors. And then lastly, you want to tell a compelling story that makes sense. You want to be simple but yet effective in being able to communicate the idea and the benefits of your venture to investors. Okay. So as I mentioned before, this is the first topic in the agenda. And one of the things that's happening today is what's called the great attrition. The great attrition is the notion where employees working at corporate jobs are actually leaving, apologies, let me go back here, are actually leaving their jobs to start their own thing. I looked at some of the research that was conducted by McKinsey, PWC and a few reports by CNBC and a few other news websites. And as you can see, there has been a significant increase in entrepreneurship and a record number of applications were filed to form new businesses in 2021. And these are not just digitally native businesses. These can be brick and mortar businesses or these can be franchise businesses. The second piece that is actually really worth highlighting is that venture funding has hit an all time high in 2021, which is fantastic. That means that, look, that means two things. One is VCs and investors, they're hungry for returns. The stock market has been performing very well despite the recent downturn, but still investors and VCs, they're looking to put their money in places, in new ideas where they can see an outsized return. And then lastly, the COVID pandemic, and despite the fact that we're coming out of it, it has resulted in significant or I should say permanent shifts in working culture. And what that means is that folks work from home, they might have side hustles, they might have side projects that they take on in order to actually make money on the side. And number two is that, look, people are starting to realize that independence, freedom, you know, the ability to spend time with their family is more important to them. And in fact, the study from PWC states that in the near future, at least 20% of the people are looking to quit and maybe start their own thing or maybe just look for a new opportunity. So this is the time, despite what any of the macro indicators tell you in terms of the high inflation or the economic downturn, these are the times when you should really be starting to think about taking a risk and starting something on your route. So let's dive right in, right? This particular slide is really a high-level overview on what investors care about when they sort of look at your idea or your venture. Number one, investors, they all care about big opportunities. If you're looking to make a few million dollars or if you're trying to build a franchise that by result it depends on millions of dollars, VC money is probably not the right move for you. Investors, they care about big market-sized opportunities and they want to make sure that the teams they pick and the ideas they pick, they are capable of de-risking, de-risking in terms of failure. So let's look at some of the four key elements here. So number one is industry, trends, and target customers. So when you think about pitching your idea or your product to VC, the fundamental thing you need to think about is look, what industries are you targeting? Are you a horizontal technology-based product that can apply across all industries? Or are you vertically focused in terms of fintech or healthcare? Number two, who is your customer? Who is your target customer? What do you know about them? And number three, how does this particular product or your venture fit in the grand scheme of things with an ongoing trend? So for example, we know that the payment space is drastically moving towards digital payments, right? In terms of checks, there's going to be less use of checks and cash, and that's going to be predominant going forward over the next few years. Now, if you have a product that really exploit this particular trend, VCs might be interested in that because you're going with the trend. Again, you could possibly have another product that's completely contrarian, but if you're able to show that, look, you're trying to create a new trend or you're trying to create something that's unique, you have to be able to show that and prove to your investors that this opportunity is outsized and is actually the right move. The second thing you need to sort of focus on is the problem statement. Think about simplistically what the problem you're solving for is. You should be able to narrate the problem in a way that a five-year-old can understand it and exactly how big is your problem and how does your product solve for that problem? These are the key facets that you should be talking about. Number three, you should also be thinking about why are you uniquely positioned to solve it? What is your unfair advantage? Maybe you and your founders are extremely technical product-oriented people and you know that you can build a super complex technical product. That could be your unfair advantage. You might not even need a team to actually do that, or you might not even need any sort of technical architectural help to do that. That is an unfair advantage. Maybe your other unfair advantage is the fact that, look, you're probably building this product along with partnerships that you already established. That might be a bit of a moat because other competitors might not be able to do that. That, again, is an unfair advantage. Think about what those things are and make sure you're able to communicate that effectively. Number three is what I talked about earlier, is your unfair advantage. Your team should be your unfair advantage. Your team should give VCs or investors the level of confidence that, hey, you will be able to achieve, you will be able to hit that pinnacle of success. A couple of things to highlight here is who are they? Why are they uniquely positioned to drive this venture? What is their track record? Do they have a strong execution experience? Do they have a strong operational experience? Do they have the ability to pivot if in case something happens, for example, there's a regulatory change that allows them to, that sort of stops them in their tracks, will they be able to pivot? You want to make sure that you can speak to some of those values and the strengths that the team possesses. Lastly, you want to focus on your product or the solution or even your service. Why is it that this product will be used by customers? Have you done any market research? Have you even launched an MVP? What is the initial reaction by customers? You want to be able to bubble those up and speak to those in terms of some of your early successes. Second, talk about the fact that if there is a specific technology aspect that's really unique, bring that up. If the specific algorithm that you have discovered, if there's a specific algorithm that you have coded, make sure you bubble that up and say why this is unique and why nothing out there exists in the market today. Lastly, if you have any IP protection in terms of patents or any trade secrets or how you've actually done things in terms of a unique user flow or any integrations, you should probably bring that up. These are all things that actually build moats around your business. These are the key things that industries care about. Now on to the key things that should really go in your investor deck. I've laid out all of the different slides or the topics that should go in your deck, starting with a cover page all the way through the topics to the thank you page. Again, this is not a storyline for everybody. Feel free to adapt this, but make sure that your deck addresses all of the topics that are listed on here. Let's go through those one by one. Number one is the vision. What is the vision for your startup? What is your tagline? Make sure that vision makes sense. Make sure that it's catchy. Make sure it's big. Think big. Number two, what is the problem? Why is that problem so important to you? Make sure that vision incorporates that and also make sure that your problem statement also talks to why this problem is so big and it's so key for you to solve this and how will both the vision and the way you're trying to solve for the problem, how do you sort of come together and make a difference to your customers? Make sure you elaborate on that. This is key. Number two is, look, this is really the crux of your deck. What is your product and what is your technology? Really, what are you building here and why should anybody be using it? You really sort of think through why does your product solve the problem and why does it do it well? For example, if you are trying to build a product that you're trying to build a better product for something that already exists in the market, you might want to explain why your product is more elegant and is better suited for a comparatively incumbent competitor. Number two is, what are some of the key features that your product does and why is it unique? Why does it lead to enhanced user experiences that really sort of brings joy to your customers? Lastly, talk about the key benefits. What are the benefits that come from this product or this technology? And then finally, if you're so inclined, you can also sort of draw out a competitive differentiation matrix, which I'll go through in the fictional example in the next few slides. The third piece is really about the market size. This is what VCs really care about. They don't necessarily know yet what your notional P&L is or how much money you're going to make or what your MRR or your ARRs are. None of those are really set in stone. These are all just projected numbers. But at the end of the day, the bigger the TAM, the SAM and the SOM, the better it is for you that you'll be able to sort of make a high revenue for you to build a high revenue, high growth company that can actually address the problem. So let's go through that. The TAM basically stands for the total available market. And this is basically the total market demand for your particular product or the problem that you're trying to solve for. Then comes SAM. SAM is really the serviceable available market. And basically, this is a segment of that total addressable market that you think you might really be able to target. For example, this might be a part of the market that's really within your geographical reach. For example, you might only be focused on the problem within the US or you might only be focused on a core segment of your customers. And then lastly is the SAM. SAM is the serviceable obtainable market. And really, this is the true realistic portion of the SAM that you might capture. This is basically, okay, after everything is said and done, this is really the market that I might be able to capture, taking into consideration existing competitors, regulations, new entrants, et cetera. So make sure you sort of spell that out in terms of market size. And if you need help, talk to a consultant, talk to your friends and try to figure out what the market sizing is. There's plenty of research out there that'll allow you to really sort of think through what the market size is. Number four, what is your business model? You have to be able to tell a story about how you're going to make money. What are your different revenue channels? What might be your projected monthly recurring revenue or your annual recurring revenue? How are you going to form partnerships? Is there going to be a revenue share partnership? What does your pipeline look like from a client perspective if you're a sort of a B2B startup? What is the probability that you're able to actually achieve sales or signed letters of intent or actual contracts through that pipeline and across what period? And then finally, if you already have an existing product or a SaaS business, what are your unit economics? Be extremely thorough with those numbers. You need to know your business inside and out. Number five, funding. This is the crux. You are pitching to investors, you're pitching to VCs, ask them, what are you asking for today? Are you asking for money? Okay. How much are you asking for? And then clarify how are you going to spend that money and where it's going and how are you going to grow the business? And then lastly is the team. This is really, please over index on this last piece because the team is what builds confidence for your investors, right? More of their qualifications. As I mentioned before, what is their experience, operational execution, etc. And why are the key members of this team? And this is important to actually showcase that. And then lastly, sort of end with the thank you or a call to action. So let's go through a fictional product. This was actually a deck that I built maybe a year ago. So and this might actually be a feasible idea if somebody wants to take it and run with it. But ultimately, I decided not to go with it. But here's what it is, right? This is a fictional product called Homer. And the vision really, the tagline is the future in your hand, right? And if you look at the vision, it really tells a couple of things. One is the vision is pretty broad, right? And it's pretty broad and it's impactful. It says, empower a new generation with physically responsible habits. That's pretty, that's pretty novel. And it's pretty righteous. And it's quite broad and visionary. So your vision statement should really sort of look to the future and how you sort of impacts masses. Number two, how are you going to achieve this vision, right? And that sort of goes into four bullet points. One is Homer as a digital product. It brings together a unified experience for millennials for their savings needs, whether it's their banking investing or lifestyle-based spends. It's a digital first bank with money management-driven functionality on the palm of your hands. Number two, it also allows you to invest by partnerships with robo advisors controlled all within the Homer app. And then lastly, it also gives you lifestyle-based spend opportunities based on your lifestyle and based on your interest. You're able to sort of partner, you're able to sort of get discounts and savings based on where you shop, whether it's Lululemon or whether you're into watches or sneakers, whatever the case might be, you'll be able to sort of exploit some of those savings and truly sort of cement this within for your habits and all your needs. The next couple of slides, really, I talk about the problem. Here's where I said the problem is sort of really important. You want to be as informative and make sure the problem is really broad. And here, really, I sort of go high level in terms of what the current problem is. Number one, I'm saying, look, the traditional solutions in terms of banking or investing or trading, they're broken, right? Brick and motor banks, they cannot adapt to millennials' needs. Existing digital banks, they don't provide an aggregated or a holistic functionality of spend saving and investing capabilities. Traditional brokerages, like whether it's E-Trade or Fidelity or even investing apps like Robinhood or even Public, they don't necessarily wholly understand the customer in terms of their spend habits or their savings habits or what their savings goals are for the long term. And lastly, none of these segregated apps actually truly understand that millennials need a long-term partnership. With their fiscal applications as they evolve through their lifecycle in terms of getting their first job, marriage, et cetera, et cetera, key events across their life. And then one of the other things that you want to do within your deck is actually truly tell a story. Here, I have a persona named Pedro who has recently graduated and works at Facebook. And you can see that Pedro wants to manage his finances in an easy and a smart way. He wants more help with long-term investments, but he doesn't know how to. He manages most of his life on his mobile. And I'm sure all of us do that. And it's also where there's not saving enough for retirement, good for Pedro. None of us have the foresight of 25 to think through that. Again, none of the solutions currently address that and Homer is the one that does that and uses the future in your hand through a combination of digital banking and savings, longer-term investments and personalized motion offers, all leading to savings for your future. So you can see that I've put together two things here. One is the problem set that's generally speaking about the macro in terms of how existing solutions do not provide value or enough value for millennials. And number two, I also sort of put this from the perspective of a young millennial named Pedro and how the problems that the macro problems actually affect him and how Homer might be the solution that he might embrace. So let's move to the next slide. This is again the product slide. And there's a couple of things I want to highlight. One is this gives you a view into what Homer is. Number one, on the left-hand side, it tells you, look, Homer is a super savings app. It gives you a unified experience where millennials can manage their savings needs, banking needs, investing needs, and lifestyle based opportunities, whether it's being able to shop at their preferred brands. Number two, it also gives you a bunch of product highlights. It tells you that it's a robust mobile banking platform. It's simple, it's innovative, and it has full control in terms of saving buckets, real-time balance, and spending. It also tells you that there is deep integration with the variety of investment robot advisors. There are also lifestyle opportunities, intelligent engine that allows you to spend smartly and efficiently, making into consideration any discounts that are aligned with your target demographics behaviors or brand interests. And then lastly, there's also customized learning and educational opportunities within the app, so you get to learn about investing and saving. I should start using this. And then you want to sort of augment that with the advantages. What are some of the advantages that you bring to Homer? Number one, your advantages or your unfair advantages are that you have a strong founding team with deep technical and financial markets experience. Number two, it's an intelligent, well-designed platform that is very singularly focused on millennials' behaviors and habits and it caters to savings and retirement opportunities in line with their values. Number three, it's cloud-native with best-in-class scalable technologies. Number four, it's maybe it's data-driven, it uses machine learning, maybe it uses AI to maybe predict the next move or the next best behavior or the next best action that your customer might take. And then, finally, it's secure. Everything is secure because financial data needs to be secure and that is paramount. Perspective. I also sort of highlight two things here. If you look at the box on the top left here, this is sort of what I talked about earlier in terms of a competitive matrix. Here I talked through, look, there's N26 Revolut and other digital banks, there's investment, digital investments, businesses such as Betterment, LearnVest, Twine, and there's also some of the legacy retirement products like Fidelity. And then you have Homer here. And then I compare some of the values provided by the products on the top with the functionalities on the left-hand side. And you can see that across digital banking, there's only N26 Revolut and Homer that provide the same thing. And you can see that when you look at lifestyle value-focused-based goals, Homer is the only one. Merchant-saving opportunities, Homer is the only one. Custom learning and courage in the right action, Homer is the only one. And this really sort of gives you just the breadth of information that you can sort of provide to your investors. And from an investor perspective, they can look at this and truly understand exactly how your application is differentiated. That is the key because you don't want to be duplicating anything. You want to differentiate yourselves. Number two, the bottom right-hand side is about the actual product roadmap itself. Here, I'm assuming that, look, you're raising money for a product that has not been built yet. You just have a very, very strong founding team. And look, you might have an MVP or a few sketches or a few designs, but it's not being built yet. So you're asking money to actually build this out. So here, I've sort of broken up the product roadmap into three different phases. First is the MVP phase. And it sort of talks about what the scope is in terms of the first digital banking product. And it'll be built in five months. Talks about the timing. It also talks about some of the core features. Phase two talks about, okay, how am I going to expand on this? How long is it going to take? And really, what are some of the features coming in phase two, the high-level features? And then phase three is how do you sort of induce more scale and intelligence? It talks about, again, what the timing is, and then some other features. And you can see all of these sort of add up to a year of development as you sort of build the product end-to-end. Okay, so let's move on to the next topic within the deck. And this is really the opportunity, right? This is the market size. So as I talked about before, the TAM, SAM, and SOM, TAM, the total available market, this is basically the total size of the market. And I made this number up, right? There's probably more research that goes into this. And TAM is basically around, let's assume, it's $200 billion. This comprises all millennials who are banking digitally or otherwise. Number two is the SAM, which is the serviceable available market. These are all of the millennials who have maybe digital bank accounts and a combination of savings or investment accounts, right? So you can see that this is a segmentation that actually narrows down a little bit because now I'm really focusing on people that have digital bank accounts and digital investment accounts. And then finally, you have the serviceable obtainable market, right? And this is really the portion of the SAM that can truly capture. And here I really say, look, our initial target market is going to be focused on 25 to 30-year-olds who are not married and have some combination of online banking or investment accounts. And the hope is that through Homer, we can convert them to using holistically one super app that provides them banking, saving, investing, and maybe even prefer purchasing and spend accounts. And that leads to maybe a $75 billion opportunity. So you want to be thoughtful about your market sizing and how that sort of evolves from a TAM perspective to a SAM perspective. This will really sort of tell the investors that you're thinking very broadly and you're sort of trying to solve a pretty big problem, right? $75 billion is certainly not a small number. And even if you were to maybe take a chunk of that market share of the $75 billion opportunity, that is a unicorn or a deca-corn. And that is actually quite, interesting for investors. The next aspect of the VC deck, I've sort of combined three slides here into one. So what really is your business model? How are you going to make money? So there's a couple of the key things here. Here on the left-hand side, I sort of talk about, hey, look, I'm going to have all of these partnerships with these merchants. These merchants will actually be useful for our millennial customers, right? Maybe they like to shop at Coachella or maybe they like to shop at Lululemon. It really depends, right? And through revenue sharing opportunities, there might be a channel to make money here. And you can see sort of how you sort of target all of these partnership conversations and what you want to get to at the end of the day, how you sort of break down the actual partner acquisition over quarters. Number two on the top right here, there is sort of the revenue model here in terms of the total number of users. And again, there's some assumptions here, right? This is all in the hundreds of thousands. I'm assuming in the first quarter, there will be 80,000 users, et cetera, et cetera. And the fees that we'll make is based on monthly fees, a one-time bank card fee. Again, there's going to be merchant partnership fees and commissions, maybe a retirement and investment advisory fees. And you can see that eventually you can get to a number of some sort. Again, these are all projections. A lot of these numbers really come from a lot of assumptions. So when you do actually pitch the notional PNLs, et cetera, make sure you're able to speak to what your assumptions are. And then again, these are the key pricing elements that actually get to the revenue model. Right here, I'm talking about a monthly user fee, a one-time bank card fee, merchant partnerships, and the retirement slash investment advisory partnership fees. So make sure you're very aware of the singular metrics, the singular revenue streams that sort of add up to the total. And make sure you're able to explain to that and talk to that easily. Next, we're talking about funding, right? This is why you built that deck. So you can actually build this, you can actually put this slide right up front, not the whole thing, but just the fact that, look, we are Homer and we're raising 1.5 million. Join us and help us create the next generation of physically savvy citizens. Or you could have this as one of the latest slides. And this really sort of helps the investors know how you plan to use that money and over what period of time. If you look at the product roadmap that I shared earlier, that was over a period of one year. And there's exactly how it's broken down in terms of all of the salaries for the team, the technology costs, SGNA costs, et cetera, et cetera. And it's also broken down in terms of phase one, phase two, and phase three, as per the product development costs. So there's really a true transparency in terms of how the money from the VC is going to be spent. And then it can delve into any of the details as you need to. And then lastly, right, you want to talk about the team. The team is very, very critical. Investors care about the core executive team. Maybe you might have some advisors on board. Maybe you might have some board members. But really, the executive team are the ones that are going to make a difference, right? You might want to talk about like, why is Ajay and why is maybe Gary the two key people to really sort of run this successfully? How can they actually de-arrest this venture? How can they make sure that, you know, the money is not gone to waste? How can they make sure that they can actually grow this quickly and within the timeframe of the VC investment horizon, which is five to seven years, right? So this is the kind of story that you want to tell in terms of their experience, their roles, and what they've done before. So this really is sort of the last slide. And I can't stress this, but, you know, the team, VCs invest in teams, right? VCs also invest in ideas, but technically, you know, the idea might or might not work out, but VCs truly invest in teams. So overindex on this. I think that brings us to the end. So some of the key takeaways, right? Number one, look, put yourself in their investor shoes, right? They're people too. Don't be too complex. VCs look at hundreds of ideas. They don't really know how your idea is better than the rest. That's why you should tell a story. Keep it simple. And be human, right? Be human and tell that story so they can understand it at a level where it's actually makes sense. And, you know, put yourself in their shoes. It's their capital. Why should they give you the money? Number two, know your numbers. Know your assumptions across all of your revenue projections, PNL, market sizing, et cetera. Figure out what your numbers are. Figure out what underlying assumptions you have. And make sure you're very clear and comfortable with that, right? Don't make things up. You don't want to get found out. It'll be pretty embarrassing. Number three, look, a lot of people pitch to VCs and investors, you will get rejected. And the rejection is not that they might, that your idea is bad. It might mean that it's just not the right timing. Or it might just be that that particular investor did not get your idea. So don't stop and don't get the solution. Ask for feedback, right? Ask them what you could have done better. Ask for what they did not get, right? And make sure you address that in the next iteration of your deck. And then keep improving. And with that, get building. Good luck. Start a venture. Build a product. And if you have any questions for me, please reach out to me. That's my LinkedIn profile. And you can also reach out to me on Twitter. Thank you all and have a great rest of the day.