 Hi, my name is Ted and as you just heard I am I'm a storyteller turned Investor so seven years ago. I took the step from building my own products and my own companies to start investing in in companies so Today I'm talking about how to pitch your company and I figured I would use my company as kind of a metaphor or story anchor for For this presentation and my company is actually a part of an even larger company. I was part of setting up eqt ventures, which is a VC but also the VC arm of of eqt and Eqt is is one of the largest private equity companies in the in the world more than 1100 people When I joined seven years ago, we were 250 people so I think it's almost like a startup journey We're on in in scaling a blitz scaling investing We're now this world's third largest tech investor combined with our growth fund and and mid-market fund and equity fund and and so forth and on the venture side we invest in Traditional tech companies like vault we're in Finland after all so I have to to plug vault where we let the series a An amazing exit to door-dash a couple of weeks ago But we also do an increasing number of deep tech investments So companies with purpose-driven founders Approaching maybe slightly larger problems that we're facing in front of us And as mentioned, I figured I would use our own pitch as sort of an anchor for this for this presentation So just like you we also have to to pitch to investors and the investors a VC fund pitches to our Various types of institutional investors sovereign wealth funds insurance companies Family family offices and stuff like that. I think the main difference is that when we raised our first fund I think we had more than 300 meetings with investors to bring in our first fund Which was 570 million euros the second fund went a bit faster because we had more track record And we had some nice exits and stuff like that, but still meetings in the I know 70 80 or so so meetings In the end we we closed the 660 million euro fund after I think six months of fundraising something like that Which I think should be considered pretty fast for such a large fundraise One big caveat here was that we closed this fund in 2019 before Covid obviously and it's interesting to see how the format of pitches Have evolved back then I would say that most presentations the really good ones were pretty visual They were designed to be enjoyed on a big screen like like this But now we present our pitch more and more via zoom So it's as if this kind of like display format idea Visual speaker support with slides like this and and the leave behind In in the venture world, that's called the private placement memorandum Would slice like this have kind of merged into a new type of presentation a new type of format Which is visual, but it's it's designed not to be enjoyed on a big screen Behind the conference table, but on your screen in front of the zoom. So that's kind of interesting With that being said here are five principles or learnings that we have iterated upon and evolved while Developing our own pitch and also seeing I know hundreds thousands not millions But at least maybe the tens of thousands of pitches from people like people like yourself The first one here is about establishing rapport So the first thing you do when you enter the room with the investor the physical room or the or the virtual room and One piece of advice here is that we're human beings, too I mean a lot of founders have rehearsed her pitch so much so they go in and they're just like come on Let me start pitching so you kind of forget the person on the other side of the table I think those first minutes in a zoom call or in a room when you I know tell a joke or Try to figure out if there is some kind of joint passions or something you you you you share You went to the same school or something. I think that's extremely Important that small talk. So even if you prepare the pitch, you know exactly what you're doing take that time So in the presentation, I think you could use the same trick So I call it three nods to lower the guard. I've heard other people refer to this as the yes slide so the idea is to start the presentation with something you agree upon and Sometimes you don't know like who is this investor on that side of the table? What do we agree upon? But there's always something I know the weather or that's something that happened yesterday's crap or or or whatever But if you use this kind of like as an anchor you nod you agree on something Then you can use that force and take the investor kind of like on a mental journey onto Deeper waters where you might not agree So in the end of the pitch the investor might have changed their mind about something that you are you're presenting and When we raised each adventures to the second fund that these three nods were about the macro climate So we started to talk about that the digital transformation is touching everything We we see and we're only in the beginning of the digital transformation So kind of like agreeing upon that everything that can be digital will be digital not very controversial It's something that everyone can can agree upon Then we anchored around talking about how hard venture capital as an asset glass is We know that a lot of investors into VC funds. They think about this So if we say it first, it's kind of as if you have like a checkbox It's as if we as investors or investment managers understand their perspective as well And then the third one was kind of dynamic So when I when I met with European investors, I was talking about how amazing European tech is when I met with Asian investors I spoke about me amazing Asian tech is and so forth So the third one was kind of kind of dynamic. So this might seem kind of weird Why are we dedicating time to talking about things we already agree on agree upon? We're here to talk about new stuff, but I think this is kind of like an important psychological anchor to take the investor or whomever you're presenting to on on a journey and a mental journey journey towards deeper water and Looking at this kind of slide view We dedicated quite some time to to this anchoring or sort of agreeing to to to agree So that's the macro chapter in this in this presentation So that's the first one three nods to lower the guard or the yes slide or have you want to you want to do it? Then the second one is also pretty obvious tell a story But there are so many pitches that we see that are just a bunch of fact glued together in a in a presentation And it's it's kind of interesting to think about how we how we think about information It's as if we group information together in a sequential order, even though there is no sequence That's just how we operate. I like this quote We are as suspicious addicted to stories even when the body goes to sleep the mind sees up all night Telling itself stories. So stories are extremely powerful and even if the story is Simplifying your product or offering or maybe even exactly what happened. I think that's fine Peace together these things into into a story with with ikit eventures. We were inspired by The hero's journey or the the monomyth, which is this archetypical story that that that we see both in these sort of holy scriptures and and in in entertainment It's interesting how similar this story is to the typical startup story It's it's a it's a hero the founder going out to to change something into into the unknown and there's often hardship There are mentors on the journey. There's transformation and then it circles back into I think it says Gift of the goddess. I know exactly what that what that means and I think this can be applied onto everything to pitch to a presentation and I Like many visual storytellers I I was pretty obsessed with Steve Jobs's way of of presenting and I I I started looking into who who crafted his his magical and very iconic Keynotes and I stumbled upon this guy who who worked with Steve Jobs at Apple But also at both next and and and Pixar His name is Wayne Goodrich and this is what he says about the story arc of Apple's keynote presentations What few people realize is that just like Pixar movies There's a color scheme throughout the 90 minutes an emotional ramp and yes There are heroes and villains action sequences humor and plot twists yet to be careful not to wear the audience out You have to manage building to a climax and Steve understood is better than anyone else So I think it like being inspired by movies and books and stuff like that Even if it's a boring pitch deck you're presenting to investors is kind like an interesting twist This is the format we used for ikid's adventures. It's kind of like a slightly like Lighter or easier or more bootstrap version of the hero's journey We talked about a premise or a goal like the point of the story protagonists obstacles Transmation and and and mentors and for ikid's adventures and this was actually not for the second fund But already for the first fund This story that we were telling is a story about how Europe is happening from a tech perspective About how Europe is now the protagonist of course being the entrepreneur the obstacles being the lack of European smart capital Could argue maybe that that changed now. There's a lot of European smart capital Transformation that this shift is happening now and and ikid's adventures as a catalyst and then the mentors of course being us and The advisors we have we have around the table Another thing I'm sure you've heard about is this start with with why you're a start with your your purpose and And and this of course is Simon Sinek who who made a very you know very famous Ted talk I think soon 15 years years ago, but it's starting to become mainstream only now, which is kind of interesting So in the beginning of the presentation don't be afraid of to talk about your ambition Especially technical people sometimes think it's scary to talk about ambition because what is an ambition and what is a lie? Or what is sort of truth from that perspective? But I think it's fine to project your ambition out into the future early on and one thing I really like in dex is when the founders have like a picture from when they when they got going on their thing and and And talk about the the moment when the idea came or the origin story or when they experienced the problem themselves or or something like that So start with why and if you haven't seen it watch this this Ted talk even though It's 12 years old crappy sound. It's still worth worth a look So looking at at the sort of layout or the the balance between slides That one is here not super prominent for us We realized that we we were communicating to so many stakeholders We decided to piece together this story or this journey Into something we call a mother story and we've got external help to do this so this is our internal mother story about how Europe is now and we We talk about how how we ourselves were one's founders and and introducing what we do and blah blah blah and it's kind of kind of good to have a document like this. This is not external So this is something we use internally and then we can take pieces and bits and stuff like that and and put into presentation Stuff like that. We spent quite some time on aligning around this So that's the second point about telling a story also obvious, but a lot of people forget about this Third one make it visual Tell it to me like I'm a smart five-year-old This is what many slides still look at especially internally at EQT where we're working with McKinsey and BCG and and stuff like that a Lot You know this I mean, this is not how human beings work. This is like a snooze snooze fest So keep it simple and I've always been inspired by by news graphics I mean, this is very American and very glitzy but if if if CNN can make something as boring as Pulse for an election interesting of course we we can too because start-up journeys are are interesting and and Engaging and for EQT ventures one and two the two fund raises we we worked a lot on a couple of visual metaphors To tell the story and and one such visual metaphor was about us having the opportunity to not just invest in seed or series A or series B, but because of our big fund in our multi-state strategy We could we could invest throughout so we use this as a visual metaphor kind of weird with it with a baseball player for European fund maybe but then we were talking about how we get three swings of the bat before we're out and this is one of those one of those Slides or visual metaphors that really stuck and I usually ask that after I present something So tell me that like the top three slides that stuck in your mind for some reason and it's usually the more visual ones It's where you don't try to cram too much into into them and this can go the other way As well so in in the first fundraise we had the very famous Make Mike Tyson quote about that everyone has a plan till they get punched in the mouth And we had this video behind it and you could see how the investors just like ah They didn't want to look just like too strong of a negative Reactions we realized after three or four presentations. We got it. We got it kill this this video because it hurts So we replaced it with With this one and then also when when choosing your visual metaphors making them a bit absurd Usually makes them makes them stick so sometimes when I present and you mean there are so many people and so many names I'm sure you may be already forgot what my name is but here it is My name is Ted Ted on a Ted talk stage with Ted dancin behind it. I'll remember so those absurd Combinations piecing stuff together often makes things makes things stick So make it visual that's the third one number four is is iterate also pretty pretty obvious But people forget about this they start creating their their deck like a week before they're pitching and of course that deck won't be Won't be good. I mean have have a deck if you're raising a serious a you have the seed deck iterate on that Dec and try to keep it up to date for For our journeys. I think for the first fund. We had more than 140 iterations of the same deck and for ventures three Two sorry we had more than 43 versions of of the same deck and back back to Apple Maybe also more for for later stage companies if you're the founder It shows if you created the presentation if you really know the slides back to Steve Jobs Apparently created his own decks which a lot of founders don't do especially around a series of B and onwards And then it's just like you're in a room with it becomes almost like a PowerPoint karaoke, which is not what this is about and Yeah, some some more some more Apple. I guess one more thing saving the best for for last in in our fund racing's This was kind of like the main menu our strategy or our four pillars We're talking about how we're purpose driven when we invest we talk about how you could ventures bring scale We have like radical support through our operating partnership And then that were data obsessed and this data obsessed piece That's when the when the investors closed down their laptops Stopped looking at their phones and really leaned in and you could really sense that this was what they had been waiting for In in our sense is that we have an internal 25-person development team developing our own AI enabled tooling for us to find good good startups for you It can be something completely different but figure out what that extra thing in the end of the presentation could could be Mother rain we would develop this in 2015. We can do all sorts of cool things with it all data sets and data sources and and stuff like stuff like this and and I think this chapter and Sort of create the story arcs. It feels like the presentation is all almost over and then you do this thing in the end I think that's very very very powerful And looking at it here. That's this that's this chapter Um, so that was one more thing. Um, here you have them the um The five commandments or observations or or learnings. So the yes slide or three nods to lower the guard Tell a story of course make it visual Don't don't start the night before you're you're you're you're pitching to your best the investor you you want because then you will fail I mean this takes time and then and then one more thing of course And speaking about one more thing of course I had to have a one more thing in this presentation as well So I figured I would I would share with you the 10 or 11 pieces of advice we give our portfolio so after we have investors in a company And when they're going out to fundraise again, this is something that we have It's kind of like our fundraising playbook if you want and this is kind of stupid for me as an investor to To sort of give away but uh, but here it is. Uh, I think they're 11 And the first one here of course is that you're always fundraising. Um build relationships early and um Preemption is the holy grail. I mean if someone some investor comes to you before you're fundraising And you get a term sheets. That is the most amazing way to get more more investors engaged in your in your fundraise Do your homework set it before uh build your story. Um Get feedback from existing investors So when you're halfway through or you have something that you like Then you force your existing investors to to uh to pretend they're new investors and and give you give you feedback Uh build your investor long list and prioritize that long list. These are the investors I want These are investors that I would accept And then you start from the start from the bottom So you practice on the long tail and then you iterate so you get feedback And the best thing here is if you practice on the long tail like the investors You don't want and you get a term sheet That's the best because then you can use that term sheet to get term sheets from your your best investors So start from the bottom and don't forget the person about the person on that side of the table as I as I spoke about early early on Then when you've done that you engage with your preferred list to the top of the list And and here we've realized that intros If if if a founder in our portfolio Wants an intro to another investor It's way better if that intro comes from another founder Because if we make the intro to another investor, it's like, yeah, what is this turd they're trying to pass us But if it comes through one of the best Performing portfolio company co's then I said, oh, holy shit. Let's put stuff aside and let's really really work on on this Some intros the entrepreneurs are way stronger than intros the other other investors Then then this one is kind of like mimicking the way tv chefs work So let's say you start engaging with with a with an investor And then you say we believe that in a couple of weeks time in two weeks time, we will hit these targets Maybe you'll really hit them And and then what you do is that you feed the investors with with reinforcing information Dropping nuggets. So they're like, oh these guys they're they're they're really delivering on what they're what they're saying I think this can be very powerful a bit harder now when when fundraising processes are so Short, but I but I still think you can do it and especially has to bring relationship build relationship with with with investors Um Number six get an early backstop term sheet know where whatever the terms are So if you have a term sheet you have a term sheet and you know VCs operates according to their in our case Monday meetings And the hottest deals are covered in the Monday meeting If you have a term sheet is if there's a company that you have like Looked at or something like that and and that company gets a term sheet That's when you zoom in and that's when that company is becoming hotter and it's interesting to see Like how information spreads from VC to VC We're in many cases the junior ranks people start trading information So if if something is considered a hot deal in one VCs Monday meeting It will spread so the next next week more and more VCs So it takes maybe three weeks if you're doing this right to be on sort of everyone's everyone's lips And you use this to create momentum and then use that momentum to get your preferred investor On the hook and you use that backstop term sheets and the nuggets dropped to uh to get on the hot list of of the VC If us funds are on the radar then this is when you go you say sorry now It's hard to travel obviously, but sorry I can't take any meetings right now because I'm in Silicon Valley and then all VCs in Europe freak out um And then number nine here I hate this one heard the VC So you're the one enforcing deadlines. You're the one saying we accept term sheets here and blah blah But don't overdo it because if you overdo it then you say I'm expecting term sheets on this date and you get no term sheets Then the fund raise is kind of over then it's not a hot deal Anymore but do enforce deadlines and be a bit strict make the VCs dance a bit And then the tenth one here is on on advisors Generally speaking if if we get an intro through an advisor And it's not like a series b or series c fundraise We're a bit like okay, but can't the ceo or the founders funders themselves Why do they do they need an advisor and then you put put that Fundraise into a different different lane a worse lane and for some reason this is not entirely true in france in france advisors has a different status And then uh number 11 the most important piece of advice here Don't put a date on the cover page goddamn it because no one likes Old milk we see this in many cases. It's um it's November it's November still it's November, but it says september on the cover page Okay, this fund has been fundraising for for for quite some time And it's just such a stupid way to to start a presentation on the first slide saying that We're not a hot company in a very subtle and stupid way. So don't don't have any dates on the on the cover page Three books, I think you should read uh designing for emotion, which is a very very short book I really like it and then this one might not be super relevant anymore But uh win bigly scott adams, you know the founder of of dillbert. He was talking about how How don't trump actually is or was uh a pretty decent storyteller and then yes, uh Cialdini's Very famous book about Influence he also has another book called called called influence and then another Resource that I think is great. This is uh a template for For a seed deck that um a vc called j12 Stock on based created luka here used to work for Ikid ventures before and he has on his first slide Uh the yes slide there as well. So I think this is a great Great great template So with that that was my 57 slides in uh 23 minutes. Thank you