I have to pitch next Tuesday, and I need your help

By Philipp Reinking

January 26, 2018

Hey Indiehackers,

on next Tuesday I have to pitch my project to a few people to get into an accelerator program.

I've never pitched before and
I've never made a pitch deck.

Would appreciate any advice and/or feedback on my current pitch deck.

https://de.slideshare.net/secret/hGvG5RBjhz8EK6

Thanks
Philipp

Philipp Reinking

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with your personal background slide first I'd expect to hear some really compelling stories that make me want to keep listening to you.
is the upside down first quotation marks a cultural thing? I've never seen it before and it's distracting. I don't think you even need quotation marks at all.

you listed two problems and one solution that only solves one problem. the solution should also address the second problem. like "a construction kit for simple chatbots that work on any platform"
okay so maybe this is just me, but a "chat" bot that only accepts pre-written button inputs isn't a chat bot. I mean, chat bots are already dramatically overrated, but this sounds like it's just a visual phone tree, or a standard menu that you only get to browse one option at a time.

"make conversational experiences a must have tool in any marketing effort" is not a vision. "make the world a better place" is a vision.

on the technology slide, the "no commitment to existing chat platforms" is good, the rest are bad. nobody cares HOW the thing works they care about WHAT it can do for them.

on the target customer slide, have you actually talked to any customers yet? if not, why are you so sure this is a solution to a real problem? I know there are other chat bot creation tools out there. why does your new one need to exist? Who exactly is going to pay for it tomorrow, preferably before it even exists because they're so excited about having a painful problem solved?

on the competition slide, it would be good to add some notes on why the existing options are inadequate. you can probably remove the "with AI/without AI distinction. Nobody cares how it works. What's the number one flaw or limitation in each of these alternatives that prevents them from solving the problem you're solving? Or, if you're solving the same problem, why will your solution get any traction?

on the marketing & sales slide, if you're the guy building the tech, how are you going to make marketing work? Are you going to do it? Is someone else going to do it? How do the existing chat bot creators do it?

milestones: when are you going to have 1 paying customer? 10 paying customers?

Okay, so, something that's missing from the presentation is WHY will anyone spend the time to learn this and WHY will anyone pay to upgrade to more features? For example, you might say that the people you talked to need chat bots to handle customer support cheaply, but they can't afford to hire someone to build a chat bot, so they will build it themselves if they have a simple, friendly tool. Then when it's working for them they'll need to get data out so they'll upgrade. Something like that, but that's guesswork.

After thinking on it for a moment, I'm worried that your model might trap you into zero revenue. If your tool ONLY makes the most limited kind of chat bot, and users ONLY pay when they need more data, you might find the few good customers leaving your platform for a different service, figuring if they're going to pay they might as well get more functionality. How would you set my mind at ease? Maybe as the expert you can say that you're targeting websites that sell one or two things so they'll never need a full-function chat bot but they will want more data when their niche product is successful. Something like that.

Matt Maier

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9 years ago
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  Hey Matt,
  
  thank you very much for your extensive response!
  
  You’re right with the solution tackling only the first problem. I will change that.
  
  I see it that way. The „chatbot“ is a really old idea and technology. Many chatbots used to work only with a very limited amount of commands, thinking of old text adventure games as an example here. And many modern chatbots, like in Slack or Telegram, still work like this. Simply by issuing special commands that the bot understands. Does it make it less a chatbot if I show the user the possible commands and let him click on it? I understand that in a world with the rise of voice assistants this may sound stupid. But this is also the thing why I do it because in that way it is stupid simple to understand for a user who interacts with it. That is conversational UI 🤘
  
  I changed the vision to „Make chatbots a useable/accessible tool for everyone.“ Do you think that is better?
  
  The technology slide is indeed a slide which I had problems. I somehow can not imagine what information would be interesting for a potential investor. Since I apply only for an accelerator, I thought that it would be interesting for them to know HOW it just works right now.
  
  I have talked to a lot of people, and everybody says that existing tools are complicated and they need the help of a developer. Also, there are tools like Drift, which show that there is a market for small and medium-sized companies. I exclude big companies here because I think that such companies will need more comprehensive solutions.
  
  The distinction between „with AI / without AI“ feels at least at the „simplicity“ level vital to me. I want to make the chatbot creation much easier. By throwing out AI, this is going to be technically manageable, but also more understandable by the people who want to build a chatbot. I will rework that slide to make it more obvious.
  
  Marketing: Yes, I will do it myself! Also, on that slide, I will explain why I think the chosen channels are relevant. Education is certainly wanted because conversational UI is a new thing. People need ideas and case studies how they can improve their marketing with conversations.
  
  Milestones: I even thought of just letting the customer thing out. That’s just assumptions that don’t help anybody. It may be a better target to have talked to at least 100 customers by the end of 2018.
  
  So you think I should highlight the specific features I plan to make only available in the paid plan? That is something I would talk about during my presentation on the marketing slide. I will give a few examples of the features which you can see in the screenshot of the plans. There will be things like branding options, more response options (like an email validation) and webhooks. This are definitely things needed to make use cases like a lead form possible. That, of course, are things I found out after talking with some potential customers, so I know there are people willing to pay for it.
  
  I read your response multiple times now and hope I have not missed anything. 😆
  
  Thanks again 💯
  
  Cheers
  Phil
  Philipp Reinking
  
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  9 years ago
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  1. 1
    
    Awesomesauce. There's a lot of nuance and randomness to pitching. Since you've only got a tiny window, if you do one thing well there will always be someone who thinks you should have done another thing instead. One general piece of advice is that a pitch either lands or it doesn't. If your pitch isn't landing, you should be very aggressive about changing it until it does land. Change everything. There's no value in a pitch that sort of lands. It's not worth tweaking. Instead, throw it out and rewrite it.
    
    Matt Maier
    
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    9 years ago
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Hey there, I'll share some of my thoughts, but before I do, I want to wish you good luck! I'm not good at providing short feedback, so I apologize for the length.
- I'd move your "About me" slide until later. There isn't anything on there that makes me say, "Holy crap I need to hear what he's got to say," so I wouldn't lead with it. Do any of the companies listed in your past relate to the work you're doing with Botreach?
- After reviewing the deck, I don't feel like I know why this is going to be huge. Is it because there's a very specific target audience with a big problem? Something like, "14 million marketers will build their first chatbots next year, we're the fastest/cheapest way for them to get started." To me, it sounds like just another chatbot builder, and it's not clear why this one is different and better.
- Related to the above, you list out a bunch of competitors, but I'm not sure I know why Botreach is better than those. Is it because it's cheaper? Is it faster? Do you provide better insights? What's the benefit of choosing Botreach over the competition?
- The Vision slide makes me feel like this is a market you're trying to create. I would've expected you to say something like, "To be the first tool used in every marketing effort" or something like that. The way it's worded now, makes it sound like you need to convince marketers that Chatbots are necessary. I'm not sure if that was the intention, but it's how it reads to me.
- Do you have any users yet? Anything that makes it feel like you've validated the need for this a bit is helpful in a pitch. "I have 25 current users and we've processed nearly 3000 interactions." That goes a long way to making it known you're serious about this project.
Andrew Gassen

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9 years ago
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  Hey Andrew,
  
  thank you so much for this response!
  
  You’re right with the „About me“ slide, it felt anyway strange to myself that I put it to the start. My thought was basically: „Ok when I start to tell them things, why should they listen to me if they know nothing about me?“ - I moved the slide to the end now and also changed the heading to „About me,“ because it feels better for me.
  
  Why is this going to be huge? I can explain that in two ways. That is information I have planned to speak of during my presentation.
  
  First is to refer to another platform called Drift (a conversational marketing platform), which is the hottest marketing tool in that space right now. They build marketing tools supported by chatbots. And they have proved that marketers will adapt to those chatbots.
  
  Second, there is [research] that shows that there is a 300% increased conversion when using chatbots instead of traditional forms. IMHO, this is enough evidence to say that there will be a considerable market for conversational marketing tools.
  
  You’re right with the competition slide. I don’t know who it was, but I saw a pitch deck where they placed competitor in a matrix to better show the differences. I think I will try the same.
  
  The „vision“ slide was named „mission“ before, but I don’t know if this makes a difference. I think the real vision would be „Make chatbots a useable/accessible tool for everyone.“ Does that make more sense?
  
  I have a total of 5 users who use the current MVP version, but a list of like ten people who are waiting for the paid features to complete. Paid features, that includes a useable data export and branding options. My plan was to launch with that in February, so nothing I can relate to in my pitch. But I’m with you that this kind of information would be critical for the pitch deck if I had something to show here.
  
  Again, thank you very much for your feedback 💯
  
  Cheers
  Phil
  Philipp Reinking
  
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  9 years ago
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    I was pretty nervous to send the feedback, especially after hit the "send" button. I was afraid it wouldn't come off as helpful, but that it would seem aggressive. I'm glad you found it helpful! Thanks for the thoughtful response, I think you've got a lot to work with. Again, good luck!
    
    Andrew Gassen
    
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    9 years ago
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