♞ Authenticate Deck Breakdown

Today, we will look at a subscriber’s deck that was sent to me.

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This is a massively overcomplicated cover slide. I don’t need any of the patent information, I don’t need the founder's name, job title, company address, email or phone number. None of these added any value and serve only to distract from the information that actually needed to be here. Specifically, when looking at this, I completely overlook the one line because all this additional information overshadows it.

This is not a problem, it’s a perspective framer. Nobody can solve all identity fraud; the product needs to solve a specific problem. This slide sets up the company for failure because you will be underdelivering when you don’t actually have a solution to identity fraud.

This would be fine as part of a perspective framer, but it is concerning when you seem to be positioning identity fraud as the key problem to be solved.

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Again, two issues: (i) this further cements that they are positioning themselves as solving all identity fraud, an issue that I don’t feel many VCs will believe can be solved by a single company. (ii) this data doesn’t mean anything. To state that your addressable market is every person is a joke; no VC will take that seriously.

I am not an expert in this space, but I know for a fact that there are many other ways to authenticate identity. At this point, the deck has so many red flags that as an investor, I wouldn’t trust anything else to come. Losing the trust of VCs is a death sentence for any founder.

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Onwards and Upwards,

Liam Gill