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- ♞ Calico Deck Breakdown
Today, we are going to look at this seed deck from Calico used to raise $2.1M.
I personally don’t like this problem slide. I’ve seen a few like these where they are purposely dense, confusing, difficult slides to show how the product helps to create clarity and simplicity. There are a few reasons I hesitate to use these:
If the next slide isn’t 100% clear then it becomes a reflection on your product. Whether fair or not, you took a strategy of showing the confusing before and the simple after. If your after isn’t simple, then investors won’t believe your product is either.
It can be distracting for VCs. Many will be focused on trying to read through and understand all of this and it will distract from your pitch (if in person) and/or your story (when emailing the deck).
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I love these types of slides. The days of saying “Uber for X” are over, but you can still communicate with the same level of clarity using a slide like this. It’s clear that what Shopify does for platforms, and Stripe does for payments, Calico will do for products.
This is where this deck fails, in my opinion. While this may read well to someone with industry expertise, it would be hard for generalist VCs to understand all of this, and therefore, it doesn’t make the product seem simple, which is its main USP.
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Same mistake. To me this slide itself is cluttered. It doesn’t matters that it’s done purposely to show the split. When I look at this, I see clutter while reading the words “Clarity not clutter”; it destroys my faith in this product.
Would you invest based on this deck? |
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