What’s in Part 3 of Our Fundraising Guide
Resources for Deck Design & Sharing
Why Are You Fundraising? Why Now?
Purpose of a Pitch Deck & Key Slides to Include
Repurposing Slides for Other Projects
Find Parts 1 and 2 of our guide here
Resources for Deck Design & Sharing
- Canva (for designing a deck, they have dozens of customizable templates)
- DocSend (get insights into who is viewing the deck and slides they spend the most time on)
- Communities like Indie CPG, CPG House, and Startup CPG (ask fellow founders for feedback on each of your pitches on a call or direct message)
Why Are You Fundraising? Why Now?
At the end of 2022, funds pulled back on new investments and focused on existing portfolio companies. This is to de-risk their current investments and to wait to see how the market does in early 2023. In addition to a stellar pitch deck, be honest with investors (and yourself) about WHY you’re raising capital. Are you raising to Start, Scale, Save or Sell your brand?
To Start
For pre-revenue brands, over-index on your team’s story, unfair advantages, early feedback from consumers or foodservice accounts, market size/landscape, and your collective understanding of unit economics, the Shopify ecosystem, and/or what your go-to-market plan and retail strategy is depending on your distribution priorities.
- Pre-launch or Pre-seed
- At this stage, you have more vision than traction, especially if you are pre-revenue when raising your first round of outside capital. You will need to convince investors to invest in YOU if your product hasn’t launched yet, so over-index on your team’s story, unfair advantages, early feedback from consumers or foodservice accounts if available, market size/landscape (with legit data to back it up), and your team’s collective understanding of unit economics, the Shopify ecosystem, and/or what your go-to-market plan and retail strategy is depending on your distribution priorities.
- Seed
- If you’re raising in this category in 2023, focus on revenue as much as possible before pitching investors alongside telling a compelling story about your product market fit. Common ways to show PMF are high retail velocities, low subscription churn rate on Shopify, five-star reviews, and wholesale purchase orders that increase in size.