Aceup Seed Stage

About

AceUp helps emerging and seasoned leaders connect with their full potential. It delivers personalized executive coaching to connect employees at all levels with their full potential, through a tech-enabled framework that makes it impactful, scalable, and measurable.

AceUp provides executive and people coaching that’s individualized to the unique needs, roles, and skill sets of today’s professionals. It gives the team members the needed tools and framework, and especially a safe space, to build confidence in critical business and interpersonal skills with an expert who’s been there and gets it. This allows the company to create stronger and more capable leaders, increase employee happiness, and drive team morale and loyalty.

When AceUp CEO Will Foussier transitioned his career as a financial analyst to working for a non-profit organization, he realized there were certain skills he was missing.

Clear communication, for one, was an area in which Foussier knew he needed improvement.

Begrudgingly, but at the suggestion of one of his colleagues, Foussier sought out a professional coach. And when he found the right one, the French-born, 28-year-old entrepreneur told Busines Insider in a recent interview, it was “life-changing.”

“I realized that when you work with the right experts, in the right environment, pursuing the right methodology, you can literally help anyone develop an entirely new set of skills and competencies,” Foussier said.

Emboldened over his own progress, Foussier wanted to encourage others to find a professional coach. However while researching the industry further, he found that the process of finding and hiring a coach was both difficult and expensive. The best coaches, Foussier said, were mostly found by word-of-mouth, and even then, some of them had incredibly high rates. One coach that Foussier came across, for instance, charged $25,000 for six months of services.

That’s when the idea for AceUp was born.

Launched in January 2017, AceUp is an online platform for professional coaching, connecting employees seeking professional development with coaches who have relevant, real-world experience. AceUp’s goal, the first-time chief exec says, is to make professional coaching more accessible with results that can be measured.

“We’re on a mission to bring this to the largest number of people possible,” Foussier says of his 17-person, Boston-based team. “This makes us happy to come to work, to do something that we really believe in.”

Companies that want to offer coaching services to their workforce will partner with AceUp. Those employees selected to get the perk will take a “behaviour profile assessment” to help them select the right coach for skills they’re looking to improve.

AceUp has a network of over 500 freelance coaching experts, which Foussier says have “functional expertise,” as well as a background in professional development. The startup also employs full-time “professional coach supervisors” to help ensure a consistent coaching experience across the platform.

Raises

Announced Date	Transaction Name	Number of Investors	Money Raised	Lead Investors
May 25, 2019	Seed Round – AceUp	2	$1.7M	—
Mar 15, 2019	Pre Seed Round – AceUp	10	$650K	Christopher J. Dean
Mar 15, 2019	Pre Seed Round – AceUp	2	—	—

Pitch Deck Review Summary

It’s a pretty bad deck. Hang on, hang on. It’s bad to my standards of fundable. There is a tonne of decks that are way worse. When I can tell people are competent my bar rises. Whilst I share my mind, I do have a dick head filter.

The founders put in work but have operated under some sort of paradigms drilled into their heads. They fall in a box of the kind of founders I like to help who know what they want to say but don’t know how to explain it. You know exactly what I mean. You have the image in your head, but it doesn’t come down in the right words.

Also, to me, it’s super clear this was shared for PR and it’s nowhere near their full deck.

Structured Summary Review

Words

There are too few words. The messed-up design makes it less apparent. The goal of a deck is to 1/ get a meeting, and 2/ communicate how smart you are.

Slide length

It’s clearly not the full deck.

Headers

It’s stage 1 neanderthal of writing the word on the checklist.

Appearance

If you weren’t actually trying to read it, it might look attractive at a distance and flicked through at pace. It is designed, but badly.

Narrative

There is none.

Structure

Eh, the logo is on the right-hand side. It should be on the left. The slide number should be there.

Slides

AceUp Pitch Deck

Cool. The first slide explains that they do. I call this the “one-liner slide”. Tell investors what is going down in funky town.

“A career” is terrible to start. You’re saying you are one of many.

The four icon points below are a good idea, but not super compelling.

The right-hand side image is not needed. It’s what a designer adds for no reason. Don’t add anything unless it helps give you cash.

There is no industry context. We are jumping into a “problem” slide.

The contrast on the right is terrible. Again, this is why I hate designers for pitch decks. Why use grey with white text??

The font size on the right is a joke. The body text is larger than the header. The text should be large at the top and get smaller as you go down.

The text seems to be a definition that you would see in a dictionary. So what’s the problem? Just tell me.

The stars on the left should have been on a prior slide to set the context of the industry. What’s the industry, how large is it, is it meaningful? Then you want to explain the problem in the industry.

This slide doesn’t explain nor prove the problem. You want the header to set out the problem, and the body to prove it.

One might argue that in a meta sense, the slide does it, but it’s not obvious. If you have to think you have failed.

The deck continues with bad design. Just noticed how much I dislike the font.

Using images doesn’t convey your message and emotion as you might hope. Just be boring and focus on quality content.

All they need to do is to move the body statement and make it the header. Then they need to prove it. The three points are a good place to start, but it’s boring. They are also pointed, not longitudinal to illustrate a trend, which is poignant given this is ticking off a box of a timing slide.

What’s the point of this slide? Seriously, can you tell in 2 seconds?

I mean there’s some value if you read into it, but what’s the real value?

What does a framework for impact mean?

Say what you want to say. Be guttural and don’t let the investor think.

When I look at this slide I see, customized, continuous, and consistent. That means nothing to me. If you are the founder and this is all you think about, sure, it might. Do not assume that investors that don’t know you do.

I like flowy charty slides to illustrate concepts, but does this work for you? A lot of space if for icons. The bottom descriptions don’t say much either without context.

There is the foundation of something here, but it doesn’t connect.

Is this meant to be a traction slide?

They love these three numbers and lots of little text under the thing.

Quotes are always super lame in a deck. You’re never going to add a bad quote. You’ll always pick the best one.

Look, the service is coaching. People get excited and drop off. After three months nothing is meaningful. For online courses, 70% of people who buy a course don’t even start.

Also, 100% of the stats are made up. Or are they?

This is a weak ass pussy (Dave Chappelle is in my head) traction slide.

It is 100% awesome that they have GE… but they don’t have GE. They probably have someone at GE trying them. They probably have “someone” at BCG who is the co-founder. dog-walker, friend, and aunty trying it out. Or maybe they have a global rollout across Fidelity? We have zero clue.

It’s a “let’s put loads of logos on a slide to impress people without context”.

Everyone does it. Don’t do it.

Ok. Big boy statements. “The best and largest network in the US”. You have… 500 coaches, what’s the point?

Aside, what’s the fascination with Sanofi?