Alan Series-D

This is the Alan pitch deck to raise a $218m series-d in 2021.

About

Alan is a digital health insurance platform that revolutionizes health insurance by focusing on user experience with an excellent price-quality ratio health plan.

Alan started by creating a health insurance company for individuals and companies, that they can trust as a service and enjoy as an experience. Alan is the insurance company that makes healthcare simpler, smarter, and better.

It is the first new independent insurance licensed in France since 1986 by the French Prudential Supervisory Authority (ACPR) and it has raised more than €125m with leading investors such as Index Ventures, CNP, Partech, and Portage since its creation in 2016.

French insurance tech startup Alan has reached unicorn status after it secured a massive new funding round.

The Paris-based company raised €185 million ($223 million) in a Series D funding round led by US investment giant Coatue. The round valued Alan at €1.4 billion ($1.7 billion).

When it was founded in 2016, Alan became the first newly licensed health insurance company in France since 1986. CEO Jean Charles Samuelian, who wants to compete with legacy operators like AXA and Generali, estimates the French market alone to be worth as much as €50 billion.

“We’ve tried to remain focused on who we are and take a long-term view of the experience we want to build,” Sameulian told Insider in an interview. “We were looking for vision-orientated investors and we found that in Coatue.”

The company previously raised $54 million from Index Ventures and Temasek in April 2020. Since then, Alan has doubled its member base to 155,000 and is aiming for 1 million members in Europe by 2023. The company has also surpassed €100 million ($120 million) in annualized revenue, according to a release.

Alan claims to offer a better user experience than its much larger peers. The company, which claims to sell its policies with so-called “transparent” pricing, aims to become a first-port-of-call for all things personal health in the future.

The funding process began through conversations with Coatue’s founder Phillipe Lafont in mid-January, and the raise took a few weeks to complete. The proposed funding then spent several weeks with France’s health regulator before being approved. The new unicorn valuation is a major validation for Alan, and Samuelian said it’s a fair reflection of the business.

“We didn’t look to optimize the valuation in that we spoke to fewer investors during the process and actually turned down higher valuations for the right partner,” he said. “Our job now is to keep delivering a lot to maintain that valuation, we’re under no illusions of what we have to achieve.”

Alan intends to use the new funds to speed up its growth plans. The company employs around 350 people but it plans to bring in a further 400 new staff over the next 12 months. The Parisien firm will also further its international expansion plans, having already added Belgium and Spain to its roster last year.

“Our plan is to increase our tech capabilities so everything from APIs, payroll integration, automation and our concierge services,” Samuelian said. “We are also looking to add new sectors to our coverage including hospitality plus retail and manufacturing.”

Founding rounds

Announced Date	Transaction Name	Number of Investors	Money Raised	Lead Investors
Apr 19, 2021	Series D – Alan	7	€185M	Coatue
Apr 20, 2020	Series C – Alan	2	€50M	Temasek Holdings
Feb 18, 2019	Series B – Alan	2	€40M	Index Ventures
Apr 10, 2018	Series A – Alan	5	€23M	Index Ventures
Oct 25, 2016	Seed Round – Alan	4	€12M	—
Mar 1, 2016	Pre Seed Round – Alan	2	—	—

Pitch Deck Review Summary

Structured Summary Review

Words

Solid length of words. The only time they go over the top is when they start telling user stories.

Slide length

At 43 slides this is super duper long. It could easily be cut down by removing all the pointless interstitial slides, as well as being more focused on the slide order.

Headers

The headers are near acceptable, but are generally pretty lame. Headers are the most important thing in creating a great deck in my opinion.

Appearance

For a series-D deck, I would have expected the deck to look better. It’s fine, but anyone capable could knock this up quickly.

I don’t like the cartoon nature of it. You need a proper designer to pull that sort of thing off.

Narrative

They seem to be offloading their narrative by sticking slides between interstitial slides. The deck is a bit meandering.

Structure

They have a good use of structure. They use the rule of three a lot. They veer off a little though.

Slides

It’s kind of hard to see if they have covered everything, because they sort of do, just not in any solid level of detail.

Market sizing matters and all I know is that Belgium is 10% of GDP. So is the point “whatever, insurance is big, so let’s move on”?

Slide by Slide Review

The cover is fine. I don’t understand why the partner is underlined.

Small point, you don’t need the page number on the cover.

Your deck should not be long enough to need an agenda. The outline is in the correct order.

The header text should be the largest font on the page.

The 3 box headers are far too large.

The header is approximately how you should write proper headers.

3 bullets for each box (Read: Think better: Rule of three) is a great place to start and if you’re confused about how to structure slides, just go here. It’s simple and effective, just a little unimaginative (but that’s fine).

Most founders can write a slide like this in under 5 minutes. What takes more time is making the bullet points more credible by adding data points. If you have no data, I have to take your word for it.

You can go a step further and replace the images with charts or data points. Investors can’t argue with data.

I don’t like this. This should come later. They should be explaining the industry and the problems first so we have the context to understand the solution. They’re going to explain what they do later, so they’re covering content twice. They could have this as their first slide to spoil the surprise and make it clear what they do. I’m normally a bit more descriptive.

Stop. You shouldn’t need interstitial slides.

This is what? A sub-interstitial slide?

Don’t use superlatives like enormous. State the number and let investors decide.

If you want to talk about the industry generally, do it at the start.

The content is good enough. This is the min you need to strive for. Strong consistency and two data points.

It’s good to have footnotes because they illustrate 1/ you think, and 2/ are capable of explaining the key points of those thoughts

I’m still not happy with their font size choices.

Don’t ever write questions in the header. It means I have to f’n read the whole slide to get the point and I’d rather play beer pong.

Never distribute across the text. As you can see it looks crappy. Just left alone as standard. You should only distribute across if you write paragraphs (and “Yes Alexander, we never write paragraphs in a deck”).

It’s a terrible slide. The structure is terrible, I need to decipher the icons in the circle etc.

Where is my eye meant to look? It should all be obvious.

Slide 7 said the market was large so why the F are we back on this again?

Don’t get me wrong, they do a better job than most presentation writers, but it’s just not great.

You should have one idea per slide. Suddenly B2B is introduced here.

The title makes me groan. Be factual. Hype-hunting VCs don’t need you to oversell in the titles to know what sector to be in.

Looks like some things were redacted – I don’t understand why.

Look how that distributed text looks in the middle. Who made this?

Jesus Christ, first-mover advantage is rarely an advantage.

There’s potentially something smart in this slide, but it’s not clear. That’s their issue, not ours.

The title starts the point but doesn’t complete it. You need to make the full f’n point.

This is a classic example of the founders being too into what they do and assuming everyone knows what they do. You need to write for an audience who doesn’t know anything. What’s the so what here?

If Google decided to F with these dudes, what are they going to do? No one is insurmountable. Total BS.

You should write “We build long run defensibility by…”, or “We create a flywheel by…”.

I spent a lot of time studying defensibility and what I realised is that:

• Startups start with core competencies… that they parlay into..
• Long-run defensibility (after a long trucking time)

NO STARTUP has competitive moats and your shite team definitely isn’t one of them. Like LinkedIn, you build them once you win.

The fact you have a license is a pat on the back. Literally, every single fecking insurer has a licence too… otherwise you’re not an insurer! What have you cornered? Your success is only more likely to have the froggy gov issue more licences in exchange for some garlic ropes and berets.

I just generally hate “defensibility” slides. They’re all BS. I would be happier if they said “We have the ability to create long-run defensibility”. The NPS of 78 is actually very good. Apple is like 72.

Now they got bored and lazy. “Our current segments”. How shite of a title is that? Garbage. It says to me we don’t care anymore so just start reading.

I really do like how structured they are. Whoever did this thinks very similarly about structuring as I do. It’s something bankers and management consultants do.

I teach structure a lot to “normal” people and you just can’t understand how you just won’t do what you’re told. You rage against the machine with all you have. You “have” to add in more points than you need, slip in more words, not use bullet points etc.

Same point. If it doesn’t sell, why is it here?

Doesn’t this feel like a slide that is at the start, or before you get into the “defensibility” of your business? I would like to know what you do before you talk about fancy stuff.

What is this slide about? I don’t know.

What’s the point? It seems to be that you can do insurance in a minute. Why doesn’t the title just say that?

The smart thing to do would be to have a product on timing vs French competitors in the market.

On the next slide, you could then how the product works.

What are they trying to accomplish with the pitch deck? Normally you just want to onboard investors and then at a later point, you can get into details. I feel like they are getting into too many details and not really accomplishing anything.

Just don’t put in clip art ever. I don’t really get why there are polar bears etc on the other slides.

Are your target investors French speaking? If not why have a tweet in French?

They make pretty crowded slides. Did they really need to add the three image boxes?

Oh, this is another interstitial slide?

What’s the takeaway from this slide?

Is this before or after buying? Is this not really part of their GTM?

Not sure how this helps?

So they have a map listing of doctors?

Ok, finally this is something interesting. This is differentiation in insurance is it not? Wouldn’t you want to talk about this more than the map listings?

This is definitely a deck that you send to investors once they are interested in investing and want to know more.

They made an example of the Alan Map already.

It’s good to track your NPS. I feel the deck is going over the top.

Another interstitial slide…

Another interstitial slide…

You can lie a bit with charts. The fact they do it every 6 months makes me wonder if they are trying to smooth out their numbers. There’s no reason they couldn’t have shown the numbers monthly.

They mention Belgium and Spain on the next two slides- why do they need to mention them on this slide?

Don’t centre-adjust text. Always right align. Pay attention to detail – note the image over the text.

What’s the point of stating the market size if you have launched? What have you achieved?

Another interstitial slide…

It’s too late to be bringing in the founders on slide 37. The later the stage you are raising, the earlier you want to bring in the team.

It’s fine for a later deck.

Marginal value, but social-proof hunters might like this stuff.

What’s the point?

Fine.

Just say what you’re raising.

Does this add value? If not remove it or make it add value…

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