AppVirality Seed Stage

This is the AppVirality pitch deck used to raise $500k Seed in 2015. They went on to raise $8.1m.

I actually saw them pitch in Singapore for their pre-seed round. They did a decent presentation and the solution was something I thought startups would like. I just couldn’t see how it was a VC business.

Laxman Papineni went on to start Outplay. I saw on Facebook he just raised a $7.3m round from Sequoia.

About

AppVirality is a plug-and-play growth hacking toolkit for mobile applications that helps app developers in identifying and implementing the right growth techniques, no coding required. Its referral marketing solution helps customize, launch, and automate referral campaigns for mobile apps and SaaS products. Its tools work through a software development kit and dashboard and customizable application referral programs to help boost a brand its app installs and engagement that enable mobile-focused companies to identify and implement the right growth techniques without having to write new code.

AppVirality was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware.

Btw if you are interested, their old description was:

AppVirality is a Plug and Play Growth Hacking Toolkit For Mobile Apps that helps app developers in identifying and implementing the right growth techniques, no coding required. Simple SDK integration and WYSIWYG dashboard to rule everything.

A/B testing and In-depth analytics help businesses with meaningful data to optimize techniques and increase app downloads and user engagement.

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Pitch deck review summary

It’s a typical deck you would see from inexperienced founders. It is highly focused on the product. The thing is that investors invest in businesses and not a product. There’s very little thought about the big picture. You don’t get a feeling that this could be big.

Structured summary review

Words

Most slides have far too few words. You need words to explain things.

Slide length

There are 17 slides which is on the shorted end. A lot of slides are pointless though.

Headers

They are done very poorly. Headers are the most important thing in a pitch deck. No one explains this.

Appearance

The founders sort of tried to design the deck, they just aren’t good at it. Consistency is important for communication.

Narrative

They attempt a narrative at the start and this ends very quickly. The slide order is sort of right.

Structure

It’s not great. It’s easy to see. Take this as an example of what not to do.

Slides

There is very little about the business. It’s a product that they are selling. How is this defensible? What is their real market potential? How do they make money? And don’t get me started, there is an advisor slide but no team? Bizarre.

Appvirality Pitch deck

The cover is best practice.

This is a terrible way to start. Explain what you do first. Slides like this are for on stage presentation.

Such a waste of a slide…

Such a waste of a slide…

The content starts well, but chill with cartoons like this. It’s infantle.

 

Why isn’t there an image illustrating this all?

Never have an interstitial slide.

The header is not obvious. It fits in with the content. You want contrast.

Easily understandable but the text gets too small to read.

The text in the footer should be at the top.

Hm, the slide takes a bit to understand.

Eh, fine.

What is this slide about? They don’t say.

Is this slide really needed? It’s turning into a product demo. For most decks I only have one slide for product. In this case a few slides is fine.

 

I don’t care about advisors. It’s the kind of things founders add when they don’t think they are good enough.

This is rubbish. I have no idea of their market potential which is what I felt when I saw them pitch.

Ok, this is actually a solid slide compared to the other ones. The content is okish.

Don’t add thank you slides. Have your investment thesis or summarise why investors should invest.

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