This is the B Great pitch deck to raise a $2,5m seed round in 2020.
About
From cupcakes to beauty products, CBD is showing up everywhere you look.
Touted for myriad health and wellness benefits, the non-psychoactive component of cannabis hasn’t gone unnoticed by investors.
That’s what initially clued in B Great’s founder, Barbara Goodstein, that CBD could be a massive opportunity.
As the former CEO of Tiger 21, a network for high net worth and family office investors, Goodstein told Business Insider in an interview she saw “lots of opportunities” in the CBD space.
“I was really underwhelmed by the presentations and by the entrepreneurs behind them,” she says. “I thought that there was a huge opportunity for a really experienced team to go into this category.”
In December of last year, Goodstein decided to found B Great, a consumer startup that sells products ranging from hemp oil to lotions and balms containing CBD.
To date, B Great has raised $1.5 million in equity over three funding rounds, with the latest round closing in February. Goodstein said she’s raising an additional $1 million in convertible notes, a type of debt that converts to equity, and has closed on $450,000 as of August 1.
Once completed, that would bring B Great’s total funding to $2.5 million in debt and equity.
Pitch Deck Review Summary
Structured Summary Review
Words
Shucks, they do love to write… They need to dramatically cut the word count and get to the point.
Slide length
The deck is too long. It feels like going to McDonalds – you feel empty at the end.
Headers
Occasionally headers are better than others, but they are generally poor.
Appearance
Deck looks like they paid a mediocre designer to make a few rubbish template slides and it was done by the founder.
The issue is not that the design is poor, there is just too much text.
To be honest, a designer would probably make some basic improvements, but it’s not really what they should focus on first.
Narrative
The deck is puzzling. The use of interstitial slides illustrates they don’t know how to order a deck properly. It’s hard to get through.
Structure
The slide structure is better than some decks, but the deck just isn’t great.
The founder doesn’t look dumb. I feel that if I did even an hour call with her I would be able to teach her to fish (think about how to do slides properly) and she could improve a whole lot by applying the learnings.
Slides
A fair number of the topics that investors want to know about are in the deck, they just are not covered particularly well.
Slide by Slide Review
The cover is busy. It annoys me when I see TM.
“Why be ordinary when you can B GREAT” doesn’t help on a cover.
You’re not meant to put page numbers on your cover. You need to edit your Master Slide.
What a surprise. They have TM on the cover and now they have a disclaimer slide. Even in investment banking, we hate these. There is no need to put these in a deck, hm, unless it is a general solicitation and you’re basically posting your deck online to get money.
Gross. It’s a wall of text. There are better ways to explain something.
If you make a claim, prove it. I mean, if you are only focusing on weed investors, ok, maybe you can get away with a slide like this but it is still lazy.
And FFS, remove the confidential BS on the bottom right. No one cares.
Negative space means there is white space on the slide… can you see any?
Barb, no one gives a shite about your signature. This is an ego thing to do.
Don’t do a deck writing a stream of consciousness. The solution is not a list of products. It’s how you are solving the problem.
They made up a sticker. So what?
Another wall of text…
You do not need to write that you have links to research on your blog. FFS, that’s so lame.
Understand that every single word you write in a deck should serve to get investors interested in investing and they care about the logic of investing in you.
Pointless slide. Send a link to a video in the email, embed it in a text link etc. They’re just saying, eh, we can’t be bothered to make a slide so just watch our video.
How does this get investors wet with excitement? It doesn’t.
If a slide doesn’t help you get money, do not include it!
Pretend you are going through slides with me and for every slide, Alexander says “Why is this slide here?”. If you can’t explain to me why it is there, just delete it or try harder.
This is the kind of slide that I start a pitch deck with. The header is crap, but this is a better slide they have made so far.
Don’t write BS like ‘soar’. Just tell me the growth rate and let me decide if that is good. I assure you I know what is good and bad.
This is a seed-stage deck. Why the flark are they talking about competitive valuations?
Do you really want to be valued at a multiple of revenue at seed? Lol, no you do not!
Need to cut the text down and get to the point. The slide isn’t terrible. The header needs to be better.
I question if this is revenue or GMV (Gross Merchandising Value) especially since they mention retail vs internet.
Don’t write “now is the time…” blah. The other two points should have been explained in the deck, so they are just repeating points, or sliding in ones they didn’t explain properly when they should have.
Don’t write terms in your deck unless you:
- You are raising from inexperienced angels who need to be told the terms
- You have raised most of the round and want investors to fill out at the agreed-upon terms
Pointless slide.
Ok, this is really confusing as these look like appendix slides. Nope. I think the last slide is an interstitial slide, but with no title…
Product slides for e-com are fine to prob have in an appendix. I might just save them for future discussions tbh.
I would have a product slide that showed the range and the average pricing, maybe highlighting top sellers, or what % of revenue comes from what product.
These slides are very acceptable though, just probably too much detail for now.
Fine.
I don’t like founders writing the d-word (disruption). It’s so cliche.
This slide is interesting but has too much detail. It’s too much to read in a PowerPoint slide. I would share it in Excel. Alternatively, I might make it two slides.
You can make research reports say whatever you want. I do not like seeing that they are #1 across the board. The cynic in me calls BS.
The header is obnoxiously large.
They have not explained how they do marketing once.
They slid in the trade margin, but that’s something that e-com investors would be interested in. I’ve never advised/invested in a retail distribution startup so I can comment without talking out of my ass which I try to avoid doing.
The photo quality is not good. This actually looks like terrible branding!
This is a lame traction slide. It’s what you add when you have nothing else to show.
Do NOT EVER make a slide like this.
Add photos of the team and 3-5 short and punchy bullets of impressive things. Investors will dig into the team. Keep your deck short.
Again, no. Bad dog.
If you have to use interstitials, I put the text in the middle. The huge-ass logo is annoying.
This stuff should be in the main part of the deck. They are not organising their deck well at all.
Chill with the writing too. Just make short and relevant points for this stage of discussion.
You do not need interstitial slides in a deck.
Just pick one thing that is working well and focus on that. Show me how you have hustled so far. Writing a list of marketing activities is a huge whatever.
They are raising 1m… you do not do outdoors to start. Yes, I know some startups found this to work, but they were all at a later stage.
This is clearly related to COSHIT. I wouldn’t make a slide for this. I would just preemptively mention it when I was pitching.
Pointless slide.
Deck Collection
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