This is the Bottlepay pitch deck to raise a $15m seed round in 2021.
About
Bottlepay is a payments platform built on top of the Bitcoin network, the world’s first open-source monetary system. The company provides mobile payment, mobile banking, and financial services. Bottlepay is headquartered in Tyne, England, and was co-founded by Peter Cheyne and Peter O’Donoghue in 2018.
Bottlepay allows users to buy, store, send and withdraw Bitcoin with a single slide and has raised $15 million in seed funding.
The round was led by Brevan Howard Asset Management co-founder Alan Howard, alongside unnamed partners from Goldman Sachs, FinTech Collective, and NYDIG.
Bottlepay gained attention previously for allowing users to send small amounts of Bitcoin using social media channels such as Telegram. The first version of the company shut down after it realized the scope of its operations would not fit within EU regulations. Bottlepay currently has a temporary registration with the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
Funding Rounds
| Announced Date | Transaction Name | Number of Investors | Money Raised | Lead Investors |
| Feb 22, 2021 | Seed Round – Bottlepay | 4 | £11M | — |
| Sep 23, 2019 | Seed Round – Bottlepay | — | $2M | — |
Pitch Deck Review Summary
Structured Summary Review
It is not a terrible deck. The founders aren’t dumb.
I have to caveat that I understand business so I have a bugbear with the whole block shite space (very little has logic).
Never use a black background. I have been a bit harsh writing this quick review because I’m annoyed with how hard it is to read. It can really frustrate a reader. It really takes the deck out at the knees.
Words
They oscillate between too few words and too many.
Slide length
The length is ok, but not enough. It feels like a typical blockchain BS deck where it’s like CRYPTO and forgoes logic. Do you know what their actual revenue opportunity is, how they acquire customers, and how they monetise? No, because CRYPTO!
Headers
The headers are lame and are the checklist approach where they write ‘problem’.
Appearance
Seriously, do not use a dark background. The deck would look pretty good without it.
Narrative
There isn’t one, at least one I like. You need headers to tell a story.
Structure
The slide structure is solid, but it’s hard to see.
Slides
They’re missing slides that matter. It’s like going to Subway to pick up a crappy, overpriced sandwich and noticing it is just bread and a little bit of lettuce.
Slide by Slide Review
I guess the cover is missing and likely some other slide. I can’t understand how this is how they started their deck.
Imagine a world where I didn’t have to read the whole slide to understand what the point is. Fecking hell, make life easy for investors, and do not think anyone wants to read your slides (no one wants to).
6 points is 2/3 too many. Under each icon, you need a header. You can have text like that below the body header.
What is going on in the footer? If content is worth reading, make it visible and prominent.
This is not how you want to structure a slide. Two long sentences are not a slide structure. They are just a string of thoughts that have been considered and then proven with data.
This ‘imagine a world’ is BS. Just show me the logic of what the problems are that are worth solving before you explain how you solve them.
Tell me what the point of the slide is within 5 seconds. I don’t know what the point is. Theoretically, the slide might be solid, if I could understand it without figuring it out. I do like the fact the slide is split in two and each box has a header, it’s just not explained well.
I HATE dark backgrounds. They make contrast complicated. Just bang missionary and use a white or light grey background.
Do not ever write ‘why now’ like you are crossing off a checklist. Again, make the point.
The text below is small and hard to read. Grey on black does not contrast.
The point of why now is super weak. Gen-Z is a why now? Why? Because of stonks and diamond hands?
Ok, cool, fancy chart. Ok, it’s ripped off and natively redesigned (best practice). But does it make a point? Nope.
They sneak in a $1.9t payment revenue market. Now you are seriously telling me that is there a specific market? Feck off. Bullshite. That’s akin to saying my market for sexual partners is 7b people when let’s be honest, it’s some subset of blind chubby chasers. Anything more is optimistic at best.
Tell me what the point is in 5 seconds. You can’t.
Do you see how hard it is to read this slide with a black background?
I don’t get the problem that this solves. But thank god they are protocol agnostic… FFS, go to a bar and see how often someone uses the word ‘agnostic’. It’s only bitcoin wankers that use $2 words to obfuscate they aren’t doing anything useful.
What’s the point? If they are doing something cool they can get to the point and explain things in a way that solves problems and imbues benefits.
Who the flark wants to pay people over a tweet?
Oh, hold the press. UNIQUE! These are the first to use social media and do partnerships! Soooo unique!
The slide, in theory, is good, but it takes too long to read. The horrific background flarks legibility so I don’t want to read.
Feel like I am on LinkedIn… “Creative business leader”. I want to slap people who write crap like that. Soz mate. RBS and Standard Chartered aren’t top-tier, they are tier-3/4…
He discovered Bitcoin in 2013. So what? I discovered masturbation quite young too and that just makes me a wanker.
“Seasoned entrepreneur”… Dude worked in top-tier (yes, they actually are) banking and hedge funds, with no mention of a startup.
The point is, to write factually.
Ok, I don’t disagree. A seat at the table is a reasonable aspiration. But ‘yet to be imagined’ isn’t an investment case. The point of raising is to get money to solve what you have imagined. That is like, viable to get traction now.
No one gives a shite. Even in investment banking, we hated adding these slides. Just don’t bother.
Deck Collection
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