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Buffer Pitch Deck to Raise Seed Investment

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Buffer Pitch Deck to Raise Seed Investment
This is the Buffer pitch deck used to raise their $3.5m series-a. In the spirit of the open culture at Buffer, they released their pitch deck. The deck is fine, but the detailed blog is worth a read.

About

Buffer helps users share social media content by scheduling online posts throughout the day. It integrates with Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and other social media platforms.
The free version of the application allows a maximum limit of 10 posts to be scheduled at any given time and only allows the management of one social media account per social media website. Buffer also contains features that give post suggestions to users and gives information on the number of clicks, retweets, likes, favourites, mentions, and potential views each post has.

Raises

They stopped raising and bought out their investors to be a lifestyle startup.

Date Amount / Round Valuation Lead Investor Investors
Oct, 2014 $3.5M / Series A $60M 7
Dec, 2011 $400k / Angel 21

Read

You can read an analysis of the terms they were given for the Buffer Series-A term sheet.

Pitch Deck Review Summary

Buffer are (were) famous for sharing their material. The deck is not great. They have just enough smarts and traction for the deck to not be put in the bin immediately, but it’s not one to learn from.

Structured Summary Review

Words

It’s basically a stage presentation. There should be another 20-30 words per slide.

Slide length

It’s on the short side at 13 slides.

Headers

They are terrible. You need to have great headers to explain the point of each slide.

Appearance

It’s on the dark side of basic. There needs to be at least another hour put in.

Narrative

The slide order is ok, but there is no narrative. You need headers for that.

Structure

Very little effort has been put into the slides.

Slides

The slides I want to feel compelled are missing. What’s their revenue opportunity in the market? Got to market strategy? Long run defensibility?

Buffer Pitch Deck

The cover is ok but needs a tagline. Minimal is good on the cover.

Cool, so they start out with the industry. I start with what the company does to make things clear.

I don’t really like quotes in decks. You use them when you don’t have better proof, and or are lazy.

You have to read everything to sort of get it. The format and slide structure are like a rough draft.

Never use interstitial slides. Decks should never be long enough to meet them.

The headers they use are grunts. Write proper headers.

There really should be around 5 more slides around here. It’s like a basic bitch presentation for a stage.

Investors love traction. It cuts through the BS. For an early-stage company, the traction points are solid ones but the presentation is eh.

Depending on the milestones, you could have a slide like this. I would only do pre-seed though, or you have some weird history to explain.

The business model slide is how you make money basically, it’s better to call it a revenue slide.

On this slide, they should just be spelling out their pricing packages as a SaaS startup.

Then you have other slides explaining your conversion metrics. Conversion rates, churn, LTV are all stats investors like. This could be presented in a far better manner.

This should be in the industry section at the start. Writing a list of points like this is the 101 of startups.

A quote on a slide. Basic bitch. Can you not show client examples across a few categories of startups?

The title is lame again. Show the integrations. They could have a funnel.

The title is wonky. What is the takeaway? Do the thinking for investors.

Always include a picture of the team. There is nothing about the team before the buffer.

I don’t like advisors on the team slide, but those are two big names.

The last slide should explain the investment thesis or the three things to remember. Don’t write the email or say thanks.

 

 

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