Uptop pitch deck to raise $5.5m seed round

Uptop pitch deck to raise $5.5m seed round

This is the Uptop pitch deck to raise their $5.5m seed round in 2019 from KAL investments.

Landlords and tenants are often at odds, but what if you could come up with a rental-market service that both sides happy?

Renters can search for apartments, schedule times to view them, apply to rent them, sign leases, and even pay their rent. Landlords can list their properties in the marketplace and use its property-management service for free. They combined everything into one.

Frank Barletta the founder, got the idea for UpTop from his crappy experience as a renter moving 10 times in 8 years.

Uptop doesn’t make money yet, but obviously plans on doing so. It’s not totally clear yet. They might make money charging a convenience fee when renters pay their rent through the platform. They are going to let the landlord decide who pays- sometimes renters and sometimes the landlord. They will also charge landlords for background checks on tenants. Why not?

About

When you’re looking for an apartment, it seems like everyone is trying to get in your way of finding a place, quickly, comfortably, and easily. Well, now there’s an app for that too.

We’ve digitized the steps of renting and connected them, making a formerly dysfunctional process, simple.

• Find your apartment: Quality listings, easily searchable • Schedule appointments: Easily coordinate with the agent/landlord • Apply for the apartment: Upload your documents and data from anywhere, anytime • Sign your lease: On any device, at any-time (Again, it’s the 21st century, it’s about time!) • Pay the rent: Use credit cards or eChecks to pay your landlord (You can finally get rid of your checkbook!)

Roommates + Cosigners: Renting with others? No problem, every step of the process has been designed with the functionality needed for a group to easily communicate and work together to get it done.

We’ve brought the different parts of renting together in one place, and we can’t wait for you to see how much better the experience of renting has become.

Funding rounds

They have raised one $5.5m round to date.

Pitch deck


Pitch deck review summary

It’s a fairly short and punchy deck. My only real criticism is it could be longer.  It is clear that they basically only have an idea. There is no traction slide to illustrate they had more. My guess is that the unit economics they show are planned, not actuals. There could be a better use of structure and images, but they aren’t going to fail because of this.

Structured summary review

Words

The word count is solid, but a little on the short side. Less text is great, but you need to ensure you communicate enough sales points.

Slide length

At 12 slides, the deck is too short.

Headers

They sort of have headers to tell a story, they are just a little lacking.

Appearance

It’s a well-designed deck. I don’t nitpick unless a deck looks bad.

Narrative

The slides generally flow. The deck is a bit short though, so it’s hard to mess up a narrative as it is not obvious there is not one.

Structure

Things are aligned well. There is negative space. It’s fine.

Slides

There are key slides missing such as their go to market strategy. They don’t explain how they make money (They aren’t super sure, yet). I don’t know what their market size is. The deck is just ‘we think renting could be easier and I guess lots of people rent, right? Fund us and we will figure it out’.

Slide by slide review

Don’t write dates on the cover. It adds no value and if you add a month then you tell investors how long you are raising for. That’s never good.

Your first slide should be an explanation of what you do.

‘Software is great but not in the rental market’ is ok, but I’m more interested in what the problem is in the rental market. Investors know about SaaS and that it ate the world.

There is some useful content on the slide and it is done well, but I don’t really get the problem? There are lots of tools… and? Uptop sits in the middle of all the tools and I’m guessing they are planning on replacing them all.

This slide explains the problem. They should have started with this slide first then show that there are lots of tools to aid in this. It’s a bit confusing showing all the tools first.

They throw in things like scammers and crying which I think makes the slide a little less credible.

So there are lots of tools and the process is a bit of a mess. Now we have a solution.

I would like them to use the text on the right as the one liner introduction. They could explain their solution graphically, or expand on the chart on the left.

Simply put, their product process works by putting the landlord and renter together in a streamlined process. They don’t quantify the actual results. I like data points to make things more concrete.

Uptop is early, so they are just testing their product. They have tested it in one market and in 4 months they got 40% of the market (whatever that means).

Here they add some numbers. I like numbers. Charts are netter though.

Ths ask slide is a little basic. $4m raise (they got $5.5m). They’re going to spend the money to get the business going, in short.

 

The team slide is meant to sell. I just see lots of people. Why is this the best possible team to work on this company? Without any text to explain the people, the slide says nothing. You want to pick 3-5 of the key people.

This is just a picture of the product. They could explain it. It should also be up by the solution slide.

The better way to explain the product is to show 4 images of the product and explain the 4 key steps so one understands how it works.

In the absence of traction, they show they got featured in the press twice. This is a who gives a shite stuff. But you work with what you have.

Waste of a slide. The investor already has your email as you emailed them the deck… Better to end the deck with the three things to remember.

 

What do you think about the deck?

 

 

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