This is the Yumi Nutrition pitch deck to raise a $152k seed round in 2018.
About
Yumi Nutrition, a business that sells chewable vitamin gummies, has lifted the lid on how it landed its first tranche of angel investment in 2018.
Based in Manchester, England, Yumi Nutrition was cofounded by Sebastien Vanderlinden, Joshua Margetts, and Adam Barker as a side hustle in 2017. The business, which sells vegan supplements and vitamin gummies, made around $15,000 in its first year, which has grown to $2 million annually. It counts retailers such as Urban Outfitters, GNC, and Holland & Barrett among its clients.
In 2018, the startup raised $152,000 in angel funding, backed by nine investors, including Ian Gascoigne, the managing director of the wealth management firm St James’s Place, and Jon Legdon, COO of the software company Idox.
Cofounder Vanderlinden told Business Insider that the key to seed funding is to prove your business idea and potential success with tangible evidence.
“The main thing that an investor is going to be looking for is a proof of concept and seeing if your ideas are actually working or if there is something to actually back it … by getting a certain number of subscribers or users, or a certain number of people coming on to the website, a certain amount of turnover,” Vanderlinden told Business Insider.
“They [investors] aren’t just going to give you the money, they need to see that you’ve invested your own time, if not your own money,” he said.
Pitch Deck Review Summary
Structured Summary Review
Words
They are bipolar. They start out going totally overboard and then not using their words.
My guess is that these are 3 20-year-olds who tried their best but just don’t know enough and can’t hire someone to teach them better. The problem is that they make a bizarre number of red flags.
Slide length
They couldn’t be bothered to add page numbers… The deck isn’t good enough for me to be bothered to count them.
The length is fine, I’d say it is on the short end.
Headers
It’s about the worst I’ve seen. They do the basic beatch thing of writing the topic as the header but they peculiarly haven’t figured out that font size matters as they hide them in the top left. It is weird.
Appearance
Don’t use background images. The more I’ve learned the more my decks sort of look “boring” or even “ugly”.
They have reverted to an investment banking style which is very content-focused but with 10th of the word count. You can see banking presentation examples here.
Their deck isn’t over-designed but they picked a theme of gummies as the background changing colors and it does not help.
Narrative
There is none. They saw a checklist and they tried to tick boxes.
Structure
They do some basics ok, but not consistently or well. If you were a M&A analyst you would get fired for the lack of attention to detail.
Slides
They cover most of what they probably read they should cover, but not all. As students, I would say they did a good job, but if you want to put on the big boy pants as competent founders they failed. In an hour’s call, I could have given them a month of homework to do which would have helped a lot.
Slide by Slide Review
It is not normal to write how much you are raising on the cover slide. I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen someone do that.
You will notice the SEIS thing on the cover. That’s a UK investment support scheme. It’s a big deal when you are raising an angel round as it gives a lot of tax benefits to investors. It’s not normal in the USA to write something like this, but UK investors look to see you are “SEIS approved” (you have to apply for the status). It is very normal for UK startups to make it clear that they are SEIS or EIS-approved.
Anyway, the cover slide is decent. I like they’ve stuck the gummies at the bottom as it indicates what the product is.
Groan… This is literally the definition of a WALL OF TEXT! Do not ever ever ever make a slide that looks like this.
I see a slide like this and just think “Yeah f-that, not reading it”. You know why that is bad, right? You need to make your deck easy for investors to quickly flick through.
I think they sort of make points that they want to make, but they don’t really say anything smart or insightful. They really need to cut all the fat from the words. This is the kind of content you write on your website and not in your deck. Your deck is all about getting to the point and educating investors quickly about the points they need to know to hand you over a check. You need to drill that into your head.
Ok, it is clear these founders know very little about how to do a deck. They’ve read one of the regurgitated blogs with a checklist of topics that you should cover and they’re sticking to it.
The header says problem. Does that tell you what the problem is? No, you have to read the slide to figure that out.
There are three points that are not supported by fact. They are just opinions.
When I do a deck I start mapping out the points that I want to cover, then I go into research mode and I find the data to support that. Ideally, I want to cover two points per slide since I can make two boxes and explain the points clearly with headers and then supporting charts (hopefully).
Are supplements bad tasking? Do people even care? If they had a market report showing what users like, or that they don’t like the taste, sure, that would support your point. Don’t just share opinions.
Their solution is just the problem slide in reverse. The market sucks and we are good. Why should I take your word for it?
Hell, they could have at least just got two user testimonials.
The slide is a good starting point, but why do they need the background image? It’s distracting. I never use background images other than maybe on the cover slide.
So they have 4 products. So what? What could you add to improve this? How about what percentage of revenue comes from each? What is the average pricing point? In short, try harder.
This is another lazy slide. I mean the headers of gummies and others are the same sizes as the other text, they didn’t even bother to bold them.
If you are going to put in reviews then add their photo. Um, so I will go to Google and use random photos if I don’t have real client ones just to humanize the reviews. It’s not like anyone is going to check…
This is not how to do market sizing. This is lazy “I just need the deck done ASAP”. Do investors get the impression you are an expert and know everything about the market? Nope.
This falls into the category of top-down market sizing, but proper top-down involves some actual work. These guys have just googled some numbers and stuck them on paper.
OK, so there are two market sizing slides. This one has a little more detail, but it doesn’t spell out what size their targeted segment is. Never say your market size is everything. It’s like Uber saying their market size includes all flights.
This is your standard competition slide. They’re effectively just showing their market positioning which is high variety and moderately priced.
Note, that is my deciding what I think the point of the slide is. It’s your job to tell investors what the point is. Don’t let investors think. Tell them what to think. This is important and I can promise you that people don’t do it even after I tell them to do it. But it’s the difference between a great and eh deck.
Also, type into Google “gummi vitamins” like I just did. There is a shite tonne of other people doing this. So yeah, you lose all credibility if you do a slide like this without mentioning “Plus: there are a hundred other people which we don’t want to mention because It doesn’t fit our narrative”. I’m being sarcastic.
Oh look, they’ve figured out how to use body headers now.
Crap, look at the slide header “routes to market”… it’s hidden behind some fricking red gummies. No, pictures of edibles are not more important than the message you are making on your slide. Your header should be the largest font size in your deck, but whatever. There is just a lot going wrong with this deck.
Looks-wise the slide is ok. The founders are all kids so it’s apparent they don’t really have experience. Their profiles aren’t interesting. It’s fine to be kids hustling, but give the impression you have excelled in life in whatever you have done. Adam needs two lines to say he studied at Oxford. That’s useful if you need a paper written…
Cool, unit economics. Investors love stuff like this. The slide is lame though.
Acquisition profit isn’t a real term. Waterfall charts are a great way to illustrate your unit economics. They’re a bit hard to make though, but I have templates to make these easy.
My reading is that they have done some work to come up with these numbers, but are probably really early and don’t really know. Definitely do slides like this though.
Don’t write a story in your deck. “The business is already profitable”. It’s fine to list things you want to mention, but then you need to figure out how to present and structure the information on the slide.
Do you know what, I know more about pitch decks now than pretty much everyone in the world and slide structure is what I focus on the most when I first look at decks. I’ve figured out that how you present information is incredibly key, but it’s just not something taught.
So, it’s a shock to me they are already profitable. I didn’t really even get the vibe that they were live till now! Did you think they were live based on what you saw so far?
So they are doing a GMV of £15k, what’s the profit margin atm? With money, they plan on 7x ut how much did they invest so far? They should say “£15k bootstrap with only £1k investment” right? That sounds impressive. You only have so much, so sell it.
Your team is not traction unless you have made senior hires (and I want names and photos please).
Groan, please do not tell me marketing can easily be scaled into new markets. That’s such a kiddie thing to say. Marketing is hard, and boy it’s hard to do across markets. Only people who don’t have a clue say things like that.
I do like the fact they end with the fact they are bootstrapped to date. but say how much you spent.
- Poor: If you are poor from a shite background and you scraped and saves to get £1k and used it to get to £15k, bro, that’s baller! Respect! Investors aren’t elitist about results. They’ll fund 12-year-old gay, black, non-binary, fruitarian, disabled, color-blind Martians if they see them hustle. Investors love scrappy hustlers. The vibe you want to give is “We did amazing with f-all cash. Imagine the damage we could do if we had real money!” That’s like porn to investors.
- Rich: If you are rich and you have invested a million and got commensurate results, then investors love your commitment. It will get them over the fact that deep down they are agist (tbh, there’s a good reason for that. I have a lot less energy than when I was 27… but I know 1000x more). But if you put in a million, they expect a lot more results than the poor kids who only had 1k…
Every perceived weakness can be a strength if you own it.
Don’t repeat anything in your deck. Make a point once. They repeat the fact they are profitable.
I can tell by how they write their first line they are kids. No offence, it’s just easy to tell. If they had shown strong traction the fact they are kids wouldn’t bother me, I would think “They have promise, and if they are coachable, I can help them a lot”.
Pay attention to grammar. See there is no space after the comma after profitable.
£100k GMV (sales?) in year 3 is crappy. They need larger aspirations and that is what cash is for. If they were my client this is the reframing I would teach them.
Oh F-me. 30% profit distributed… Jesus Christ take the wheel! Startups are meant to grow and not be dividend companies. I know in the UK and less developed markets investors ask dumb questions about “when you will be profitable” but founders need to hold the line.
Their numbers don’t make sense. You don’t grow and be profitable. Yes, I am against blitzscaling, but I know eCommerce.
Their top-line growth rates are far too small. Hell, I have a client that got to $72m GMV in 8 months without investment (they put in 300k).
If they have an advisor, it’s some old-school accountant who wants to play a startup advisor.
TBH, these guys probably aren’t dumb, they just don’t know what they don’t know (which is a lot) when it comes to building a VC-scale business.
The learning here is not that I’m mister smarty pants and I know everything, it is that an investor with some experience would tell this isn’t going to end well for their investment.
Just to check I’m not wrong, I just checked them on CrunchBase and I can’t see they raised any money. So I’m right.
This is very flimsy. They are attempting to show they have a plan but it doesn’t make sense.
You have to shore up your home market before you go abroad. Yes, there are exceptions, but the UK is a large enough market to just focus there before attempting more countries.
Don’t write “potential” as it’s code for “we don’t have a clue what to do”.
There is a lot wrong with what they wrote, but I could write a few blogs to explain why. When you don’t have the experience you don’t know the limits. That’s good in another way when you want to disrupt, but scaling is what it is and it has a playbook and costs.
So back to the SEIS and “approved” thing. Yup, they say it because UK investors want to see it.
NO, they do not need to scale to new markets with £100k which is literally pocket change to me (as a startup founder). Do not raise angel-size money to do new markets.
Eh, don’t use these pie charts. they almost always say the same obvious things. Frankly, consultants are taught that pie charts are the crappest charts ever.
If you are a kid you need to know that £100k is pocket money. It goes so fast. If they were scaling they could easily put the whole amount into working capital, well, specifically inventory. I’m going to stop as there’s just too much to write.
A big thing I do calls with founders is to talk about things they didn’t ask for help on, but are actually what they should focus on. One thing I would teach these guys is to raise their round amount.
So under SEIS, they can do £150k with the investor tax benefit. 150k is still far too small. You want to be doing min 250, but ideally, 500k to do any kind of real traction damage. So I might tell angels in the UK that they are doing 500k but the first investors to commit get the benefit of the 150k to encourage people to get in. The first investors are the hardest to get. Most investors are sheep.
You should sell on every slide. Investors already have your email as you emailed them the deck…
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