Growth Warrior Capital, an early-stage venture capital fund, is actually giving away its AI-powered pitch deck generator. Promise Phelon, the VC’s managing partner, was tired of sifting through countless weak pitches before she struck gold with a needle in a haystack stroke of luck.
She thus wanted to help founders make their pitches to investors stronger. The generative AI-powered pitch deck builder called Elevo will officially go live in October. Those interested can be on the waiting list starting today.
Phelon and her partners invest in company founders in fintech, insurtech, AI, and the future of work, who have, what else, great ideas. She calls these “dangerous” startups that could “fundamentally change the way we work, earn, and build wealth.”
Phelon believes that a poor pitch deck often leads to VCs overlooking them and their sheer numbers create a logjam of endless narratives.
Phelon’s venture partner Ashley Pilipiszyn, was a former technical director at OpenAI in 2018. Combining Phelon’s pizazz in marketing tech companies allowed the launch of this new product as a VC.
“I thought, what if we could take the most successful pitches from a VC’s perspective and from founder outcomes, like getting the valuation they wanted or getting funded quickly, and build a generative product that enables you to do that quickly?” Phelon asked.
The team at Growth Warrior Capital sourced hundreds of pitch decks from publicly available databases and reach-outs to other VC firms for data on which to train Elevo’s AI model.
Read: AI startup Hugging Face attracted funding valuing it at $4.5 bn
Using Elevo
When using Elevo, founders include details like the funding stage they’re trying to raise for, their team, the product, and the market size.
Elevo will then generate a pitch deck for them with the key details that VCs are looking for. “When I look at a team slide, for example, I’m trying to assess founder-market fit, problem-founder fit, how pedigreed is this team, how does their background match what they’re looking to do,” Phelon said.
The AI will prompt a founder with targeted questions that can educate them on what VCs are looking for at each stage.
Using simple designs and a short number of slides, the pitch deck will be enough to clearly describe what a VC is looking at with a touch of intrigue to prompt further follow-up.
Phelon and Growth Warrior Capital are not planning to cash in on Elevo. They are simply looking to make the VC ecosystem more streamlined and productive.
There are other pitch deck builders out there, like DeckMatch which recently attracted a $1 million seed round. But they are not free.
What a typical pitch deck contains
High-profile VCs get thousands upon thousands of inbound pitch decks.
A pitch deck is usually a 10-20 slide presentation designed to give a brief and compelling presentation of a new business idea that entrepreneurs give to potential investors, customers, or partners.
They hope to showcase their vision, explain their unique value proposition, and demonstrate their potential for growth.
An effective pitch deck usually covers what the problem the startup is addressing, and the market opportunity it has identified. Other details should include the team’s expertise, and the execution plan.
Crafting one requires in-depth knowledge of the market, audience, and business model, as well as excellent communication and storytelling skills. Below are your typical points to cover:
- Problem
- Solution
- Product
- Market Size
- Business Model
- Underlying Magic
- Competition
- Better/Different
- Marketing Plan
- Team Slide
- Traction / Milestones
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