User blogs

The pitch deck is just one aspect of the broader fundraising process, but for founders aiming to entice investors, it’s the best way to communicate their startup’s progress and potential.

The decisions founders make regarding what to include on those few slides can be the difference between a quick pass or a first check. As the venture capital market continues to boil over and investors find themselves reviewing more deals remotely across different stages, there’s added need to drill down into the basics for their first look inside the company.

To get an insider’s look into the process, I chatted with Pilot CEO Waseem Daher. Last month, his bookkeeping and financial tools startup wrapped a $60 million Series C round led by Sequoia, bringing the company’s total funding to just north of $118 million. We discussed the different approaches he has taken to crafting the company’s pitch deck to showcase what he knew potential investors were most curious in, something that shifted over time as the company hit new milestones.

Daher took me on a tour of his company’s Series C pitch deck (embedded below) and described the decisions he and his team spent the most time considering as they crafted the deck. During the discussion, he broke down some of the key questions investors ask at each stage and touched on many of the proof points that VCs have started paying more attention to.

“If the Series A was about, ‘Do you have the right ingredients to make this work?’ then the Series B is about, ‘Is this actually working?'” Daher tells TechCrunch. “And then the Series C is more, ‘Well, show me that the core business is really working and that you have unlocked real drivers to allow the business to continue growing.'”

What are investors looking for?

Seed

• Key investor question: Is there significant potential?
• Proof points to consider: Total addressable market (TAM), team.

Series A

• Key investor question: Is there proof of product-market fit?
• Additional proof points to consider: Annual recurring revenues (ARR), cash burn.

Series B

• Key investor question: Is the flywheel working? Will you be the market winner?
• Additional proof points to consider: ARR growth, net retention, market share.

Series C/D

• Key investor question: Are the unit economics compelling?
• Additional proof points to consider: Gross margin, lifetime value (LTV), Customer acquisition costs (CAC).

IPO

• Key investor question: Will the business generate significant cash flow?
• Additional proof points to consider: Free cash flow (FCF), FCF margin, average selling price (ASP) growth, category expansion, earnings per share (EPS).

Check out the full pitch deck below from Pilot’s most recent raise (with illustrative data swapped for actual financial metrics).

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/24/pilot-ceo-waseem-daher-tears-down-his-companys-60m-series-c-pitch-deck/

Equity is celebrating its fourth birthday in a few weeks and closed 2020 with its biggest quarter to date. To celebrate and say thank you to our wonderful listeners who tune into us each and every single week, we’re growing upward and outward!

First, as many of you have noticed, we’ve expanded the Equity team. Grace Mendenhall joined the production crew this year, initially helping cover for Chris Gates while he was out on paternity leave. But now Chris is back and so we’ve doubled our producer team.

In classic startup fashion, a bigger team means we can make more swings at R&D, or in this case, add on a new show to our semiweekly cadence.

Today, the whole Equity team — Chris, Grace, Danny, Natasha and Alex — are super proud to announce that we’re expanding the podcast’s show lineup. We’re going to add a new show each week, which will rotate around a particular theme, geography or supermassive news event. It’s your midweek chance to listen to a show about one trend, whether that’s space tech or the growth of community as a competitive advantage. Sometimes it will be an exact topic you’ve cared about for so long (insert Alex and SaaS joke here) and sometimes it will be about a topic you know nothing about. We’re here to convince you to care anyway. Regardless, you can depend on the Equity trio to give you a trifecta of shows that helps you stay up to date on startup and venture capital news in a consumable way.

Starting, well, now, here’s what Equity looks like:

• Equity on Monday: Our weekly kickoff show is not changing. Except Alex has promised to learn how to speak with better diction.
• Equity on Wednesday: Our midweek show focused on a single topic or theme. Expect to hear from other TechCrunch reporters about their beats, investors on what they are seeing in the market and reporting on countries and cities where startup activity is blowing up.
• Equity, now on Friday: The main Equity episode is not changing, other than that we’re going to tighten it up a little bit and release it Friday mornings like we used to. While it was a blast to get out the door Thursday afternoon, we’re going to give Equity Wednesday a little more time to breathe. And since so many of you listen to this episode on Friday anyway, most folks won’t notice a change.

As COVID-19 fades thanks to the rollout of vaccines around the globe, we’ll eventually get back into our studio. That could mean more video down the pike. And we’ll still do the odd Equity Shot for big events that we can’t help but chat about.

Our goal was to double-down on what we think is the best part of Equity: A group of friends hammering through the news as a group, learning, joking and having fun with the world of startups and venture capital.

So, we’ll see you one more time each week. Cool? Cool. Hugs from here and chat soon. — The Equity Team

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/24/the-equity-podcast-is-getting-bigger-and-better/

A little over two years after ANGI Homeservices acquired his startup Handy, Oisin Hanrahan is becoming CEO of the combined organization and joining its board of directors.

ANGI is a publicly-traded subsidiary of IAC, formed from the merger of Angie’s List and HomeAdvisor. In addition to the Angie’s List, HomeAdvisor and Handy brands, the company also operates Fixd Repair, HomeStars, MyHammer, MyBuilder, Instapro, Travaux and Werkspot (most of those are outside the United States).

The company says that nearly 250,000 home service professionals are active across its platforms in a given year, with more than 30 million projects facilitated annually. For the fourth quarter of 2020, it reported revenue of $359 million (up 12% year-over-year) and a net loss of $14.5 million.

Hanrahan joined the company with the acquisition of Handy in October 2018, becoming ANGI’s chief product officer the next year.

“I’m really excited for the opportunity to lead ANGI at this inflection point,” Hanrahan said in a statement. “As we’ve all spent extra time at home over the last year it’s clearer than ever how important our physical space is in our daily lives, and ANGI’s mission to help people love where they live is more relevant than ever. I’m grateful to the Board and energized to work with our talented team to help ANGI become the home for everything home.”

ANGI’s previous CEO, Brandon Ridenour, is stepping down from the role. In the announcement, IAC CEO Joey Levin thanked Ridenour “for his instrumental role in building ANGI Homeservices over the last decade” while praising Hanrahan as “an exceptional product visionary.”

In addition, the company announced appointments to two new positions, with Bryan Ellis, becoming Chief Revenue Officer – Marketplace (he’ll oversee the company’s leads and advertising products) and Handy co-founder Umang Dua becoming Chief Revenue Officer — ANGI Services (where he’ll be in charge of ANGI’s pre-priced product).

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/24/oisin-hanrahan-angi-homeservices-ceo/

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This is our first-ever Wednesday episode. If you want to learn more about the latest edition of the podcast, head here for more. This week we talked about space, an increasingly active part of the global economy, and a place where we’re seeing more and more young tech companies place their focus.

We were lucky to have TechCrunch’s Darrell Etherington join us for the show. He’s our resident expert, so we had to have him on to chat about the space startup ecosystem. Here’s the rundown:

• SpaceX has raised a bunch more money, at a far higher valuation. We chat about why it didn’t raise more, and how much capital there is available for the famous rocket company.
• Starlink came up as well, as the satellite array just put another 60 units into orbit. What is it good for? We have a few ideas.
• The second crew member of first all-civilian SpaceX mission revealed, and of course there is an IPO and startup angle involved. 
• Which brought us to a side conversation on which one of us are most interested in going to space commercially. It’s the raised hands feature no one asked for, but take your guesses on who wants to go first and see if you’re right.
• Regardless, Axiom Space raises $130 million for its commercial space station ambitions
• And then there was the Astra SPAC. You can read its deck here. What matters is that we get a look into how fast it plans to ramp future launches. And the answer is fast.

As we get more comfortable in our Wednesday episodes, we’ll tinker with the format and the like. As we do, we’re always taking feedback at equitypod@techcrunch.com, or over on Twitter. Hit us up, we’re having a lot of fun but are always looking for ways to sharpen the show!

Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST, Wednesday, and Friday morning at 7:00 a.m. PST, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/24/spacex-is-really-just-spac-and-an-ex/

Oak HC/FT general partners Annie Lamont, Andrew Adams and Tricia Kemp invested in healthcare and fintech before the two sectors were mainstream, and today, as a result of that early intuition and a handful of key exits, the trio has over a billion dollars in new fund money to show for it.

The firm announced today that it has secured $1.4 billion for its largest fund to date, an investment vehicle that will exclusively back healthcare and fintech companies. The firm previously raised $500 million, $600 million and $800 million for its other funds, respectively. Doing quick math, Oak HC/FT, which closed its first fund in 2014, has been able to triple its total assets managed in six years.

Over the history of its fund, the team has outlined six notable exits, including Anthem’s acquisition of Aspire Health, Thermo Fisher Scientific’s acquisition of Core Informatics, Diplomat’s acquisition of LDI Integrated Pharmacy Services, AXA Group’s acquisition of Maestro Health, GoDaddy’s acquisition of Poynt and Limeade’s public debut. The firm declined to share any numbers around IRR, or share information on what percent of current portfolio companies are planning to go public and which are best capitalized to do so.

Today’s fund, its fourth to date, will be invested across 20 companies, with average check sizes between $60 million and $100 million. Oak HC/FT invests in both early-stage and growth-stage companies. The fresh capitalization comes during a watershed moment for the two sectors, heavily impacted by the coronavirus pandemic from an innovation and adoption perspective.

For example, digital health funding broke records in 2020, attracting over $10 billion in the first three quarters and increase in deals by investors, compared to the previous year. Fintech, despite an uneven beginning, has been tearing through capital to meet with demand, and valuations continue to skyrocket.

From a healthcare perspective, Adams told TechCrunch that it is looking at startups working on the cost of delivering care and ability to engage with complex patients. Lamont said that “virtualization of [both doctors and patients] has been incredible in the last year,” and that much of the firm’s focus is on startups that rely on providers taking risk. The investor is hinting at the big push of startups that are betting that value-based care will replace fee-for-service care. The former rewards service for money, instead of time for money, placing monetary incentive for doctors more on outcomes than number of visits it takes to get to an outcome.

I asked the team if telehealth was no longer as big of a question mark for them, since the pandemic has accelerated adoption. But Lamont argued that telehealth is still “unbelievably complicated to pull off at scale, which is less obvious to the public.” The firm is looking for startups who can bring a consumer experience to telehealth, taking the place of an in-person receptionist.

The firm is also looking at startups that blend its two expertises, healthcare and fintech, around payments and digitization of billing. Kemp said that the firm is less interested in standalone point-of-sale services for restaurants and bills, and are now looking at items that reduce friction with payments. One of its e-commerce optimization portfolio companies, Rapyd, raised $300 million at a $2.5 billion valuation in January.

Other subsectors of interest include digital consumer payments, as shown by portfolio companies Namogoo and Prove, and fraud and risk identification, as shown by portfolio companies Au10tix and Feedzai.

On the diversity front, Oak HC/FT said that within its portfolio, 26% of C-suite and executive leadership roles are held by women, and 52% of senior management roles are held by women.

The firm has invested in nearly 100 startups to date. Of the 35 investments it made in 2020, 20 of the deals were follow-on rounds.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/24/oak-hc-ft-1-4-billion/