8 ms·
The pitch deck that helped us get an $865M valuation
- pekk 12y agoLet's hope it was the company which got them the valuation, because no Powerpoint presentation is worth $865M
- brettkc 12y agoThe title says 'helped'..
- floody-berry 12y agoUnless they did a study with various presentations and found this version resulted in higher numbers, I doubt they have any clue how much it 'helped', or if it helped at all short of just being _something_ to toss up with their revenue/business numbers.
- espace 12y agoYou can't open source a pitch deck can you? Open sourcing is for source code, hence the name. This would go under a Creative Commons licence.
- cryptoz 12y agoWell at the very least, you'd expect "open source deck" to have the source file for the deck rather than processed image files. ;)
- dchuk 12y agoYeah but "We're Creative Commons-ing our pitch deck" doesn't quite have the same ring to it.
- mkal_tsr 12y ago"Disrupting vocabulary"
- Alupis 12y agoWhile their intent is good, choosing the term "Open Sourcing" is not very genuine here. The pitch deck is nothing stellar (it's a run-of-the-mill pitch deck that we've seen before), and showing the slides only really lends ideas to others (ie. you can't literally treat them like an open source project and just modify certain parts, you have to rebuild the entire thing from scratch, and of course YMMV). A more appropriate title would of been "Take a look at the pitch deck we used while vying for an $865M valuation".
- dang 12y agoAll: we took "open-source" out of the title. Let's stay on topic now.
- suhail 12y agoI changed it on the blog too! :)
- SeoxyS 12y agoYou could say "we're opening" or "we're opening up." Ambiguity removed, while keeping the original meaning.
- espace 12y agoOpen sourcing was the topic, erroneously so. I corrected it.
- espace 12y agoHey dang, are you friendly with the folks at Mixpanel? Is that why you're jumping in to defend them?
- dang 12y agoJust a humble field worker battling the dreaded title fever, which drives souls mad like mosquitoes in the old North West.
- ojbyrne 12y agoI understand that VCs value succinct, but not sure what the value of this is to anyone else. Other than to beat home the point that VCs like succinct.
- timdorr 12y agoRegardless of the "open source" nomenclature, this is actually pretty helpful. Not a lot of sizzle and flash in these slides, just hard numbers and facts. That can be harder for a younger company, where there is less data to pull from. But the matter-of-fact nature of the deck is key. You should have a vision, but you need to back it up with an actual execution plan and reasons for why that plan is achievable.
- btrautsc 12y agoagreed Tim. A lot of it seems obvious, but it is so easy for young co's to get caught up in wordsmith'ing. VCs want the clearest picture in the fewest amount of words.
- mbesto 12y agoWordsmith'ing becomes a necessary evil for a lot of young co's when you don't have MixPanel-like numbers. If you don't have metrics, you have to have vision and pedigree and those are extremely hard to articulate.
- hnnewguy 12y ago>Not a lot of sizzle and flash in these slides, just hard numbers and facts. I agree. Seeing this deck provided some positive re-enforcement of my opinions of oft-fluffy VC-world. Mainly, that it can come down to "show me the numbers". I'm reminded of an anecdote from the first season of The Apprentice. An early team task was to sell as much Donald Trump branded bottled water as possible. The team sat down and put together a presentation, complete with stories on the gathering location, filtering process, bottling procedures, and on and on. After the tale was spun, they headed to a nightclub to try for some sales. They sit down with the bar owner and get into their spiel. After about two minutes the proprietor cuts them off and says, "We're talking about bottled water here. Tell me the price and how much you can supply." My point is that it's nice to see VCs say "show me that the numbers work, nothing more." That said, Mr. Horowitz, in the press release, was quick to point out that this was as much an investment in the founders as anything.
- suhail 12y agoHappy to answer questions if other founders have any on the topic of fundraising, pitch decks, etc.
- brandonb 12y agoThanks for sharing this deck! I think the most striking thing to me and others in this thread is how austere and matter-of-fact this deck is. Obviously your growth and scale is great, so the numbers speak for themselves. How has your deck changed from when you were series A, still unproven, and presumably needed the pitch to fill in the gaps in belief that the business hadn't yet filled in reality?
- suhail 12y agoNot a whole lot. In 2012, the most important thing I realized while making a deck was to state your problem, solution, and vision at the beginning. Your deck shouldn't tell the whole story. YOU should be telling the story. And your slides should function as bullet points to tell that story. In 2012, the only addition to our deck was a clearer sense of how we'd use the money with a use of proceeds section. I think that's unnecessary though. I think a "what we plan to do in the next 12-18 months" is more specific.
- talltofu 12y agoThanks Suhail. It is reassuring to hear from someone who has clearly had success pitching to VCs. I am big fan of the 10-20-30 Kawasaki rule for slides and yours is pretty close to that
- boulos 12y agoDo you happen to have your original (repeatedly turned down) pitch deck? It'd be great to see the deck that set you guys going towards this point.
- Xorlev 12y agoMixpanel helped Mixpanel get their $865M valuation. Mixpanel is solving a huge problem with a bunch of software, gobs of data, and smart people. Beyond that, they're pulling in revenue. Regardless of how good, or how brief your deck is at the end of the day your value comes down to your organization, your ability to execute, and your future revenue potential. I'm not going to say their deck doesn't have value, but I will say it doesn't seem like it has much of one. Maybe that's the point.
- forrestthewoods 12y agoStep 1) Be successful Step 2) Make enough money that don't you need to ask for money Step 3) Ask for more money anyways! So yeah, I agree with you. There's nothing special about the pitch deck. The special sauce is the company, duh. They also got a lot of great free marketing out of this blog post. Their next post should be "open sourcing our blog post that helped us get tens of thousands free views". :)
- api 12y agoTrue except 3) is "ask for more money to accelerate growth."
- eli 12y agoThey also do an excellent job at customer service. I wish every SaaS made me feel like a valued customer.
- sillysaurus3 12y agoWould it be incorrect to say this was the only slide that mattered from their deck? http://i.imgur.com/4nKuGx1.png http://i.imgur.com/4nKuGx1.png EDIT: Oh, someone already pointed this out downthread a few minutes ago. Whoops.
- myth_buster 12y agoThat definitely is the most important slide. Funding is perhaps similar to college admissions in that the most in need are most likely to be rejected. I think the KPI slides are very well done. Those look like the questions that VCs would be asking so it's nice to be pro-active.
- nlh 12y agoThis is a terrific deck (and thank you guys for open sourcing it, even in redacted form - an excellent compromise that's totally fair.) Take note of a few things: * They don't use BS "corporate speak" -- no synergies of optimizing user solution metric analysis. * There's no fluff. Just, none. Problem. Solution. How We're Doing. Why We're Better. What We Want To Do. The Landscape. And it worked. This should be the baseline for every pitch deck.
- chrisseaton 12y ago> They don't use BS "corporate speak" I don't know: "penetrate organisations", "sales enablement", "widen our lead flow to lower cost per acq. long-term". I'm not sure I'd call that plain language. You might say 'but I know what they all mean, they're not BS', but then a MBA might say that he knows what 'synergies of optimizing user solution metric analysis' and it's not BS to him. One person's rational and precise technical language is another person's BS corporate speak. Not saying it's not a good slideshow - sorry! I mean 'deck'!
- sriramk 12y agoThat's not corporate speak - that's very precise language in different domains. For example, anyone in sales knows exactly what that means.
- chrisseaton 12y agoYes that's exactly my point. To some people 'synergies of optimizing user solution metric analysis' sounds like BS, but I'm sure to the people who use it it's actually very precise language with a specific meaning. And to them 'penetrate organisations' probably sounds like corporate BS.
- nocman 12y agoPerhaps, but there are definitely people who just stick in a string of verbized/adjectivized nouns in order to sound sophisticated or intelligent. In reality they just sound like they are full of hot air. It's one of the many reasons people are so put off by salesmen.
- lukasm 12y agoWhy do you hide your growth rate when you show your graph?
- myth_buster 12y agoAssuming this is a genuine question, its done to not provide information to competitors. Hence when startups are asked about numbers they reply using % instead of absolute values.
- lukasm 12y agoThe first number is shown, so you can extrapolate what are the others. I'm not talking about absolute values.
- abannin 12y agoWhere do I submit a pull request?
- capkutay 12y agoThe only thing I would really read into in that pitch deck is their revenue and growth rate. VCs are not swayed by hip fonts and background colors (as much as we would all like to believe).
- todd3834 12y agoThe slide that helped them get an $865M valuation: https://image.slidesharecdn.com/v1-classified-141218103325-conversion-gate01/95/mixpanel-our-pitch-deck-that-we-used-to-raise-65m-7-1024.jpg?cb=1418921966 https://image.slidesharecdn.com/v1-classified-141218103325-c...
- suhail 12y agoThat slide looked very similar 2, 3, and 4 years ago. It was not enough, many people still passed on us. Raising any amount of capital (in part due to the risk at each stage) is more complex than showing a single graph.
- mchusma 12y agoYes but executing at a high pace for 2, 3, or 4 more years dramatically changes one's opinion of the company and its opportunity to reach scale. If you've grown MRR from $10k to $100k, that still doesn't answer the "will it scale" question. If you've grown MRR from $500k to $5M, totally different story. Good work keeping up momentum!
- suhail 12y agopmarca: if you're reading this, feel free to chime in ;)
- pmarca 12y agoOn this topic, Mixpanel at this stage is the magic blend of: * Track record of consistently impressive revenue growth. * Impressive current level of revenue. * Comprehensive plan and organization in place to continue growing revenue. * Large and expanding market. * And bonus points, doing all that while simultaneously generating vs burning cash!
- pmarca 12y agoYes, exactly so.
- 12y ago
- DigitalSea 12y agoI wish more companies released their pitch decks like this. Creating a great pitch deck is an artform in itself. Even in redacted form, I think it goes to show you don't need to use technical terms and corporate speak to raise money. Of course having a steady stream of growth also helps as well. Look at that growth graph, impressive. Seems being concise, using facts and getting to the point quickly is the way to go. I've seen a lot of companies who go as far as creating pitch videos with fancy production, graphics, voiceovers and a soundtrack to try and use fancy visuals to get funding. Congratulations on the recent funding round. You have a great product Mixpanel.
- haberdasher 12y agoWouldn't it have been nice to hear what they actually said while they went through this deck with potential investors? Something like this would be a better share/embed IMO: http://presentio.us/view/p1tcHs http://presentio.us/view/p1tcHs
- colinrand 12y agoMixpanel getting this money at this valuation has more to do with the market conditions than anything else.
- princetontiger 12y agoCompletely agree.. Using the word 'bullshit' in a deck and not seeing people flinch is pretty crazy. This slide deck is very basic.
- curiously 12y agowell I disagree...their deck could've been one or two slides with the numbers they are pulling. I almost feel like they knew the rest of the deck wouldn't be as important.
- curiously 12y agoLet's take a look at their pricing plan https://mixpanel.com/pricing/ https://mixpanel.com/pricing/ I wonder how much of their MRR X 12 months is multiplied by to reach $865M valuation. AVG MRR X 12 X ?? = $865,000,000 I can't fathom what the ?? will be, it would have to be significantly crazy. It isn't 1000. Is it 100 ($8.6m ARR) ? Is it 50 ($17.2m ARR) ? Is it 25 ($34.4m ARR) ? What is the average valuation multiple for SaaS? Is it higher or lower than other Startup models (consumer, yearly subscription)? If one was to replicate a similar valuation with their SaaS what would it take?
- drewinglis 12y agoTheir average MRR per customer is four or five digits (see slide eight), and they have 2,814 paying customers according to their homepage, so their MRR is at least ~three million, which puts their ARR at at least 36 million. This implies a multiple of 25 at most. (I think 20 is a common multiple for SaaS companies at this stage.)
- curiously 12y agoDo you remember groove? They had 14 as a multiple for their SaaS but it could've been at the time they had 70k MRR. ARR at 36 million....and 25 the multiple...gotcha now I have a solid number to gun for.
- doctorKrieger 12y agoso basically you are getting $865M for drawing pretty charts?
- jgalt212 12y agoInteresting to see that Marc Beniof funded them. Salesforce has so much inside info on corporate America, I wonder if he's secretly running a hedge fund on the side that just trades on the info it can glean from its users on the state of the US economy. And will at some time in the future, will MP be able to do the same thing?
- ravensley14 12y agoWow awesome exactly what i was looking for , i will use it as guide to create my own pitch deck for my company Pingmergency . https://medium.com/@ravensley14/pingmergency-ycombinator-winter-2015-2432e052845c https://medium.com/@ravensley14/pingmergency-ycombinator-win...
- droob 12y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_F9jxsfGCw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_F9jxsfGCw