- After having raised venture capital
from the best of the best,
after helping countless SaaS founders
with their pitch decks,
I've learned that the most critical set of slides
in your pitch deck are your go-to market slides.
Here's the reason, the go-to market slides actually convey
and communicate to your potential investors
that if they were to give you the money,
you know what to actually do with it.
And that's the biggest question they have
besides the fact that, is this market big enough?
Now, in this episode,
I'm gonna walk you through the three key go-to market slides
that you need to have.
I'm gonna actually draw what goes in them,
and by the end of this video,
you'll know exactly
how to structure your go-to market slides,
what goes in them,
that way when you go to investors and you pitch them,
the level of conversation you're gonna have,
the way you're gonna show up representing your business
is gonna be dramatically different
and you'll be able to raise that next round.
And by the way, 50% of the founders that I work with
are bootstrapped and 50% are venture backed.
So if you happen to be a bootstrap founder,
what I recommend is you still watch this video
because you're never gonna have to raise.
But have yourself and your team create these three slides
'cause you'll be able to see your business
through the eyes of an investor
and see where the strengths and weaknesses are.
Intro.
(upbeat music)
(beep)
What's up everybody?
Welcome to Unstoppable, I'm TK,
and on this channel I help SaaS farmers like you
grow your SaaS businesses faster
with an unstoppable strategy.
Now if you're new to this channel, welcome.
I drop an episode every single Sunday
with actionable strategies and tactics from the trenches
on how to grow your SaaS business faster.
So if you're new,
be sure to hit that subscribe button and that bell icon,
and you'll get notified every single time I drop an episode
with the TK Energy.
Now, if you're already part of this channel,
if you're part of this community,
if you're part of my SaaS go-to-market coaching programs,
one, we just hit 48,000 subscribers.
So my people, thank you so much,
and also I'm just super happy to see you over here.
I seriously love you guys.
So for my last company, ToutApp,
I raised from some of the best venture capital firms.
They include 500 Startups, Founder Collective,
Andreessen Horowitz, Jackson Square Ventures.
I even raced from some of the best Angels out there
including Scott Banister, Josh Baer, Esther Dyson and more.
Through that whole journey
I learned how to raise venture capital.
Now, fast forward to today,
I've now worked with over 250 SaaS founders
and half of them being venture backed.
I've worked with a lot of founders
on a lot of pitch decks
who have now gone on to raise funding.
Through all of that, through that journey,
I learned that these three slides I'm gonna walk you through
in your pitch deck are the most critical components
to a successful raise.
One, it helps you show up
with the right level of understanding
about your own business so you can represent the business.
And two, it communicates to the investor
you know what you're going to do with that money
if you were to raise it.
So we're gonna break it down into three key slides.
I'm gonna walk you through each of them.
If you're excited, dig into slide number one.
Go ahead and smash that like button
for the YouTube algorithm.
It just really likes it when you do that and so do we.
And let's dig right into it.
So principle number one, the first critical slide
in terms of your go-to-market slides is to highlight
your traction.
Now, one of the things I've seen in countless pitch decks
and I made the same mistake before
is we tend to bury this slide
all the way at the eighth slide where we say,
here's how much revenue we have, here's how it's growing,
here's what it looks like,
here's how we're getting that revenue,
and what I always recommend is this should go
as early as possible.
Here's the reason.
When investors are thumbing through the preview deck
or you're starting to get into the presentation
investors are wondering in their mind,
is this thing for real or is this all theoretical?
Should I trust it?
Do I trust what they're saying?
Is this coming from a place of conviction?
So I always like to put the traction slide
as early as possible.
That way you say,
"Hey listen, everything that I'm about to say to you
is based on all this data and traction
that we have in the business.
This is our traction, here's what we've learned.
And based on that,
here's what we have conviction
around what's ahead for the company, the opportunity,
the target market,
and everything else I'm going to tell you about."
As soon as you start to frame it that way,
you're gonna come into the investor's minds
in a whole different way,
and two, the investors are gonna stop wondering
if they should take your word for face value
or if it's actually just you embellishing
because they'll know exactly what your traction looks like.
So one of the biggest things
that I try to make sure founders have
in their traction slide
is some sort of a revenue traction graph
showing exactly how your revenue growth has been going.
In addition to that
I like to call out specifically who your ICP is,
what your value proposition is,
like we're selling to salespeople
and we help them generate more pipeline
and here's our revenue growth.
And you should also highlight what your average deal size is
and what your customer acquisition cost is.
If you can start early on in the presentation
with just this snapshot,
everything else that comes after this
is going to be that much more powerful.
If you don't start with this
and you bury it later or worse, you don't mention it,
there're gonna be wondering if this is real or not
especially in that preview deck that you send
where you're trying to get that first meeting.
And so one of the biggest things that I always say
is have some form of a traction slide.
If you are including it in your preview deck,
you'll have to use some sort of lens
to figure out if you wanna share all of that data
or some of that data,
but you need to actually communicate
what kind of traction you have,
what specific ideal customers you're going after,
why they're buying, that's your value proposition,
what average deal sizes are
which communicates how you're gonna grow the company,
what kind of model;
is it product led, sales led, sales heavy,
or marketing heavy,
and what your customer acquisition cost is.
And this last one is probably one of the toughest ones
and founders often leave out
but as soon as you can start to mention this
then they start to piece it together and like,
oh, it costs them this much to get a customer.
They wanna drive growth.
If I write them a $3 million check,
or a $5 million check, or a $10 million check,
or a $100 million check if you're a pre-seed AI company
then I'll know exactly what they're gonna be able to do
with it.
The last part was a joke
depending on when you're watching this episode
because right now it's kind of crazy with AI companies.
This traction slide clearly articulates,
hey, here's what we know about the business
and here's why we have our go-to-market instrumented.
This is a critical slide that you need to have
as early as possible in the deck.
Once you have that,
then we get into your second slide that you need to have.
And the second slide is your go-to-market strategy slide.
And the go-to-market strategy slide
is a little bit of a misnomer
because in a way you have already communicated
your go-to-market strategy right here.
You've already communicated what your ICP is,
what your value proposition is,
that's half of the go-to-market strategy.
So in this slide you're really gonna double click
on saying, hey, we really know how we're gonna go to market,
how we have been going to market,
and how we're gonna continue to scale that.
So for example, during my series B raise
where I raced from Andreessen Horowitz,
we raised $15 million,
one of the slides I had for my go-to market strategy,
the second slide was talking about how outbound
was working really well for us.
So we had the traction slide, we showed the growth
but then we said, hey, by the way, the real big thing
that's making our go-to-market strategy work is outbound.
And here's the stats around that outbound,
here's how many opportunities we're generating
from that outbound,
and here's how it's impacting our average deal sizes,
and our revenues.
So we alluded to exactly
how our go-to-market strategy operates to generate pipeline.
And that's super important.
And the more robust you can be
about how you're generating pipeline
the more likely you're going to get conviction
from investors because ultimately
they're trying to figure out is there a real market here?
Do you have a real solution?
And can you compete in the market and generate pipeline,
get attention, and convert it to revenue?
That's it.
And so in order to do that,
the more you can explain exactly
how your go-to market strategy is working
and how it's functioning,
the more likely you will be
to actually be able to raise that next round.
So let's get into specifics for this slide.
Now I've seen this slide explained in different ways
but I'm gonna give you what the core components are
that you need to have.
The core components that you need to have
is what's the channel,
how much leads are you generating, and how much revenue
and pipeline have you generated out of that channel?
That's a broad base view of what you should highlight
in this go-to-market strategy slide.
So in my specific example,
we would've said we did outbound,
and we're generating five to 10 opportunities per week
and about 20% are converting to revenue
and we give the revenue number.
So that's how we communicated it.
Now in a more robust go-to market strategy, you can say,
well, we also have social, and we have ads,
and we're generating say a hundred leads per week
and through social we're generating 50 per week.
And you can start to get into how much pipeline
and how much revenue you're generating
out of those channels.
If you start to explain in this level of detail
then investors are gonna see you actually have
a go-to market strategy right down to channels.
And you know
if they were to write you a 3 million check
exactly how you're gonna be able to deploy it,
which is the biggest thing,
they're trying to de-risk the fact,
hey, will they be able to know what to do with their money
or do they not know and they're gonna have to figure it out
and they have to hire VP of marketing?
One of the things that I do when I work with founders
for both of these slides
is I always have them do a go-to market diagnostics.
That's this spreadsheet right over here.
They plug in all of their numbers
and out of that it automatically calculates
what's their average contract value,
what's their CAC, and what are the things they need to do
to improve their go-to-market?
It's super easy to calculate when you work with me.
The other thing that I do with founders
is I have them look at this dashboard
and this dashboard gets into the details
of exactly where they're generating pipeline from
and we teach them how to use a platform
that automatically calculates all this for them
so it's super easy:
right down to what channel, what's the conversion rate,
and how much pipeline and revenue gets generated?
That's this dashboard right over here.
If you're instrumenting your SaaS business the right way
and you have the right go-to market strategy,
then it's super easy to calculate these things
and plug it in.
And you have to lay the groundwork
for that kind of go-to market strategy.
And once you have that
then you can communicate it in a slide like this.
And that way the investors aren't wondering
is this guy for real?
They're like, no, there's traction.
They're not wondering do they actually know
what they're doing or they're just gonna take my money
and then say, I'm gonna hire a VP of marketing
'cause I don't know what good market strategy is.
Instead they're gonna be like,
oh, tell me more about this channel.
Like what's working, what's not?
That's pretty good numbers.
Can that be improved?
Or how would you improve it?
They get into buying questions,
they get into thinking about,
oh, if I were to write this check
how could I help them be even better
because this is pretty good.
I bet I can make it better.
And investors lean in and get more excited.
So those are the first two slides that you need.
Now let me pause here for a second
before I go to the third slide
which brings it all together.
Understand the power in this.
I wanna highlight two things.
Now, regardless of whether you're gonna go raise money
or your bootstrap founder,
if you have just these two slides on your business
you are going to have a deeper understanding
of your business.
If you have these two slides
it means you actually have a working go-to-market strategy.
If you have these slides and you put it
in front of an investor or a potential buyer
you're gonna come approach that conversation
with a level of swagger and a level of confidence
unlike anything else.
And that's what you really need.
Everyone talks about the black arts of fundraising
but some of it can be faked.
But when you actually have these things
you don't need to fake anything,
you literally show up like,
look, we're awesome, you'd be lucky to be part of this
because we did the hard work.
To flash out a go-to market strategy
and start executing on it and now we're ready to scale it.
So if you're starting to see the power in this
can I just get a yes in the comments below
and also smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm?
It just loves it when you do that.
And so do we, and my team,
we put a lot of love into these videos.
Also if you're in this stage where you're like,
hey, TK, I need a go-to market strategy.
Ours isn't instrumented in this way, it's not working.
Or I thought I could just fake it and raise money
and then build a go-to market strategy,
but turns out all of my competition,
all the other startups that founders are building
and are going to investors
with already have a go-to market strategy.
So I'm not competitive, so I need to get competitive.
If you're in any one of those stages
and you'd like to revamp your go-to market strategy
and get growth going,
so you show up to investors with slides like this,
then be sure to check out my SaaS Go-To Market
Coaching program.
I'll tell you more about it at the end of this episode.
You don't have to go anywhere right now.
I'll link to it below as well.
Let's go in principle number three.
But before we do that,
make sure we smash that like button and let's dig into it.
You've done traction, like here's what we know so far.
Number two, you've shown that you understand
your go-to market strategy,
and the machine and how you're operating it.
Number three answers that ultimate question
of when you give us $3 million, or $5 million,
or $10 million, or a $100 million dollars
if you're a pre-seed AI company
here's what we're gonna do with it.
So number three is essentially your goals.
This is the slide that really brings together like,
look, here's our market opportunity, here's our traction,
here's our go-to market strategy, here's our vision,
and by the way here's how much we're raising it.
If we were to raise,
here's what next year and the next year plus that
and the next year plus two looks like in terms of growth.
You start to talk about what your targets look like.
And you start to say,
look, we're raising X dollars and based on that
here's the growth we're gonna do next year,
and the subsequent year
based on our understanding of our go-to-market machine
and how we are scaling it,
and based on our market, how big the market is.
Now you've done all the homework for the investors.
You said, what's the traction,
how are you getting there, and how are you gonna grow.
And when you have these three critical slides
you make the investors' jobs 10 times easier
and you have a much more constructive conversation
about how you're gonna grow the company
and more importantly, what are you gonna do with the money.
'Cause remember ultimately for investors
they're trying to figure out,
if I put in 3 million now will they hit their next milestone
so they can raise the subsequent round?
That's it.
And now you are answering that for them
to help them understand, are they gonna hit it?
This varies from stage to stage if you're super early
you need to show some understanding of these components.
And you may not have all of the answers
but you still need to show that you understand this.
If you're at the seed stage
and you're trying to raise a series A
you have to have some of this.
If you're at a series A going to B
then it gets even more robust.
If you're going from a B to a C
it's really becomes a giant spreadsheet that they look at.
So depending on the stage you go at,
you still need each of these components
to show that you understand what to do with their money,
but also you need to go into greater levels of detail
depending on how much more you are raising.
And that's why these three slides
makes such a huge difference in the fundraising process.
So to recap, the three most critical slides
you need to have in your pitch deck,
especially for your go-to market
so you can show investors
you'll know what to do with their money,
number one is your traction slide.
It has your ideal customer profile, your value proposition,
your ACV and your CAC,
and it shows your revenue growth and traction.
Number two, you need to show you go-to market strategy
in terms of what channels you're operating in,
what the yield is from those channels
and how they can be scaled with more money.
And number three, you need to show what your goals are;
given the amount you're raising, what next year's revenue,
and the subsequent year's revenue is gonna look like,
it needs to tie together with how you can pour more money
into this channels
and open new channels that are showing to be promising
to continue to scale that go-to-market machine.
You have these three slides,
one, you are gonna have a deeper understanding
of your business,
two, you are gonna show up differently
with a different level of swagger in front of investors,
and three, investors are going to get an answer
out of your pitch deck on the biggest question they have is,
will these guys know what to do with the money
and is there a big enough market for them to go after it?
That's it.
Now you know what these three slides are.
But if you don't know exactly
how to build a go-to market strategy,
if you don't have all these components,
if you don't have your ideal customer profile,
if you don't know what your value proposition is,
if you don't know what channels you can spin up
beyond your existing network,
if you don't know exactly how to pull all this data
and calculate it and show it in a cohesive way
in a pitch deck,
if you don't know how to measure
and have the right dashboards in terms of the channels,
this is exactly why
I created my SaaS Go-To-Market Coaching program.
My SaaS Go-To-Market Coaching program
teaches you how to build a scalable go-to-market strategy.
It flashes out your ideal customer profile,
then it teaches you how to build a manifesto.
This is your value prop.
This is your unique message, your strategic narrative.
By the way, a lot of the manifesto
turns into the story in your pitch deck as well.
And then we teach you how to run a broadway show.
And the broadway show is a consistent set of sales
and marketing activities that you run
to actually generate pipeline.
And we teach you how to track different channels
and operate in different channels and scale.
And when you have that,
when you have the key pieces in place
and a proper strategy and you're executing on it
then these slides are easy to build,
because you actually have the go-to-market strategy
and it's easy to tell that story.
This is why I have all these tools inside of the program
that helps founders take the pieces they're doing
and really get the right data
so they can present that right story
and pitch decks become that much easier as well.
So it's an incredible program.
If you'd like to work together one-on-one
inside of the go-to-market program,
to build your go-to-market strategy, execute on it,
bake it in your pitch deck,
and accelerate the path to the next stage of growth
for your SaaS business, just go to tkkader.com/gtm,
tkkader.com/gtm.
You get all the details in that page.
And in that page if it sounds like we're a good fit
just fill out the little form we'll get on a call.
The greater the fit, the greater the results.
So that's why we get on a call
to make sure that we're the right fit,
to actually work together and that we can actually help you.
It sounds like we can help you,
then we're off to the races,
we get started right away and within three weeks
we're able to help you revamp your go-to-market strategy
and start running your broadway show,
start generating pipeline,
and also prepare for your fundraise.
So just go to tkkader.com/gtm.
If you got values from this video,
please smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
It just loves you when you do that.
And so do we.
My team and I put a lot of love into these videos.
Also, if you have a fellow founder, a team member,
if you're part of a Slack group or WhatsApp group
that would get value from this video
please share this with them.
We wanna help as many SaaS founders as possible
on building incredible SaaS companies.
That's why I do this.
Also, I drop an episode every single Sunday
with actionable strategies and tactics from the trenches
on how to grow your SaaS business faster.
If I wasn't in the trenches
I would not be able to go to this level of detail
to tell you about how to grow your SaaS company.
And I bring you videos like this every single Sunday.
So be sure to hit the subscribe button and the bell icon
that way you'll get notified every single time
I drop an episode.
And lastly, remember, everyone needs a strategy
for their life and their business.
When you are with us, yours, it's gonna be unstoppable.
I'm TK and I'll see you in the next episode
or inside of the SaaS Go-To-Market Coaching program.
Link is below.
(gentle music)
Ah, this is gonna be a fun episode.