I talk to startups every day.
Thirty minutes of shared, free office hours- 20 minutes of one-on-one office hours, and
60 minutes of strategy calls for our pitch deck writing service.
When do I get anything done, you might ask? Well, I like to think that I'm getting stuff
done: my job as a CEO is to bring value to our business where value opportunities arise,
and this is one. It's THE One opportunity.
We had no idea that so many people would find so much value in us sharing our experience
starting this company. Even... Chamillionaire.
There's plenty of content on slidebean.com that will give you insight
on how to get the market size.
My job at Slidebean, beyond admin and operational stuff, has always revolved around marketing.
I like to think of myself as a self-taught growth hacker. But, as our team expands, I've
found an incredible marketing team that has taken over most of the stuff I used to do:
Gustavo now manages projects and our paid marketing channels.
Elena does the animation, which I used to do in the early stages.
Paula helps with production, video editing, and manages our email lists.
Maria handles our social networks and communication. You've probably talked to her
if you've sent a tweet to me. She's the one that replies to those.
Mariel does all marketing-related designs and ads.
All these tasks I used to do as a one-person marketing team in the early days of the company.
Trust me; it's easy to delegate when you know how long things take to do.
I delegate all of this now, mostly to free time to do stuff that no one else can do,
which is, as of today, help other founders who look to us for guidance.
It's not that nobody else can do it, BTW, it's the fact that the place where I can
add more value is doing this.
Still, as our company grows, and as my office hour calendar becomes booked three months
in advance, we have to find new ways to solve this at a larger scale.
These videos are one of those ways, of course: most of the people I talk to in my office
hours have seen our videos, and have follow-up questions about the stuff I discussed.
When the same question comes up regularly, I'm happy to answer it, and then we make a
video about it.
We know that you struggle with the Market Size slide, the go To Market Strategy, and
estimating your Financial Projections.
When a question comes up that I've already answered on a video- I just point people to
the video.
But as this channel gets bigger, as our signups grow (we get around 30,000 new signups every
month), more and more of these questions come up- and we've been working on a solution.
On a better and more scalable way to answer all the questions that you founders have.
This video is about that solution.
First, on the common questions,
The Market size- we are working on a comprehensive guide to estimating your market size, we'll
have that soon.
On the Go-to-Market Strategy, we have a couple of videos on the matter, especially the How
to Grow a Small Business video.
Finally, on the Financial Model Template- we are releasing our Financial Model Template,
and doing a free webinar on how to use it. We'll build a simple SaaS business model into
the spreadsheet- to show you how you can project this yourself.
But beyond all this, we know that there are specific questions that need answering. I
try to get to as many as I can as part of my office hours.
Also, I've had plenty of startups come in and ask me to become their advisors- which
is, of course, a great honor, but my answer is usually no:
First, I'm not an advisor to any business, especially if they are Slidebean customers
first. It'd be a conflict of interest to take stock from companies that are our customers.
Second, few advisors deserve your stock. The amount of time that I could dedicate to an
advisor role, consider I'm running my own business, and my Youtube channel- is tiny,
probably less than an hour per month. You should only give stock to someone who can
TRULY dedicate, say, an hour a week to your company.
If it's less than that I don't think that they deserve a part of your company.
I have consulting hours available, but they are expensive- so I've been working on a solution
to be able to assist more companies in their seed and fundraising stages.
We are launching a new Slidebean plan called Slidebean Founder's Edition. It's a specialized
plan for founders looking to raise capital, where myself and our team get involved in
helping them out.
So, Founder's Edition includes, Access to every single feature in the Slidebean
platform. A 30-minute kick-off strategy call with me;
and then a quarterly catch up call after that. One design consulting call per month: this
is a call where our design team can give you pointers on the design of your deck.
One content consulting call per month, so our team of business analysts can provide
feedback on your pitch deck. They can also clarify questions you have on the business
strategy. One deck proofreading per month
One design review per month, where you submit a Slidebean presentation for our team to tweak
up. All the legal templates we've published.
Including a template for a stock option pool.
A template for your 83 b elections.
If you don't know what that is go check out our video on incorporation.
Our financial Model template: the spreadsheet that made us profitable.
A growing list of startup deals, including
access to up to $1,000 in AWS Credits, up to $500 in Brex credits, and a bunch of other
discounts. Our investor database: the contacts for 5,000+
Venture Capital firms and angel investors.
This plan is launching today at just $149/mo, and you can subscribe now, with the link in
the description- If you watch our videos regularly AND you find this useful, go ahead and try
it out.
The first 25 people to sign up for the plan will get a care package from our team, which
includes a t-shirt and a couple of other Slidebean goodies.
If you watch our videos regularly and find this too expensive, or simply not useful at
all, we'd like to know- drop a comment and tell us why it's not working- we might be
able to work something out.
That's all for today. See you next week.