New hardware companies have One serious drawback over SaaS companies: Once you ship, it’s difficult or impossible to make changes to the product. That means you better get it right. But knowing what to send can be a challenge. Prelaunch.com first came to my attention at CES in Las Vegas this year, where the company had a “wall of failure”: products that were being made but not commercially successful.
Earlier this year, the company raised a $1.5 million seed round, and I’ve already spoken with the company founder about what it takes to de-risk hardware products. As part of that interview, I was able to convince the team to let me take a closer look at the pitch deck he used to raise $1.5 million.
We’re looking for more unique pitch decks to tear down, so if you’d like to submit your own, here’s how you can do it.
Slides in this deck
- deck slide
- summary slide
- Market Context Slide
- problem slide
- solution slide
- Problem with existing solution slide
- Product Slide 1
- results slide
- Product Slide 2
- Product Slide 3
- Product Slide 4
- vision slide
- Value Support Slide
- Traction Slide and Metrics
- Business model and pricing slide
- Market Trends Slide
- why now swipe
- team slide
- The Ask Slide
- contact us slide
three things to love
The pre-release obviously has a very clear idea of where it wants to go, and it presents it beautifully on its slide deck. At the same time, the company makes some pretty elementary mistakes, and the deck is missing important information. Still, there’s a lot to love here, so let’s dig in and take a look.
share the victory
On slide 8, the company shows the measured effectiveness of what it does, essentially suggesting that it has developed some sort of crystal ball.
[Slide 8] Being able to predict how much demand there will be for a product with more than 85% accuracy is quite a feat. Image Credits: Pre launch
When you’re putting together your own slide deck, think about whether you have a similar metric you could refer to, one that illustrates how much better your customers’ lives will be if they use your product.
On slides 1-7, Prelaunch lays out its problem space and the challenges it faces in the hardware ecosystem. On this slide, he comes full circle and says that what he’s doing is working extremely well. For hardware manufacturers and people who know how they work, 86% accuracy in forecasting product demand is about as good as it gets; it can also be a crystal ball. This is an incredibly powerful statement that goes a long way to confirming that the company is building something that may well be an indispensable tool for hardware manufacturers.
When you’re putting together your own slide deck, think about whether you have a similar metric you could refer to, one that illustrates how much better your customers’ lives will be if they use your product. It’s a great storytelling tool, if it stands up to scrutiny.
a bold vision
[Slide 12] Lots of room to grow. Image Credits: Pre launch
Market sizing is always an interesting challenge for startups, but Prelaunch’s vision, combined with its claims about how much it can reduce risk in hardware manufacturing, makes for a compelling story. Of course, many product launches do start with a market research phase already, but Prelaunch aims to put the expensive market research tools available to manufacturers of high-end products in the hands of everyone, including start-ups, family manufacturing operators, and individuals interested in making human-informed product design.
show, don’t tell
[Slide 11] Showing what the tool does helps explain why it is useful. Image Credits: Pre launch
Prelaunch uses four slides to show different aspects of its product, summarizing the analytics, reports, and much of the feature set that is available within the company’s product. But you were able to do this with a simple set of screenshots, rather than overloading the slide with words.
This part of the story is very demonstrative and describes a couple of important things about the company and its product: he is able to create complex dashboards that convey large amounts of information in a simple way, and he is able to create a product that is intuitive and actionable.
Traction galore!
I usually only add three things that I like, but I also had to include this slide…
[Slide 14] In the four months since launch, Prelaunch has experienced incredible growth. Image Credits: Pre launch
There is one slide that will trump everything else that happens in the business, and that is traction. A horrible team that has traction is not a horrible team. An awful product that generates revenue is not an awful product. I’m surprised the pre-launch team waited until slide 14 to hype these numbers. But $133,000 ARR after just four months is incredibly impressive, and while 800 companies registered might be a vanity metric, if all of them are in-market buyers for a product like Prelaunch, that’s a robust and promising pipeline.
