The Perfect Funding Pitch Deck PG Connects Digital #2

i think our our speaker is is on his way here that looks like hey yes there he is hi ilya how are you hi doing great thank you for having me today no thank you i had to actually i had to uh i just had a mouthful of coffee that i suddenly had to pad a little bit which i i uh satisfied uh you are you are you have the the honor of closing the first half of the first day of of this particular track so um where are you speaking to us from whereabouts you in the world at the moment um i missed in moscow moscow fair enough fantastic i know i know moscow's in russia it's all right i'm in london england so that's good that's great it's very international event so uh fall away from uh and have you are you all set up and ready to go um are you are you fine to go you've got everything you need to go yeah so i'm gonna back off and let you have your talk and i'll come at the end and ask you some questions there we go elia the floor is yours

okay so hello everyone my name is i'm from melro games adventures investment arm of my games um and today i want to like give you an idea what could uh like perfect uh game company pitch deck looks like um we invested in video games companies and for my uh last time in mrgb it's uh two and a half years now i sell more than thousands of more than thousands of peaches and i realized that there is no perfect um like framework for uh giving the given speech or giving a beast for investor because many many beaches contains some unnecessary information just takes too much time to get through it and some pictures like um some important and essential parts in

that so i decided to create a kind of perfect pitch deck uh so give you an idea what it's how good it looks like and what should it consider stuff so um it consists of 10 slides it's pretty clear and easy back and please don't pay attention to details uh any all the all the information here is fictional so uh it's only the only thing that's valuable here it's uh um like the general idea of what you put in your pitch deck so the first slide it's interest right i think it's pretty important and it should contain your game company's logo and your name and the purpose of the pitch deck so in my case uh it's serious alien investment proposal pitch deck and the date is may 2020 so they give you um give the investor the idea of uh what's your um what's the general purpose of the pitch deck and how act uh how actual and

current it is so it's pretty clear and then um it goes their most important slide in in hope is deck i guess uh it's founders because i believe that in in a gaming company in game startup founders is one of the main and the most important assets so it's pretty important to introduce key decision makers in the company um like right away uh so it should include a photo role of the founders and their previous experience and track records and it's it's very good when you have a linkedin uh link connected to your profile so i could just follow the link and get more information about your experience and uh what are you guys up to and uh yeah yeah sorry to interrupt but i i think you might need to press play on the slideshow i don't know because it's still i know maybe you're not but i just want to check because it's not showing the slides um

we can just uh we can just see so we can just see the um powerpoint the whole thing but not the slideshow it looks like you need to press play from start or something an actual powerpoint maybe i don't know if you've got two powerpoints open maybe it's different ones okay um just keep giving us sorry we've got plenty of time it's okay we need the last one as long as you need so sorry yeah i just didn't want you to go through the whole thing and then go it's not showing because it wasn't okay [Music] that's perfect there you go brilliant perfect thank you for letting me know uh so um i was talking about the most important slide it's founders slide and uh here at the bottom of the page you could see um like a mission of the company i think it's pretty important to uh articulate the mission and what's

your up to what's your idea of the company in my case um i say that my fictional red solid games is founded by industry veterans and focused on multiplayer mobile games with social core and original ips and mass market appeal you could came up with something that would serve you best but that's that's my case and um the second important slide is team composition i think the team is the second important part in the company um and uh it's pretty important to to understand how many people you have where where are you based and what's your previous experience and how it is translating a monetary meeting so it's really important to state your burn rate in my case is 50k per month and your target is barely because uh often when you raise money you have to increase your burn rate hire more people and it's crucial to understand what's

the actual burn rate would looks like after you raised after you raised their investment and it's pretty important to state the previous experience of the team uh like at which company they worked at and but don't you please don't use the terms at like the kind of the team has 600 years of experience combined i don't believe that experience doesn't combine and it's just just something that could confuse uh potential investors and uh it's pretty important to state your hiring and management strategy in my case i came up with the idea that my company would hire top tier hats and we would save some money by hiring remote and cost effective development teams it's it's a great idea and during the current time it's something

that you could think about and um this slide is your previous titles and your previous experience um it's great if you have previous success uh so you could just state here how many downloads and how much revenue generated by you by your apps but it's it's perfectly okay uh if you don't have any successful titles you could just take here your previous uh experiences because if you failed and you uh learned some lessons out of it it's also uh it's also normal and it's perfectly fine with us uh so you could just state something show something here that you work that but it's um it's great if you have worked on titles that got some success and some some scale because it's not just um it's not [Music] it's not to guarantee it wouldn't guarantee your future

success but when you are like familiar with how uh big titles are operating and how it could like could be looks like how to do and run liveops for example in their big titles in mass communities so it's uh transform your um just from your vision from your mindset and so it's pretty important to understand that you um you had that experience um that's a general slide for the whole presentation that's about your game that's you're developing um in my case i came up with the idea of a combination of fission mechanic and modern and deep clash royale like meta it's perfectly fine to use fake screens and using some you know art from other uh titles because it's not a commercial based uh thing to show and you should just translate your idea

about what kind of game you're developing uh what would be uh the core gameplay would be the meta gameplay and what's your monetization idea so in my case i'm came up with the um with them proved mechanic or mechanic fission is pretty popular mechanic and proved uh metagame let's just proved in uh different uh different titles and my idea of competition is we're gonna sell sell um premium currency and it could be spent on uh speeding up um just unlocking and purchase some mystery resources and a few screenshots uh just give your potential investor a clear idea how you think the game would looks like the second part of the game pitch is competitor analysis so it consists of two parts first is precision positioning i think that's

pretty important because it would um find the idea of your positioning on a market in comparison of other competing titles because you you need to um translate your idea in a short term individual way so you could uh do that in comparison uh so that's that matrix is just an example you could use any other axis to translate your idea i choose to um compare in two um two points at the deepest deep deepness of the meta and has a stability of gameplay so my uh vision is our game would have really deep meta in comparison uh and with other competitors and we it would be pretty accessible and i think that's what clash royale and golf players did with their competitors and we about to

do the same thing and the second part of that slide is top competitors it serves the matter that i should show my investors that there is some money in that niche so don't be don't hesitate to um show successful titles uh here and it's always uh you you always have some comparison some comparing titles so please try to find something that is close to your idea and that maybe you close comparison try to use analytic tools like app magic for example to or app any to to get numbers and uh estimated numbers of downloads and revenues to show your potential investors what's your potential revenues and looks like the next slide is roadmap and kpis

it's also very important to show not just your current kpis but it's it's dynamic uh it means that you are working on the on your game and you are constantly improving uh its uh mechanics and your work with with feedback by the players and you could analyze data and you could analyze [Music] what's going on in your game and you're constantly improving your your kpis and the game and please uh be uh realistic in there uh please provide uh like realistic core data dates on when you're planning to run soft launch when you're about to uh push your game to global launch and that would help investors to understand how much uh how much money you need to complete your game

not completely prepare your game for for global launch and what's your current metrics looks like because uh you know game game oriented investors are pretty familiar with uh keep your eyes and with of other games and they would compare your kpis with others so please try not to cheat here because on the next step you would be asked it could be asked to provide access to your analytics tools and like provide proof proofing numbers and one more important thing it's cover size um and make sure that it's at least 1k 1000 players to make some stressful numbers and it's one it should be 1k players and one gear and at least 100 pain users to measure monetization kpis

um then it's company in four slide and uh investment proposal it's something that usually missing in in um beach decks uh like you just saying how great your companies how great your game is but it's not clear what you're asking for so please make sure to clearly [Music] state uh the amount of funds you're raising and maybe some non-monetary things you're looking for from your par from your potential partner in my case i'm stating that cap table cup table it's a um it's a table um describes ownership of the company so in my case it's there are three founders and there some vc fund that we get on board in the previous round and at this round we are raising two and a half millions uh at ten millions pre-pre-money valuation uh it's debatable so please be ready to justify your assumptions

on how much money you uh what's your valuation at the moment and don't focus too much on the vibration please have unlike a serious copy collision on the on the terms and take on account um other things uh besides money because uh first thing you should consider is how fit your vision with investors vision on your company and what kind of what kind of benefits they could bring on the table besides money because you know everyone has money now and uh you have choice and the valuation could be not the most important thing at the round uh but please make sure to justify to justify the amount of money you're raising at this uh this time uh in my case i've seen that uh one and a half million i need to keep my company running

and i'm about to spend one billion for either acquisition it's pretty important because in some cases you would uh we would meet with investors who could offer you something like some different schemes for example uh at mrgb we provide market money for marketing separated from money from for development and uh from this statement i could see that i could offer you something better than just two and a half millions in exchange for equity in the company i could invest only one half million get less shares in your company and provide you with one million for marketing in a kind of different way which which would be um mutually beneficial for for both sides and um i'm trying to state that multiple investors are welcome here and the minimum check is 500 thousands uh it's just to uh get get potential investor the idea for how

you see your potential partners how how could they looks like are you up to attract some angel vcs on this round or are you looking for a single investor who should cover up the whole round and um the pretty important thing here uh it's a closer date like spectacular date in my case it's december 2020. uh just to give your potential investor the idea of uh are you in hurry or um there is some plenty of time to have some info conversation and uh negotiation uh and uh please make sure to run your raising a forest in advance because there is rare case when you could raise money in less than three months because it takes some time to approach investors you have some multiple negotiations to your due diligence and um if you need

money like next month or you're gonna bankrupt uh it's just would be a deal breaker for um for plenty for many investors so it's super important to state real uh closure date and what's your ex and what you expect to close this round and uh it's a great thing to have but it's not mandatory to show off your long-term goal in my case i imagine that uh it would be a great thing to me to exit in three to five years at six million plus uh valuation i think that's important to get aligned with investors region because uh you know when you um when you get we see on board your company is for sale since that moment and you have uh you have to have an aligned vision or feature for you um for your business because uh if you if you're not about to exit the company at some point it would

be a kind of problem if your partner uh want to do that so make sure to stay as much and express as much information as possible and to express your vision and your your idea of like of your future this next important slide is forecast pnl it's something that's commonly used for series 8 companies so because you already have some traction maybe you have even a revenue stream already but if not please just uh create the cost part of the pnl uh and because there's something you could you'd have even if you don't have any revenue subtractions right attraction right now but if you could calculate it uh out of your company budget

and you're expected um how much time you need to hit a break even point breaking point is when you uh become profitable so usually um you should uh raising you should be raising money uh enough uh to survive till the next round or to hit the break-even point so this pne forecast is kind of a justification for the amount of money you you're raising at the moment because uh you would be asked by the investors on what would be the usage of funds you're raising and that's a clear way to show uh how the money your resident would be used and what would be used for and the great things thing to have it's your expected kpis you could construct it by using your previous experience or by um exploring uh your competitors

and talking with uh um you know other uh other founders or uh using any uh any other resources to uh construct this region that's this important thing to have because it's kind of a goal the thing you're targeting and that's help that would help uh investors understand are you have like a touch with reality and is issue expectations are realistic and the easier whole business plan is realistic because you know for investors it's really important to understand how this venture would benefit for them how much how how they could make money out of this investment and stating these financial calculations and their expectations uh is caused a lot of questions right away and the last slide is the thank you

slide uh it's also important because it's uh have it should have your contacts um i think the most important thing is your email here and that's how you could get connected by your potential uh potential investors and partners so that's that's it that's the last slide of the deck and i would leave for uh you could find uh on the whole piece deck on my medium or my facebook on my routine it's videos please feel free to get it modified and use it as a template for your own presentation awesome wow thank you very much julia that was uh you don't i'm sadly you don't get the uh the real round of applause because you could never you can hear can do it but you get a virtual outposts that was really good really detailed um we've got a few questions actually if you if you don't mind answering a few questions from the audience um and i

uh i thought some there's a lot of detail in there um and i can obviously that's your perfect perfect pitch deck how does that compare to the pitch decks you see typically i i i you know are you getting pitch decks or are you getting i mean you've asked for them but you are you getting quite different things yeah you know i um usually uh the pitch decks that we're getting are pretty you know the high quality ones but sometimes they lack um some essential parts uh as a the investment for investment idea for example the as i said the pitch deck could uh represent the company or a product and i was you know i was all excited and i'm about oh my god that's something that i could be interested in and then uh like i am expect to be asked for something like what you guys looking for and then when i missed it um i should

you know contact the founder and ask them uh and find all the crucial uh details about our potential collaboration uh like much later than i could have yeah okay and i i've got a couple questions i'll go through so one of them relates to just that is is this is is this some pitch date you know is this a typical thing for most invest investors i obviously you want them to come to you i get that but um is this pretty standard questions that everyone wants to ask are these somebody specific for for the way that um you know i think that's kind of uh general knowledge uh it would be perfect for us for mrgb but i think it would be great to use it for a pitching to any other investors but uh keep in mind that it's uh you know game industry specific and uh it's uh it's expect that your potential uh partner have an idea about the games market and et cetera because it lets uh the industry

overviewed life for example because i know that totally no i i appreciate it's a games one but if they're going to a different you know computer investor i mean i think it's very very good and it's very open and generous to share this around um you you mentioned a few things so this is another question from there was you mentioned kind of burn rates and projected burn rates um obviously people can work out how big their team is now but the question is how should we estimate the projected burn rate is is is underestimating that level a concern or can you go too high too low with that yeah uh actually i have for an example of a game company's budget so you could construct uh your hiring plan um and the positions you're looking to close in the nearest future and their salaries and some tax multiplier so you could uh calculate for each month how much money you're about to burn uh let's uh that's all the expenses combined uh like you into cover salaries since you cover um office

trends you uh like any uh other stuff like outsource uh service yeah etcetera and then you like have a sum of it and then for for each month you have uh that statement uh with like you about to hire for example two developers in march so you have two more positions in march and then you are about to hire like a 3d designer and the your monthly burn rate increase on the salary of a pde designer and then you have like total sum so you will get an idea about your total amount of money you are you need to get to a certain point and you would need you would have a euro monthly boundary dynamic so if you take a look at my uh linkedin or facebook you would find a team plate for games company budget so you could use it uh and so that would be really helpful

right now um as couple of questions kind of related here one is what's the most important aspect when you're looking at people often say in talks that it's all about the founders and the team it makes kind of sense because they're gonna make the game and they might not succeed with the first game is that is that true and also on the flip side are there any common mistakes that developers make when dealing with investors or in their pitch decks or anything yeah as i said as i said uh at the very beginning of my uh like uh presentation it's really important to uh founders are the most valuable asset in the company because we invest in people in first place and if your idea is not that great at the moment uk came up with something different if you're if you're a great founder if you're a great entrepreneur so we would invest in people in teams and even if your current project wouldn't turn over as a success you you came up with something different at the private stage so yeah i think

that's it's super important but uh even if you don't have any previous experience and it's your first gaming uh business it's also possible to find um find investments in your company so if you lack at some now part of your um um the deck you could force uh other parts for example if you lack experience you could force the idea of product if you have a uh idea idea of the product uh it could be a problem uh but uh because you you better you know something right you need something to me yeah yeah but experience so it is not necessarily something it's important you know one of the most successful investments in mrgb was in a company without any experience in game development uh we invested in this precede stage where uh even no company been incorporated so uh and now they are making a like

multi-million revenues so yeah it's it's absolutely possible to get investments without any experience okay cool answers another question as well so uh um harry francio not anonymous i said how important is it to display the market opportunity for certain niches i mean you talked about comparison different games and how i think it's pretty important or in first place it's important for for yourself to understand your position on the market and uh like to justify for yourself is this game idea have any potential because when you have just a rough idea in your mind and you don't um you don't put it on the paper uh and you don't do homework on uh get the idea of if there are any real potential for your idea uh you'd be um you think that you you could be you know overpositive uh about your your idea and that

would be you you could you should you would find any uh evidences of for your like for your success and you you would ignore any obstacles for that yeah i've got two final quick questions and i'll let you uh go so you've got the uh investor connect stuff going on so um uh anonymous question considering forecasting is usually a guesstimate i guess this goes back to what we said before how much value do you find in it because i i guess that's what i was looking at what the other person was asking a question was looking at was how did you forecast you know what your burn rate's gonna be when really you've no idea how much uh costs forecast is crucial uh earnings forecast is guesstimate that's for sure but you if you could came up with that uh estimate it's uh better than you if you don't um we and we understand that it's uh not something that would be um would be uh like real and it would be

adjusted at some point yeah um but if you have it we could talk about it uh we could to you know dig your mind about why did you create such estimates and what's your uh what are you basing on you can help home those estimates i guess yeah it's good you've got to start somewhere right otherwise while you can yeah sure the final question from the audience is is um uh i'll paraphrase this i guess are are there any things changing in terms of the type of investment or the things that investors are looking for as a result of the kovitz crisis and the potential recession that's ahead i presume that is impacting to some degree i think they're the um the most valuable impact here that we become more comfortable in investing in the remote uh in remote teams uh companies because uh right now we're working remotely and before before that crisis uh

it was um really important to invest in companies that sit in one place and like that felt like a company and without you know having an office and sitting in one place uh it was it was a downside right now i think that we don't care about that anymore uh and uh it brings more opportunity for distributed teams yeah yeah okay brilliant well thank you so much uh for all that and thanks for sharing that as you said we'll we'll make sure we paste that that link uh in this window and in the discord for people to check out um you'll be involved or mrgb involved in the vest connector which people are signed up for we're not uh oh subscribe so hope that's that goes well um today um and yeah mate we'll see you hear more from you later hopefully you'll come out of this with some amazing new signing uh deals that we'll read about and write about in a couple of years time thank you for your time uh elia thank you very much indeed digital round reports for me at least

okay