My First Million: Shaan's Masterclass On Pitching That Has Raised Millions From Investors

you will learn what part of your business is weak.

Why would a smart investor not invest in this?

And you need to go fix those problems.

Because if you do use this deck,

you will be able to raise money

as long as you actually have good content to put inside.

I feel like I can rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like days off on a road.

Let's travel never looking back.

All right, what's up, y'all?

Sean here, and this is gonna be a different type of episode.

This is a, I'm calling a masterclass.

So a masterclass did invite me to do a masterclass

because I'm not famous, but F them, I'm gonna do it myself.

I know how to do some things really, really well,

one of which is pitching.

And so if you're listening to this on the podcast feed,

it's gonna be slightly not ideal

because I'm gonna share my screen.

I'm gonna show, I'm gonna give away one of my little assets

which is my dummy pitch deck.

So this is literally a template for how I do my pitch decks

that is for any business that's trying to raise money.

You want to send a deck to an investor

and you wanna have them understand what you're doing,

be excited about what you're doing and cut you the check.

This is a deck that I have used to raise money.

I have sent to other founders to help them raise money.

I also, in my power writing course,

this is one of the modules.

This is one of the examples, one of the templates I give away.

So normally people pay $1,000 to take that course.

This is one of the little things in there.

I'm giving this away for free right now.

So if you're on the podcast feed,

you're not gonna be able to see my screen.

So what I recommend you do, hit pause, open YouTube,

type in my first million.

That's find our channel, subscribe to it,

and you will be able to see the screen here

because it's gonna be a lot better with the visuals.

But if you're on YouTube already, all right, you're here.

So this is my dummy pitch deck.

So the first thing is your title

and a small subtitle explaining what you do.

And as we go through this pitch deck,

I'm going to write in an example from that

I had done with a founder in our power writing course.

Okay, so for example, here with the, this is your title.

So they go, we are shuny.

And I was like, okay, what the heck is that?

And they go, we are an app for people with insomnia.

And I said, okay, that's kind of, you know, that's,

that's okay.

What's a subtitle that says the outcome

and maybe your special sauce.

And so this is what we landed on.

So we go, they said,

we are helping millions of people fix their insomnia

with skills, parentheses, not pills.

So that took a little bit of workshopping

to get that one liner.

But when you have that one liner,

feels so good when you get that one liner.

So I think this is great.

What are we doing?

We are out here trying to help millions of people

fix their insomnia with skills, not pills.

All right, so that's your first line.

Now let's get to the good stuff.

So this is where you want to,

if you have credibility, you want to lead with it,

which is basically in the beginning of any pitch

an investor is trying to figure out,

should I even care?

Should I listen?

And should I listen is going to come down

to one of two things.

Number one, do you have something that I want?

So that's kind of what the title slide sort of hints at.

What do you, what do you actually do?

And the second is, are you somebody

that is legit?

Are you worth listening to?

Do you have credibility or some,

some gravity to you about what you've done?

So if you have accomplishments,

I like putting that as slide two.

So a bit of credibility.

If you have some accomplishments, set the stage.

This is your quick intro, which sounds polite,

but it's actually a place to humble brag.

And if you or a company doesn't have accomplishments,

then skip this slide.

Don't put this here.

You don't want to lead with, I'm not that interesting.

So in Shuny's case, I go, why, you know,

do you have any credibility?

And they go, well, our co-founder or a partner is this guy,

Matthew Walker, who wrote this book, Why We Sleep.

It's a, I was like, oh, I've heard of that book.

It's like a bestseller.

They go, yeah, exactly.

So I go, perfect.

So our title became,

we literally wrote the book on sleep.

And then basically I explained, so that's like one of them.

You're trying to show that you were highly, highly credible.

And then, you know, I would put the, you know,

the title of the book, you know, the recognizable image

or some image here in big words.

And again, forget the formatting, right?

Like I'm not working on slide design right now.

That's why I just took the Times New Roman,

black font, white slide,

because I'm not worried about design.

That will come at the end.

We'll do that later.

For now, it's what is the story?

What is the storyline that's gonna get somebody hooked?

So here we're saying, we have a compelling initial thing.

We're helping millions of people fix insomnia

with skills, not pills.

Secondly, we're legit, you should listen to us.

We literally wrote the book on sleep.

One of the best sellers, we wrote that.

I'm a good business person and engineer.

That's the dynamic duo that's gonna build this thing.

Okay, great.

So now you're gonna say, most customers have this problem.

And it's gonna be backed by either really compelling data

or a personal story.

And so, you know, I'm gonna just copy paste

kind of what I did for them here.

So most customers have this problem.

For that, we did 25% of Americans have insomnia.

That's 75 million people, right?

And then we added to that the personal story.

So that became including me.

I had insomnia for years.

I tried pills, but felt yucky.

I tried to sense some oils that did nothing.

Finally, I found something that worked, okay?

So this is your problem slide.

Your problem slide with a big headline number

that punches you in the face,

shows how big of a problem it is.

And ideally, maybe a personal connection to it.

I had this problem.

I knew this problem.

Either I had this problem or I was a doctor

and I saw thousands of patients who had this problem.

I tried to help treat thousands of patients

who had this problem, right?

So something like that that connects you

to the problem is ideal.

And then you wanna do the current solution.

So before, what people are tempted to do is say,

here's my solution.

Here's why we are so great.

Instead, you wanna say, here's how they try

to fix it today.

So what we did for this was we said,

so how we solve it today.

We did, Americans spend $75 billion per year

on sleep aids to try to fix their sleep problems.

They barely work.

They have side effects

and they're mostly using fake science, right?

So that's what we put as the secondary thing here.

And then here I would maybe put some images

of the categories, right?

So I would put like, whatever, some shape here.

So let me get a little shape.

I'd be like pills or sleeping pills is X billion dollars,

whatever, nasal strips is this,

whatever the other sleep aids, essential oils

or whatever people use to solve this problem.

So I would kind of show they try A, B and C,

none of that shit work.

And this is where you now come in

with the Steve Jobs moment.

You get your turtleneck on and you say,

but what if instead there was a simpler solution,

a beautiful solution, a solution to totally fix this problem

with no downsides whatsoever, right?

This is essentially what you're gonna say.

And so, you know, this is where for them,

we basically came in and we said, you know,

instead we built an app that will teach you how to sleep

without having to take medicine.

So that's the headline that would come here

and then beautiful picture of your product.

And then you kind of reinforce it, right?

Like that's us, we do that thing.

So if you gave a hypothetical here,

like what if there was an app that did blank, blank, blank,

then you say, that's us, we do that thing.

Or in this case, just put it all on one side, that's fine.

Now, here's a key thing that most people miss.

So what they do typically is they go solution

and then they just go solution, solution, solution.

They just start talking about

how the solution works under the hood.

Everything about the solution.

As an investor, you don't need to know

how the whole product works yet.

You instead need to know, is this big?

Am I going to make money, right?

That's what the receiver of this presentation

really wants to know.

Am I betting on credible people?

Are they solving a big problem?

Does their solution make sense?

And how big can this get?

So now we go here, we state the dream.

So we explain the big plan, the big vision

for how big this company can become.

You know, this is where you might say,

we're building Uber for freight trucking, right?

That's like, we're building this big thing

in this big industry.

That's a $100 billion industry that's totally broken.

You know, so as an investor, I'm thinking,

wow, if they actually fix this problem,

that would be a big deal.

So, you know, for these guys,

what they did was, we said, our dream.

What common headspace, you know,

two billion dollar company,

one billion dollar company did for meditation,

we are gonna do for insomnia, depression, and anxiety.

A quick break to let you know

that today's episode is brought to you

by the Side Hustle Pro Podcast,

a podcast hosted by Nikela Matthews Akome,

which is also on the HubSpot Podcast Network.

So the Side Hustle Podcast has focused on people

bringing their side hustles

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making them big businesses.

And so she's got a bunch of really interesting episodes.

Her most recent episode is about a woman

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She has a few other episodes

on changing the relationship with money

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which is definitely challenging, mastering self-talk,

and then also how to have a plan for the year

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So go check it out, Side Hustle Pro,

wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, everyone, on the podcast about last year,

one of the best guests we ever had

was this guy named Neil Patel.

It was kind of controversial

because he said that he was spending $200,000 a month,

which is a ton of money.

And the truth is, even though it was controversial,

everyone was asking about him,

and if we can get him on again,

well, I've got good news because he has a podcast.

And today's episode is brought to you by his podcast.

It's called Marketing School,

and it's a daily marketing podcast

brought to you by Neil Patel, the guy we had,

and his partner Eric Sue.

So they share all types of stuff

about marketing, business, investing,

and your friends will think you are a marketing genius.

So check it out.

You can just search Marketing School

on your favorite podcast platforms or on YouTube.

So search Marketing School on YouTube and check it out.

And then we then added the sort of subtext.

These are $200 billion annual markets.

It's 50 times bigger than meditation.

And then we follow on.

Again, we make this even more persuasive.

So you wanna anchor it to something that they already know.

So why did we use Headspace and Calm,

or why do we use it's Uber for X?

Because it anchors it to something they understand,

something that they know, right?

We're building, I built an eSports app,

and I said, we're building Little League Baseball

for Fortnite or for eSports.

Okay, Little League Baseball produces

X hundred million dollars a year,

but more people play Fortnite than play Baseball.

This is gonna be a bigger business

than even the Little League is.

And so we were able to take this something

that sounded very niche, right?

Like youth eSports, but make it sound a lot bigger

by pitching it and connecting it

to something that's already big,

and then saying, we're doing that,

but in this big space.

So, here's where this slide landed.

People with these notices are sick

of taking pills for every problem.

We can get clinically verified results

with habit-based app therapy.

And I think the key here is

what this thing you recognize did for the X,

we're doing for Y.

Y is much bigger than X, 50 times bigger than X.

And people really have this problem.

All right, so now you're gonna get to your attraction slide.

Again, as an investor, I'm trying to figure out,

is this actually going to work?

The easiest way to answer that question is to say,

it's already working, look at this shit.

So, so far so good.

And this is where you put an impressive chart.

So, what is your hero chart?

How can you show that this thing is working?

So, what is your most hero metric?

And this is where pitching can't save you.

If your chart sucks, your pitch is gonna kinda suck.

No pitch can fix a terrible business.

You shouldn't be pitching a terrible business.

You should be pitching a business that's working

or going to work.

And so, if it's already working, you wanna show that.

If it's going to work, you wanna say

why you believe it's gonna work.

Maybe you have a wait list that's really big.

Maybe you have a track record of doing this

with other products.

What can you show that would give me faith

that this isn't all just talk?

There's some evidence.

So, this is where you put your hero chart.

Now, you go back to under the hood.

So, now you're gonna say, all right,

now you're interested, correct?

I told you the problem, the solution,

the big vision of how big this can be,

and the evidence that we're on our way.

So, now what you're gonna do is you're gonna say,

let me tell you how we're different, right?

Does this already exist?

Is this really that different than anything else?

And this is where you're gonna highlight your differentiator.

What most people do is they just explain their features.

That's not what you wanna do.

You wanna say everybody does X and we do Y, right?

That's the core differentiator.

So, let me tell you how our approach is different,

yet sensible.

Others do X, we do Y.

And this is where you're talking about

either your product strategy, your business model,

your growth strategy, et cetera, right?

Everybody else charges for this stuff.

We give it to them at cost,

but we have an annual subscription.

That's Costco.

It might be product.

Everybody else tries to solve this problem with pills.

We do it with skills through this app

that teaches you it daily habits, right?

Everybody else tries to grow through paid marketing,

but we do YouTube content that gets millions of views,

and therefore, we're able to acquire customers

for pennies where everybody else is paying $10, right?

This is the type of thing that you're gonna do.

Product, business model, or growth strategy.

How are you different than everybody else?

Now, we zoom out.

Is there a bigger trend that you're a part of?

Again, this is all about instilling confidence.

Confidence, confidence, confidence.

One way to instill confidence is,

we're not alone doing this.

This is something that you're seeing.

The whole world is moving remote.

The way that Peloton did this for fitness,

we're doing this over here in this other space.

So you wanna be able to zoom out

and show that you're a part of a bigger trend.

So in their case, I asked them this question.

I said, what bigger trends are you guys a part of?

And they ended up telling me,

we didn't design this slide,

but there's three big trends.

One is app-based coaching, calm, headspace.

They've proven that people will do app-based coaching.

The next one is telemedicine.

There are billion dollar companies

now that people are comfortable getting doctors advice

over the phone.

And lastly is that insomnia, depression, anxiety,

are rising due to technology overload,

the pandemic, the recession, the whatever else.

And so we are surfing these big waves.

We're not the big wave ourselves,

we are surfing the big waves.

Now you wanna answer the why now question.

So can you explain why this idea would work today?

But it wouldn't work three years ago,

five years ago, or 10 years ago.

What has changed?

Did a rule change?

Did technology change?

Did social behaviors change?

And so, you know, for example,

in their case, when we brainstormed,

and again, it's not about slide design.

It's about being able to make a persuasive case.

And so each of these slides is part of your persuasive case.

This is your why now.

So why now?

Well, this wouldn't have worked five years ago.

Regulation did not allow for digital therapy

with licensed doctors.

So there's a regulatory inflection point.

Also, in the last two years due to COVID,

everybody had to have a telemedicine experience.

We went from 10% of people having tried telemedicine

to 80% in two years.

So the whole world got to sample this

and now has Anne experienced doing this.

There ought to be more comfortable today

than they would have been, you know, X years ago.

Okay, why are you the one to do it?

What's your track record, your credibility, your expertise?

You want to reinforce what we did up top?

Or if you didn't write that up top,

you want to write it here.

So this is your why you.

Okay, now the business part.

How do you make money doing this?

If I give you some money, what will happen?

And so this is where usually,

I actually kind of left one out here.

So what I would do here is I would separate these.

I would do how the money gets made.

This is where you do your unit economics.

So you show that you've actually thought this through,

that the business is sensible.

You know, we put in X dollars.

It costs us Y to produce the product or service.

And Z is the net profit at the end of it.

And so, you know, for these guys,

they were able to say,

we make $100 per session at 25% net margin.

Here's our, and then they had a graph

of their unit economics and their payback period.

So their payback period was,

they acquire users for X dollars.

And that means they break even in three months on that user.

So three months is a good payback period.

So that's the unit economics side.

Now you're going to do the, what milestones will you hit?

You know, if I give you this money,

how will you make this the, you know, the big, big results?

So, you know, here's how will you make progress

so that the valuation goes up

and my shares become worth more?

So, you know, this is what we came up with for them,

which was the raising $2 million to do their pilots

to get our first 5,000 paying customers.

Key drivers, what are we going to do to get there?

We're going to allow people in from the waitlist.

We're going to hire three more coaches

and we're going to roll out our company plan

that lets corporations buy this for their employees.

So those are the key things we're going to do

to get to one million ARR.

And now I'm telling you, if you give me $2 million,

I'll turn that into one million

out of annual recurring revenue.

Also on the YU, we had a good version of it for them.

So, you know, I'm a fan of being bold with this stuff.

So we're the team for this.

We're world renowned sleep experts and AI engineers.

Instead of, and we wrote this,

instead of trying to get people to play eight hours

of Candy Crush per day,

we've decided to help people,

help everyone get better sleep at night.

Right, so I kind of like this,

this vocal style of being a little bit ballsy.

Not everybody loves that.

And sure it could turn some people off,

but you want to attract the type of investor that likes you.

And so, you know, as long as you attract,

as long as some people love it,

it's okay that some people hate it.

You know, as long as it's just not everybody hates it.

All right, now this is one thing I see

a lot of people miss out on, sweet in the pot.

So you want to take some of your good news

and move 15% of it to the end of the show.

So what can you say for the end?

It's like your little good news dessert

at the end of the thing.

So for them, their pot sweetener was this.

They said, one last thing,

we just secured a partnership with NIH.

They're going to be giving us 500,000

in this round no dilution.

There's over 2 billion in sleep funding grants available

and we will tap into this as we grow.

Nice, just a little bit of good news at the end

that shows more momentum, more progress,

a key partnership you just had.

Maybe it's a revenue milestone

or it's, you know, some key thing

that you didn't put in your main traction.

You just took a little bit of good news out,

saved it for the end to leave them on a high note.

And this is at the end, call to action.

So get in touch, we're closing out this round.

If you're interested, email me here.

Here's my email address.

That's my dummy pitch deck.

So if you just go to, I'll make a link for this.

So just go to www.SeanPourri.com slash deck, D-E-C-K.

I'll put a link to this here.

So you can go and download this

and have a copy of this for yourself

and you can edit it with your stuff.

So I'll clean this up, I'll revert all these

so it goes back to the template

and then you can use this for your stuff.

So try this out, let me know what you think.

It's pretty battle tested.

So, you know, I've definitely been there.

The hard part for most of you is gonna be

you don't have good stuff to put on some of the slides.

You don't have a differentiator

or you don't have traction

or you don't have a pot sweetener

or you don't have a great track record.

And that's where you will learn

what part of your business is weak.

Why would a smart investor not invest in this?

And you need to go fix those problems.

Because if you do use this deck,

you will be able to raise money

as long as you actually have good content to put inside.

If your business is not very good,

then don't worry about the deck.

Make your business better first.

Then go raise the money.

So anyways, that's it.

That was my masterclass.

If you liked it, let me know.

If you want me to do more of these,

I got tons of these things.

So go get this deck, SeanPurri.com slash deck.

Try it out, let me know how it goes for you.

All right, that's all.

I feel like I can rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to.

Put my all in it like no days off on a road.

Let's travel, never looking back.

Bye-bye.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.