4 Comments
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Amy Gong Maxwell's avatar

So awesome to read. 5 slides with huge font?! Would never have guessed but totally makes sense. Curious, thoughts on co-founders who are family members or spouses?

a16z speedrun's avatar

We’ve had a few! All great teams.

Clayton Yan's avatar

Great conversation on validation and being an outlier! If founders foresee a problem that customers may have before they have them, what is the best way to get validation on our solution.

Sal's avatar

The good:

This is a great template for a pitch deck. So thanks!

The bad:

Only founders who have had a product hit the market would understand things like: "What problem are you solving?" - This isn't obvious to young founders and thats okay. (WhatsApp started as a status setting tool! They built it because they thought it was cool). Iterating and finding PMF post-launch is where a lot of magic happens.

"Why are you the right person to build this." - This is not clear. Not everyone has worked for a fast growing startup, or is a domain expert. Many are first-timers. Anyone can build anything with enough humility and determination. I'm not sure what VC's are looking for here.