e019 - Mandeep Soor: Building a winning Pitch Deck

Speaker A: 3, 2, 1.

Speaker B: Hi, everybody. Welcome to the Total Recall podcast. We're here for a another great episode educating the startups around the world with great content. And this episode I am, um, excited by because it's a question that I've been asked many times over the last few weeks, few months, few years around, what's the perfect pitch deck look like? And I'm joined by know that the mandate saw her to talk just about that. Hi, Mandy.

Speaker A: Hi, Will. How's it going?

Speaker B: I'm good, I'm good. I'm looking forward to talking to you. Um, the reason I'm looking forward to talking to you is because I actually watched you win a really cool pitching event. Um, for everybody listening in, in Birmingham, where we live, and there was a pitching event and I believe it was 60 plus startups, right, that got into Venture Fest. And uh, the idea of it was to pitch your startup to a panel of, um, analysts, funders, VCs, and for them to be effectively scored out of 60. And you won, right?

Speaker A: Somehow, yeah, it was, it was a bit of a. Yeah, I didn't imagine that first you had 60 and so we were asked to come up a couple of weeks earlier and then it was eight on the day. Uh, so then eight went down to three and then the final three, we had a public vote, so everyone voted on it. And that was, uh, yeah, great. Really, really boosted by that. It was a great day, obviously, wasn't it?

Speaker B: Well, I, I watched you pitch and you control the room very well. You're a fantastic presenter. Um, but your pitch deck was, was great. Really, really enjoyed that. So I'm thinking what we can do here is kind of, um, you know, pick the meat off the bones a little bit in your journey, I guess, and how you came to the final iteration, um, that you came to, I know we were joking off camera, where, you know, 50, 60 iterations you got where, where you are now. Um, but why don't you just introduce your company to us and tell us a little bit about this data intelligence software startup that you're creating, Bendy.

Speaker A: Great. Uh, thanks, Will. Yeah, look, firstly, really great to be here and um, excited to talk about Bendy, as I do every day. But, um, also just, yeah, go through the pitch deck and we can make it a conversation if you want stop me as I'm going through it. Just let me know. Sure. Um, so Bendy, one of the three co founders for the company. And, uh, what we do is two things for clients. We help organizations with large, complex supply chains to understand Those chains. And we do that by one, helping them map them. Uh, we use an automated process so you don't have to go to your supplier and say, look, who's your next supplier? Who's your next ones? The kind of confessional model. We build a graph database using trade data. So every time there's a trade between two countries, there's a little digital bit of evidence. We collect that, uh, lots of data science. Um, we put it into a massive graph. And then when our clients want to know who their supplier, supplier, supplier are, ah, we can tell them, um, using this graph that we're building. And it's super quick. It's uh, like moments instead of months, which is kind of what usually this process takes. And then the second thing we do is we help them to understand risk. And the risk is really around E, so environmental, social, so around how people are treated, what's the human impact of, uh, the products that are being produced and G, so governance, how's it run? Um, are any legal issues? Who you know, is this something in the ownership structure? Um, and we scan the horizon for lots and lots of different types of information in about 20 different languages, um, across the world. So one of our clients has got suppliers globally. Um, so we scan through a huge ton of information. We look at the news, um, in all those countries where their suppliers are based. We look at legal records, we look at, um, international kind of reports or something produced by um, a local body or governments. But we also look at social media. So it's not just like a post by X, it's, you know, in today's day and age, mobile phones technology is ubiquitous. And you've got a farmer in Bangladesh or in southern India who's basically having a hard time and they'll write about it on a board. So then we collect that information and we can build these kind of patterns of. Actually there's been numerous issues of overtime, excessive overtime in this region. And your suppliers are based there. So that's a risk.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And, uh, what happens in the world today is you send a person with a clipboard and a survey. So this captures, uh, everything else. We, yeah, we, we share a lot of very difficult information with our clients, but stuff that they just need to know.

Speaker B: Yeah, and that's, that's the AI element of it, is it? That's doing that scanning for you?

Speaker A: The scanning, uh, the filtering, the um, I would say summarization of that. Um, we're talking about thousands of suppliers with millions of data points to get to maybe, you know, a Couple of hundred or so risks of which literally only a handful of are going to be severe. So we rate everything. The last thing you want is a, As a big, big brand or a big retailer is like, we send you hundreds of risks and you're like, oh God, what am I going to do with this? So we rate it all, we align it with regulation because that's. There's lots of reasons why companies would do this, but a big, big reason at the moment is regulation. And so based on that, it's going to be a handful that you're like, okay, this is like, my hair is on fire. I need to fix this. Because if I don't, it's going to be in the press. It's really expensive. Yeah, my stuff's going to be late. I won't be able to sell it. So it's, yeah, it's reputational, it's commercial. Um, but it's a, it's kind of, it's opportunity to marry the, you know, doing the right thing by people and planets and also your business. Which is why, why I'm doing it, really.

Speaker B: Yeah. And that's going to bring me to my next question really is the, uh, you know, how you translate that why into a, Into a pitch deck. This is the challenge, you know, because you. First thing is the, the solute, you know, what's the problem and the solution. So there's a massive problem there that you've just articulated, which, you know, we have to condense all of the narrative that you, you kind of just wax lyrical with that into a slide. Which is where the challenge, the first challenge comes. I think I'm. Whenever I'm talking to people about pitch decks and you probably would have seen this is the first, um, you know, flashing light is what problem do you solve in a shorter sentence as you can possibly make it so that the person seeing your pitch deck knows straight away what, what it is you're doing. Uh, what did you come to in the end as your elevator statement? Call it what you will. Um, and kind of how difficult was that process?

Speaker A: So it's, uh, it's not like it was a difficult process. It is and continues to be a difficult process. Uh, there are a number of things that change, um, Bendy in its current iteration. We've been doing this for about a year and a half and in just that period alone, there would have been over 50 versions of this pitch deck. Um, and then even there, there will be slightly different, um, for particular audiences, even within the investment, uh, arena, I would say If I'm taking this to a small angel, um, um, they've got. They might have a slightly different background. They're looking for slightly different information. So I tailor it for that. If I'm taking it to a vc, they might be looking at, I don't know, thousands of decks. Right. In a year. And we know this to be true, then I need to get it down into even less slides.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: Uh, so they're. They're both different versions of the deck over time, but also, even in the singular point in time, there's different versions of it. It's, like, based on an audience. And I think I was previously, um, a strategy consultant at bcg. And so, you know, your two bits of bread and butter, your tools are, um, slide decks and Excel. And I don't think that's really changed, but it does teach you how to be succinct. And, like, one of the bits of advice that I got and I've continued to try and incorporate is if you didn't actually read the slide, if you didn't take anything from the slide, could you figure it out from the sentence that you have above? And that's, uh. So when writing the pitch deck, the first thing we do is, okay, you've got 10 slides, 15 slides. Just write those sentences. Yeah, Preferably, if you read all those sentences, it should be a story. It should be a complete picture of the company, and you get everything that you want to say. You know, everything. But, like, the highlights in there. And so you've just got a. You just got a word document with 10 bullets on it, and that then becomes the pitch deck. It's like, okay, well, in order to say this, to make this statement, what information can I put on it? Is it a visual? Is it a table? What is it?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's a good point, really, because I. I've seen many, many pitch decks now over, uh, the course of time. And it's funny to see how some people go heavy on the story and not so much on the. On the commercials. Some people go heavy on the commercials and not so much on the story. Some people go very heavy on the tech and not so much on the commercials or the story. So it's kind of, you know, like we've said before, horses for courses. But, um, where did you get to that you felt was the winning formula for you, uh, in terms of how you mix up the commercial, the tech, what it looks like, what it does, versus the problem that you're solving?

Speaker A: So at the beginning, when you've got a uh, product that is not out in market. It's, it's a work in progress at best. Uh, you maybe test it, maybe tested it with like a couple of uh, friendly clients, but potential clients. But it's not, it's not a commercial product at that point. It's like it's, you've got to be strong on story. Um, but you know, it's like some investors might be interested in that and some might. So again you're trying to find, you're looking at different, you've got different pieces of the puzzle and you're trying to fit other people's perspectives onto that. Some investors prefer strong story, but really strong story. When you're thinking about a VC or a fund is uh, you're not a first time, um, entrepreneur. You've done this before, you've preferably exited. Um, you've gone through all the growing pains before. And then if you have a product that doesn't make money, you'll probably get funded. But actually otherwise, I mean from our own very painful experience, um, we were first time founders. So of the three of us, myself, uh, Ollie is, actually has had a couple of startups and he's our cto and Ben, uh, who is head of research has not had a startup before. So for me and for Ben it was you know, the first time. And while together we've got like a great set of skills that helps fill all the needs of the business. You just don't know what it's like until you do it. And so that we, we tried to fundraise before we had a product that we could sell that didn't work. Uh, it doesn't matter how good the pitch deck was, I think. So you do need commercials because um, it doesn't have to be all commercial that you don't want, you know, three, three slides of just like forecasts that don't mean anything five years into the future because that's just made up. But it's like this is our current revenue, this is where we think we're going to be the next two years. Here are some commitments that we've got from hopefully companies, brands, consumers or a number that you care about. So it's like an loi and that's that, that traction piece. I think without it it's really hard to fundraise.

Speaker B: Show the potential.

Speaker A: Yeah. Unless you're an Exit founder. Yeah. And then.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Great. Good for you.

Speaker B: And I think one of the, um, you know, one of the hardest things in, in taking the idea because obviously, you know, first Time founders. Um, it's exciting, right? It's, it's scary, it's daunting, it's exciting. There's all of these things going on in your head that you then have to condense into 15 slides, you know, and then you have to convince somebody that's reading that slide that they are as excited as you are about it. And you said it ah, earlier like 10 to 15 slides. You know, the kind of um, the sweet spot that I find is somewhere in between that, you know, how did you kind of in your journey go from the start? I saw one the other day and it was 92 pages pitch deck. Um, so we obviously have some work to do there. But how did you get all that information into, into 15 slides?

Speaker A: Uh, yeah, I usually slide deck. There's a version of it that's like 25 slides and then skim it down. Um, so again there's so many versions of stuff. Right. Like um, the 25 slide version looks at like lots of detailed feedback from customers, for example. It might have some more detailed competitive analysis in there. But the purpose, I think this is the thing like who's the audience and what's the purpose of what you're doing? And the audience uh, is, is hopefully investors, whether they're angels or VCs or funds of some variety. And the purpose of this is to make them excited. So you kind of want to tease a little bit and not say everything. We m also do this in our uh, like monthly kind of investor updates. You have to expect that if it's good, it's going to be shared a lot. That's great. But you kind of give a, a flavor of what it is and you're like, if you're interested then come and have a conversation with me. And that. And then we get, get stuck in. So giving someone 24 slides is complete waste of their time.

Speaker B: On my own, yeah, it's, it's hard work to, you know, to even read through those. And especially at those lengths, it's hard to stay to the story because it, it's so long. You know, it's like watching a three or four hour film. You kind of think, well, what actually happened an hour ago? You know.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think I need a break now. By which time yeah, you missed some really important part of the plot. And I don't know, I ye if 24 slides is something you might do on a second third meeting.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Where they've said, okay, tell us how you got to these numbers. Um, tell us how the technology works underneath the hood. Um, certainly some of our earlier decks we went because we were like, okay, we're a technology company. We've built this, like, great WYSI software. Um, it learns and gets better over time. Let's tell you all about how that works, and here are the types of algorithms that we're like, training. Nobody wants to know that on the first day.

Speaker B: No, the thing is, I spoke to the VC in New York, and I was talking to them the other day about how they assess their pitch decks, and he said to me, he spends less than 15 seconds per slide. You know, it really is a quick scan, which is obviously what you were saying is to have the strap line that tells the story. And then, you know, you skim over the detail below. Does the next slide flow? Does the next slide flow? Um, and I think that's obviously why numbers are so high in terms of pitch decks that get unfortunately in, you know, they put aside and never, never seen again by that vc because they, they are too long. They don't follow the narrative. And this is what I found about yours when I, When I was watching you deliver yours. I kind of knew what slide was coming next before it came because.

Speaker A: That's nice to hear.

Speaker B: Yeah, you really did follow the story. Um, and I think that is obviously a result of, I'm assuming, quite a lot of feedback that you've had.

Speaker A: Astronomical amounts.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: I think both within the team, like, we all three of us work on, obviously a lead on it, but like, all three of us, um, input on this on a regular basis because we have to be aligned. And I think the startup, you know, a day, so much happens in a day, you have a new conversation and then you're like, okay, great, add that client onto the, to the list. Or, um. Oh, actually, we've just got this idea. We're going to build this thing in six months. Oh, my God, that needs to go on there. So it's such a living document. Ah. And I think, uh, one of the things that we did a little while ago was we got it really beautified into something in like, Figma or using one of these, like, um, slightly more snazzy, uh, kind of Canva type thing. No, Canva's pretty easy, right? Like Canva, you could just change stuff around. But, like, I don't find it easy. Makes me like the world's easiest thing. But that's okay. We'll put that aside. Um, but yeah, it's just, you want, you want your pitch deck to be easily easy to change, because I expect to change it every week. And I do.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And is there, there like a, a level of complexity that you, you stick to or simplicity per slide? You know, I've seen some bit stacks that have a lot of information on there. A lot of graphics, very busy. Do you, you know, do you prefer to go punchy and, and more condensed? What's your kind of vibe for that?

Speaker A: So there's two versions again and another. There's so many versions of this, right? There's the version that you present versus the version that you give someone. So uh, when speaking I will strip it down so that you're looking at a picture or something visual, but you don't really have to read anything. I'm going to tell you the thing that I want you to think at that point. Hopefully that, and hopefully those things come together. Um, whereas when you're giving something away, and this is kind of similar for like sales conversations, generally once you've given those slides to someone, you have no control over how they receive it. If they have questions or thoughts, you've got no way to come back on that. So your best bet is to give them more information. Um, so then I kind of almost. My beta writes the things I want them. Want them to do, but they probably won't read them.

Speaker B: It's good advice to be fair. The, um, almost like the present, you know, vocally version of it, nice and short and sharp. And then the, the version that you're going to send to someone where they might, you know, take the time to read it.

Speaker A: Yeah, right.

Speaker B: Okay, nice. Um, and with the, you know, with the idea that you had, um, for the product. You know, some people, when they start writing their pitch deck, the product iterates itself. Almost like getting it from your brain into writing. It's almost like a CBT method, you know, where um, it changes the narrative as you read it. Did that happen with you? You know, did you have your product at the start and then when you started to write, to write your pitch deck out, iterate the product,

Speaker A: um, that kind of feels a little bit like the tail wagging the dog a little bit. I think the pitch deck is like a uh, genesis from the product. I don't think I've had the experience of uh, things that have come out of the pitch deck that I've, that we've then taken, like what the product is and how it works and how we develop it is almost exclusively based on what our customers want and say, right? I think, yeah. Um, especially when you're in a B2B scenario, uh, getting that feedback from customers actually actively going out and trying to get that, uh, um, that, that's the loop that we have there. And then I think the pitch deck is new customer conversations, changes in the product that goes back into the pitch deck. The pitch deck's almost like the, the final outcome kind of thing.

Speaker B: So you've done a lot of, kind of customer research and inquiry before you even got anywhere near the pitch deck?

Speaker A: Yeah, pretty much. Actually. We, um, we had an idea of what the product might be, but that was really not very good.

Speaker B: That's the way it goes. Right. You know, you can iterate it before you've spent a fortune on it. Happy days.

Speaker A: Yeah, we did a lot of, uh, drawing MVPs, uh, so making some Figma files. We actually hired a consultant, somebody who was really connected to. We started off in the textile sector. Uh, since then we've moved into kind of retail more generally. Now we're looking at food and all sorts of other areas, but in that space, uh, she connected us. So we'd had a bunch of experiences. Just. I mean, I know this isn't about pitch deck, but it's probably one of the big lessons that we had was people just don't tell you hard truths. Uh, it's like, if people have come across this, the mum test, so does your mom stand it? But also, uh, your mum's not going to say it's bad. She's going to say, it's lovely, darling. And sometimes you take this thing that you've been working really hard on to a customer and they're like, it's really nice. And especially I think in the English kind of, when I want to say English, British scenario, people like, oh, that's really interesting. But they don't mean, oh, that's really interesting. They're like, thank you for sharing that with me. Probably not for me. And you've got to get over that. So, yeah, uh, it's a great time to do that.

Speaker B: Like, I, I've, I've done a podcast on that very topic with, um, somebody who built and exited a really, you know, successful tech company. And his approach to that was to go in and be cynical. Um, he takes a cynical approach when he does the mom test, you know, and he'll go in and he'll almost try and put the people off it, you know, and he'll go in and say, why would you buy this? Why would you bother? You know, you're not solving this problem already. And yeah, instead of coming into it warmly and Kind of getting them to say, oh, uh, yeah, actually, yeah, that's really nice. I really like that they're like, no, I would actually pay for that. No, no, that, that does solve a problem. And you know, and, and this is why. Okay, well, how would you potentially make it better if you could. And you know, takes him down a more cynical rabbit hole, which I think is quite an interesting approach.

Speaker A: Yeah, that is great.

Speaker B: Um, yeah, so anybody that's interested in that, check out the, um, the podcast that I did with Kyle on that one. It's very good. Um, okay, so all of that, it's all about data. It's all about gathering the information, uh, which then allows you to put succinct, um, you know, feedback, you know, real time data into your pitch deck. Right.

Speaker A: Y.

Speaker B: Okay. And how do you, how do you pick what goes in there? So for anybody listening that's got that data and they're like, I've got so much data here, I can barely pick it up. How do you then think? Right. That's the most important thing to put in. What, what do people want to see?

Speaker A: Uh, so people want to see stuff they've heard about. So, um, if you told me some new information, but I have no idea what it is, which doesn't really mean anything to me. So at the beginning our, uh, only client was like a really small brand. No one was really that interested.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, then we started working with companies that everyone had heard of and yeah, that you, you've got to go for something that means something to the, to the audience. It's always picking stuff that is going to entice the, entice the audience. I think, um, an investor wants to know how much money they're going to make in five years. Uh, an investor wants to have you. Have you as a tiny little group of like, you know, six, seven, eight people. Have you managed to convince, like a behemoth organization to work with you? That's interesting. Um, have you contacted someone that you worked with briefly a few years ago who runs a small little mum and pop shop? Probably, probably not. So, yeah, there is a lot of filtering that goes on. I think it must be so hard when you get to, uh, I don't know, Series B or all of these where effectively I can see that your slide deck will look like 30 pages because you've just got so much going on.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: But at the beginning you're like, I've got nothing to say. I've just got ideas and dreams. Then you start getting to a kind of a Space where you're like, okay, there's quite a lot, especially on the technological side when you're. You could deep dive. Like I could make, you know, 15 slides just about how the tech works, but that's not interesting. Um, and I could do 15 slides just about the feedback and the, you know, how we're doing with our customers and the pipeline. So it is, it's this trick of getting 10 points into one, but then only giving it one header.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I think like, a lot of, um, a lot of people that I speak to on this topic who do invest and they kind of just like to see what it looks like as opposed to how like the pipe work. They don't want to see the pipework, they kind of just want to see how it's presented to the end user. So more of like a kind of a, you know, like a ui. Um, because they're not techies. Right. A lot of the VCs, they're not techies.

Speaker A: Yeah, it varies. Um, and if they're interested in the tech, then great. I've got, I've got another 10 slides on that. We can have a. Cool too. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Um, and I'll get, you know, a couple of the technical people on the line and we can, uh, go to town on that. But.

Speaker B: Nice.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So I think we've. We've kind of gone into a bit of detail about your pitch deck now. I think for people on audio that are listening on Spotify, unfortunately, that this is going to become a visual exercise between Manip and I, because we're going to actually have a quick run through of the pitch deck. So you can see, um, what a pitch deck looks like. That's one. A venture capital pitching event, a competition. Um, so I think it'd be great if you don't mind sharing that with us so that the people watching can kind of, you know, make some notes and see.

Speaker A: Sure.

Speaker B: It would be wonderful.

Speaker A: Share my screen.

Speaker B: Right, got it.

Speaker A: Going to leave it in this. In this version.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: To go through.

Speaker B: So that's your strap line. So reducing, uh, supply chain. That's your kind of elevator strap. So that a VC watching this straight off the bat knows. Right. Okay. This is exactly what Bendy do. Reducing supply chain risk with 24. 7 monitoring. How did you come to that? That's the best phrase to use, the best way to phrase it.

Speaker A: We had multiple sessions. Uh, we used a bunch of frameworks as well. Um, there's a whole. We had a coach kind of give us some advice on how to Structure these sentences. Uh, you can Google how to structure an elevator pitch sentence. Um, there's a few of them. I think YC has a whole bunch of these. We went through those and so, yeah, this, this is like seven words or something. Right. But it took us like half a day.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: To kind of come up with this and then the other pieces. Uh, similar even coming up with this. And like, what does the company do? Who does it do it? Who does it do that for? Um, who's your ideal? Like, we went through all of those sentences. If people are interested or if they've, if they've come across like the Lean Canvas model, this kind of stuff's, uh, great for that as well.

Speaker B: And it is really important. It is, isn't it?

Speaker A: Yeah. You feel like it's going to be a waste of time, but actually you just really need it. You absolutely have to all sit around, like lock the doors. Just sit in and just do it.

Speaker B: Yeah. Uh, okay, so good first tip there. Then get this right. Get your first slide with the, with the strap line on there. So in as little sentence as possible, people know what you do.

Speaker A: Yeah. Don't say too much. Um, you can see that I haven't changed this since the presentation because it's still March 2024.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: Um, so there's no title for this. And that's because this is the presentational version. Um, and. But you can see that there is something not right in the world. And you kind of, you can skim it. So the advice that was given by a few people was the product gives your customers information that's kind of frightening about the world. So set that scene. And so this is supposed to be, uh, like shocking to some extent. We've got sweatshop workers, um, we've got incidences of a fire. We've got things around sexual violence, murder. Like these are deeply problematic. But this is where. Yeah, this, this is what happens in the. In a very complicated supply chain and where our products come from. So maybe you're probably isn't. Yeah, maybe your problem isn't like this, and that's fine. But there should be some sort of emotional response, I think.

Speaker B: Yeah, I'm terrified by that side. So it works.

Speaker A: Yeah. Um, and then of course there's an emotional section to the elements, to the, to the business. But it is a business. And so this version of the problem slides is about the numbers. Right. It's ah. If this stuff is happening in the world, in my supply chain, in my products, then I recognize that that's a Horrible thing. But isn't it a job for NGOs and other people? It's like, well, actually, you don't get a handle on this. It's going to be super expensive. And I think regulation is the big driver that we've seen. So on the left, this is a number for the value of goods that were detained in the US ports last year that couldn't be sold, had to be sent back, or were just kind of stranded for a while, which is a really, really big number. That's a big business number that companies need to be worried about. Huge, um, revenue. Every business needs revenue, we need revenue. Other businesses, our clients need revenue. 8% loss, uh, in revenue because of reputational issues. Again, big number. Um, and then finally, if you don't really know what's going on in your supply chain, it's costing you a lot more money than it could do. So you've got these, like, fines, lost revenue, high costs. Those are pretty much the three big things. And, and, you know, we could have probably left some more words out, but again, we tried to keep it visual.

Speaker B: Well, nothing hurts people more than the pocket, right? So, you know, you've set up the scene and then hammered in the, you know, the financial risk and reputational risk.

Speaker A: Uh, and then it's like that, that question that you were saying, or the thing about Kyle, it's like, well, you know, what are you doing already? It's like, well, we're, we're doing. We're looking at some. We're looking at some audits. We send someone with a clipboard. Um, and then the catch line is really, tools that you've got at the moment are not good enough for the regulation that we just talked about, which is really expensive. And so you're going to need something better. Um, and then that something better is effectively, uh, our products, which is doing those two, three things that I spoke about, really. The first one, which is connecting your suppliers. Suppliers, suppliers. So, you know, first you knew that, oh, I made making some things in Turkey, but actually the Turkish suppliers get, uh, some of their raw components from India and actually their m. Mind somewhere in Africa. Um, so we automate that process for you. So that's okay, now I know where my suppliers are, because I didn't know that before. And then it's like, well, I've got these audits. What more information are you giving me? And so then we harness thousands of data sources, millions of Data points in 20 different languages to identify risk events. We're screening these suppliers. So suddenly you went from having 100 suppliers to a thousand suppliers. Great, we told you about those. What are you going to do with it? We're going to help you screen them and we'll take you through like, uh, And I'm doing this from a customer perspective because actually I think that's. You can share these sort of views really, like what the customer wants. If that works, then VCs and investors will understand it.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's an, that's an interesting slide because what you're doing there is, you're on the one side, you're suggesting what pain, um, these people might have to go through to do it themselves. You know, there's a lot of points there that people are going to have to scan to, you know, protect their supply chain.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And you're just solving it with, you know, one solution. Like, uh, we've got you covered across all of those different things that you, that you need to do here, but we've got this. So you're kind of really making it a simple silver bullet almost.

Speaker A: Yeah, I want to stay away from the silver bullet kind of, uh, analogy. Uh, okay, not silver, but it does fulfill a lot of requirements. Like it's, uh, a powerful tool in your arsenal of options and things that you can do. And certainly it's interesting. We were just with a client last week and they said, oh, we tried to do some of this by hand. And um, yeah, I used to work at a consultancy and you've got 20 analysts all day long doing country analyst reports, looking at various things manually. I mean, it's just. We've got a couple of things that are working on our side. One is individuals around the world own, uh, technology that they communicate with. And, um, we've developed technology well enough that we can harness and bring this data together relatively quickly and relatively cheaply in comparison to even five years ago. There's a bit of luck involved with these things, right? It's luck and it's timing. Yeah. So first you find out about all these hundreds of new suppliers. Then we tell you if the, um. And then we run them through this kind of screening process. And the output that we give you is this, which I'll kind of show you a bit more detail. Um, for every risk, we give you kind of one of these updates. And this is a real risk that we gave to a real client. And you can see that we've looked at it in the local language. Um, we've given it a rating because you don't want 100 new risks. You don't know what to do with them. So this is a high rating. Probably need to have a think about that. And it, uh. And like we started off with that emotional piece at the beginner beginning, right, You've got five workers injured after falling into a tank of boiling plastic at a mill. I mean, this is like really serious stuff. Yeah, it might be a one off, it might be a trend. And so if it is a trend, we will put together the trends. Because even in the uk, everywhere in the world, like, you're going to have some sort of, uh, occupational health and safety. And we totally recognize that. But when there's a systematic failure of providing safety for workers, especially in mills where you're using chemicals, you're using, um, you know, dies, for example, then, uh, these become really problematic. We align it with the regulation, we tell you when it happened and we tell you how sure we are. So based on this kind of information, yeah, sure we are. And that paints you a picture of what the product is.

Speaker B: It really flows that, because you've highlighted the pain, what needs to be done, that people have to have to do this to protect their supply chain, the outcome that you can give them. And, um, what that, what your solution presents to them in the easiest format possible. So that's that journey, that flow, Right?

Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, the next bit I think brings it all together, which is what does it actually look like for me? Um, so we, one of our clients is Amazon. Um, and you know, we took, we talked a little bit about this mapping. Well, here's a map that we gave them from one, one, a single supplier. We went away and we built this map. And I'm not going to show it in too much detail, but you can see some red dots on there. Right. And each one of those red dots looks like one of these risks. So you've gone from, they gave us one supplier, um, we've given them 50 suppliers and about six or seven, uh, risks related to those suppliers that have taken place recently that you probably want to have a look at. Right. Um, and then, you know, bringing it back to this problem. Well, there is a regulatory issue, but there's also, if you've got, if you're a publicly listed company and you've got shareholders, um, they will push back. So, uh, one of the reasons we started working, um, together is last year migrant workers were found to be working under, um, forced labor, um, in Saudi Arabia. And so there was a massive revolt by the Amazon shareholders. 40% of them voted that you've got to basically pay more attention to how people are treated as workers, which is, I think we all know, has been problematic historically. And it's. Yeah, it is people who work for Amazon, whether it's in the packing, um, department or whether it's not less so the head office, but also all those people that make those products in the supply chain. So this is helping them to. We're beginning to work with them to help them to solve some of that so that ultimately we want to avoid this sort of thing happening again.

Speaker B: Yeah, so investors can now see exactly what's happening with their investment, you know, what problem it solves, how it impacts the users and the people involved.

Speaker A: Right, yeah. And who it's solving for. I think, uh, having a case study is super, uh, important. Nice then. Classic. Right? There's, there's no right way or wrong way to do this. I have done, um, I would say at least a dozen different versions. It's probably the most difficult slide, in my opinion. Competition slide. You could have the slide where you've got these kind of a star shape, where your, your company logo is in the middle of the star. You, uh, can have this like, box sticky exercise. There's just so many. But I think the bit around this is to say when we recognize we're not the only people in the world. No, no, new. No idea is completely new. Right. We're all taking, uh, something and then adding to it and innovating further. And, um, I think we definitely innovate in a number of spaces that our competitors don't. So just trying to show that in some sort of way. Uh, and if, yeah, when VCs want to talk about this in a bit more detail, obviously. Yeah, there's like pages and pages behind this. Like so many case studies done. Um, each of the verticals that you've got here, there's like a two pager at least of how we difference. So again, trying to take two pages times 10 and then you're putting it into the slide, you can only get so much in.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's really clear. I think that works in honesty. I think it's very straightforward. You only need nine seconds to see what, what you're getting out there. So that's perfect.

Speaker A: You barely got time to read the titles, really. You. If you can just say the two things. So I think for us, this sentence, it's like we offer the wider sources, so we look at more diff. With more raw sources than any of our competitors. And, um, the output that you get, the report that you get is aligned with regulation. And so you could just use it straight away. That's it. That's the only thing I'm trying to say in this slide. Everything else is just kind of an addition.

Speaker B: Yeah. Nice, nice.

Speaker A: Uh, so this is, um, kind of the pipeline. I've taken a couple of bits out and left in the customers that we're still working with. But you absolutely need a pipeline. You need to say how much it's worth. Uh, you need to say how much your contracts are worth. If you've got some Lois. Things like that, I think absolutely necessary.

Speaker B: Yep, agreed.

Speaker A: Another problematic slide. No good way to do this. Uh, is your market, uh, size. How do you get to market size? And the number that they care about, obviously, is your som. So hopefully everyone's familiar with the kind of total addressable markets, uh, down to your kind of obtainable market. Yep. And, um, I've heard all sorts of versions. Is 5% of the total, uh, addressable market. A good number is 2%. Good. I mean, it's just like there's. There's no right or wrong about this. We did. We've also split this by sectors because originally it was just looking at one sector. So I think the number just needs to be big and then you just need to back it up. There's a whole model that sits behind this. It might be right, it might be wrong. Um, but a lot of thinking has got into it and I think sometimes that's all you need to show that you've really, really thought about it. And you're measuring twice before you go and cut once. Right.

Speaker B: Yeah. I think it's like when you. Of course, I'm going back some years now when you should do, like, algebra or something at school, and you just have to show your workings out. Right. You know, you get the number at the end and then you have to kind of somehow demonstrate the mechanism as to what got you there. Because that's all an investor will see. Right. They'll see end number. How did you get there? Is it realistic? Am I taking a punt here? That's way out, you know, outstretching all of us. Um, yeah, that's what you need to show. Right.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I think if you especially. And if you're working in a competitive market, but the market's massive, might invest. But if you're working in a not very competitive market and the massive. The market's pretty tiny. It's like. Well, that's not really interesting.

Speaker B: See. Yeah.

Speaker A: And. And of course, this is also useful for us. It's like, are we going to make money in this, uh, space. Are there enough customers who want to buy this for this to be a commercially viable business? Because otherwise why would anyone invest and why would we spend all of our living days and moments doing this? So I think it is important to figure this out. Yeah, there's no right answer.

Speaker B: I think a good book actually, that, that is a really good, um, you know, a bit of writing on this kind of a topic. It's called Blue Ocean Strategy. I quite enjoyed that. It touches on the, on the points that you just made, uh, about, you know, small market, not really growing, large market, red waters, bloody waters, etc. So anybody listening? Um, you know, Blue Essential Strategy is a good read.

Speaker A: Right? Uh, so the next one, okay, there's what happens in 2027, no one knows that, but the number does have to be sizable. Um, but there, again, there needs to be some logic. I think being an ex consultant does help because you just do the, it's a little bit of a bucket, uh, of the envelope kind of calculation. But it's like, well, if I've got 10 customers, I've got two customers today, I'm going to have 10 customers tomorrow, next year. If I get to like 100 customers in five years, how many people do I need? What does the average contract value need to be? And then what does like my margin look like? How many people do I need to hire? How much money do I need to raise? So it does need to be done. There is an absolutely huge model that sits behind this. But this is the bit that obviously you shared, which is we're growing. We expect to grow fast. Here's how we're going to get there.

Speaker B: Nice.

Speaker A: And then specifically for us, we, this is, this, this is, it's the same business. But what we were doing at the beginning isn't what we're doing today. And I think it's important to, this is kind of this journey and the story of the founders and the business. Uh, we were making some sort of like plug in for consumers three years ago. It was not, not very good, not, not much data. Nobody really wanted to pay for it. Not a viable business. Um, and it's taken a really long journey to get here. And I think one of the things that I mentioned when I presented was it's, it's pretty common for this actually. You, most companies either go bust or they trial and trial again. They pivot and pivot again. Maybe they've got a few things. And we had, we had to pivot three times in order to get to the point that we are at today. So we wanted to kind of share that journey. And then finally the founders, you know, shiny logos, places, uh, that we've worked, things that we've done, uh, stuff that we're proud of. And why, why us? Right. Um, we've got somebody who's worked in supply chains, sustainability. I've had this kind of pretty corporate operational, um, background. And Ollie has built technology for, you know, massive organizations. Huge. Like the metas of this world.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So if you put those three people together, get them working on something for two years, they're going to come up with something hopefully good. And then the final raise, like, what is it? We're raising 800k, of which 300k is a, is a grant. We've got. Oh, it's a hundred left to commit.

Speaker B: Right, There we go. There's an iteration as we speak.

Speaker A: Good. Um, so we're, we're, you know, almost the way there and that builds us some Runway. What are we going to do with it? Well, we're going to go into new sectors. Um, we're looking at kind of consulting, insurance, going to go beyond retail, sort of the products of this world, into the financials of this world.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's, it's important. It's one of the best things that I learned, uh, working with startups that were heavily funded. I actually worked with a startup, uh, two and a half years ago who are now the, the world's fastest, uh, ever startup, you know, in terms of their growth. They're actually.

Speaker A: Who's that?

Speaker B: Um, they're a company called Wiz, um, cybersecurity company.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Um, so I worked with them some years ago and one of the key lessons that I learned in that process was iteration of product. Um, because everybody was getting excited about the product as it stood today. And then VCs and people started asking, okay, great, but what's next? You know, what comes next after that? Product kind of hits a little bit of a, um, you know, a, ah, stalling point, if you will, or it plateaus. How do we then iterate? So I think it's important that last slide to kind of talk about. Right. This is actually long term what we're going to do with the money that you invested us. Uh, some people miss that. You know, it's quite important.

Speaker A: Uh, yeah, because I think internally it feels like, oh, I know what I'm going to do with this money. I've built this like, version of the product or this and then I'm going to go on to do, I'm going to make it better. But actually that vision piece of like, uh, you're working on something now, obviously you want to go deep on that, but then what does tomorrow look like? And I think that's the difference between having a bootstrapped revenue, uh, generating like this, you're basically building from revenue versus you want to raise money to do something. If you're going to raise money, then you need to show this like big, bright future which isn't just one vertical, it's like multiple verticals. And how do you get there? So a bit of vision building there.

Speaker B: So it's all very exciting. I mean just putting that pitch deck together has taken you as long as it has the product iteration, getting the mvp, right? Getting to the point where you're now selling it. It's one hell of a journey, you know, and I think so many founders get on this um, hype train of, you know, I want to be a startup founder. And they just get burnt because it's so difficult to be a founder, uh, you know, solo founders. I really, you know, I've been there. It's, it's a very challenging place to be. And I think these kinds of conversations and what you're doing is exposing yourself, uh, to as many individuals as you possibly can, you know, by uh, virtue of the fact that you, you sign up to the, to the Venture Fest, you know, you're exposing yourself to critique, which like you said earlier in the conversation, not a lot of people are, are brave enough to do. You know, you're taking your idea, your dream, your, your future retirement and putting it up on a ledge for somebody to go, bam, bam. I don't like it. This is why, um, so you're, I mean your actions are your advice to people to say, put yourself out there, uh, get people to critique it, ask the advice of people outside of your family and your friends and join some competitions, get into some accelerator kind of VC pitching, uh, competitions. Um, how easy have you found that process, by the way, in kind of getting, um, you know, getting into these events.

Speaker A: Uh, this one was fine.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: But I think, um, in all honesty, as a founder, I think you've got to juggle building um, a product versus um, spending this time kind of building your network. I guess, uh, at the beginning of this journey, spent quite a lot of time like doing a lot of accelerators. Didn't really know anything. Um, so that was really helpful. I think now we spend very little time doing accelerators. So we came to Venture Fest because an investor, Minerva, who were running It. And they obviously, they didn't vote for us because it was a public vote, so it was completely fair. But yeah, m. Um, Alex Toff invited me, uh, to pitch to apply effectively. And then I think the rest of the. It was in the Aston's hands.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And now really that's how we tend to do those sorts of things. Um, people invite us and then we do them. But at the beginning, I mean, I did everything, but I burnt myself out. The first year was just ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah, I wouldn't advise that.

Speaker B: No. It's not an easy place to be. And I think, you know, for anybody that's in that first, uh, year or in that phase of building, perhaps their MVP is to lean on people. You know, a lot of people go insular. Uh, you know, they, they want to kind of be and protect their product. I don't want anybody to know. What if somebody copies it? What if somebody steals it? But you know, it's a risky bottle to take. Right. But you can't burn yourself out. What's more risky, burning yourself out and crashing mentally or somebody potentially having an idea similar to yours?

Speaker A: The idea is not worth that much is the other thing. I was just like the execution, that's the, that's the bit that kills you.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, and you need a lot of really smart people, a lot of really hard working people, a lot of help, incredible amount of support and advice, and, uh, more hours than you think that you have in a day. And that's the bit that will make your company even mildly successful. Not the idea. Obviously. The idea does need to fit, but yeah, if you think it's easy, you can have a go. Right? Yeah, I'm happy to share this much, for sure.

Speaker B: Well, it's very helpful. And I think these conversations, this is why I do these podcasts, because I want everybody that's trying to have a go to have as much tools as they possibly can. You know, I make specific episodes for specific things and this one was really to help people, you know, take all of what's in there and put it into a pitch deck and, and be funding ready, I guess. Um, so I thank you for your time. Hopefully people listening, um, are thankful. Even if we've helped one person, you know, I think we've done something good for the universe. Right. And passed it forward.

Speaker A: Yeah. And if people have got questions, I'm, um, happy to, uh, like you can look me up on LinkedIn and just drop me a note or something. I'm really happy to have a conversation.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, I'LL put your link in the. When I post this on social media, I'll put your link in there so people can come and be in touch with you.

Speaker A: Okay?

Speaker B: But, man, it's great to see you. Um, glad you're feeling a little bit better than when we spoke last week. I'll see you very soon.

Speaker A: Yeah, lovely. See you soon.

Speaker B: Bye.