How Retail Zipline’s Series A pitch deck ticked every box for Emergence Capital

Melissa Wong spent more than a decade working for major retail brands before founding Retail Zipline. That kind of outrageous advantage — a complete understanding of the industry — is something that investors struggle to resist in a vertical SaaS company. At least, according to Emergence Capital investor Lotti Siniscalco.

Wong and Siniscalco joined us on a recent episode of Extra Crunch Live and went into detail on why Emergence was eager to finance Retail Zipline’s Series A round, walking us through Zipline’s Series A pitch deck and sharing which slides and bits clinched the deal.

Extra Crunch Live is a weekly virtual event series meant to help founders build better venture-backed businesses. We sit down with investors and the founders they finance to hear what brought them together, what they saw in each other and how they work together moving forward. We also host the ECL pitch-off, where founders in the audience can pitch their startups to our outstanding speakers.

Extra Crunch Live is accessible to everyone on a live basis, but the on-demand content is reserved exclusively for Extra Crunch members. You can check out the July slate here and see the full ECL library here.

Stand up, stand out

During Wong’s fundraising process, Zipline was also attending a big industry conference. Emergence suggested that they do a virtual pitch meeting while Wong was at the trade show, but Wong pushed back, insisting on an in-person pitch meeting. Not only did she know that she would deliver a better pitch in person, but she didn’t want to squander the limited amount of time she had at the trade show with potential clients and partners.

“She pointed to the screen projected behind her to help us stay on the most relevant piece of information. The way she did it really made us stay with her. Like, we couldn’t break eye contact.”

Once the in-person meeting did take place, Wong surprised the Emergence team. For one, she stood up to pitch. Wong explained that her co-founder is a bigger guy, and she’s a smaller woman, and she feels more confident and comfortable presenting from a standing position.

“She was one of the few or maybe the only CEO who ever stood up to pitch the entire team,” said Siniscalco. “She pointed to the screen projected behind her to help us stay on the most relevant piece of information. The way she did it really made us stay with her. Like, we couldn’t break eye contact.”

In terms of delivery, Wong had already made an impact. But the content of the deck, and her experience in retail, clinched the deal.

“I look for an unfair reason for a founder to be the perfect person to build this product,” said Siniscalco. “Wong gave us her background in the first slide, and I knew quickly that she was a credible person in the retail industry. Then, what I look for in a pitch, is customer love.”

Siniscalco said the combination of that unfair advantage and intense customer love is highly correlated with a very positive outcome for a company.

“When we first started out, I was really insecure because I came from the industry versus coming from a lot of Silicon Valley knowledge,” said Wong. “In retrospect, I really underestimated the competitive advantage of coming from the industry. People said it to me, but I didn’t understand what that resulted in. But it resulted in the numbers in our deck, because I know what customers want, what they want to buy next, how to keep them happy and I was able to be way more capital-efficient.”

The Zipline deck

Zipline’s entire deck (with some minor redactions) is embedded below. You can swipe on through at your leisure, but the real value here (in my humble opinion) is Siniscalco’s breakdown of how she reacted to the information in the deck. I’ll relay that here in text, but I also strongly suggest you watch (at least) the first half of the episode below to hear the founder/investor duo walk us through this deck.

Check out the expert speakers joining us on Extra Crunch Live in July

What are the most important factors when you’re pitching your startup for fundraising? What questions come to the minds of the VCs you’re pitching? How do you get the deal across the finish line? Or choose the right investors for your company to begin with?

Extra Crunch Live looks to answer all these questions and more. Thus far, Coda’s Shishir Mehrotra and investor S. Somasegar have told us what sings in Coda’s pitch doc (not deck). We’ve heard how important it is to be customer-obsessed from Toast’s Aman Narang and BVP’s Kent Bennett. And Fifth Wall’s Brendan Wallace laid out all the biggest opportunities in prop tech. And that was just in the last month or so.

In July, we have more top-notch speakers on the roster, including big-name founders and seasoned investors. What’s more, these speakers are ready to hear about your startup. ECL features the Extra Crunch Live Pitch-off, where founders in the audience can pitch their products to speakers and get live feedback.

So without any further ado, here is a look at the amazing speakers we have joining us in July.

Jordan Nof (Tusk Venture Partners) + Michelle Davey (Wheel)

July 14 – 12pm PT/3pm ET

Jordan Nof, co-founder and general partner at Tusk Venture Partners, led early investments in companies like Lemonade, Bird and Sunday. He also invested in Wheel, co-founded by Michelle Davey, an infrastructure company focused on virtual care. Join in a conversation with them on Extra Crunch Live about what it takes to raise funding and use it to the greatest effect.

REGISTER FOR TUSK VENTURE PARTNERS AND WHEEL


Extra Crunch Live: Startup Alley Edition w/ Alexa von Tobel

July 21 – 12pm PT/3pm ET

Check out the Startup Alley companies that will exhibit at TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 in an episode dedicated to the art of the pitch.

REGISTER FOR STARTUP ALLEY EDITION


Stephanie Zhan (Sequoia Capital) + Nick Fajt (Rec Room)

July 28 – 12pm PT/3pm ET

Sequoia Capital is one of the biggest names in VC. On this episode of ECL, Sequoia partner Sephanie Zhan and Rec Room CEO Nick Fajt talk about how the two came together for the startup’s seed round, why Zhan also led the Series A, and how it’s gone on to raise nearly $150 million in funding.

REGISTER FOR SEQUOIA CAPITAL AND REC ROOM


As a reminder, Extra Crunch Live is accessible to anyone and everyone who wants to come hang out. However, only Extra Crunch members get access to the content on-demand. If you’re not already an Extra Crunch member, what are you waiting for? 

 

Toast’s Aman Narang and BVP’s Kent Bennett on how customer obsession is everything

Toast has raised more than $900 billion and is reportedly valued at over $5 billion. But back in 2011, no one knew this startup would see such meteoric success. It had a few things going for it, of course — founder Aman Narang hailed from Endeca, where he was a software engineer and product lead with a reputation for being able to ship a lot of software quickly.

But the ambitions behind Toast were big and complicated, and enough to give pause to any investor. Kent Bennett was one such VC, and while he had conviction in the founding team, he wasn’t convinced that they could tackle such a big problem.

Toast is a restaurant POS system that acts as a sort of operating system for an establishment, managing everything from online orders, deliveries and marketing to payroll and team management as well as the actual point of sale. Being able to do all that requires building a number of complex products, such as payments.

Early on, Bennett had told Narang not to build a restaurant POS. To him, it was too complicated and nuanced, which is why the systems from the ’90s were still deeply entrenched 20 years later. However, he did offer space in the Bessemer office for the Toast team to work on their product.

“I caught up with Aman and he told me that they did this interesting thing after hearing that a lot of their customers were frustrated by payments platforms, which are separate from the POS,” said Bennett. “Aman said they built their own payments platform. Once again, I was like, ‘You did what? You’re not allowed to build payments.’ But he told me that they built it and it improves their products, and that, by the way, they make a margin on it.”

Bennett said that when they added up the margins from the payments and the POS, it was impactful.

“It hit me like a ton of bricks,” said Bennett. “This is a really good business.”

From there, it became his obsession. And though it took a few more quarters to close the deal, they eventually got there. Bessemer led the company’s Series B financing in 2016.

We spoke to Bennett and Narang recently on an episode of Extra Crunch Live to explore the story of how they came together for the deal, what makes the difference for both founders and investors when fundraising, and the biggest lessons they’ve learned so far. The episode also featured the Extra Crunch Live Pitch-Off, where audience members pitched their products to Bennett and Narang and received live feedback.

Extra Crunch Live is open to everyone each Wednesday at 3 p.m. EDT/noon PDT, but only Extra Crunch members are able to stream these sessions afterward and watch previous shows on-demand in our episode library.

Despite the complexity of the Toast system, or maybe because of it, Narang says the fundamentals are the most important part of communicating the business, especially when fundraising.

May Mobility’s Edwin Olson and Nina Grooms Lee and Toyota AI Ventures’ Jim Adler on validating your startup idea

When a founder has a work history that includes the name of the parent company of one of their key investors, you probably assume that was one of the first deals to come together. Not so with May Mobility and Toyota AI Ventures, which connected for the company’s second seed round, after May went out and raised its original seed purely on the strength of its own ideas and proposed solutions.

That’s one of the many interesting things we learned from speaking to May Mobility co-founder and CEO Edwin Olson, as well as Chief Product Officer Nina Grooms Lee and Toyota AI Ventures founding partner Jim Adler on an episode of Extra Crunch Live.

Extra Crunch Live goes down every Wednesday at 3 p.m. EDT/noon PDT. Our next episode is with Sequoia’s Shaun Maguire and Vise’s Samir Vasavada, and you can check out the upcoming schedule right here.

Meanwhile, read on for highlights from our chat with Olson, Grooms Lee and Adler, and then stay tuned at the end for a recording of the full session, including our live pitch-off.

A different approach to corporate VC

One thing Adler brought up early in the chat is that Toyota AI Ventures likely takes a different approach than most traditional corporate VCs, which are often thought of as being more incentivized by strategic alignment than by venture-scale returns. Adler says the firm he founded within the automaker’s corporate umbrella actually does behave much more like a traditional VC in some ways than many would assume.

Toyota AI Ventures and May Mobility will talk the future of the transportation industry on Extra Crunch Live

Besides a passion for progress in the mobility space, what do Toyota AI Ventures’ Jim Adler, May Mobility’s Nina Grooms Lee and May’s Edwin Olson have in common?

All three of them are joining us on an upcoming episode of Extra Crunch Live. The show goes down on May 12 at 3pm ET/noon PT. Register here for free!

May Mobility is one the most exciting companies to enter the transportation space in the past decade. The autonomous shuttle company has a fleet of autonomous low-speed shuttles spread out between Detroit, Grand Rapids and Providence. Recently, May launched a Lexus-based autonomous shuttle. The company has raised $83.6 million in funding, including a $50 million Series B led by Toyota Motor Corp.

Which brings us this episode of Extra Crunch Live.

Toyota AI Ventures Founding Managing Director Jim Adler will sit down with May Mobility Chief Product Officer Nina Grooms Lee and May co-founder and CEO Edwin Olson to discuss how that Series B deal came about. We’ll talk about what made May stand out to Toyota, and vice versa, and how the teams have worked together since.

We’ll also talk about what to expect out of the ever-changing and growing mobility industry.

Following the interview, Grooms Lee, Olson and Adler will weigh in on startup pitches from the audience. Yup, that’s right. Our ECL audience will once again have the chance to pitch our seasoned tech professionals. Attendees can virtually “raise their hand” as soon as our virtual doors open and throw their hat in the ring for an opportunity to make a 2-minute elevator pitch. Imagine running into a VC or potential customer at a tech conference like Disrupt or bumping into them at a park. As such, no visual aids are allowed, including decks, videos, demoes, etc. Excited? Smash this link to register for free!

Extra Crunch Live goes down every Wednesday at 3pm ET/noon PT and is accessible to anyone and everyone. However, on-demand access to the content is reserved exclusively for Extra Crunch members. If you’re not yet a member, what are you waiting for?

Forerunner’s Eurie Kim and Oura’s Harpreet Rai discuss betting on consumer hardware

There’s a stark contrast between Oura’s deck and the others we pored through on Extra Crunch Live. The slides CEO Harpreet Rai brought to the event were the clear output of a more mature and confident company seeking out its Series B. It’s a company with a focus, aware of where it wants the product to go and do (and it went there, announcing a massive followup round on Tuesday).

Then there’s that giant image of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, with the company’s smart ring adorning Harry’s right hand. From there, it’s a parade of celebrity faces: Will Smith, Lance Armstrong, Bill Gates, Arianna Huffington and Seth Rogen, to name a few.

It’s clearly been a wild half-dozen years since the company was founded. Rai joined up in 2018, not long before the company embarked on its $28 million Series B. Forerunner General Partner Eurie Kim got on board during the round.

“[I] enthusiastically took the meeting and Harpreet shared his story and the story of Oura. The deck is what we talked through,” says Kim. “Because I was a consumer, it was just a no-brainer that I knew what he was trying to build. So we were very excited to lead the round.”

Kim and Rai joined us on Extra Crunch Live to discuss the process of taking Oura to the next level — and beyond — as the product found a second (or third) life during the pandemic through partnerships with sports leagues like the NBA. And as we’re wont to do, we asked the pair to take a look and a handful of user-submitted pitch decks. If you’d like your deck to be reviewed by experienced founders and investors on a future episode, you can submit it here.

On the hardness of hardware

By the time Oura sought out its Series B, the startup had already progressed pretty far. Kim compares the first-generation product (circa 2016 — predating both Rai and Kim’s time with the company ) to a “Power Rangers ring.” You’ve got to start somewhere, of course — and if nothing else, the admittedly bulky original edition of the product served as a powerful proof of concept.

Pitch your startup to seasoned tech leaders, and a live audience, on Extra Crunch Live

TechCrunch is known for its pitch-offs. We’ve had them in cities all over the world, and heard from hundreds of startups who have shared the story of their company on our stages.

We’re excited to be bringing the pitch-off to Extra Crunch Live.

Anyone in the audience on an episode of Extra Crunch Live can virtually “raise their hand” to be selected to pitch in front of the audience and get feedback from our all-star guests.

On ECL, pitch-off startups will have two minutes to tell us about their company. This is the equivalent of an elevator pitch — imagine running into a VC or potential customer at a tech conference like Disrupt or bumping into them at a park. As such, no visual aids are allowed, including decks, videos, demoes, etc.

Essentially, what can you convey with your words, in a short time frame, to get people to both understand your startup and be excited about it?

This is a critical skill, and we’re creating the space for founders to practice and improve.

I’m amped to have FirstMark’s Rick Heitzmann and Orchard founder Court Cunningham as guests on Extra Crunch Live on May 5. This founder/investor duo know exactly what it takes to deliver a great pitch. Do you have what it takes? You can register here for free!

To be selected for the pitch-off, you must be present in the audience during the live show. Instructions on how to raise your hand will come at the top of the show, so don’t be late!

See you on Wednesday!

 

Sequoia’s Shaun Maguire and Vise’s Samir Vasavada will talk success in fintech on Extra Crunch Live

In the past few weeks, we’ve heard Fifth Wall’s Brendan Wallace and Hippo’s Assaf Wand discuss the biggest opportunities in prop tech, heard why Scale AI’s Alex Wang and Accel’s Dan Levine think that unconventional VC deals can be the best option and taken a stroll through the Poshmark Series A deck with CEO Manish Chandra and Mayfield’s Navin Chaddha.

This is the particular flavor of content, rich in key insights and tactical advice for founders, that goes down on Extra Crunch Live.

In an upcoming episode on Wednesday, May 19, we’ll sit down with Sequoia’s Shaun Maguire and Vise CEO and co-founder Samir Vasavada. You can register here.

Maguire focuses on enterprise, fintech and frontier technology for Sequoia. His portfolio companies include AMP Robotics, Knowde, Physna and Vise. He joined Sequoia in 2019, before which he was a partner at GV, where he led investments in Stripe, Opendoor, IonQ, SpinLaunch, Lambda School, Dandelion Energy, Clutter and Mode and sourced the firm’s investment in Segment.

Maguire has also been an entrepreneur in his own right, co-founding Expanse (a cybersecurity company), which was ultimately acquired by Palo Alto Networks for more than $800 million.

If that weren’t enough, Maguire also spent two years working at DARPA, and was deployed to Afghanistan, participating on a team that earned a Joint Meritorious Unit Award from the U.S. Secretary of Defense.

Samir Vasavada co-founded Vise in 2016. Vise is an AI-powered investment management platform that aims to give independent financial advisors access to technology and tools to build and manage personalized portfolios for their clients, ultimately giving those advisors more time and energy to spend on the relationships.

Vise has raised upwards of $60 million.

We’ll talk to Maguire and Vasavada about what brought them together, key tips for fundraising and how to be successful in the fintech space, and ask about the next great opportunity in fintech.

On the second half of the episode, Maguire and Vasavada will put on their feedback hats and listen to live elevator pitches from the audience as part of the ECL Pitch-off. Folks attending the event will be able to raise their hand and pitch their startup to the VC/founder duo, and then answer their questions and get their feedback.

But the only way you can pitch is to show up. This episode of Extra Crunch Live goes down on Wednesday, May 19 at 3pm ET/12pm PT. Anyone can attend as long as they register here, but on-demand access to the content is reserved strictly for Extra Crunch members, who also have access to the complete library of Extra Crunch Live content, among many, many other awesome articles and perks.

 

Fifth Wall’s Brendan Wallace and Hippo’s Assaf Wand discuss proptech’s biggest opportunities

What is the biggest opportunity for proptech founders? How should they think about competition, strategic investment versus top-tier VC firms, and how to build their board? What about navigating regulation?

We sat down last week with Brendan Wallace, co-founder and general manager of Fifth Wall, and Hippo CEO Assaf Wand for an episode of Extra Crunch Live to discuss all of the above.

Extra Crunch Live goes down every Wednesday at 3 p.m. ET/noon PT. Our next episode is with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim and Oura CEO Harpreet Rai, and you can check out the upcoming schedule right here.

In the meantime, dive into the wide-ranging conversation we had with Wallace and Wand. You can find the full video, including the ECL Live pitch-off, below.

Investing in the board

The first step in running a useful and beneficial board is determining who should be on that board, and that starts with the first round of capital investment and carries on forever.

One of the strategic benefits of Fifth Wall as an investor, according to Wallace, is that the firm was built specifically with strategic LPs in the real estate realm, allowing the firm to connect portfolio companies with massive incumbent players in the industry. Incumbents get access to new tools and software, portfolio companies get big customers, and Fifth Wall gets to reap the benefits of both. It’s a rare win-win-win.

We asked Wand about how he chose his investors, and how to weigh the value of a top-tier VC firm and a strategic angel investor, for example.

He explained that there is no right answer to a question like that, but it should always be thoroughly discussed by the team. One of the benefits of having a top-tier VC firm on board is that it has a signaling effect, helping you to recruit early team members and open doors.

Join ECL on Wednesday to pitch your startup to Fifth Wall’s Brendan Wallace and Hippo’s Assaf Wand

Have you ever dreamed about the opportunity to find yourself in, say, an elevator with an investor who is open to hearing your pitch? Well, then the next episode of Extra Crunch Live is for you.

If you’ve hung out with us on an ECL before, you know we start with a bit of top news, chat with our speakers about how to successfully fundraise and finish with the Pitch Deck Teardown, where we take a look at decks submitted by you, the audience members, and give live feedback.

On Wednesday, with the help of Fifth Wall’s Brendan Wallace and Hippo’s Assaf Wand, we’re going to shake things up a bit.

Folks who attend the live event will be able to virtually “raise their hand,” come on screen, and give a 60-second pitch of their startup. No demoes. No videos. No visual aids of any kind. It’s the ultimate elevator pitch, and it’ll be done before a live audience.

Wallace and Wand (that’s catchy, eh?) will give their feedback and ask questions at the end of every pitch.

The only way you can participate in the ECL Pitch-off is to show up. Luckily, the events are free to anyone. However, accessing any of this content on demand is reserved strictly for Extra Crunch members.

We’re super excited to introduce the pitch-off as a feature of ECL and hope you are too! See you on Wednesday!

Register here.