Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here, and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, with great shows like Being a Boss. Today, we'll be focusing on how to build your pitch deck to raise money in just 13 slides.
To drop these value bombs, I have brought Brandon C. White on the mic. He is an entrepreneur with two exits so far. Angel investor, former VC in management and marketing at AOL, and the current host of Build a Business Success Secrets Podcast.
And today, Fire Nation, we'll talk about Brandon's first experience raising money, how he came up with 13 slides, the top three questions that angels or VCs are going to ask, and do you really need full financials? And so much more when we get back from thanking our sponsors. The HubSpot Podcast Network is the audio destination for business professionals who seek the best education and inspiration on how to grow a business. Whether you're looking for marketing, sales, service, or operational guidance, the HubSpot Podcast Network hosts have your back.
Listen, learn, and grow with the HubSpot Podcast Network at HubSpot.com slash podcast network. Customers want more from brands. Delivering more means owning the customer experience, taking control over data acquisition, analysis, creative, and delivery. Klaviyo calls this owned marketing, and they believe it's the best path to grow.
For more, visit klaviyo.com slash fire. That's K-L-A-V-I-Y-O dot com slash fire. Brandon, say what's up to Fire Nation, and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. What's up, Fire Nation?
One of the things that I think most people think is that building a business takes these large movements. And one of my mentors who was really successful once told me, which I didn't believe at the time, which is just do one small thing every single day towards your goal. And after a week, you'll be uncommon. After a month, you'll be really special.
And after a year, you and your business will be remarkable. And it turned out that way for me. So most people don't believe it, but it's really just one small little thing every day and do it every day. I don't always agree with my guests when they share this.
In this case, though, I do have to say 100%. There's two books that I always recommend that really put me in that mindset, Brandon. The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson and The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy. And it really just gave me this relief of being like, you know, I can do the small things right every day and just 1% better every day.
And it's really going to add up to massive impact over time. And, you know, here you and I are a decade later, 3,000 episodes later, 100 million listens later. And it all started from doing one episode, one time, one day, and then just doing it again the next day. So that really can add up, Iron Nation.
As I shared, we're going to be talking about how to build your pitch deck to raise money in just 13 slides. And Brandon's going to be breaking this down for us. But before we do, I want to get into a little bit of a backstory with you, Brandon, because you have a pretty interesting story about your first money-raising experience. Yeah.
So when I started, it was 22 years ago. And I started what became the largest social networking site for sport fishermen on the Internet, of all things. But I had no idea how to raise money. I had an idea to build a magazine.
I had like $800 in my bank account. I was working on my master's in psychology. And I decided after reading, and this may, hopefully, the Fire Nation listeners are old enough to remember a thing called Time Magazine. And in the beginning of Time Magazine, they used to have these little write-ups.
And it would be innovative people doing cool things, a lot of entrepreneurs and startups. And it had an article that said that Jerry Filo and David Yang, the founders of Yahoo, had just raised, I think it was $1.7 million from Sequoia Capital, and that they were going to build this thing, which was the yellow pages of the Internet. So I read that, and I was like, well, if they can do it, I can do it. So I got a business plan book from Barnes & Noble or Borders.
My now wife and I drove in her Acura, Tegra, to Annapolis, Maryland, bought this book. And I actually just started reaching out to people. I'd read an article in my alumni magazine of a guy who had graduated, who I knew was a senior when I was a freshman. And it said that he was doing investing, and I had reached out to him.
And ultimately, he didn't invest right away. He made an introduction to a guy, and he said, look, I know you're sort of private. Do I have permission to send your email to this guy? And I was like, well, if he wants to potentially invest, sure.
So I get an email four hours later, and it says, hey, I'm Tom. I'm from a venture capital firm called Sequoia Capital. I'd like to see you tomorrow. Well, here's a little bit more to the story.
So between that time, I actually had packaged up, because I had no idea how to raise money, a business plan, which back in those days, you wrote like these 50-page business plans, which was crazy. And FedEx did to Sequoia Capital only because I had read in Time Magazine that they were the best venture capital firm in the world. And so I write back, because I don't actually believe this. I said, yeah, sure.
620 South Street, Easton, Maryland. Love to see you. And the next day, he showed up and knocked on my door. So my wife and I lived in a very, very small house for many, many years, which I think life was a lot simpler.
It was 1,400 square foot house. And he walked in, and he looks around, and he's like, is this all you got? And I was like, well, my office is in my spare bedroom upstairs. Come on up.
So we walk upstairs, and he looks around. He's like, is this really it? I was like, yeah, this is really it. My partner has a spare bedroom down the road that we can go to, but this is it.
I said, if you came here for more, I'm really sorry. He's like, be quiet. This is how we found Cisco. So we had lunch.
We did the business plan on the back of a placemat. I was like, hey, do you want to go fishing? Because he was a big fisherman and actually had been using the site for a long time. He's like, yeah.
So we went fishing and had a great time. On the way back, he asked me how we were funding the company. And the truth is, John, we were trading stocks to fund the company. We were getting some money from building webpages, but we literally were my partner and I trading stocks to raise money for the company.
And I was like, well, usually we have like 7,000. Sometimes we have 15. Just depends on how the market did. And he said, what does that mean?
And I told him. And he just kept quiet. He was writing something. And he handed over a check for $50,000.
He's like, let's go. And that was literally my first money-raising experience. Wow. I mean, Fire Nation, think about that.
You know, talk about humble beginnings. And I actually truly resonate with you when you said, you know, sometimes life might have been a little simpler back in the 1,400-square-foot days. I mean, I think back to my 384-square-foot studio apartment, one block from the Pacific Ocean in San Diego, California. And man, I sometimes miss that place so much, it almost hurts.
And you know, listen, I'm not complaining. I love my house here. But when you have 5,250 square feet, when you have six bathrooms, five bedrooms, you know, all the things in the world, there's always something that's going wrong. And it's always like, oh, you have a great house?
It's like, yeah, but it's always taking my energy, my time, my bandwidth. Like, nothing was ever wrong with my 384-square-foot studio. Like, I loved that thing for all the reasons. So, Brandon, I resonate with you there, brother.
And let's get into the meats and potatoes of this episode because you came up with something pretty revolutionary. You came up with 13 slides, you know, specifically how to build your pitch deck to actually raise money in just 13 slides. I like to say, listen, so many people are just doing things wrong. And here you are coming and saying, this is how to do something right.
So listen up, Fire Nation. Brandon, take it away. I came up with this through a bunch of experience. One trial and error.
I've done a few companies. I've raised a lot of money for those companies. I was a venture capitalist, actually. I worked for two venture firms managing about half a billion dollars.
And from trial and error, I said, what really works? What doesn't work? And then I also studied, I think this is important for Fire Nation. I looked at what the quote unquote pros said.
So I looked at Guy Kawasaki. I looked at Peter Thiel. I looked at Sequoia Capital. And then I added, I'm a, John, I don't know about you, but I'm a Bruce Lee guy.
You can do. So absorb what is useful, discard what is not, add what is uniquely your own. So I came up with this 13 slides because from seeing pitches, from pitching myself and it working, it just so happened to work. And a few other parameters here.
If you are pitching or when you are pitching, either an angel investor, a venture capitalist, friends and family, anybody, you are generally going to have about a 50 minute meeting. Now they'll schedule an hour, but you've got to figure that it's going to go 50 minutes and people are going to start wrapping up. So you've got to have your story done. 13 slides, that gives you two and a half minutes, a slide, and you want to get through that deck as fast as possible so that you can get to the real questions that they're going to ask you.
The other thing is that it forces you ultimately to make your story, which is what you're telling, really concise and simple to understand. If it is complicated, you're just not going to get through. And what a lot of people who pitch, entrepreneurs who pitch out there don't realize is that you are one of multiple meetings of the day, of the week, of the stack of business plans that are on these desks or get sent in. It's much more sophisticated, I think, than when I started because technology with a lot of the big firms and even angel investors or angel groups.
But you're going to have to make yourself stand out. And if it's not simple to understand what problem you are solving, what your solution does, and how you're going to scale that company, then investors are going to get lost, they're going to glaze their eyes over, and they're just going to move to the next one. And you could say, well, they're going to miss a billion-dollar opportunity, maybe, but there's a bunch of billion opportunities in that queue. So you've got to make yourself stand out.
And usually, if you can make it simple and concise, you will stand out. Now, I'm a big believer in the quote, success leaves clues. Why would we not learn from people who have had success who have come before us? And the answer is, I hope you are.
I hope you will. Of course, that's why you listen to a podcast like this, because you're the type of person who does understand that success leaves clues, who learns from the guests to come on and share their knowledge, their expertise, their ability to absolutely dominate one area in life. And this can be a make or break, one opportunity. You know, this is your opportunity to actually get something that you want, that you need.
And you only have that first time to make a first impression. So if you do it right, you could be walking out that door with something. You do it wrong, not only may you be walking out that door with nothing, but hey, listen, VC, they talk. They talk to each other.
And you definitely don't want to have a stink around your business because you can't put together an impressive deck. So why 13, Brandon? There's 13 original colonies. I think there's 13 weeds on the back of the dollar bill.
I'm kidding. It just turned out that way. But it turned out that what you're really doing here is telling a story. And in order to tell that story, it came up for 13 slides.
Would it be okay if I went through just quickly? Yeah, we're through, brother. You're going to have a title with your elevator pitch. Your elevator pitch needs to be an elevator pitch.
It needs to be 30 seconds. Can you just give us a quick example of an elevator pitch that you really like? We help you find files you know you have but can't find faster. Boom.
It can be that simple, Fire Nation. So go ahead. And by the way, just for Fire Nation out there, I rattle that off because it's one of the companies that I'm an investor in called FileFinder. But that piece right there took probably seven months.
Wow. That's true. So I'm just saying the iterations that you have to go through, you just can't sit down. Like it comes to you.
I think you understand that. You know that as well as anyone, John, right? Totally. It happens that way.
So get your elevator pitch done. Then your problem, your solution, your product, your market, your business model, your traction and or goals if you're early, your competition, your barriers to entry or what I like to call your remote, your financials, your team, funds needed and how you're going to use them and your summary slide. And the summary slide is the magic slide that I really came up with. I don't want to ruin it for too many people, but I'll drop that for your Fire Nation is that that summary slide is your key points that you leave up there when you keep talking because people forget what you said earlier.
And this is a reminder. And it was something that just happened. It clicked for me in a meeting with a very large VC firm when I was pitching and I realized that people couldn't remember. So I picked out the key points.
I put that on the summary slide and I leave that slide up there for the rest of the discussion. And it's a reference for them. It's also a reference for your or our team to go up there and remember what we did. So why 13 Fire Nation?
Because it's 13. Like you don't need to question everything. Like people are always like, John, like why is your roadmap in the common path on common success? Why is it a 17 step roadmap?
Like why didn't you go with like 10 or 20? There's just such more round numbers. I'm like, because there's 17 core foundational principles over 3,000 success. That's why it's 17.
It's a 17 step roadmap because there are 17 core foundational principles. Not 18, not 16. 17. So again, success leaves clues.
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Brandon, we're back, and what the heck are those three questions? What are the top three questions angels or VCs will ask? So here's the questions that I ask as an angel investor and that I've experienced over two decades. I usually get asked, what traction do you have?
And what that question really is, is in today's world, they're looking for sales. A lot of things have progressed in the way of angel investing in venture capital, and people are actually looking for success. So if you just have an idea, you probably want to go to your friends and family that you still want this pitch deck, but they're probably not going to be as pressing. But what investors really look for is, do you address a problem, and that's painful enough that your solution is something that people are willing to pay for?
And ultimately, that's really what's loaded in that question. Now, if you're raising money and you're a little bit further down the road, they're going to be asking that traction to look for your KPIs and to see if you understand the repeatable process so that when you hire arguably senior management, you have a process that they can replicate. So that's the first question and sort of the behind the scenes why they're asking that question. The second question, I think, will be about the team.
Usually, if you're raising money in the early stages, you're betting on the people, not necessarily the idea. There's so many examples out there, and over all the interviews you've done, I've listened to, there's plenty of entrepreneurs that have said, you know, I started with this idea and I wound up moving to this idea. So it really is that, what is the personality of that person and what is the openness of that person to be able to pivot? Some entrepreneurs I've seen die with their business idea because they just won't move off.
They continue to say, this is it, this is it, this is it. When the market's saying, no, it's not it. And so the question is, are they willing to listen to the market? And then, of course, do they have background?
But I would say. say that there's plenty of examples that people didn't have that background and we're still wildly successful because of these other traits so they're really going to be looking at the founder founders and the supporting team and also i'm gonna say it's a trick question but a question that that is in that question is do you understand your weak points in your team so you can identify the people that you need to go get immediately with whatever funds you're raising and then number three they're going to ask in my opinion at least what i ask for is your financials and to walk me through your financials and it is not because anybody believes those financials predictions unless you're further down the road in a later stage financing are actually correct or not it's do you understand the approach that you're going to be taking your business down down that journey so have you thought through these things have you thought through your marketing tab so that you understand your customer acquisition costs and how about that what your customer lifetime value is and how that flows into your cash flow and what your receivables are going to be if you're an internet company or online company you're probably going to get you're going to get your money relatively quickly although that's a misconception because what i'm looking for is if you're doing an e-commerce company or any sort of company where you're taking large large volume of transactions online is payment processors are going to hold your money back do you understand that and have you allowed for that in your cash flow and that's where a lot of people get caught up so that these are the types of questions um that the financials answer do you understand that if you pay someone 125 thousand dollars a year that your total load on that person is probably 150 um because if you just do 125 at the end of fall short or on a monthly basis so those are really the three questions and in my opinion why or at least why i ask and why i've seen a lot of vcs and investors ask those questions wow you are getting a master class fire nation that you need to be going through step by step if you are going to be in front of angels or vcs at any point in the future i really hope you're taking all these to heart i mean i love that tricky question that brain brought up what are your weak points and who do you need to hire to address those weak points i mean just think about that you need to have answers to that because people want to know that you are prepared we're going to be in the room with the vcs with the angels you have these 13 slides how long do we have to get through these in general you should plan for a 50 minute meeting they'll schedule an hour but those last 10 minutes are going to be either follow up or they're going to wrap up and the vcs actually or the angels or any of us quite candidly even entrepreneurs we get to that next meeting so you're going to have 50 minutes but you're really only going to have or want to allocate two or three minutes per slide to be able to get through so when you practice and practice is key i practice with an hourglass you can buy them on amazon for like three bucks and i will turn that hourglass over there's plenty of apps you can get on your phone as well i think the iphone has one but um you need to time yourself and you need to be able to get through this as quickly as possible if they interrupt you that's fine but but you're gonna have to get back on track so you should be able to do that slide deck almost out of memory and you should not have a wall of words up there it really should only be logos pictures and very large font so that it is easy to understand and the other tip i'll give people is is that you don't want people to read your slide i mean this is for all presentations but especially when you're pitching for money you want them to be listening to you so don't put a lot of stuff on your on your slide so they have to pay attention to you and then you can probably get through this thing in less than 30 minutes and leave time for discussion g-o-l-d gold fire nation but let's be honest do we actually need full financials if you have multiple exits with companies that you started built and sold investors will probably forgive you if you don't then i would suggest that they're going to ask for some level of financials now i will admit that i get down into the nitty-gritty mainly because i know the i got i don't know a few hundred scars on my back from the last two decades of mistakes i made and i know that you're going to understand those marketing dynamics and those metrics and how that feeds your pnl and your receivables and all these things will they want that level of detail i can't say all of them will but they all will want some level of financials mainly to understand either either if you and or your team member that you have recruited or is a co-founder can fill that gap because if they're going to write a check to you they're going to want to make sure that that just doesn't get wasted fire nation i really hope you're taking away the gold the brain is putting down here because this is the type of thing you're going to go in you're going to have an opportunity to absolutely crush it by doing just even the small things right i mean not having a wall of words like i love that phrase think about that you really want people squinting and leaning in and trying to read things on a powerpoint slide behind you instead of like listening to your voice you hopefully you know really practice and prepare for i mean you give us so much value within this entire episode what do you want to make sure fire nation really gets from everything you talked about today if you're going to raise money be prepared with your 13 slides i do have an ebook for everybody if they want it i outline these slides in a little bit more detail entrepreneurs always go into investor meetings with this idea that they've got this checkbook and that we have to answer every question and and that we're on trial so to speak here but they're on trial too don't forget that when you get a check you're getting married so do your research on your investor and that way you'll know that there's a match and quite candidly they'll actually be impressed that you've done done the research and spent the time spend the time fire nation do the research impress the angels impress the vcs now brandon thank you for that final takeaway it was awesome as always how can we connect with you to learn more about what you have going on you mentioned an amazing giveaway for fire nation what's the call to action to that and then we'll say goodbye i have a 42 page ebook on these 13 slides and one item for fire nation if you go to brandon c white forward slash fire all in lower case you can grab that ebook and be on your way to raise money for your business everybody's gonna need to raise money for their business at some point if you're growing fast and fire nation we want you growing fast and one more time brandon that was brandon c white dot com slash fire that's right brandon c white dot com forward slash fire so that's brandon with an o fire nation b-r-a-n-d-o-n c as in the letter c white dot com slash fire and fire nation you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with and you've been hanging out with b dubs and jld today so let's keep up that heat head over to eofire.com type brandon in the search bar the show notes page will pop up with everything we talked about here today best show notes in the biz timestamps links galore brandon c white dot com slash fire is your direct call to action to that amazing 42 page ebook brandon is offering for you and brandon thank you brother for sharing your truth your knowledge your fire with fire nation today for that we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side thanks john it was awesome hey fire nation today's value bomb content was brought to you by brandon and fire nation over the last decade i've interviewed over 3,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs and i've created a revolutionary 17 step roadmap for your financial freedom and your fulfillment and i put it all into my first traditionally published book the common path to uncommon success this book has been personally endorsed by Seth Goding, Gary Vaynerchuk, Erica Mandy, Dory Clark, Neil Patel, and Fire Nation the common path to uncommon success is the step-by-step guidance you need to achieve the lifestyle of your dreams visit uncommon success book.com to learn more and order your copy today and i'll catch you there or i'll catch you on the flip side the hubspot podcast network is the audio destination for business professionals who seek the best education and inspiration on how to grow a business whether you're looking for marketing sales service or operational guidance the hubspot podcast network hosts have your back listen learn and grow with the hubspot podcast network at hubspot.com slash podcast network customers want more from brands delivering more means only the customer experience taking control over data acquisition analysis creative and delivery Clavio calls this own marketing they believe it's the best path to growth for more visit clavio.com slash fire that's k-l-a-v-i-y-o dot com slash fire