Future Story … Communicating your vision and strategy to stakeholders in an inspiring, relevant and commercial way … learning from Airbnb, Uber, Tinder, Revolut and more
September 6, 2022
What’s your big idea? And how do you explain it?
Whether you’re an entrepreneurial start-up looking for early investment, or a senior executive seeking to articulate where you want to take your business next, a “future story” is crucial.
It’s a carefully structured narrative that describes how you see the future, the way you see your business succeeding within it, and an overview of the path that will get you there.
It typically takes the form of a “pitch deck“. But don’t just think ppt presentation by start-ups. A pitch deck could indeed be a formal presentation, or a thoughtful letter, or a detailed strategic plan, or a powerfully spoken narrative.
The pitch deck structures your future story. It becomes the magic bullet that inspires, engages and convinces investors and other stakeholders, that yours is the future that they want to be part of.
Ultimately it’s about storytelling. And like any good narrative, it should be compelling, credible, and concise. Grab your audiences attention in your first slide and work to hold it as you describe the business concept, the market opportunity, and what it will take to make happen.
Here are some great examples of pitch decks, from entrepreneurs and corporates, to inspire your future story, your structure for telling it, and your future success.
Examples of start-up pitches
In 2007 Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia were broke and looking to raise money to make their rent in San Francisco. They decided to rent out air mattresses in their apartment to attendees of a conference because all the hotels were booked. They called their service “Air Bed and Breakfast.” In a few years, this small experiment would create the hotel industry disruptor Airbnb.
Uber’s story began in Paris in 2008. Two friends, Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp, were attending LeWeb, an annual tech conference The Economist describes as “where revolutionaries gather to plot the future.” The concept for Uber was born one winter night during the conference when the pair was unable to get a cab. Uber was founded on a single idea: “What if you could request a ride from your phone?”
Reid Hoffman started out at Apple, launched his first business SocialNet in 1997, a matchmaking site based on leisure interests, and then joined PayPal as COO. In 2003 he launched LinkedIn as a social networking site for business people. Based in Mountain View, it was acquired by Microsoft in 2016, and now has over 900 million members in more than 200 countries.
Sean Rad and engineer Joe Munoz built the original prototype for Tinder, “MatchBox”, during a hackathon in February 2012. Tinder is an online dating and geosocial networking application. On Tinder, users “swipe right” to like or “swipe left” to dislike other users’ profiles, which include their photos, a short bio, and some of their interests. In 2022, Tinder had 10.9 million subscribers and 75 million monthly active users. As of 2021, Tinder had recorded more than 65 billion matches worldwide.
Revolut describes itself as building the world’s first truly global financial superapp. In 2015, Revolut launched in the UK offering money transfer and exchange. Headquartered in London, it was founded in 2015 by Nikolay Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko. It offers accounts featuring currency exchange, debit cards, virtual cards, Apple Pay, interest-bearing “vaults”, commission-free stock trading, crypto, commodities, and other services.
Examples of corporate presentations
23andMe Investor Presentation 2024
Anne Wojcicki wants to change the face of healthcare. 23andMe, her personal genetics testing company. In 2021, 23andMe merged with Richard Branson’s VG Acquisition Corp (a SPAC), in a $3.5 billion transaction, to take the business public. A new business model is rapidly taking shape. Compared to the old world, where drugs were made generically, and pharma companies never connected with patients, 23andMe is now fundamentally disrupting that model.
Coca Cola Investor Presentation 2024
The Coca-Cola Company was founded in 1892 and produces Coca-Cola plus a large portfolio of other beverages, sold in more than 200 countries and territories. The company has operated a franchised distribution system since 1889. The company largely produces syrup concentrate, which is then sold to various bottlers throughout the world who hold exclusive territories. It describes its purpose as “To Refresh The World And Make A Difference”.
Tesla Investor Presentation 2023
Tesla is an automotive and clean energy company based in Austin, Texas, which designs, manufactures and sells battery electric vehicles, stationary battery energy storage devices from home to grid-scale, solar panels and solar shingles, and related products and service. It was founded in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, with Elon Musk later joining them and becoming CEO in 2008. In the same year the Roadster sports car launched, followed by the Model S sedan in 2012, the Model X SUV in 2015, the Model 3 sedan in 2017, the Model Y crossover in 2020, the Tesla Semi truck in 2022 and the Cybertruck pickup truck in 2023.
Hello Fresh Investor Presentation 2023
HelloFresh is a meal-kit company based in Berlin, Germany. It was founded in November 2011 by Dominik Richter. elloFresh’s business model is to prepare the ingredients needed for a meal, and deliver them to customers, who must then cook the meal using recipe cards, which can take around 30–50 minutes. It generally provides about three two-person meals a week for about $60 to $70. Each week, about 45 recipes are offered for users to choose from.
Schneider Electric Investor Presentation 2023
Schneider Electric’s purpose is “to empower all to make the most of our energy and resources, bridging progress and sustainability for all”. They call this “Life Is On”. The French company’s mission is to be your digital partner for sustainability and efficiency. It drives digital transformation by integrating world-leading process and energy technologies, end-point to cloud connecting products, controls, software and services, across the entire lifecycle, enabling integrated company management, for homes, buildings, data centers, infrastructure and industries.
Shopify Investor Presentation 2023
Founded by Germany’s Tobias Lütke, and based in Canada, the Shopify platform offers online retailers a suite of services, including payments, marketing, shipping and customer engagement tools. s of 2023, Shopify hosts 4.6 million stores across 175 countries. According to the company’s yearly financial report for 2023, its total revenue reached $7.1 billion. Shopify was founded in 2006 when Lütke sought to build Snowdevil, an online store for snowboarding equipment. Dissatisfied with the existing e-commerce products on the market, Lütke, a computer programmer by trade, instead built his own.
Intuitive Machines Investor Presentation 2022
Intuitive Machines is a space exploration company based in Houston, Texas. It was founded in 2013 by Stephen Altemus, to provide lunar surface access, lunar orbit delivery, and communication from lunar distance. It holds three NASA contracts including one to develop a Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV). It became public in 2023, listed on the Nasdaq. In February 2024, the Odysseus IM-1 spacecraft landed on the Moon. It was the first privately built craft to land on the Moon, and the first American spacecraft to do so since 1972.
So what makes a great “pitch deck”?
A great story grabs you immediately. So does a great pitch.
In its 2004 pitch deck, Facebook started with this compelling quote from the Stanford student newspaper: “Classes are being skipped. Work is ignored. Students are spending hours in front of the computer in utter fascination. Thefacebook.com craze has swept through campus.”
In the opening slides of its pitch deck, Airbnb left no confusion about what it planned to do. “Book rooms with locals, rather than hotels,” the first slide proclaimed. By the third slide, the reader knew exactly why that idea made sense. “Save Money. Make Money. Share Culture.”
However it’s not just about a creative vision. People gain confidence from numbers – describe the existing market clearly, or if you seek to develop in a new space, use adjacent markets as comparisons. Then you can apply some logic to your future projections, how could it grow, what gives you this confidence. And ultimately, what’s the size of the prize?
Talk a bit about people too. Investors are human, and ultimately engage with people not proposals. And we all know that whatever great plan you have right now, is unlikely to work out quite in the way you imagine. Therefore its about the people, do they have the ambition, capability, resilience and creativity to find the better future.
There is no one structure that works best, but a typical flow might be
- Title … start with a clear and interesting title or theme
- Introduction … establish the context, where, who, what
- Problem … what’s the problem to solve, the opportunity
- Solution … the business concept, core products or services
- Opportunity … market size, trends, potential, and size of prize
- Difference … who are competitors, alternatives, why you’re better
- Roadmap … a horizon-based plan with phases, milestones
- Team … a bit about the key people, interesting, relevant
- Testimonials … more confidence, support, endorsement
- Next steps … what happens next, or what you need now
Of course, graphical presentation does matter – a diagram can tell a thousand words, a sketch prototype enables people to interact – and of course visually engaging images, colour and design layout can be powerful. But don’t go overboard. It’s the business idea, the logic, the story, that really matter.
I’ve worked with many entrepreneurs and corporate leaders on their pitch decks, and what always strikes me is how they get lost in the detail. Either they are too obsessed about the technology, or the financials, or the nifty graphics. What matters is a clear, compelling narrative.
Intelligent, imaginative, inspiring. A future I want to be part of.
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