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You understand what’s an enormous ache the place the =sum()don’t shine? Monetary reporting, planning and evaluation. I usually go on and on (and on and on) about startups not getting their financials and working plans proper of their startup pitch decks, so … not gonna lie, I picked Austrian startup Helu.io, which accomplished a €9.8 million round in July, within the hope that an organization that focuses completely on FP&A (that’s “monetary planning and evaluation,” for many who aren’t as much as their eyeballs in monetary lingo) can present the remainder of us the way it ought to be accomplished.
We’re searching for extra distinctive pitch decks to tear down, so if you wish to submit your personal, here’s how you can do that.
Table of Contents
Slides on this deck
When Helu submitted its deck, it did so with a be aware that income and unit financial data was eliminated.
In a world the place I see pre-product, pre-revenue corporations spin wild desires of world market domination, slide 10 comes throughout as fairly defensive.
Additionally value noting (as a result of I’ll be sincere, I needed to Google it, and I’m all about saving you a Google search or two) what “DACH” stands for, as a result of it seems within the slides under. D is Deutschland — that one is straightforward. A is for Österreich (Austria) and CH is for … Switzerland. DACH is a considerably generally used time period for the cluster of nations in Europe which have German as its Sprachraum — in different phrases, the place German is predominantly spoken.
- Cowl slide
- “Helu is for CFOs what Personio is for HR” — market alternative slide
- “The CFO’s ache is Excel” — drawback slide
- “Goodbye Excel sheets” — resolution slide
- “Our strategy is exclusive and totally different” — product slide
- “Automated monetary reporting: real-time in a single step” — worth proposition slide
- “Collaborative evaluation” – worth proposition slide
- “Addressing a 100bn B2B SaaS market globally” — TAM slide
- “Multi-billion market in DACH alone” — SAM slide
- “Specifics of DACH market” — SOM slide
- “Distinctive place in DACH” — moat/aggressive benefit slide
- “Helu automating information aggregation” — product slide
- “Helu’s typical buyer” — buyer profile slide
- “High notch worldwide workforce” — workforce slide
- “Backed by robust traders and advisors” — traders and advisors slide
- Closing slide
Three issues to like
Total, Helu’s slide deck comes throughout as a little bit unusual seen by Silicon Valley eyes. Having an English-language slide deck specializing in German-speaking international locations, with out actually saying something about an English-language growth plan, is oddly unsettling. There are additionally some notable issues lacking from this slide deck — however I’m getting forward of myself. Let’s check out the issues that work nice, initially.
Strong worth proposition
For founders working in an area that could be a little inside baseball, it may be actually tempting to over-explain what a product does. The reality is that the traders don’t actually care what your product does. Probably not. What they care about is that the shoppers are joyful sufficient to maintain coming again and to get that a part of the story throughout, you want to clarify what the client will get out of it. You try this by sharing the advantages, or the worth proposition. The Helu workforce does that effectively over the course of two slides:
[Slide 6] Half 1 of the worth proposition. Picture Credit: Helu
On Slide 6, the workforce exhibits a pair of screenshots of its product, reducing it finely between explaining options and advantages. In the event that they have been attempting to promote this product to me, as somebody who runs their very own enterprise, I’d prefer to see it extra profit pushed, however they aren’t — they’re “promoting” shares within the firm to institutional traders, who are typically very clear on how monetary reporting works.
[Slide 7] Half 2 of the worth proposition. Picture Credit: Helu
The second a part of the worth prop argument is extra of the identical, however it helps spotlight the strengths of the software program bundle. Most significantly, I can completely see how that is essential for working considerations; you want to drill down into, simulate and analyze varied situations. This bundle has you lined. Excel can do that, in fact, however good luck resetting the mannequin to pre-scenario states.
Now, these slides aren’t full slam dunks; I’d have liked extra consistency. In Slide 7, the bullets on the left have capital letters and those on the remaining begin in lowercase. The slides flip-flop between utilizing “&” and “and” to tie issues collectively. However total, they do the trick.
Present me the cash. And take my cash.
[Slide 12] Take my cash; I’ve wished this product since I began my very first firm. Picture Credit: Helu
I’m an Excel/Google Sheets nerd, and I feel many traders are, on the whole. Ingesting information and maintaining it updated is excruciatingly onerous, and the ugly little secret is that loads of us are working with snapshots of knowledge. These snapshots might or might not get up to date. Working fully on anecdotal information? I believe more often than not the snapshots don’t get up to date. That implies that you’re making large, strategic monetary selections based mostly on outdated data. It doesn’t take an MBA to comprehend that that ain’t the easiest way to run a enterprise. This slide bought me very excited certainly, and the info geek in me really wished to see what this seems like in actual life. It’s uncommon {that a} slide deck each makes me conscious of an entire new product class and makes me wish to play with monetary modeling.
I feel this slide is masterful; it exhibits the facility of Helu’s instruments in a approach that helps a possible investor perceive why that is so vital. I wouldn’t be in any respect stunned if the traders requested a number of of their startups to check out Helu’s instruments for his or her monetary modeling and reporting; they fall within the heart of the bullseye for the product, and if it really works in addition to it seems prefer it would possibly, it’s an apparent win. The slide itself is modest and easy, but when I squint my ears, I can hear a founder ship a voice-over with an instance or two exhibiting how highly effective this may be.
Glorious moat
[Slide 10] When you get a foothold within the DACH market, you’re golden. Picture Credit: Helu
OK, so this slide is likely one of the greatest and one of many worst on this deck. We’re speaking concerning the prime three issues I liked, so on this part, we’ll speak about that, however, spoiler alert: This slide is making a comeback within the “three issues that may very well be improved” part under. When you’ve learn a few my pitch deck teardowns prior to now, right here’s an opportunity to do an train: What’s flawed with this slide? Sure, it has too many phrases on it, however that’s not the issue — see when you can determine it out!
What I do love about this slide is that it paints an image of how, as soon as Helu will get a stable foothold on this market, will probably be primarily unbeatable; and I believe $10 million and a stable product will assist it on this. It’s not going to get competitors from abroad anytime quickly, on account of getting “essentially the most complicated accounting and tax system on this planet.” I’m positive somebody from the Inside Income Service reads that and can begin to really feel a little bit aggressive, however I purchase that it’s seemingly a fairly distinctive panorama of guidelines and laws.
With an extra twist: The German Mittelstand is a robust power to be reckoned with. These are hundreds of small however effectively run companies which can be onerous to think about in some other nation; within the U.S., small corporations are likely to get rolled into greater ones. As the corporate factors out, 99.5% of all corporations and 97.5% of all exporters fall into the SME class. That’s a panorama most worldwide SaaS companies don’t actually know what to do with; native and cultural data and constructing instruments that work very effectively for this particular subset of corporations imply that Helu may find yourself with a formidable moat. The corporate doesn’t come straight out and say that it is a “winner take all” market, however I feel that’s what they’re getting at.
In the remainder of this teardown, we’ll check out three issues Helu may have improved or accomplished in another way, together with its full pitch deck!
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