Can I (YOU) Raise $100K PRE-SEED with this Pitch Deck? (Copy Me)

Can I raise $100,000, $1 million, $10 million, and then $100 million starting off at preede as a CFXO? We are going to find out. I am literally after recording this video going to pitch to an investor and try and raise that first $100,000 tunch. In this video, I'm going to show you the slides I'm going to use ahead of time and the technique of using an idea validation pitch deck to help you increase the optimized chances of raising funding preede for your startup. Before we continue, my name is Ed Kang. If we met before, welcome back to my channel. Thanks for stopping by. As usual, use the chapter markers to skip ahead to the good part of the video. You are welcome. If we haven't met before, I'm a seventime funded founder with two exits. I'm also the chief strategy officer for startups. com and the community lead at SparkLabs by Arc Invest. Check the description of this video for special offers to get me as your adviser. But my focus this year is training founders how to be a CFXO chief funding execution officer. And not only am I going to show you how to do it, I'm going to do it myself. So, like I said, this is the pitch deck that I'm going to show the investor and I'm going to record that meeting and just play for you completely raw. and that way you can see us and how we can do it together because I want to invite you along in doing it yourself but also let me help you. I believe that the traditional roles of founders being a CEO, CFO, COO are going out the window and every founder must become in part a chief funding execution officer or have on staff. We're going to be using my CFXO canvas and as you see we are at the beginning stages. I'm going to be talking about founder funding fit, but also the idea validation pitch deck, which will help you raise funding before you actually raise funding. Too many founders make the mistake of just going in hot and trying to raise funding right away. But there's a way for you to prepare, especially thinking about founder funding fit, what funding works for you, and to connect with all the people out there that are going to help you get connected to the right investor to eventually reach founder investor fit. Yet so many founders I meet at startups. com and other programs start off cold and it's incredibly hard to get things going. I'm going to show you how to warm everything up so you have a better chance and it makes it a lot easier on you. Here's my invitation. Take the challenge with me and build a yo unicorn. You may not have the same funding goals as I do and you might not have the same type of startups that I want to do, but you're going to build what you want based on your expectations, how you want to be fulfilled as a founder, not investors. That means you pick the size of the raise. And we're going to start off with founder funding fit. Know what funding fits you. VC is not always the answer. There's so many other ways that you can go all the way from debt financing, non-dilutive grants, bootstrapping yourself, seedstrapping. VC may not be what you want. That's the concept of a yo unicorn. Instead of VCs wanting you to build a unicorn traditional with a U. Through CFXO, you are going to learn how to build and fund in public. do it in a way where the markets are attracted to you versus you always having to go out to the market, which is a brutal way to work. And when you're in a startup and you're strapped for cash and you've got a limited amount of time, you want to have everything working for you. So, you might as well figure out how to get people to come to you. So, become that CFXO. Start up by subscribing to this YouTube channel. All your likes and comments are helpful as well. Before I show you my idea validation deck, we need to know why the idea validation deck is the best for you, especially if you're preede or a first-time founder. This is based on my experience and other experiences from other founders out there that have shared with me their best secrets, their best practices. That means the idea validation deck is not to raise investment. And that may sound counterintuitive. If you're willing to be just a little more patient, you'll have an easier time optimizing your fund raise if you use the idea validation deck properly because the idea validation deck helps you with networking and you'll network with potential investors and people who know potential investors. You'll also meet customers and those are the ones that you share with the investors. You get the feedback from the customers. Investors will be interested. Potential partners will start to come out through this process as well as co-founders. How many founders do I know looking for a co-founder? And it's like trying to date while bringing your adult kids into the relationship. There's a better way to do it and that's the idea validation pitch deck. Finally, you get as much practice as possible before you talk to investors. I tell founders all the time, you'd rather flub it with me than lose your chance with investors. Your first impression means everything. You got one chance to do it. So, get your pitch deck right and understand what type of feedback you're going to get. And this allows you not just to get feedback from me, but your warm circles, people that you trust who will give you honest feedback because you're going to ask them, "What feedback would you give me if you knew you couldn't offend me, we're friends here. " You're going to develop a soft heart and thick skin. And that's going to help you go through the gauntlet that investors are going to put you through. So many founders are shocked when I tell them this is what an investor is going to ask, and they go, "No, it's not going to be like that. " because they're not used to it. You have to get used to it. It's like going through a trial by fire. It's insufferable and it's thankless. I learned the hard way when I went through Y Combinator way back in 2015 for an

interview. It was one of the best and worst experiences of my life. So, you want to fail in a safe environment where the consequences are mostly artificial. And that's what the idea validation pitch deck is all about. This pitch deck will not have all the slides that you might be used to. You're going to start simple with the cover slide, then the problem, solution, market, how it works, business model, your team, who you are, traction, ask, finally, your back cover. At this stage, you don't need all the details such as a go-to market strategy or competitive analysis or even financials, even a use of funds. I'm going to show you how to make it as simple as possible so you can get investors and all the other potential stakeholders interested at this stage. Now, remember, this is just how I approach things. There are many other ways to do pitch texts. So don't say, "Well, this advisor told me this and that advisor told me that and this expert says this. " This is just in my humble opinion. There are dozens of other founders that I know that have raised millions of dollars using pitch decks with a different format. In fact, doing formats that I wouldn't necessarily agree with, but that's okay. Learn the basics of this and adjust it yourself. See what works for you. Develop your own style, but also understand that the basics exist for a reason. Investors are used to seeing pitch decks in a certain way. So, as much as you want to be creative and stand out and be different, that might be working against you because you're giving the investor too many opportunities to say, "This doesn't look like what I'm used to. " Or you create that cognitive friction where they have to work so hard to understand it. Think about using the basics and then improvise from there. Like you're a painter using the basic colors and doing basic color theory or you're playing piano or musical instrument and you're learning basic scales. You learn how to play Twinkle, Little Star so that everybody else can see it. And then you start embellishing and flourishing from there. Here is the first slide and my working name is VCDD Ventures and I have a purpose statement, a simple statement. There's not a lot of fluff marketing slogans on this cover. Unlocking unrealized economic value from underperforming patents. You will immediately notice that this pitch deck has no graphics. It has no colors. It is simple black and white with no images. I believe if you can't validate your idea or get an investor to understand what you're pitching with just plain black and white text, then you've got bigger problems. you need to go back to the drawing board. So, this very first deck is so basic when I send it out because I haven't spent so much time on graphics and giving investors the wrong impression by misleading them with something that maybe I made a mistake on visually speaking. I'm going to go just straight black and white and see if they understand. And you're going to get the video watching an investor process my deck. This very deck that you're seeing right here. Here's the problem slide. The US grants approximately 300,000 patents annually. Yet 97% never generate returns due to commercialization failure, locking over $6 billion investment capital and unrealized economic value. And I got some bullet points. The problem slide needs to have a stark summary headline sentence that has the size, who has the problem, how many, the scope, why the problem exists, and the severity, how much the problem costs if you do not solve it. And this ticks all the boxes. I have so many videos on how to construct problem slides, as well as the rest of your pitch deck. So stay till the end of the video and you're going to link to those playlists. After the problem slide is a solution slide and mine says we acquire and commercialize underperforming patents by d-risking markets before deploying capital using AI. And we've got three bullet points here. Another thing I want you to notice is that solution is in the slide small and to the top left and the headline stark summary sentence is the biggest font. Too many people have solution as the biggest boldest word and the rest of it is smaller. Also, the solution slide should have the form factor, the unique process, as well as the final result. So, the form factor here is that we acquire, that's what we do, and we've got AI in there. And how we go about it is acquire underperforming patents and we derisk it. That's the final result. We're going to derisk it because that was in the problem. Investors don't like it when the problem and solution statements don't connect together. And that's what I'm going to be looking for. Is there a connection? Do people understand that I put a problem and the solution reverse engineers the problem point by point as far as the scope is concerned. If the light bulbs go off, the investor is going to say, "Yeah, that totally makes sense. " I'm not looking for something glamorous here. I'm looking for it to be clear and concise versus cute and clever. This is a why now slide. Now, I don't normally recommend creating a why now slide, but in this case, I added one in because there was a clear inflection point in the marketplace with AI. That brings me my summary sentence that says AI has reduced the cost of learning which patents can be commercialized by orders of magnitude and I have before and after. This is the inflection point that says why now. You can use this if you got clear inflection points, but if you just got general data in the marketplace that says oh this industry is growing, that industry is growing. It's not enough to have a why now slide. Moving on to the market slide. The headline says there are roughly 2 million enforceable US patents that could be acquired today. I'm giving them the entire market. And then I calculate the TAM which is $6 billion in current asset value and I show the math 30,000 average per patent replacement value. Then SAM is the segment that I'm focusing on because of my business model and what makes sense and explain why this SAM is based on faster lower cost

commercialization and best fit for AIdriven validation. And then SOM is what we realistically can do in a five-year period. And I said I'm going to use $3 million and acquire 100 patents out of the 2 million that are available. And my target outcome here is $250 million revenue. Mistake most founders make at this stage is they use a top-down analysis alone. Understand and learn how to do a bottom-up analysis and segment Tam Sam. Exactly. I have more videos on this on my channel. Next is the how it works slide with just a statement saying I drisk commercialization using AI agents for each phase. And I've got five phases, five steps. You'd like to break it down maybe to four, some in three, but don't have more than five. This is designed to show the investor that I have a clear process in how this solution is going to work. And you want to make sure that you show any special sauce in there that you've got, anything that is patented. If you're using AI, talk about how it interacts with AI. Such as in this case, I'm saying we're going to create an AI agent for each phase. The business model is how you make money. And it starts with a very simple statement. I just say generating returns through multiple monetization paths. Set it up. And I have the monetization paths. If you've got pricing and it's battle tested, you want to put the pricing there and talk about how it's battle tested. People have agreed to do it. But in this case, my monetization paths are all different. I can't put pricing there because it changes with every patent. Now, one difference between a regular startup pitch deck and an idea validation deck is you don't necessarily have to have all the battle testing done. You can say, "These are just my assumptions and how we're going to battle test it. " But you always want to explain why you're making the statements that you make. For example, if I say that we're going to come in at this price, say $99 a month, which is 20% lower than all the competition out there and we think that's a good price, but we still have to test it. That is a very valid thing to do in an idea validation pitch deck. And investors are going to understand that you are starting off with an assumption and you are going to go test it. And that's all right at this stage. You always test your assumptions and investors understand. So tell them the assumption but always follow it up with how you are testing it and you're not taking anything for granted because they are going to ask you how do you know how did you come to this assumption here's a team slide I'm just very straightforward up at the top currently building the team with multi-dommain expertise if you got a better team just talk about how many years of experience and how much value you've created and I got the bullet points for the team including me and our CTO which shows as much domain expertise as possible why we're going to win these are relevant bullet points then I added a technique at the bottom saying we're seeking investors serve as a general partner The reason that statement can be powerful such as an investor become an adviser, an investor become a chairman, investor to come on board and be a part of the team is because angel investors in the beginning want to ask what's different about your startup. Why you? Why now? And finally, why me? Why that investor would actually make the biggest impact, have leverage? Because typically in the beginning stages, these investors can't put in millions of dollars. They're going to put in $100,000, maybe $50,000. So, you want to show them how smart their money can be and how much leverage you can get if they join part of the team. And you will see me have this conversation with the investor as I present. Stay tuned for that. Here's a traction slide, which is so important. I have a statement up at the top saying that we're currently validating the idea. As I said, it's very fair to say that we're validating ideas at this moment in time. This is an idea validation pitch tech after all. But every traction slide should cover three points: product, validation, and growth. and you'll see what I've achieved so far with these bullet points and I'm going to explain that to the investor. Now, here's a special technique for the ass slide. I said not raising funding at this time as we validate our hypothesis with more traction. But I'm open to all investor conversations. I use this technique to make sure investors don't feel uncomfortable that I'm trying to raise at such an early stage where I might not have enough traction validation could be too early for their fund. All investors love being part of the story. So, they say keep me posted and I want to emotionally involve them. And that's what's so fun about this. If you do it right, a little bit of FOMO will set in and they'll think to themselves, hm, what if they don't need money? Or even worse, what if they get money, but they don't come back to me? That's why I want to say, keep me posted. And there you start off the relationship. And here's my contact information. By the way, if you want to email me and contact me, and you can see this advisors. com, just contact me or contact me via my socials. There you have it. Quick, simple, easy, concise, clear, painless. That's what you want it to be for you and the investor out there. And if you've done it right, you can follow these next steps. This is what I recommend. I'll make another video of this to go into detail further along, but just to give you a preview. Make a list of 200 people. Then you're going to rank them ABC. You're going to show the A-list your deck. You're going to contact them and say, "Hey, can I get feedback on the deck? " You're going to get brutal feedback. Brutal feedback is your friend at this moment of time. Ask who else to talk to. The A's are going to give you a [snorts] whole list of B's. Then you're going to keep sending them investor updates. You're going to ask them, "Can I keep you informed of our progress? " And keep updating them. and you're going to run the CFXO canvas. That's what I'm here for. And this will give you all the other steps. But remember this, this is the adage that always stays true. Ask for investment, get advice. But if you ask for advice, get investment. Always

contact your say, "Can I get advice on my pitch deck? " Your feedback will be tremendously valuable. And do not pitch slap. Nobody likes being pitch slapped. Everybody on my A-list during the idea validation stage knows that they can invest if they want to. I just want their feedback. I'm not slapping them and asking them for money. Don't pit slap. Just start a conversation, not a conversion. Start a conversation versus a conversion and you'll be just fine. Ask for advice and eventually you will get all the right contacts to get that investment. I put some other videos on the screen for you to watch. Stay tuned. But I'm going to publish the video next on how it went and you're going to see video evidence of me pitching the investor and you're going to see it real time and hopefully we'll make that educational for you. Thanks for hanging out in this video. I'll see you in the next one.