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It is premeditated. Long on our radar — the company won our 2018 Startup Battlegrounds at TechCrunch Disruption, and a few weeks ago CEO Deion Nicholas joined Vanessa Larco on TechCrunch Live to talk about Noise and Platts Decks alongside Neesa.
Today it’s my pleasure to break down the 23-slide deck of the company that helped raise a $65 million Series C late last year.
Foresight’s mission is to help humans do better work using AI. One of the things we’ve focused on is being a human-centric AI platform. And that really comes in… with our mission, and our mission is to unlock human potential through artificial intelligence,” Nicholas told TechCrunch. Ron Miller.
We’re looking for more unique pitch floors to break down, so if you’d like to submit your own, here’s how to do that.
Slides on this floor
In most cases, this is a slide that catches my eye; Forethought made me do a double take on the slide because it was an unusual exception to that rule.
- Cover slide
- Founders slide
- TechCrunch Disruptive Startup Battlefield Slide — (Yes, Really!)
- Drag Slide (fixed numbers)
- Customer list slide
- “Forbes 2021 the next billion dollar startup” – secret slide
- “Think of the last time you were” – problem slide
- “The value of bad customer service” – problem slide
- “Transform customer experiences with human-centered AI” – solution slide
- “Complete platform” – product slide
- “Real AI” – product slide
- “Fast Time-to-Value” – Product Slide
- “Safe and reliable” – product slide
- “Identifying the intelligence gap” – product slide
- “Best Trusted” – Customer breakdown slide
- “Parameters summary” (edited) – drag slide
- Customer testimonials slide
- ARR expansion by one team (edited) – Customer development slide
- “Pre-thinkers” group slide
- Consultants and investors slip
- “What’s Next” (edited) – Road Map Slide
- “Where are we going” (corrected) – Income growth slider
- “Unlock human potential through AI” – mission slide
Three things to love
There’s a lot to like about this deck, and it’s hard to pick just three things. In the last few pitch deck tears, I’ve often focused on the beginning of the narrative – the first few slides.
It ends on a mission
[Slide 23] Closing slide. Image Credits: Thinking ahead
I’ve already argued how important it is to have a good final slide. To understand why, remember that in many pitch situations, the first and last slides are on the screen longer. The first is about wanting coffee, waiting for people, and sitting down. Last because it’s not unusual to leave the last slide up during Q&A at the end of a pitch – at least until you go to another slide in the deck to clarify something. To be honest, this was especially true when you were voicing in person, but it’s nice to have each slide do the heavy lifting.
Often, the last slide is just a repetition of the company’s logo or slogan and the contact details of the founder; It makes sense to reiterate your vision or mission here, but it’s rarely done, and that’s a shame. If you have a clearly defined mission, why not wave that flag while you’re filming?
Oh, the investor slide
[Slide 20] Consultants, investors and customer advisory board. Image Credits: Thinking ahead
Many startups include an advisors-and-investors slide. A customer advisory board is less common, but I’ve seen that too. In most cases, this is a slide full of people who make my eyes glaze over – people who can’t really help your organization. Forethought made me do a double take on the slide because it was an unusual exception to that rule. When I recognized Ashton Kutcher from his photo, he first caught my attention. That prompted me to take a closer look. This slide is unusual and probably the first of its kind that deserves to be part of the deck.
Having Waymo’s CEO and Stanford AI lab professor as a mentor is dynamic. The Customer Advisory Board includes decision-making customers for Pinterest, Instacart and Carta (busy). What about the investors? Well… it’s not always clear how much time each investor actually puts in, and that’s a question I’ve been asking before, but it’s certainly a conversation starter: how the company stopped short of adding a few household names. To the cap table, and do they add value beyond money and famous faces?
Contextual numbers are sex.
[Slide 17] Customer testimonials. Image Credits: Thinking ahead (Opens in a new window)
I included slide 17 as a “thing to like” for two reasons. Similar to investors, it’s rare to see a customer testimonial slide that does any serious lifting. More often than not, it appears to be smoother than actual traction. However, in this case, the company managed to do something really smart; Foresight is bringing some impressive customer statistics to the fore – and backing it up with real feedback from its customers.
I’ve done a lot of customer support in my past startups, and if anyone had put those statistics in front of me, I’d have bought them on the spot: 43% of customer interactions don’t result in support. ticket? Rotation accuracy 85%? Handle tickets 21% faster and get 32% more productivity from every customer support staff? That’s unusual by any measure – but tying it in with customer testimonials makes the story more alive. Very well done. Also the slide is well designed, easy to read and the logos show that these are a solid set of customers.
In the rest of this teardown, we’ll look at three things with the entire deck that could have been improved or done differently in the past.
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