Just Product #9: StoryWorld.Studio - Constructing the pitch deck
I introduced the written pitch last week (why does human storytelling matter?) and mentioned that the deck's deadline was within a week, so here it is.
Most investors will not spend much time on your deck; I’d want to say 45 seconds (that was what I was gunning for), but according to DocSend, it’s between 2.5-4 minutes. When we did the insert for Corle for the a16z speedrun program (featured in Just Product #5: Ventures that should be backed), they asked for 3-minute videos, which makes sense given how long investors spend on the pitch decks. I remember reading this TechCrunch article back in the day, which supported the story and highlighted that contacting more investors doesn’t correlate with success. The Pitch is good, or it isn’t.
As to giving you the deck here, Substack doesn’t support innovative embedding (unlike Medium), but you can download the deck from Canva as a video. I just used the default length, but you could likely use the reference below to allocate time per slide accordingly.
A curious fact is the amount of time spent on financials. However, as Siqi Chen highlights (interview referenced in previous publication), how investors think is not necessarily how you should construct your pitch, as you want to raise from that one investor who is genuinely moved by your story.
As for the tools used to construct the deck, I considered pitch.com for a second, but it’s better suited for teams heavily involved in B2B sales. In contrast, Canva has a lot of functionality you’d want in consumer marketing. Pricing-wise, they are more or less the same, but Canva gives you premium access for free for a month.
You should likely include the pitch recording while you’re at it, but we didn’t get that far. We’d consist of a notion page with the pitch's write-up and the details we could update as we go. You’d also likely want some demo of the tool in action; even if we’ve tested a few different mockups ourselves, we will put something out there only after it’s been tested with the initial alpha testers.
The Product Roadmap is intentionally very high-level in the deck (more detailed in the write-up), and our discussions have revolved around what is truly the most challenging problem to solve and speculated about how AI will not automate different processes in the entertainment creation but rather wholly change how you’ll be able to create blockbusters in the future.
I heard Vinod Koshla once say (I can’t find the reference now) that if your venture consists of steps from A to Z, figure out which step is the hardest to solve and start from there.
Figure out what the most challenging problem is in your endeavor and start there
For us, in Phase 1, it’s figuring out how to map a story world to seemingly infinite detail, then generating a story out of it, and if you want to change something (like change a scene from the end to the beginning), how you’ll do that without breaking the relations in the story. In other words, how do you preserve context in long-form story creation, regardless of the modifications made? At least, that is the technical challenge.
The other challenge is design-related: how do you abstract enough functionality but not too much so the user doesn’t become overwhelmed with the amount “of nobs” you can turn? We’re thinking of a cursor for stories, but we may want to use voice-creation methods when someone starts from scratch, combined with a “card approach.” After all, there are a few existing frameworks on which one can lean for story creation.
Furthermore, if you can’t achieve the goal of becoming the best story world creation tool for master storytellers, phase two won’t matter. However, I’ve encountered many entrepreneurs who can’t see past the horizon of what to do if they achieve their most improbable goals. During my tenure at Slush as head of product, I made the same mistake and won’t do that again.
Regarding market sizing, we deemed it easiest to conceptualize this exercise using Netflix as the benchmark. Then, your primary monetizing model would be subscriptions; however, we can’t get there unless we achieve our phase 1 goal. Should we monetize a story creation tool, like Adobe, for storytellers? It would impede our way to the ultimate goal, but we could use our tools to create, publish, and monetize a story made with Story World. Make our case by creating a movie that can’t be ignored.
With all this thinking shared, we need to finish the pitch write-up and delve into some details, as well as the round setup, before officially sending it to some of the investors we have in mind. Nonetheless, some of you have already been receiving Just Thoughts for almost a year, so don't hesitate to contact us if you’re interested in joining us on our journey to redefine the standard of how the world's best stories are created!
Until next time! I don’t know when that will be, but you won’t miss it if you subscribe!
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