[Slide 11] Business model. Image Credits: Fibery

I love a good, clear business model, and Fibery’s is a pretty decent example here; it shows the high-level pricing model (multiaccount SaaS), the target market, and how it is pricing itself. It shows an expected LTV that’s pretty conservative (the $7,000 LTV using these numbers assumes an average account size of 20 or so).

Inbound marketing and customer success are both great when the customers are coming to you, and “partners network” is a little fuzzy. But it’s missing the customer acquisition cost. I’ll say a bit more about this below when I talk about things that could be improved but overall it’s a solid slide.

Metrics!

[Slide 12] Show me that traction. Image Credits: Fibery

A good traction slide forgives all sins, and this is a great snapshot of where the business is right now. The fact that the logo churn (i.e., churn of number of customers) is higher than the revenue churn indicates that the company is able to retain its higher-value customers. That’s good. The rest of the stats look good, too, for a company at this stage. Clear, simple, concise.

Still, I wish Fibery had shown some of these metrics as graphs. Having $350,000 annual recurring revenue is impressive, but if it had been stagnant for the past six months, that’d ring some warning bells. Investors don’t invest in snapshots, but in trends, so you may as well show them.

The other quirk is that the numbers are inconsistent. On slide 11, it says that the expected average account size is 20-30, but on this snapshot slide, it shows that Fibery currently has 15 paid users per account. Not saying anything about how it expects to grow that number makes me suspicious.

Bonus win: Great ask slide

[Slide 15] Yessssss. Image Credits: Fibery

The slide is labeled “plans,” but this is what I usually refer to as the “ask” slide.

Fibery is a really interesting startup that’s aiming to be the single source of truth and work for product companies. The Cyprus-based company raised a $5.2 million series A recently, and I wanted to take a closer look at what makes the startup tick.

We’re always looking for more unique pitch decks to tear down, so if you want to submit your own, here’s how you can do that. 

Slides in this deck

Fibery raised its round with a 15-slide deck and shared the whole thing with TechCrunch+ unedited. That’ll give us a good idea of how the company landed its $5.2 million investment.

These are the slides:

1. Cover slide
2. Problem slide
3. Solution slide
4. Market-size slide
5. Competitor slide
6. Competitive analysis slide
7. Product slide
8. “Building blocks” slide
9. Feedback/customer validation slide
10.  Go-to market strategy slide
11.  Business model slide
12.  Traction slide
13.  Milestones to date slide
14.  Team slide
15.  The ask slide

Four things to love

Click through the full deck and you’re treated to a lot of white space, simplicity and clarity. The company made a few unusual design choices, which really work for me, and the story hangs together well. But there are a few things that I particularly enjoyed.

A solid competitive analysis

The company has two competition slides:

[Slide 6] Competition, part 2. Image Credits: Fibery

Competition slides are often an afterthought, either because startups underestimate their competitors, or because they claim that they don’t have any. Fibery does a really good job on both fronts.

On slide 5, the company breaks down both the existing players in this space in a really elegant way, and shows that there’s a big market worth going after. It even manages to identify some of the strengths in its competitors, which is always a nice touch — especially if the solution does something slightly different or is able to offer an additional set of features or an approach to the problem that unlocks a broader or different customer base. Investors who might be interested in this space will know Jira, Trello, Asana and Zendesk; Fibery is shrewdly positioning itself opposite a few multibillion dollar companies. Smooth.

On slide 6, there’s a slightly deeper dive into the other no-code tools Fibery considers to be competitors. Again, the company is choosing to praise its competitors for their strengths (“Best Tables” for Airtable and “Best Wiki” for Notion).

This helps give a deeper understanding of what the company perceives is its positioning in the market.

Great business model clarity

[Slide 11] Business model. Image Credits: Fibery

I love a good, clear business model, and Fibery’s is a pretty decent example here; it shows the high-level pricing model (multiaccount SaaS), the target market, and how it is pricing itself. It shows an expected LTV that’s pretty conservative (the $7,000 LTV using these numbers assumes an average account size of 20 or so).

Inbound marketing and customer success are both great when the customers are coming to you, and “partners network” is a little fuzzy. But it’s missing the customer acquisition cost. I’ll say a bit more about this below when I talk about things that could be improved but overall it’s a solid slide.

Metrics!

[Slide 12] Show me that traction. Image Credits: Fibery

A good traction slide forgives all sins, and this is a great snapshot of where the business is right now. The fact that the logo churn (i.e., churn of number of customers) is higher than the revenue churn indicates that the company is able to retain its higher-value customers. That’s good. The rest of the stats look good, too, for a company at this stage. Clear, simple, concise.

Still, I wish Fibery had shown some of these metrics as graphs. Having $350,000 annual recurring revenue is impressive, but if it had been stagnant for the past six months, that’d ring some warning bells. Investors don’t invest in snapshots, but in trends, so you may as well show them.

The other quirk is that the numbers are inconsistent. On slide 11, it says that the expected average account size is 20-30, but on this snapshot slide, it shows that Fibery currently has 15 paid users per account. Not saying anything about how it expects to grow that number makes me suspicious.

Bonus win: Great ask slide

[Slide 15] Yessssss. Image Credits: Fibery

The slide is labeled “plans,” but this is what I usually refer to as the “ask” slide. Lots of founders get this wrong, so it’s a delight to see it done so well. Fibery doesn’t explain what a “strong marketing” team is, and “setup and improve channels” doesn’t mean much. Having clear MRR and ARR goals for EOY 2023 and 2024 is great, and having a clear launch target for a new version of the platform is even better.

In the rest of this teardown, I’ll take a look at three things Fibery could have improved or done differently, along with its full pitch deck!

Pitch Deck Teardown: Fibery’s $5.2M Series A deck by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/11/sample-series-a-pitch-deck-fibery/