Tzakhi M (00:02.809)
Okay, hi Sam.
Sam Eisenberg (00:04.406)
Hi, Tzachi.
Tzakhi M (00:06.952)
I'll just introduce you and just in a word, first of all, this is the first episode of the Meet.Capitol podcast. And what I was thinking about doing this podcast, you're the first person I was thinking of, because when I set up Meet.Capitol, you're the person whose advice I took. And you're not the only one, but I think it was probably the most meaningful conversation and really put my head together. So I know you have a ton of information.
I'll let you introduce yourself. I'll just say a few things just about you, like, besides what you're going to tell us about your expertise regarding pitch decks for startups and, and your work at Design for Decks. You do a lot of amazing stuff. You're a marathon runner. You're, you've donated a kidney, which is a whole story, which we should probably talk about at some other time. And you've lived in Israel and the U.S. I know now you're in Europe. So
I'll let you introduce yourself just briefly.
Sam Eisenberg (01:07.542)
Thank you. Thank you so much. First of all, yes, I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to learn from the podcast myself. I always enjoy our conversations, so I'm happy to be on the first one and I'm looking forward to the future episodes as well. So yeah, my name is Sam Eisenberg. Like you already said, I work on a couple of different ventures, mostly in the marketing and operations space, but the one which is nearest and dearest to my heart is Design for Dex. I co-founded Design for Dex along with two partners. We all have kind of different...
focuses and at this point much of the day to day operations, much of the interaction with the clients and investors is through myself. So we started Design for Decks around two and a half years ago and our approach was very simple. All we are trying to do is help founders best display and best pitch their companies to investors. We want to give them the opportunity to put their best foot forward and to increase their chances and likelihood of raising capital.
Over the past two and a half years, we've been blessed to work with very excellent clients and we've played a small role in that process, but to date the results have been much better than we could have anticipated. And along the way, we've made a lot of concerted efforts to try to really understand the process, to learn from the clients as they go through the raise, to get feedback from investors, running surveys, learning from and having conversation with the proven industry experts and
you know, distilling that information and bringing it to our audience. So that's what I'd love to do here today. Thank you, Tachi.
Tzakhi M (02:40.34)
Okay, great. Let's just get right into the stuff. So most of our audience are startup founders and other people in the startup world.
Tzakhi M (02:53.692)
How should I say this? It's a kind of painful spot in the founder's journey, is what I notice. There's a lot of advice and a lot of people, you can find a lot of content about how to do it right, but in reality, a lot of pitch decks, I'd say most pitch decks don't look good when you see them, don't get the message across in the right way. And on the other hand, I think founders know that. So like the kind of...
When I work with founders very often they ask me for my feedback on their pitch deck because founders kind of are concerned about their pitch decks and always feel that something is not right with them and Often it's true. So I really want to get you know, I have a few questions And But maybe the first one is we're saying pitch deck
In my mind, there are at least a few pitch decks that each startup should have. And maybe you can tell me what you think about that.
Sam Eisenberg (03:59.198)
Yeah, absolutely. So the first thing that we want to think about when building a deck is, what are we building? What is this deck being used for? And there's no strict definition of when we say pitch deck, slide deck, fundraising deck, capital raising deck. Ultimately, they're all interchangeable and whatever terminology you use for it, what's really critical is understanding what is the purpose of this deck. Most of the time,
when we're referring to, at least in my circles, when we're doing capital raising, raising money from venture capitalists, we're going to be using two types of decks. One type of deck is going to be what some people refer to as the teaser deck or the send-along deck, and that's going to be the deck that we initially use to get investor interest and to try to bring us to the next step, which will be a meeting with the investor or follow-up questions or something similar to that. The second type of deck is going to be the live presentation deck. That's also a deck you'll maybe use at pitch competitions.
But also once you already have a meeting with an investor, whether that's through a warm intro or because you already got their attention, you're going to now be presenting them your deck live. The two decks, they have a lot of the similar ingredients. They're going to have to answer a lot of the same questions, but the way you present that information is going to be different. The density of the deck is going to be very different. What you include, really every single piece of that deck, absent the core ingredients is going to be different.
Okay, so the first thing I'm thinking about is why am I building this deck and who is it being geared for? Okay.
Tzakhi M (05:29.132)
Okay, wait a minute. So, the Teaser Deck is not just the full deck minus five slides. It's an entity within itself.
Sam Eisenberg (05:39.102)
Yeah, so any information that I'm sharing, a lot of it's going to be general, but there is a certain level of tailoring it to your specific use case. So assuming you're now going and you're using this deck, whether it's to apply to top tier accelerators or whether it's to try to get early, try to get interest from investors so that they'll invite you to a follow-up meeting, you're going to have a set of course lines that all of them expect. We've gathered information, but you don't need to look so far.
If you're sending to a specific investor, you'll go on Google and you'll type in, Founders Institute recommended pitch deck, Y Combinator recommended pitch deck, Sequoia recommended pitch deck. Almost any big investor will have the way that they want to receive the information and you absolutely should follow their format. So that means you should give them the information that's important to them to receive. And obviously, if they have a guide that goes more detailed, focus on that as well. Beyond that, there's going to be
the specific elements of your deck that make it unique. So it has to be telling your story. It's not about sharing the dry facts. It's also about making sure that I'm highlighting what makes us stand out, what makes us unique. To go a little bit further in that initial deck, what I want to be answering is going to be three big questions. And there's different ways of doing this and different ways of highlighting it. The first question, and in my opinion, the most critical, is why is this a problem worth solving?
At the end of the day, especially in the current fundraising environment where we're seeing a little bit less capital, especially at the early stage, what we're looking at is we don't want this to be a very innovative, unique solution. We see a lot of this in the AI space. We see a lot of this in the Web3 space and all that. What we really want to be focusing on is showing that there is a problem. There is a problem that is costing us some sort of currency.
dollars, hours, manpower, resources, time, something that an investor could understand. And once I can drive home that this is a significant problem and it's worth spending money on, then I can start telling the rest of my story. So the first thing is I wanna highlight why is this a problem worth solving? The second piece is going to be why are we the right team or company or solution to solve this problem? Where you're usually going to be putting the emphasis as much as possible is going to be on the team, showing that they have.
Sam Eisenberg (08:01.634)
position relevant experience, industry relevant experience, stage relevant experience, wins, prior exits, or anything that could work in your favor, you always wanna make sure to highlight those. And then beyond that, when the team isn't necessarily as seasoned as you'd like it to be, then you're going to also obviously show how the differentiation from your solution to the others, the USPs, the unique selling propositions, show that it's a hot space and whatever else you need to do.
And then the third one is going to be the why now. Why is now the right time for your solution to be brought to the world? Why is now the right time for investors to invest in your solution and so on and so forth? So when I look at a deck as I take those three questions and I'm going to package them depending on the slides that this specific investor wants to receive, where my company stands out the most and I can highlight my advantages, and the relationship that I have with this investor. If it's totally cold, then I'll probably need to share a little more details.
If it's someone who's already had a warm referral, then maybe I can give over some of the high-level details more quickly and dive deeper into the USPs and differentiations, but there is always going to be a context-specific element to your deck. Okay?
Tzakhi M (09:15.392)
So wait, just so we get it. We're still talking about the teaser deck, right? So you need to.
Sam Eisenberg (09:19.678)
I'm really talking about any deck, but what's sometimes done is that people say, hey, there's this number, I need to send 8 or 10 or 12 slides in the teaser deck. And it's definitely good to keep your teaser deck small, and not even good, it's probably essential. But it's not just a matter of, like you said, people often will say, hey, I have my full deck that has everything about my company that has 25 slides, I'm doing a pre-seed or seed raise, and now I'm just going to reduce the 5 or 10 that are the least exciting.
The narrative always has to be clear. The slides that are included always have to be the ones that they expect, and I always want to be highlighting my strengths and to an extent preempting the weaknesses where possible as well.
Tzakhi M (10:02.172)
Okay. All right. There are a few questions that I have here, but you mentioned tailoring the deck.
as per the need of the investor. So in an ideal world, each investor that you're sending your deck to or presenting your deck to would have a tailored deck made for them.
Sam Eisenberg (10:23.862)
Yeah, it doesn't need a tremendous degree of tailoring. Meaning what's first and foremost is having a strong story, a strong investment case, having all your slides that are formulated well.
But when you are reaching out to investors and you're looking at previous companies they invested in, or if you look at their previous experience, it could be they'll have either a greater knowledge of something and you won't need to spend as much time explaining it. Or alternatively, they'll be more interested in understanding something, right? If you're reaching out to a tech-focused investor, you may want to get a little bit deeper into the technology than when you are.
reaching out to a VC who has very little understanding of technology and will just get lost in it. It's more about understanding who it is you're sending it to and that really is a step before the pitch deck. Pitch deck is just one part of the fundraising process, but that's the relevance of your investors making sure they're a good fit. Then once you start building those categories, trying to tailor to the extent possible without building a new deck for all 200 investors you're going to blast it to.
Tzakhi M (11:27.652)
Okay, now you mentioned three things that are that should be in the deck or three questions that should be answered. What is the problem? Why are you qualified to solve that problem? And why now?
Sam Eisenberg (11:45.778)
Yeah, there's always going to be competition. So it's not even where you qualify. It's why are we the best option to solve this problem.
Tzakhi M (11:56.967)
Yeah, I kind of think of it when I guide founders, I kind of think of it, it's ultimately would come to the same results maybe or the same output, but the way I frame it is, you know, why would
the investor that you're reaching out to or you're showing this want to move to the next step with you. So the next step is not writing you a check usually, not right from the pitch deck, but if it's the teaser deck, then the next step is getting in a meeting with you. And if it's the full deck and it's in a meeting, then it's having a second meeting or a deeper meeting with a bigger team, et cetera. So the way I would say it is why would the investor want to move on with you? And you have to be able to answer.
answer that. So that's also their concerns and also whatever you have to give validation and if possible external validation, meaning unquestioned validation to why they should move on with you. So one thing that I always tell that should be on even a teaser deck is how much money you've raised and who else is in and maybe something about your traction. So things that give
give an investor confidence that there's a good chance of success here.
Sam Eisenberg (13:15.998)
Absolutely, yeah, I fully agree. So it's the same, that all comes back to, you know, what's the why? What am I trying to do with the stack? In most cases, I'm trying to get to a meeting. So like you said, it's why should they want to meet with you? Why should they want to go to the next step? And to me, if most of the time, if I can answer those three good questions, plus highlight any advantages, like you said, right, if I have traction, that's a huge piece. If I had prior investment, especially from, you know, reputable or respected investors, that's a huge piece. If I have intellectual property,
That's an important piece. So it's kind of giving them, making sure that they really understand what you do. And that's part of that even before the, why is this a problem worth solving? That's the one sentence summary, the introduction, making very clear what it is you do, who you solve a problem for, and what problem you solve, your what mechanism. And then once I get into that, it's making sure they understand what the problem is and why it's a huge problem, making sure they understand why we're.
best suited to solve it, making sure they understand the relevance and the urgency or whatever it is for why we should bring it out now, market conditions, unique advantage, whatever it's going to be. Then everything else around that is telling that story while highlighting your big advantages. So yeah, I agree. I think that is the approach. The approach is why should they invite me for a meeting?
Tzakhi M (14:32.831)
Okay, you mentioned something which I really want to know what you think about. What is the first slide? Because typically what people put under first slide is the name of the
Sam Eisenberg (14:50.402)
Okay.
Tzakhi M (14:51.895)
What do you recommend for the first slide?
Sam Eisenberg (14:53.802)
Yeah, so people put on the first thing, like you said, they'll often put name of the company and a logo. Sometimes they'll put a meaningless graphic. You know, they'll just take some stock imagery or maybe AI generated imagery, but doesn't actually show anything. Sometimes they'll include a ton of information like their name and their website and their contact information and the QR code. Sometimes they'll include a tagline, which is great for maybe marketing materials, but.
with a pitch deck, you're going for simple and clear over sophisticated. So we have a few formulas we recommend. My partner, Jax, recommends as follows. He says, company X helps audience Y solve whatever problem via whatever it is. So in our case, it would be, let's say, design for decks, help startup founders raise capital from investors via, you know...
workshops or whatever that mechanism is, depending on what we're offering them. So we're always going to be using that. Airbnb connects as a marketplace, right? We're telling the mechanism that connects hosts who want to rent out their home temporarily with guests who are looking for travel accommodations or something like that, right? You need to iterate on it. You need to play with it. But what needs to be clear is what's your company? What do you solve? Who's your target audience? And what's the mechanism by which you're doing it?
We have two other variations of that sentence we play with when the first one doesn't work well for our company. And I've seen a lot of good ones from salespeople, from copywriters. We don't hold the only way, but what's most important is clear, concise, and simple. That's where I want to go from my first slide.
Tzakhi M (16:25.752)
And if I get it right, the most important thing is that right from the first slide, you don't waste it. I'm just showing something meaningless, but you're already pulling the investor into your story and your world by telling, by presenting yourself in the way that you described.
Sam Eisenberg (16:41.946)
Well, you're doing them a favor and you're doing you a favor. You're doing them a favor because if they look at the deck and they see like, you know, for some reason you sent an investor who wasn't relevant, they see right away like, oh, I don't invest in marketplaces. Or they see right away like, oh, I don't invest in things that target enterprises or whatever it is or geography, something that was told. That's first of all. Second of all, from your own side, we want to make it clear for them. So now they have a framework. This is who you are. This is what you do. When they go through the rest of the deck, you're filling in the details for them. So it definitely, yeah.
Definitely from the first slide, I've seen people separate it into two slides, I don't see a good reason for that. On the first slide, you're giving them that one sentence breakdown of what it is you do, who you serve, and what's the mechanism that's guiding that thing, whether it's you have proprietary technology, a unique algorithm, an AI, whatever that is, just tell them up front. You don't need to get deep into the details, but at least they understand who they're dealing with.
Tzakhi M (17:37.32)
Okay, which brings me to the next question, which is what do you do with the last slide? Because I see that as a huge pain point for most slides.
Sam Eisenberg (17:47.918)
So you're referring to the thank you slide or the sign off slide? Yeah, I, the truth is that that's actually a slide. I get very little focus. Um, first of all, I'll say that if an investor got to that last slide, you're usually, you know, you did something right. Um, and second of all, all it is, is all that slide in my opinion should be doing is, is get, make it easier for them to contact you. So I don't like when that last slide has tons of stuff on it. I like when it's pretty clean and simple, but I don't feel strongly about that either. So to me, I can use some sort of. You know,
Tzakhi M (17:51.031)
Yeah.
Sam Eisenberg (18:19.286)
Join us in our mission of XYZ where it's trying to help get them to buy deeper into your story. And then simply a name and contact information. I always like when there's a name. Sometimes we will stick a phone number and email, put a name, make it feel personal. To me that's valuable. But I actually, that's not a slide I give a lot of emphasis to, to be fully honest.
Tzakhi M (18:40.55)
Okay, I'll tell you what I do with the last slides. What I recommend for last slides is to have a call to action rather than just a list of contact information. I say put a button.
which links to your Calendly and say, let's talk. And maybe with a sentence that summarizes like your strengths and then let's talk and click, the investor can schedule right there.
Sam Eisenberg (19:00.107)
So, I'll leave it.
Sam Eisenberg (19:11.022)
Yeah, I think reducing friction at any point is a good idea. I think that is a good idea. If someone could click and go to a calendar, I don't know that if it isn't there and they're interested in your company, they wouldn't reach out to you. I'm not sure if, I think it's a good thing to do, but I'm not sure if there's any loss in not doing it. And I do like I said, a call to action source join us in doing X to learn more, to get our full deck reach out to Y, whatever it is. But yeah, a call to action is always a nice thing to have at the end of your deck.
Tzakhi M (19:23.728)
Obviously, yeah. That's not, yeah.
Tzakhi M (19:40.152)
Okay. This is a bit of a challenge, I think. You know, not always, but in a lot of realms in life, there's like the one thing, the one problem that solves and takes away a lot of the pain. So is there something that, I mean, you see, I think you see hundreds or thousands of decks a year, right? So is there like, if you needed to give one advice?
And that would probably be useful for 90% or 80% of people and improve their, is there something like that would improve their decks by, I don't know.
Sam Eisenberg (20:21.566)
Yeah, I think we actually, I think we've pretty much covered all that right here up front, which is a few of them, which is make sure they understand what you do, make sure the problem has to be extremely painful, extremely specific, and in a currency they can understand. So to me, that's always a big one. When I say they really need to understand the problem, to get a little bit more specific, what is this costing in terms of dollars? The more specific, the better.
Tzakhi M (20:22.723)
X amount.
Sam Eisenberg (20:47.006)
How many people is this affecting? 82% of CISOs experience this issue, use data. We're showing it's impacting a lot of people. We're showing it's costing them money. We're showing it's costing them time. Once they see that this is really something that is costing in a currency, I don't like when people use words like, this is extremely difficult, this is cumbersome, this is challenging, this has too many steps. Let's make it clear that this is an issue that people are feeling in their pockets. They're feeling in the number of staff they have to employ or whatever else.
Tzakhi M (20:47.81)
Okay.
Sam Eisenberg (21:16.098)
To me, that's a huge one. I see very impressive companies who are really bad at formulating the problem slide. That's definitely, that's definitely, I'd say a big one.
Tzakhi M (21:25.989)
Okay. And is that something that you think is missing because a lot of early stage companies don't know how to frame that correctly or simply they just don't know that they need to focus on that for their deck?
Sam Eisenberg (21:41.458)
Yeah, I've actually spent a lot of time thinking about it. Why does that so many companies get it wrong? So I think first of all, we all suffer somewhat from the curse of knowledge or the fact that most people who are founding a company, they're founding a company around something they're already quite passionate about or have a deeper understanding.
So to me it's like, yeah, obviously this is an issue. It's really painful. It's really challenging, but your investor may not feel that pain. They may not see that challenge. They may not even be in your industry, right? Plenty of investors invest outside of something they have a deep knowledge of. So that's the first reason. The second reason is that people are sometimes have a concern about sharing data that, I don't know sharing data, data points that don't always touch.
a thousand percent on their pin point. And that's okay. It doesn't need to be one data point. It can be two or three or four. And that's also okay to say, this impacts 82% of people. A survey that was done shows that the average SMB spends $4,927 a year in marketing. It doesn't always need to cover your entire audience or exactly. All you're trying to show is, this is impacting people. It is costing them money. They are looking for other solutions. They are in need of a solution.
It's not about finding that one magic statistic that's going to say exactly what you needed to say and say that everything all at once. It's just about driving the point home that there is a need and there are people who are feeling this need.
Tzakhi M (23:08.903)
Okay. Sam, there's a lot of websites now that offer to magically create a pitch deck with AI or like you just... What do you think of those AI-driven pitch decks? Is that like something to start with and then fix? Or is that just...
Not good? Or is it great? What do you think?
Sam Eisenberg (23:31.254)
I love AI. I use AI in a lot of my processes. It saves me a lot of time. I'm a big fan. I'm obviously subscribed to ChatGPT Plus and to quite a few other tools as well. For pitch decks, I'm in two different minds. My first one is that there's a huge obstacle to getting your first draft on the table. It's like you go through 150 iterations of your pitch deck.
but getting that first one out is so hard. So if you can create a system, not create a system, if you can use a system where they're helping you get that first draft and it's actually touching on your strengths, then I'm okay with that. Don't take that as, you know, this is gonna be anywhere near my final version, but at least I have something on paper that I can now iterate on significantly, get feedback on and work with. There's a lot of ways to do that. There are some tools, I don't wanna start naming tools because I've tried a lot of tools. At this point, at least two dozen tools that help with.
either design or content or both. And at least as of last month when I tested this, and I'm testing these now for six, seven months at least, not a single one of them has been anywhere near the level of what I would want it to be. But the ones that are somewhat better are the ones that are prompting you on specific questions. So what they're doing is they're basically interviewing you and helping ask you the questions that they need so they have something to work with. The ones where you stick in two sentences or one paragraph summary of a company and they churn out a deck, those are pretty awful.
Okay, on the design side, I recommend design assisted tools for my clients, and I'll use them for some decks, not for pitch decks, but that's just because I have a design firm. But I'll use, let's say, a beautiful.ai, which helps see information in different layouts. Canva has design tools which make designing using AI a lot easier. But when something goes and takes my deck, and once again, there's a very, you know, more than one very big player that raised tens of millions of dollars that's out there,
taking your information and sticking it across the slide with some meaningless AI-generated graphics that does nothing for your case and nothing for your cause. So I would say the first thing is, if you're using it for your V1, just understand that's your V1, it needs a lot of iteration. Two is as much as possible, go for either prompts or go for an interview. And you could pretty much, you can do that even with GPT. Hey, I'm building my first pitch deck. These are our biggest strengths. These are our biggest weaknesses. These are the slides we need to include. Ask me questions you need in order to get the best output, right?
Sam Eisenberg (25:52.61)
play with the prompts a little bit, but ultimately what you wanna be doing is, hey, this is my V1, and then iterate, and iterate, and iterate, and once I'm at a point where my story's good, it's clear, it's answering the questions, I'm getting feedback, right? You always have to test this with audiences. Only at that point would I start thinking about the design. So I'll say on the content side, it's very helpful. It could be very helpful. On the design side, it's helpful as an aid at best.
Tzakhi M (26:18.381)
Okay. Yeah, I think it's very clear.
Sam Eisenberg (26:18.578)
Okay, was that clear? I know I threw it. I'm trying to summarize dozens of hours of testing AI tools with my conclusion about how they work for pitch decks. I do believe that they'll keep improving and at some point they'll be even better, but in their current state, I don't see an AI-generated tool as producing anything near the output that you need in order to pitch investors or partners or even future employees.
Tzakhi M (26:25.208)
Yeah.
Tzakhi M (26:46.204)
Well, yeah, you know, a pitch deck really touches on the core of what you're doing. And, you know, you really, there are things that you really can't delegate. Like, you know, this is your mission and your mission statement. If you don't know how to formulate it or don't, you know, aren't clear on what exactly is that you can do or want to do. There isn't any tool that's going to solve that problem. There may be our advisors that can help you there, but it's not going to be a tool.
that it solves that problem.
Sam Eisenberg (27:16.946)
Where it could be a little more useful is also as a critical aid. Where like I say, hey, this is what I wrote on this slide. What weaknesses do you see? And that's how I use it also when I build SOPs. That's how I use it when I build guides for employees of mine. I say, hey, this is what I wrote. Is this clear? And that can help me a little bit with the curse of knowledge or identify flaws. But then output has to be your story, your company. And like you said, it's really the core of what you're doing.
Tzakhi M (27:43.688)
Yeah, I assume just coming back to the beginning of our conversation, it could be an interesting tool that takes a pitch deck with a number of slides and then shuffles it, adjusts it as per different investors. So like you have automatically creates a YC version, a A16Z version, et cetera.
Sam Eisenberg (28:07.146)
Yeah, it's that it's I mean, if you're using that, that also comes back to the beginning of your pitch deck with a tool that you use to build your deck can be very helpful in saving you a lot of time as you need to iterate it and as you build an it. So you're going to want to be using a tool that's collaborative that you can include your teammates on. You're going on. We are going to want to use a tool that makes it easier for you to collect feedback. You're going to want to use a tool that makes it easier for you to reorganize slides because I can reorganize. I can I can hide a slide. There's a lot of different things you could do in a lot of the tools.
the better the tool you start with, the easier it will be to iterate and save time as you go. Personally, we use Figma for everything in-house, but Figma, if you don't have a designer, I wouldn't usually recommend it. What I personally enjoy the most is pitch.com, but there are plenty of other good ones as well. Beautiful.ai is quite good. Miro, Miro has a presentation tool that's also quite good. Frankly, most tools outside of like PowerPoint,
I'd recommend. Even PowerPoint is fine if that's what you're most comfortable with, but I find that it takes a lot longer to get a high quality output and it's missing some of the features that I would want.
Tzakhi M (29:18.353)
Okay. One last question. If you can say something about the relation between structuring and formulating your pitch deck and the design part of it. Because those are not the same thing. And how do they work together? What is the relation between them? And what is the order in which you need to approach these things?
Sam Eisenberg (29:42.542)
Absolutely. Yeah. So our approach is content first, narrative first, story first. Once I know what my story is and what I want to highlight, only then will I bring it to a designer. And it's the same when we work with our clients. When we have clients who come to us for design, the first thing we do is review the content with them. The second thing we do is confirm that they're comfortable with the existing narrative. And only once we're at, let's call it the 95% mark, will we start talking about design. Design, there's a few different functions of design.
At the early stage, I would say the biggest thing you want to make sure that you're doing is making sure that design is not an obstacle to understanding your story. And I see this all the time, people put in these sophisticated graphs and flow charts and whatever it is. We always want, if we're using a design element, it's because it makes it easier to understand that information. Going a step further, I want to create that element in a way that it can be most easily absorbed.
and understood quickly. So if I'm using a bar chart to show growth, I can also, instead of just having right where I have on the left-hand side, right on the y-axis where I have all the numbers, on the year I'm trying to highlight, I can put a bubble on top that says 82% or 4927, whatever that number is, where it's very easily for them to, instead of trying to look and estimate, they can immediately see what that number is. I want to use a very clear key.
a number, I want to make it clear that this is revenue, and this one is profit. Whatever it is, use labels, make it really easy to understand your graphics, and only use graphics when they add. Stock imagery usually doesn't add anything. UI shots, if you're going to use UI shot, great, use call-outs. Highlight the points that you want me to see. I don't need to see your entire application, I want to see what is unique about your application, and what do you specifically want me to see. Use a call-out, use a pop-out, use whatever you need to do to make that
easier to digest. Okay? Once you've gotten all the basics right, your design is complement, you know, it's helping you tell the story, your graphs are clear, your charts are clear, at that point you can focus on the next level, which is, you know, making sure it's on brand, making sure it's pixel perfect. I don't know that that's essential, but it's one of the things we pride ourselves in doing with our clients is that our decks follow very specific patterns and nothing's out of place. Consistency. Consistency is really critical using the same fonts over and over.
Sam Eisenberg (32:05.278)
using the same colors, using the same placement. You know, when you're looking at a deck and you see like the headline adjusts a few pixels up, a few pixels down, to the right, to the left, it strikes you, even if you're not a designer or a person, it doesn't have a professional feel to it. Things like that. So make sure it's not an obstacle, make sure it's clear, make sure it's consistent, and then you can focus on all the, what I call the bells and whistles.
Tzakhi M (32:29.953)
Yeah, I think it's super important because the difference between a well-designed deck which presents you as a professional that does everything the way it should be done and that makes sure that everything is clean and neat and in place and orderly.
big difference in terms of effort. It's just getting the help of a professional. And the difference that it makes in the impression on an investor is huge. Even if the investor isn't aware of it, just we all, we're all impressed by seeing something clean and neat and well-designed, even if we don't think of it as we see it. So.
Sam Eisenberg (33:08.434)
It's subtle we can feel it we can feel when you look at something that feels professional And most of us don't have a design I per se and that's okay in that case, you know if companies cash strapped if a company is you know trying to Invest where we're in their product and they don't have money to spend on design. That's okay. Start with a good design tool Okay, and just make sure to be consistent use something that works at least it shouldn't be if it can't help you
If it can't be a big help to telling your story, at least make sure it's not an obstacle.
Tzakhi M (33:40.936)
Yeah, I don't think I could say I have a design eye, not at all. But just recently, one of founders we worked with, I looked at their deck and I said, I think you should get a designer, I actually told him to go to you, and take a look at it, and just put it in order. And they'd ask me, why? What's wrong? You don't like the color? I didn't know what to say. It's just, I don't know. It doesn't feel like it's neat.
Sam Eisenberg (34:04.018)
You could feel it. You could feel it. You could feel it. You'll...
Tzakhi M (34:08.512)
and in order and consistent, and it needs a professional touch. Yeah.
Sam Eisenberg (34:10.862)
So misaligned, inconsistent, rapid changes in layouts from slide to slide, mixing between all caps to all lowercase or all caps to only the first letter capitalized, using three or four different fonts in your deck. There's so much that goes on, and this is not the exception, this is the rule. Most decks I see, even coming from very impressive founders, oftentimes have big...
you know, issues with that. And that's ultimately why they're coming to us because some founders recognize it and some don't. Those who recognize it, it's obviously, it's advantageous for them to fix those issues.
Tzakhi M (34:52.31)
So, this was great. Thanks a lot. How do people find you if they need your help? What should they look for your help with? Obviously, Design for Dex. But how do they find you?
Sam Eisenberg (34:54.613)
Thank you. Thank you, Tati.
Sam Eisenberg (35:04.958)
Absolutely. So if anyone needs resources, we keep all sorts of checklists and guides that we build. We've done surveys, anything that a resource or specific challenge you're having, you can reach out to me, just team, T-E-A-M, at designfor, F-O-R, dex.com. And I'm more than happy to share resources, share best practices and all that. If someone wants more intensive help, we are pretty selective in who we work with on the design side, A, because we're a boutique firm,
recommend early stage founders invest a lot of money into the design of their deck. For some it is relevant, for some less so. So they can reach out there as well. I'm always happy to mention where we can be of help. And that's it. Yeah, don't be shy. I appreciate it.
Tzakhi M (35:49.266)
Well, it's easy with you guys because you have a great name designed for decks.
So designproducts.com, easy to find. What?
Sam Eisenberg (35:52.911)
Yeah, we want for clarity over simplicity. Exactly, designfix.com, LinkedIn, whatever works. We answer all the channels and we're happy to help as many founders as we can, even when we can't service them as clients.
Tzakhi M (36:07.824)
All right, Sam, this was great. Thanks so much. Thanks a lot. It's great talking to you.
Sam Eisenberg (36:09.506)
Thank you so much. Have a great, you as well, have a good rest of your day.
Tzakhi M (36:14.576)
You too.
