Simba Chain $25M Series A deck – TechCrunch

Grab a cup Coffee and a hangover, because this peach deck rip is very different from most I’ve done to date.

why? Let me count the ways. (Okay, well, there are only two ways.) But let’s dig deeper:

1. This is the voice of blockchain. The deck is stacked for Simba Chain, a blockchain company that has raised $25 million in Series A. They’re decking out their heroics. Hey you Follow me on Twitter.You may have noticed that one of my three or four tweets made fun of blockchain technology.

It’s not that I hate it. People Building blockchains, but in the ten years I’ve followed the industry, I’ve only come across a handful of companies that make sense to me (Archive is one, and I’ve also scrapped the deck). I often conclude that it is a shame that people cry. This Talented people throw their time and talent into building something in this space.

I know those are harsh words, and I hasten to add that that’s my personal opinion, not TechCrunch’s as a whole. (Also, you don’t want to I Writing about this while covering an incredible crypto/blockchain/web3 team.) I wanted to mention it, because as much as I try to be neutral, my disdain for blockchain technology definitely shows in this teardown. .

2. TechCrunch didn’t cover the round! I know, I know, that’s pretty much one of the rules here for pitch deck tears. That said, The Wall Street Journal reported the round, according to CoinDesk.

Suffice it to say that I’m stretching my knowledge here, but I invite you to consider two things.

1. i won’t they have To have a deep understanding of blockchain technology to critique the voice. In fact, many of the people who buy my books and work with me as pitch coaches are running companies in fields I know nothing about.
2. Storytelling is global, and as long as the founders know what they’re talking about, I can help with that side of things.

So here’s an invitation: let’s see this together as an adventure, and if you have any comments, ideas or suggestions, feel free to write them on paper and put them on Facebook… I’m happy on Twitter. I promise to keep an open mind.

All that out of the way, let’s learn some things together!

We’re looking for more unique pitches to break down, so if you’d like to submit your own, here’s how to do that.

Slides on this floor

The Simba Chain Slide floor is incredibly impressive and covers a lot of ground. It consists of 19 slides, some of which will sneak up on you in shock, and others that will leave you scratching your head.

1. Cover slide
2. Problem slide
3. The solution slider
4. Market Slide (TAM/SAM)
5. Market Slide (SOM)
6. Vision slide
7. Drag slide
8. Awards
9. Group slide
10. Slide of the board of directors
11. Balancing Simba’s slider
12. Slide layout
13. Competition slide
14. Death slide
15. Competitive product comparison slide
16. “Call the smart contract method” slide
17. Slide of supported blockchains
18. Current investors are slipping
19. Thank you slide/link

Three things to love

There are two ways to make money in the gold rush: one is to mine a giant block of the heavy yellow metal. Another is to supply miners with pickaxes, shovels and TNT.

I love how clear Simba makes it clear that Chain is doing the latter – and not just to anyone. The company is working with a long list of clients, including some of the most difficult to secure contracts (such as the US Navy). In sound and storytelling, Simba Chain relies on his customers’ genealogy to bring the story to life.

Crystal-clear vision

Many companies find it incredibly difficult to identify their ratio. When you’re a beginner pursuing a blue ocean strategy, a thousand opportunities come your way in every round. It’s the way to build a fast-growing, successful company with clear, strategic vision, then actionable strategies and iterative work.

This visual slide has plenty of clarity: “‘Blockchain Rush’ Picks and Shovels” is ChefsKiss.gif, and “What Stripe to Pays, Simba will be to blockchain” is even more difficult. I wish this was the second slide because even for a chain skeptic like me, I shook my head and muttered, “I see what you did there.”

There are a couple of head-scratchers here, so I’ll name them quickly: Drag on the vision slide or I don’t know what investors are doing – it obscures the message and obscures the story. If the last two shots on this slide are moved, this is the perfect composition-to-tone slide for this pitch.

As it is, it’s only too good, so we’ll let the founders off the hook here.

Holy team, Batman!

[Slide 10] First impression: Goodness, that’s a lot of white people. Second Look: Goodness, that’s a hell of a team. Image Credits: Simba chain

In a world where diversity matters, this slide got an eye-roll from me. But then I started reading the descriptions.

I’ve never seen anything on a slide deck that says “Brian has pitched in 380 starts and 17 exits” before. After serving as the company’s board chairman since the end of its 2019 seed round, it appears to have attracted it as part of its Series A round. As “380 startups and 17 exits” claim, any investor will want Rich’s LinkedIn page.

It seems a little disconnected there, and I’m guessing the founding team had a fun time in due diligence. Still, the company has successfully raised the money, so they have gone through due diligence, and if the company can back up its claims, it certainly speaks of a lot of experience.

The rest of the team is stacked with veterans. The CTO was in IT academia for a decade before founding the company, and the COO spent 25 years at Microsoft before joining Simba Chain (although he seems to have moved to Google recently).

Co-founder and former CEO Joel Niedig also has an impressive resume, although “Blockchain Address to the President’s Economic Council” is a bit of a blur and I don’t know what that means. In any case, he apparently left Symbla Chain with COO Joe Matz in July.

This slide is pretty wild. I haven’t talked to the company, I’m trying to make these pitch deck tears as best I can, but it seems like there’s more to the story than you might think at first glance.

The company If I come across this deck in the 2021 raise round, I’ll say, “There’s a lot of veteran talent here.” In the year Looking through the eyes of August 2022, the picture is interesting: the CEO was not there when the fundraising took place (as part of this round he was promoted from chairman of the board to CEO) and two of the remaining seven people on board moved.

I read that the company brought in veteran leadership, which caused a shake-up. That’s not necessarily a bad thing—companies grow their founding team and early employees very quickly—but it certainly makes me do more due diligence than usual to make sure there’s not a culture problem here.

In any case, the company currently lists 91 employees on LinkedIn, so it seems that it has been in hell since the early days.

Competition slide beast

[Slide 14] Check check check this. Image Credits: Simba chain

Blockchains and web3 are both rapidly growing areas in terms of market adoption and technology. It helps that Simba Chain was originally awarded a DARPA contract and has the credibility of being associated with established and well-respected academic organizations. This means it has a head start on tailoring itself to governments and enterprise customers.

Of course, the company didn’t add anything to its own competition slide, which doesn’t show it’s coming out on top. Even so, this is a wonderful way to start a conversation. A series of discussions will revolve around why these points are so important to government customers and how they translate into overall competitive advantages.

Of course, investors want to make sure that Simba is truly ahead of everyone else and that there is no competition for code alternatives. That said, this slide does one particularly nice thing – you can shape the look of the competition and steer the first pass of the competition conversation in your direction. Very smart and undoubtedly beautiful.

In the rest of this teardown, we’ll look at three things the Simba Chain could improve or do with the full pitch deck.