Our special guest and experienced investor Nilima Achwal roasted 3 pitch decks of consenting startups in the presence of Roastmaster General Shaun Gold.
See below the video and transcript of the event.
Pitch Deck Roast 4 - Video
Pitch Deck Roast 4 - Transcript
Shaun Gold: We are back. Hello, hello. I'm Shaun Gold, your Roastmaster General, and I'm coming to you live from the 305 that's right, Miami Silicon Swamp. And I want to welcome you all to Halloween four, the Revenge. Oh, sorry, I mean Pitch Deck Roast Four, presented by OpenVC, proving that people want to learn, get roasted, and more importantly, laugh. Now, I see some new names. I see some familiar names in the chat. More importantly, I see people are coming from all over the world. I appreciate it, especially the people in Singapore and Dubai, for staying up so late to hear us roast some decks. I truly appreciate it. Hello, Connie. Hello, Ayub. Hello, Karill. Hello, David. So many new names, so many familiar names. Thank you for being here. We truly appreciate it. Now, the objective is to show you how a VC thinks when they open your pitch deck for the very first time. This is being live streamed on YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter. Before we start, please like and help us by sharing, tweeting, retweeting. Doing this not only helps OpenVC and the roast, but makes me more like a promoter and less like an influencer. The last thing we want is an OnlyFans account. Don't make me do it. If you want your own pitch deck to be roasted and let's face it, who doesn't? There'll be a link in the live chat to submit. So just click on that, enter your information, and you, too, could end up on a future roast. Now, here's the how. We've collected three, that is right, three pitch decks from consenting founders, and we're going to roast them live in front of you. To do that, I'd like to welcome our special VC guest roaster. She's a deal partner at Ganas Ventures, as well as the founder of the Female Founders Lab Accelerator, who has been featured in multiple publications such as USA Today, CNBC Vice, Nasdaq 500 Startups, to Harvard Business with you. And she's doing our show! The scream queen herself. Nilima Achwal.
Nilima Achwal: Hi. Hello from L.A.
Shaun Gold: Thank you for doing this. You look so smiley, so nice, but don't let that deep down, she is cold hearted and she will make you cry. She's seen enough decks to push her over the edge. This is just a facade.
Nilima Achwal: Yes, absolutely.
Shaun Gold: You're ready to do this?
Nilima Achwal: Let's do this.
Shaun Gold: All right. Well, thank you for being here. It's an absolute pleasure both for your experience, your background, and your other lack of squeamishness when it comes to these decks. Now, the three rules of the roast. First, this is all in good fun, but we're trying to be educational and provide actionable advice for founders who are watching. So being able to take a joke in life is so important, especially with decks like these. Just remember, entrepreneurship is a tragedy for those who feel, but a comedy for those who think. These are real conditions. Nilima is going to open these decks and spend two to three minutes on each while saying out loud what she thinks. No filter. We want to see her thought process as she goes through each wreck, I mean, deck. Sorry. And she has her checkbook, so in the event that I am wrong, she may take a meeting and may actually invest in any one of these startups. And I am also planning to start in the next James Bond movie as James Bond, so we'll see what happens first. Ten minutes total per deck. Feel free to comment, ask questions, et cetera. We're going to use that to discuss each deck after her review. Nothing is off the table and we want to hear from you in the chat. Now, as always, before we begin, I want to salute and commend each founder for having the guts, the bravery, and the fortitude to come up here and get roasted by us. Remember, we are not personally attacking you, your business, or your idea. We are, however, attacking your lack of design skills, your lack of knowledge when it comes to primary colors, your lack of salesmanship, your pitch and your ability to be a successful founder. Now, with that out of the way, let's start roasting. First up is a deck for a Web3 startup that looks like it came from Web0. Memory Gardens. Cool startup name or the title of a Black Mirror episode. You be the judge. Take it away.
Nilima Achwal: Okay. The memory gardens. Do you ever worry about the permanence of your digital photos?
Shaun Gold: No, not once in my life I have ever worried about the permanence of my digital photos, but thanks for asking.
Nilima Achwal: Yeah, I've literally never worried about the permanence of my digital photos, but let's see what they have to say. The problem? As time passes, we're gathering more photos and videos without an easy way to organize, share, and preserve the stories they tell. What? Okay, I think there's, like, multiple platforms I use to organize, share, and preserve my photos and videos, but let's see what else they have. Most are stored in virtual shoeboxes and maybe gone. Okay, so I'm considering, for example, Google Photos is what I use, and I'm imagining Google is a multibillion dollar company, like, how many servers they have and the possibility of all of them going down at the same time with no backup and everything disappearing out of the blue.
Shaun Gold: That's today. Today they're a multibillion dollar company, but who knows? Okay, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
Nilima Achwal: I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they know something I don't about my digital photos disappearing overnight. Also, I personally backup all my photos on my hard drive and on external drives. And so, yeah, I already back them up in various places, but let's keep going. No long term storage. Approximately 30% of Instagram owners report content removal. Okay, so I guess they're assuming that a lot of people just store all their photos, like, every single one on their Instagram account, as if they're posting every day, just all of their photos, which is not the way people use Instagram. But data can get deleted. Facebook deleted a bunch of content. Yeah, that's okay. So social media. Social media. Passive storytelling. Man and woman, men and women ages 18 to 25 and 26 to 35. So basically 18 to 35 is what they're saying. Spend more time playing video games and watching broadcast TV. Why is every single word capitalized in that sentence?
Shaun Gold: To illustrate a point? I mean, again, grammar is not really important when you're probably asking for millions of dollars.
Nilima Achwal: So 18 to 25 and 26 to 35 spent more time playing video games and watching broadcasts. What does that have to do with anything?
Shaun Gold: We'll find out. We are on this journey together.
Nilima Achwal: Passive story. So they're basically trying to make a point about how our photos are supposed to tell a story. And then they're saying that all of these adults between 18 and 35 are playing a ton of video games. I have no idea what's going on at this point, but let's see what their solution is. After living a life of adventure, you deserve to relax under the sun and close your eyes, knowing your memories are safe. This reminds me of one of those ads of resorts and you see the couple running through the sand.
Shaun Gold: The life of adventure. Who's this for, Indiana Jones? Again, I get what they're trying to do. Again, I'm not a person that worries about the permanence of my photos, okay? Maybe it's a giant thing that there's a lot of people who are. In the chat. If there's anyone that worries about the permanence of their photos, please let me know because I might be an outlier.
Nilima Achwal: Now, I understand the positioning. This is a blockchain thing. And so the main thing with blockchain is that it's, like, stored there. So that's why they had to retrofit that problem onto it, is what I'm guessing. I'm guessing that they wanted to create a blockchain photo storage thing, and then they're like, blockchain is permanent. So let's pretend that the problem is that photos aren't permanently, even though that's not really a thing that consumers probably are facing. They kind of retrofitted it there. So I get it now. It's a blockchain storage technology ensuring no data loss for 200 years so our children's children can see our college party photos. I don't know if I want all my photos stored for 200 years, but okay. Undeletable media, full ownership and custody of the data cannot be deleted. Okay, so that's opposing social media platforms. I wonder if they're doing the social media play with this, which would make it more interesting. Interactive storytelling. So there's different ways that they're doing the galleries. All right. Okay. This is very metaversy. This is like, we're not just looking at the photos. We're walking through a gallery looking at photos. I feel like this is very Gen Z. It's like we had real things, and then we had digital things, and now they're trying to make the digital things look real, which is, like, a bit too mind blowing for me. I don't know why I would want to walk through a physical gallery looking at photos.
Shaun Gold: It looks like how a video game did in 2004. This is how it reminds me of when I used to play video games in 2004.
Nilima Achwal: Okay, I get what they're trying to do, but in case you want to walk through an actual gallery with your headset looking at your photos, I don't know why I would want to do that, but let's traction 507 galleries. So I'm guessing that they have 500 galleries online, templates that they've created or different styles. 350 users, 800 Twitter followers.
Shaun Gold: But some tastemakers in those Twitter followers. Definitely some tastemakers and some change makers, otherwise they wouldn't have listed it.
Nilima Achwal: So this gallery sells, five to 250 per purchase. That really is confusing, because if you want to have different revenue streams, I want to understand it's. Like $5 for this subscription, 250 for premium. What is the customer segmentation for these different tiers of payments? Like, five to 250 is a huge range, and, like, your customers would be so different, or, like, the services would be so different based on what price you're actually paying in that range. Accessory sales. Is that like VR headsets? I don't know what sort of accessories they are. Premium features. I don't know what your premium features are. What is your differentiator what sets you apart from Google Photos or any of these other things? Why would people want to put it on the blockchain? A lot of unanswered questions here. Storage,
Shaun Gold: First off, this picture of this slide, okay, it's essentially an elderly gentleman with a physical photo, like, book. It's the antithesis of what you're pitching.
Nilima Achwal: I didn't even look at the photo. I was too obsessed with the five to 250. I was just like, what is that range?
Shaun Gold: Essentially, just from a pure design aspect, I mean, if you're pitching something in the metaverse on the blockchain, then you shouldn't be using a picture from, like, 20 years ago before there was Google Photos or anything of someone in a physical photo book showcasing his kids that are like, what's a physical photo book? It's this entire slide. Besides the, you know, the information with the gallery sales and all that, fine. You could expand about that, but please get rid of the picture because it's the antithesis of what you're pitching. It is like pitching a car to a ride share service, except you don't have any ride shares or anything.
Nilima Achwal: And you forgot that the book is actually a digital book. With a digital gallery that you walk through to see the pictures of.
Shaun Gold: It looks like a physical book. I mean, it just looks like it was like you got a stock photo, I get it.
Nilima Achwal: You guys your market is not how many photos were taken by humans in the world? I'm sorry, that's not your market. Your market has to be like people using photo storage apps or like a niche type of photo storage app, maybe like on the blockchain or according to your differentiating factor, which is not clear what your differentiator is. But your market is not just all of the media that was ever created in the world, because that's not a market.
Shaun Gold: I mean, it's an attempt at a TAM. I mean, it's a good attempt, but yeah, again, there's a bazillion photos, we get it, but not everyone that takes a picture is going to sign up for this.
Nilima Achwal: Exactly. So we need to do the market sizing based on something specific to what you're building in the photo space. Go to market. So it looks like you've given me a bunch of ideas for how you might go to market, but I would want to understand if you've actually done these things or if you've had any sort of product market fit doing any of these things. Or just like if you're doing SEO and traffic analysis, do you have numbers on your customer acquisition cost or just any sort of numbers around any of these categories? Because it kind of looks like these are ideas right now.
Shaun Gold: These are a list of buzzwords. It's like everything that's hot. Let's just throw it at the wall. Influencer marketing, digital marketing. B to C, B to B to B, d to C like focus. I know there's a lot of stuff you want to cover, but focus on something that's actually going to bring in revenue and grow the business.
Nilima Achwal: Yeah. And our competitive advantage. Looks like some of these are social media platforms. Some of these are actually photo storage. So again, unclear if you're trying to do any sort of social media play if you're just doing plain storage, which the social media platforms are not meant for storage. So I think there's just a complete disconnection from actually the user journey and the user experience and needs. But anyway, looking at this personal data ownership, that's great interactive entertainment. So if this is something you're doing, I would want to understand what it is beyond, like, working, walking through a virtual gallery, which doesn't feel very entertaining to me. Undeletable content. Yeah, we got that one time fee. So you're saying one time fee versus free or versus multiple time fees? Because actually this doesn't seem like a value compared to the free platforms. It seems like not a value. Customizable is charitable. Okay, team. JPMorgan Chase, KPMG, DTCC Blockchain. So it really looks like they're trying to do something on the blockchain, but they haven't given too much thought to customer research and what people actually would want to use. And if they have, they haven't really clearly told us why people would want to use this or how their current user base is enjoying the product. They said there's 300 people using this, but I don't have any understanding of their experience on the platform right now. No. Any revenue do we know is their revenue? Are they freemium? Are they beta? I mean, it's a matter of just adding a slide and breaking it down. Okay, so this slide, it's really stressful because they're saying that they're going from 70K quarterly revenue in Q two, and then suddenly they have 163, which is the oddly precise number in Q three, and then they have 296, which is another oddly precise number. And then four hundred and ninety K. So they're not just scaling. They're not even showing like, over the next twelve months or 18 months, our revenue is going, they're literally saying quarterly. We're literally going to be like, just exponentially growing these numbers. And if there was any sort of actual go to market strategy, or if the growth till now reflected that they could support those numbers, like cool, but I really don't understand how they're going to be growing at this pace.
Shaun Gold: Okay, well, that's all we needed to hear.
Nilima Achwal: And then they want 1.5 million seed. This is definitely not even a pre-seed deck. I don't see traction. Or if you have traction, it's not shown on here. And so definitely not a seed deck. Yeah.
Shaun Gold: Okay, well, listen, thank you. Memory Gardens for a deck that was forgettable. Oh, thank you. That's good. All right, going on to deck two. Next up is Symposify, which is an all in one community platform for creators. It sounds spicy,
Nilima Achwal: Symposified. I'm just happy to move on to the next one. Getting, like, anxious. It's okay.
Shaun Gold: It's an all in one community platform for creators, which should use one to create this deck. All right, take it away.
Nilima Achwal: New energy. New energy. New energy. New energy. Okay, Symposified. I like the colors. It looks fun. It's an all in one community platform for creators. So I'm not entirely sure right now what they're trying to do.
Shaun Gold: Well, let's find out together. Also, if you could make your screen full, that'd be good. So we want to see the beauty of this deck.
Nilima Achwal: Is this better?
Shaun Gold: Yeah, it looks somewhat better, so take it away.
Nilima Achwal: Okay, so this is interesting because on the first slide, if you can use a verb like helping creators monetize and distribute their content to more niche and engaged audiences right. Do you see what I did there? I really painted a picture of how you're serving that audience and solving a pain point that's not being solved by current social media platforms. But if you're just saying it's an all in one community platform for creators, it doesn't really differentiate it from any of the other creator platforms like Instagram. I don't have much time, so on the first slide I want to already understand what you're doing, but let's keep going here.
Shaun Gold: Look, it's the problem, this deck there,
Nilima Achwal: Creator boom has encouraged experts to become a creator creator economy. Okay? Experts are becoming creators and serving their audiences in a modern fashion. They need to create a community around their knowledge, build their brand and monetize their domain expertise. Starting this journey requires tools for membership, community management, payments, video systems, and et cetera. So you guys on the problem side, we really need to understand I would literally put a few statistics at the industry level, like what is happening in the creator economy. So if you're saying like, there's a ton of people who know the creator economy is a thing, right, but what's happening say in the last five years, a huge number of people have entered the creator economy and the current tools aren't serving them. A huge percent of these people say that the current social media platforms don't serve them in building their audience or that they can't monetize through it. Or like you need to clearly show me the gaps in what's happening in the industry through a few statistics and try to give me a more precise point on this slide to later tell me the solution.
Shaun Gold: And periods. Grammarly please. This is kind of one long sentence.
Nilima Achwal: Yeah, so I'm not even critiquing the language right now, but yeah, for sure. And then the solution. An all in one platform for a large career just can provide their exclusive services through subscription plans. Since now I'm thinking it's like a patreon or something without needing to make a whole bunch of different tools work together. So I think that's very colloquial. I think that there needs to be more detail around. First of all, if this is a solution slide, this needs to be like your value proposition. And so if this is your value proposition, it pretty much reads as like creators are putting a whole bunch of stuff together and I would just need way more detail and precision on how you're actually filling a niche for creators that's not being filled currently in a one sentence value proposition product. Okay? So basically what they're doing is they're monetizing their services via their subscription plans. Again, they're just saying all the stuff, all the stuff, but they're not really telling me what the things are and why it's necessary and filling a niche that other platforms don't. So they're just saying chat payments, video systems, et cetera. And so again, I don't understand why you're different from a patreon or from another platform and why it's so juicy and fills the niche so well where people would really want to adopt it. Core features, creator studio.
Shaun Gold: You know what would be great? ust adding to this. We could see it in the chat, a mockup of a picture of the product, a chart, a graph, a royalty free picture, something. Anything. It's just words. That's it. There's nothing here.
Nilima Achwal: It looks like they came up with an idea, but they haven't actually built anything yet. So it looks like they're trying to create some sort of a creator platform where they can collaborate with creators to community management, analytics, have subscribers, et cetera. So basically what they're trying to build is a social media platform because they're saying it's like a creator platform, but at the end of the day, it's a social media platform, right? Like the customer is the person consuming the content. Right? We don't know. I don't know. But we have one slide that explains the entire business model right here in one sentence. They're taking 10% off their creators, which right now from other platforms, creators don't get charged anything. So they better have a real value add for creators if they want to be taking that cut from them. Roadmap and traction. So they're just releasing the first, like, the beta right now, I guess, and then they want to raise funding. But I don't understand what you're doing. I don't understand if any creator has used it and liked it.
Shaun Gold: Hold on. Look at the traction go up real quick to the traction. Raised 100,000 Canadian through family and friends round.
Nilima Achwal: Raised November 2021.
Shaun Gold: Okay. But I think after doing so many pitch deck roasts and looking at so many decks, we finally found our first founders that could actually be disowned by their families and ostracized from their communities. You raised 100,000 more power to you on what? What have you used it for? You didn't even use it to get the deck created. You could have just hired someone to create the deck with that money. There's nothing here. There's still no pictures. There's no videos, there's no charts. There's nothing. It's just a bunch of buzzwords.
Nilima Achwal: Yeah. I'm sorry. We're going to have to move on to the next one.
Shaun Gold: Okay, just real quick, though, I just want to say that I did go to their website, and their website is pretty good. So I don't know why this deck is not really like their website.
Nilima Achwal: There's stuff there. It's like there's actual stuff.
Shaun Gold: The website looks like a legitimate startup website. And this deck looks like nothing.
Nilima Achwal: Like, it looks like someone just woke up and put down an idea for something they wanted to create. But apparently they've been doing this for years. I want to see what they did in that year. And it seems like if you did a bunch of stuff and there's all the stuff you've built and there's people using it, like, I would want to see that, but that's me giving them a benefit of the doubt.
Shaun Gold: Okay, well, up next is our last deck. Yeah. And it's just in time for Halloween. That's right. Who am I kidding every day at OpenVC, and the startup ecosystem is Halloween. So, yes, our next deck, and I hope I don't butcher the name, it is Gutierre? Gouter? And it's a startup that is dead set on ruining chocolate for everyone. So take it away. Okay.
Nilima Achwal: Gouter helps reduce industry food waste by rescuing bread and transforming it into delicious chocolate snacks. So, first of all, chocolate is made out of, like, cacao beans and sugar and milk. And so I don't understand how you're making there's no way to turn bread into chocolate. Like, you can add bread to chocolate, but I don't know if you can alchemize and transform a piece of bread into chocolate unless you've come up with some crazy new thing.
Shaun Gold: Well, let's find out together.
Nilima Achwal: Founder. So somebody who's worked at a bunch of different chocolate companies, so that seems like on the R and D side. So maybe they're coming up with a new type of chocolate, and then there's a whole bunch of people, like Godiva. Okay, cool. So there's like, maybe there's something here in the chocolate space. Frustrated with the lack of innovation that tackles environmental challenges, I've quit and launched Gouta with support from ex colleagues. So they're really going for something.
Shaun Gold: I hope you left on good terms.
Nilima Achwal: Okay. More than a third of greenhouse gas emissions are generated by food systems. Yes, but that's primarily from cows and from deforestation. So I don't know where one third of food waste is wasted globally. Okay. And then 44% of that is bread. So this is really a stretch. Like, if you're trying to transform food systems, you can look at bees, you can look at regenerative farming, you can look at distribution channels, you can look at seeds. I mean, there's just all of these issues with our food systems and even looking at what contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, but most of that is not going to be the bread, sorry, very much a stretch because we're going to be seeing some not so tasty chocolate. Can you make it full screen, please, so we could really get the tastiness of going on? Thank you. Okay, next slide. Okay, so this is, like, from a food. I mean, I'm somebody who's been in the impact, like, systems change space for over a decade, and this just feels a little bit like you read, like, a UN report or something and then just decided to create bread chocolate without really researching what actually can create systemic change in the food system space. Okay, this whole being frank thing is very strange, Shaun.
Shaun Gold: No, it's fine. People need to hear it because it's like, here you have a quote, but the quote is backwards and it doesn't close. It's a grammar thing. It's very, like, backwards.
Nilima Achwal: Okay, guys. Okay. Consumers are moving towards ethical consumption, but when you're looking at chocolate, that means fair trade chocolate, organically harvested, paying the farmers upcycling bread into chocolate again, is a very strange angle on ethical consumption. Like very strange. That's just not what a consumer thinks of when they think of ethical chocolate. We aim to change the agenda around waste using our chocolate. Know how to embrace waste makes some people really sound like they want to make a positive impact, but they just really haven't thought it through completely. Kind of almost like Tom shoes, right? They're like, okay, we're going to sell shoes and give a pair of shoes to someone in Africa. And in doing so, they crowded out the entire local shoe industry and caused local economies to collapse. So it's like, if you're going to do impact, you really need to do your research on this. Three tasty snacks without compromising our planet's well being. Okay, so this is interesting because they're saying without compromising our planet's well being. So this is like, again, very confusing because they're saying that current chocolate compromises our planet's well being. But that's not what they're saying because they're saying they're upcycling the bread. So it just doesn't make sense. Use fresh bread off cuts that would otherwise be wasted. Ethical rich British chocolate. I would want to know how it's ethical beyond the cycling of the bread. Not sourced as close as possible to the UK. Okay. It's just like local sourcing wrapped in paper.
Shaun Gold: That's one thing. Yes. Is the packaging eco friendly?
Nilima Achwal: It's paper, not plastic. But if it was compostable, that would be better. Upcycled food products. You can make beer from leftover bread. Okay, that makes more sense to me. They're saying they're like toastales.
Shaun Gold: Yeah, but people will drink anything. People will drink anything. It doesn't matter where it comes from. If they get them drunk, they're fine. So that's why it's like, oh, well, we got to drink fine. It sucks? I'll drink it anyway.
Nilima Achwal: I just want to know if people like this chocolate. I want to see some testimonials of people being like, this is the best chocolate ever. Because I don't know if the chocolate is any good that's going to make or break this thing. Right? It's like, how is the chocolate?
Shaun Gold: But at the same time I get these. They're from the chocolate space. But you should know you're going up against every chocolate bar imaginable. Snickers 100 grand. Whatchamacallit, Hershey bar. Hershey with almonds, Kit-Kat, Chunky, Nestle Crunch, Mr. Good Bar, Milky Way, Three Musketeers, Baby Ruth, Mounds. Payday. Butterfinger and Almond Joy. You have so much competition.
Nilima Achwal: 100% total chocolate market, 56% tablet and bag subsegments and then build a ten pound, 10 million pound brand revenue business in five years. Yeah. I don't understand if you've sold anything so far. Yeah, I don't know how. You just understand.
Shaun Gold: Well, we'll find out.
Nilima Achwal: Okay, let's see. So 5,000 slices were saved. They're rescuing bread. Pouches sold by Kickstarter. Okay, so people are buying it. They sold a bunch on their Kickstarter. They have some independent retailers. And then they have an online zero waste retailer, which usually refers to the supply chain and the packaging and they're referring to it as like upsizing the bread. Again, it's a bit confusing, but I just feel like this bread could go to the homeless or something. I feel like, okay, if you're doing the impact angle and you think consumers are going to buy this chocolate from the impact angle, think through the whole impact angle. If you think consumers are going to buy it because the chocolate is really good, then that has to be the main thing.
Shaun Gold: In the Chat, we have $10 million revenue is not sexy. People are saying it's not sexy. It's not investable for $10 million. So I mean, again, scale this to 100 million. They're all coming up. Not enough growth for VC funding. Say it with me. Chocolate cottage industries. I mean, it needs to be higher. It definitely needs to be higher.
Nilima Achwal: Yeah, it's more like it looks like they want to be like a little chocolate brand. Doesn't really seem like a VC venture.
Shaun Gold: Because you're forgetting the social impact. They are revolutionaries, okay? They are saving bread. They are liberating bread from the Infernal Bakery Bastille, we get it.
Nilima Achwal: Well, they're literally measuring their impact based on bread slices saved. And at the beginning they were talking about carbon climate change. And so I think that it's a bit simplistic if you're really taking the impact angle. And yeah, it looks like year one. I don't understand if the year one is this year or if that's like, in the future, like projections. I don't understand how much they've made so far. That'd be really good to know.
Shaun Gold: There needs to be a tasting element when presenting. I know it's tough and maybe you can ship some of this delicious chocolate bread or bread made from chocolate. I mean, there's just something where it's like the first thing I want to do is I want to try it, but I don't know. And yes, even the Chat hashtag save the bread slices from our friend Nathan Phillips. Memory Gardens is here asking if it's Halal or Kosher certified. That's a pretty good question, to be honest. Something to consider. But yeah, this is a lot of questions, none of which have to do with the taste or the texture besides the ones I'm asking.
Nilima Achwal: Yeah, it looks like they have some unit economics there. Again, the thing is, I don't know if they made up these unit economics if they've validated this through actually selling their first batches. It's just unclear if they've already started this or if it's still more I guess since May 2022, they've rescued 5000 slices. I have no idea how many customers, how much revenue that is.
Shaun Gold: And it's also $3 or £3.90 for a bar. Forget that from our friend Mark Lewis. Yeah, that's pretty expensive.
Nilima Achwal: You can go get some really high quality, ethical clean. Everything chocolate for that price. And it sounds like their only angle here is upcycling of the bread and not any of the not even clean, healthy chocolate. These consumers, they're going to be thinking of chocolate from so many angles, right? Ethical consumers, they want, like, clean, good for your body, good for the planet, good supply chain. There's so many angles. And just upcycling the bread I don't think is going to cut it with this market segment. Okay, so marketing deployed a strong digital marketing strategy. Start at customer acquisition channels. Start. So they haven't started customer acquisition yet. Need resources to deliver our be seen to be sold strategy. So they're assuming that they're not selling anything because they're not being seen. This is a red flag to me because you should already be able to start selling organically and just through your whatever, like through just start. And then the resources should only amplify that because there should be product market fit. So this signals to me that there's no product market fit, sales launch. So they're in Bristol right now. Looks like they want to go beyond Bristol, but I don't understand if they've even been successful in Bristol so far. So that if I can see you've been successful in Bristol, then I'll be like, okay, cool, let's fund that to grow beyond that. But that's unclear. Yeah, let's see.
Shaun Gold: I just want to know what it tastes like. There's no testimonial here. There's not a single thing that is the tastiest and the sweetest thing ever.
Nilima Achwal: Instead they look like clusters, like coconut clusters or something, except it's just like bread and chocolate, I guess.
Shaun Gold: So we have a question for you from the Chat actually Memory Gardens. Thanks for being a good sport and sticking by. To my understanding, raising is done to accomplish goals in lieu of getting runway. Can you please speak to that?
Nilima Achwal: So runway is basically the amount of time that you have to spend the money. So you can be like, I'm raising 500k for an 18 month runway. So I don't think they mean runway. I think they mean traction. When they say that. They're saying you raise instead of getting the revenue. I think that's what they're trying to say.
Shaun Gold: And then we have our friend David Yang, who says funding is done to accelerate growth, not start it. Very good point.
Nilima Achwal: You have to show, like, a really solid product market fit, either through numbers or Qualitatively at least, and show that you've been able to grow the numbers of users if you don't have any revenue. But revenue is better because that really validates product market fit, in short.
Shaun Gold: Got it. Do we have any other questions? Because we're happy to answer them right now. Whether you got roasted or you did it or you want to get roasted. Remember, we have a link going around in the chat where you can submit your pitch deck for the next roast, which is going to be the November 25 end of November. You'll have a wonderful Thanksgiving, and I'll be thankful not to have to look at any more decks until after the holiday. But if you have any other questions, please type them out. We will answer them. And if not, as I said, don't forget to, like, share comments on social media and make this go viral. I want to thank every single founder that submitted their pitch check for taking the abuse. I really hope that they learn something and they find funding or at least a good day job. Say it with me. UberEats driver. I want to thank OpenVC, Nalima Achwal, Stephane Nasser and you for being here. I'm Shaun Gold and this has been a job done. Thank you, everyone. Bye.
