The Power of a Powerful Team: Secrets to Creating a Winning Slide with YCombinator Michael Seibel

Name: The Power of a Powerful Team: Secrets to Creating a Winning Slide with YCombinator Michael Seibel
Uploaded: 2024-04-16T20:45:43+00:00
Duration: 2 min 4 s
Channel: Jason M. Lemkin
Description: In this segment, Michael Seibel (Speaker A) explains how to craft an effective team slide for startup pitch decks. He outlines the slide’s purpose—to…

16 Apr 2024 · 2 min

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In this segment, Michael Seibel (Speaker A) explains how to craft an effective team slide for startup pitch decks. He outlines the slide’s purpose—to clearly present each team member’s name, role, title, notable achievements, and any personal experience with the problem the startup solves. He stresses that weaving personal problem experience into the slide can boost credibility. Seibel then enumerates common mistakes: omitting titles or roles (leaving investors unsure who the CEO or engineers are), telling long life‑story narratives that belong elsewhere, and failing to highlight specific, impressive accomplishments (e.g., a founder’s work on the Mars Rover). He illustrates the points with concrete examples, such as Airbnb’s founders describing how they built a website to pay rent, and a founder who contributed to the Mars Rover project but didn’t mention it. The overall takeaway is to keep the team slide concise, factual, and achievement‑focused, and to only share personal stories if they directly reinforce problem‑solving expertise.

Chapters

Next, your team. People screw up the team slide all the time. The purpose of team is really just to talk about who's on your team, what do they do, what their impressive accomplishments and credentials are. And if possible, how they've personally experienced the problem. If we go back to Airbnb, they could literally talk about how they were starving startup founders who couldn't pay their rent. And the first time they did this, they set up a website for a design conference, hosted 3 guests so they could pay their rent. If you can weave how you've experienced the problem into the team slide, suddenly I think of you as an expert. Now, what do people screw up? No titles. I don't know what the roles are. I don't know who the CEO is. If I'm an early-stage investor, I'm trusting the CEO with money. If I don't know who they are, who am I trusting? Number 2, who writes code? Number 3, telling long stories. The team slide is not the opportunity to tell your life story. Here's a hint, there is no opportunity in your pitch to tell your life story unless the investor asks explicitly for your life story, and you should double confirm they want to hear your life story. No life stories. And then the one I always love, missing specific accomplishments. There's one company in this batch that literally worked on the Mars Rover. The founder was like, worked at JPL and like built software to make the Mars Rover project actually happen. Didn't talk about it. I didn't even know when we accepted him. I'm in office hours with him a month, 2 months into the project, and I'm like, what was— what did you do at JPL? And he's like, oh, have you heard of the Mars rover? I'm like, yeah, I'm not a fucking idiot. And he's like, yeah, I did that. And I'm like, can we talk about that, please? If you've done something cool, say it.