BoneChat #33 - Mastering the Art of the Pitch Deck with Ted Bird

Let's light the candle here. So this is going to be a lot of information in an hour, so Ted's going to go fast. And just raise your hand if you have— interrupt him at any time you want because this is going to be a lot of information. All right, here. So here we go. So we are thrilled to have Ted Bird with us today, an active BoneChat member. Fundraising is a mission-critical thing for every nonprofit company today, and compelling pitch deck is the key component of that. So Ted's here to share his expert tips and advice on how to make your pitch deck more effective. So handing the mic over to Ted.

Great. Thanks, Tiger. Welcome everyone. I'm going to switch over to the slide deck. I'm going to go through and kind of share what I plan to talk about and try and get through it. So we have time for discussions at the end. Let me just share screen.

And we'll share this deck on Slack after the call.

Okay, can you see that? Yes. Okay, so that is not my normal outfit with the palette in front of the canvas, but since this is about art and mastering the pitch deck process. That's what I'm putting together here. Again, my name is Ted Bird. My background is my entire career, pretty much, except for about 18 months, has been in orthopedics. So deep domain expertise. My company, Bird Medical Group, we— this is what we do. We do go-to-market commercial strategy. And execution. We primarily focus on partnering with startups, early stage, early commercial, or even preclinical founding stage. We specialize, because of the breadth and depth of my network, in KOL and distributor market development, business development, licensing, mergers, acquisition, business analysis, assessment, serving in board advisory or, or fractional or full-time operating leadership roles depending on the project. And for the last 7 to 10 years, I've been doing quite a bit of capital fundraising because I've pivoted more towards the smaller companies. And down below are some of the companies you see, from the big ones at the top like J&J and Medtronic to the mid-sized ones like Orthofix, but smaller companies like ApiFix out of Israel, Titan Spine, which sold to Medtronic. ApiFix sold to Orthopediatrics. Dimecron out of Utah, Ascol Healthcare. I'm chairman of their company out of Helsinki right now. So I've really pivoted more to the smaller companies. I love the innovation and the faster-moving environment. Let's get into it. So this is what I'm going to cover. Just kind of planning a pitch, kind of mapping out what's required, the elements that you need. Making sure that you— I'm going to share a formula for an elevator pitch. It's important to have that, that 15 to 30-second or maximum 1-minute elevator pitch that really helps kind of succinctly crystallize you, your company, your mission, your value proposition. And then having that down is actually a good start before you even get into your your full pitch. I'm going to talk about the anatomy of a pitch deck, you know, what's really important and minimally required for the pitch deck. I'm going to talk about just slide design rules, you know, crafting that from information that I've read, and I'm going to share and give credit to everyone that I've gotten the information from on some simple rules to abide by. In a pitch deck, delivering the pitch, key kind of recommendations about what to do, what not to do, talk a little bit about storytelling, the importance of storytelling in a pitch, just as it is with any kind of sales approach to connect with your audience, some watch-outs on what not to do. I've seen quite a few pitches in the last few years, hundreds of pitches, I've seen some doozies. I've seen some interesting ones. I've seen some great ones too. And then I found an article about dialogue, particularly with VCs. You know, not always— everyone here is not always pitching to VCs, but, you know, picking your partners is very important. So even after the pitch, you get the follow-up meeting, you get interest from the VCs. These are some recommendations on how to engage that investor or that investor group. And then just a little final slide about some kind of psychology around presenting and some great information on that. So let's get into planning. So this is called the 10-20-30 rule. This isn't hard and fast. You can adjust this slightly, but it's from a well-known venture capitalist guy, Kowalski. I'm not sure how he pronounced it.

Kawasaki. Kawasaki from Apple.

Yeah. Thank you, from Apple. So, you know, his recommendation is no more than 10 slides, no more than 20 minutes. You might, you might not have 20 minutes because if you're going to LSI to present at a conference, you've only got 8 minutes. I've actually had one presentation during the pandemic. It was online. It was 3 minutes. So, you know, the shorter is, the more succinct you have to be. And a 30-point font on your slides. I have a great quote from Guy Kawasaki I want to share with you. So this is Guy a few years ago. As a venture capitalist, I have to listen to hundreds of entrepreneurs pitch their companies. Most of these pitches are crap. 60 slides about a patent pending, first mover advantage. All we have to do is get 1% of the people in China to buy our product, quote unquote startup. These pitches are so lousy that I'm losing my hearing. There's a constant ringing in my ear, and every once in a while the world starts spinning. I thought that was funny because some of the real bad ones that I've seen, kind of, you know, you could have a bloopers reel on some of these. The other point I wanted to make on this slide in planning your pitch, you really have to have a couple different presentations. Prepared and ready. A pitch deck is, you know, really for general audiences that, you know, don't really have any prior information. The goal, as it is with any first meeting, you know, if you are, say, on a job interview or meeting with a group, an important group you're trying to partner with, the goal is just to get to the second meeting, is to create a strong first impression. And that's why you keep it, you know, to within 10 to 12 slides. You have to prepare an investor deck with more information, provide more information that, you know, the investors that you're presenting to that have accepted a second meeting, that they— the information they need in order to make a decision. And that deck can be longer, still has to be, you know, stick to kind of presentation, don't go off point, you know, in terms of, you know, your style and how you get your your design of your deck, but make sure it's more thorough. Make sure it's a deck that can be read by itself. So for elevator pitch, so this is the, you know, the 1-minute pitch. Ideally, actually, it should be 15 to 30 seconds because, you know, depending on what building you're in, what elevator you're in, they'll sometimes go 20 floors, you know, every 5 seconds. So, but essentially recommendation is be factual, avoid hyperbole, follow this formula. I saw this formula by a guy called Chris Totman on— you can look him up on LinkedIn. He provides a lot of great infographics regarding startups, and I like this formula. Basically, you can kind of take this, plug in your company, and just, you know, put together your, your 5 points. You know, my company is, you know, developing a, um, you know, whatever it is you're developing to help your audience, your customer solve a problem with your value selling proposition. We compete in a growing— define your market. Last year was this, this value. We're similar to competitors or other competitors. You might not have a competitor, but But we're differentiated by the market in this way. Currently, we have, you know, we're commercial, we have our regulatory clearance, we have the company, we have the team. And what— and include the ask, what we're looking for. We're looking for, you know, $5 million to help us, you know, get to some commercial traction, or $10, $20, $30 million to get to a certain milestone. So be positive, be energetic, be compelling, avoid kind of jargon or industry speak, and make sure you, you have the ask in there, that you talk money. Be concise and be memorable. You know, I met people like, for example, at investor conferences like, like the LSI meeting. I remember meeting, uh, other startup CEOs that are in the elevator, and that's where the relationship started. If they were effective I remember them because they told me in a minute or less who they were, what they, what they have, what they're doing, because you never know where it's going to lead. And I've developed new relationships out of that in the end. I'm giving credit to David Walder and Mark Gibbs here. They also had a nice Medium— is a, is a publication called Medium— article about the art of pitching. So I read that some of these concepts come from that article. Okay, next, pitch deck anatomy. I want to give Tiger credit for this. Tiger sent me, you know, some of his thoughts regarding the key slides. I think this is excellent because there are a ton of templates out there. There's a lot of different— you can go online, of course, you can have AI, you know, create a deck for you.. But we're talking about med tech and this group, we're talking about orthopedics, musculoskeletal. So I think these points are relevant and appropriate, you know, for what's recommended here is actually 12 slides. But number 1, a cover slide. You have your company name, your logo, your tagline, a captivating image, purpose to grab the attention, set the tone for your presentation. You can talk about your purpose or mission, you know, on that slide. But but make it, make it compelling. Number 2, identify the problem. Clear, concisely describe the medical problem, the unmet clinical need that your device addresses. Make investors— the purpose is to make investors understand the pain point and the need for a solution. This is where the storytelling can start. I'll talk about storytelling and sort of techniques around storytelling, but You want to think about that in order to connect with your audience and be more memorable. Slide 3 is a solution, how you're solving the problem. Explain how it works concisely, how it solves the problem. This is the danger point for a technical, maybe a scientist or an engineer founder. Be very careful to not go deep here and start trying to go way over the heads on how great your science is and how brilliant it is, or your IP around this technology. Again, just, you want to get to the second meeting. Show it's unique and show that it's innovative.

Hey, one quick note on your cover slide can be your most important because it's usually up the longest while people are shuffling into the room. It can be up 10 or 15 minutes before you even start talking.

Yeah, that's an important slide, and I'll talk about it when you're delivering your presentation. Always introduce yourself, you know, follow a certain protocol of professionalism once you get into the presentation. Slide 4 is the market opportunity. We've talked about this before, you know, and there's lots of different ways to slice this from market size, but make it concise. You know, you go from total available market, TAM, to— what is it— total available market, serviceable available market, TAM, SAM, and SOM. There's all kinds of different acronyms for these, but basically make it relevant to your solution and your market, what the growth potential is, who you're targeting, and demonstrate that it's a lucrative opportunity. And you don't want to just back into it and say, yes, it's a billion-dollar opportunity. That's another kind of guy, Kawasaki, because you hear that from everyone. This is a multi-billion-dollar opportunity because you often hear people say that no one's going to be interested unless it's a billion-dollar opportunity. But unless you can really show how you get there and your numbers are believable and make sense, then be honest. You know, tell them it's going to grow to a billion-dollar market, but right now it's, it's, you know, multi-hundred million-dollar market, but it's the hottest area in the space and it's going to grow for a certain reason. Talk about your product. You need to get into there and have the audience come away from understanding what you're selling. You know, how many of us watch TV commercials and after the commercial you're like, what was that about? What What were they actually selling? That may be very artistic and creative, but you've got to get the point across. Detailed description, features, benefits, any clinical data that you have to back it up, again, without going very deep, you know, too deep into the weeds on that, but highlight the technical aspects and the advantages that you have over the existing clinical solutions that are out there the existing patient pathway. Business model, slide 6. You've got to talk about, you know, your— how are you going to make money and sustain that growth? You know, what the revenue streams are, what your pricing strategy is, your go-to-market strategy, sales channels you plan to use. You know, you have to show command and an understanding of the market that you're addressing and the pros and the cons of the different ways of doing it, that you've assessed that and have the right information and the right model to be successful. Slide 7. This is actually a little bit more, you know, detail on the go-to-market strategy. You know, your marketing plan, your distribution strategy. Key partnerships, outline your plan, you know, for market entry and growth. You also have to have kind of a roadmap. That's later, but slide 8 is you have to talk about the competition. And you may have a brilliant novel, what you feel is unique solution without competition, but everybody has competition. Even if it's not a direct competing company. It may be, you know, the nature of the marketplace or other barriers that you're facing, you know, in the landscape you're in. So make sure you just don't assume that it's just going to sell itself. We've all heard that before because of the brilliant breakthrough nature of your creation. Analyze those competitors and how you're unique. Demonstrate the unfair advantage. You hear talk of that, you know, what is the unfair advantage that you have and how are you going to position that in the marketplace. Slide 9 is the roadmap, you know, the traction and the milestones. It's important to show any investor, and they're going to want to know what are the milestones, because oftentimes you're going to, you know, maybe or likely have a funding plan that allows investors to get an increase in the company in valuation by achieving milestones. It's clinical data or clinical trials results, new patents, any new sales or sales threshold milestones, revenue milestones, or partnership agreements with strategic partners. Show progress and validation of your device and the business model. Again, you absolutely have to understand and know these numbers cold and be prepared to answer questions that come up on your plan, including regulatory plan. If you're pre-commercial, you know, you got to really understand, you know, what it's going to take if there's clinicals required. If it's a Class 3 product or a 510 with clinicals, you know, how are you going to do that and show that? Graphically on a timeline. Slide 10 is financial projections. You know, show the revenue forecast or the profit margins and the key financial metrics for the next 3 to 5 years and make sure it's realistic to instill confidence. Don't show the typical— see a lot of hockey stick graphs that show, yeah, we're going to be up, you know, this thing's going to just take off. And if it's unrealistic, your audience or the smart investors are just going to check out. So make sure that you pressure test all of your assumptions before you go out with your pitch to the world. So then we're going over Guy Kawasaki's 10, but number 11, this is very important: team. We've talked before, and I've talked before in previous presentations about many times the investor is— the most important thing is who they're betting on. It's the jockey rather than the horse that they're concerned about. So rather than flashing up a slide that shows your nice beautiful pictures that are usually 5 to 7 years old from today, but ensure that though— but rather than just flashing those pictures up, describe the relevant experience and how they contribute and why this team is going to win. You're trying to convince the investors that you're going to win through this team, both your management leadership team as well as advisors or board members that you have with expertise and capabilities. So this is an important topic. Don't just rush through that. And then ask what your ask is, you know, how much funding you're seeking, how it will be used, you know, what the milestones are that you plan to achieve with that money. Clearly state those needs, justify them with a well-defined plan that we're going to use this money, for example, to get clinical data so that we can get better reimbursement if you're in that situation of in a marketplace that requires a new code. Which is a long road, an expensive road, but again, it's an important road to get through. Or building your sales force and other commercial traction, you know, is the use of funds, additional R&D or development to extend your platform, you know, beyond your first design. And then it's optional, you know, to have And it's a good idea to have appendix slides, not necessarily for your presentation, but if you're at a meeting, you know, you're there and you're going to have other one-on-one conversations. Someone might want to have a second meeting right after your talk and get more details about your clinical data or more information about your financial plan. So, you know, having those detailed financials or other supporting documents in an appendix is a good idea.

You have to anticipate what the questions are and put them in the appendix. And then every time you have a meeting, when they ask a question not in the deck, like clinical or patents or something, you just need to add another page on your appendix. So you have an answer. You have a well-thought-out, brief answer for every question ever asked.

Absolutely. And of course, you know, put a well-designed filing system because pitch decks change almost daily when you're in an aggressive fundraising, capital fundraising campaign, and make sure you number everything. And as you're sharing with your team and others that are helping with it, you with it, make sure you have a well-organized and documented way to file and track these decks. Okay, slide design rules. Again, this is information I got from David Walder and Mark Gibbs who run an agency to kind of help people with pitch decks as well as design and putting them together. But I liked what I heard from them. In terms of templates, again, there's hundreds of templates out there. There's ones that you can just kind of click on and it does it for you. But, you know, the recommendation here and the reinforcement is to keep it simple, or they call it keep it straight and simple. I mean, don't use wild and crazy colors and crazy fonts, you know, and have your text flying in and, you know, flipping around and, you know, fireworks going off, you know, it's too much, and multiple colors for different things. Keep it simple. It's nice to have kind of a clean background, like a white background. If you put too much in the way of images, and it might be beautiful, a picture of the Matterhorn behind your slide deck, but it's not going to help, you know, the reader see what you're trying to get across. So keep it simple, keep it straight and simple. And the 7-7 guideline is no more than 7 words on a line and no more than 7 lines on a slide. I like that because I've seen a number of decks where there's so much text, uh, that, uh, there's no way you can really capture all of that.

Yeah, the other, the other piece is that investors are smart people and they can read way faster than you can talk, so they're going to read the entire slide before you even get it out. And you want them looking at you, not your slides. So that's another reason to have less words, just less and less and less.

Keep it, keep it as simple as possible. Fewer words, you know, use more images. Right, this is my next point, you know, use pictures. Picture tells a thousand words, really. I mean, charts, graphs, expand upon your ideas and clarify points. And then part of delivering the presentation, I'm going to talk about this in the next slide, is you don't want to be reading your slides. You want to be, you know, connecting eye contact with your audience, whether it's a small group or a large group. You don't want to be, you're not going to be as confident if you're up on a stage and you're not looking at the audience, or they may be filming you. You're looking at the screen and trying to read the slides or looking at the prompter machine trying to read the slides. You know, be comfortable with your presentation. So you don't need to do that. You have a goal of trying to get concisely and energetically and confidently get your story across and be compelling, because a lot of times these meetings, there's hundreds of presentations. You want to come away with being just one or two that they remember. So on delivering the pitch, you know, it is a beauty contest, particularly when they're Well, these VCs, whether they're getting this from you over Zoom or in a meeting or in their office, unlikely for a first-time meeting, but they see hundreds if not thousands of pitches. So it's important to know your audience, particularly if you're going to a certain group. Understand if it's important that they that stay on time. If they've given you a certain amount of time to present, don't go in there and make sure you practice to know that your pitch, if you've got 8 minutes with no questions, that you're going to go 7, you know, minutes and then have you give yourself 7, 7 and a half time to, you know, come under the correct time without rushing through and doing the FedEx commercial speed talk. Approach to your pitch. Dress, groom, and act appropriately. You know, I've seen guys get up that, yeah, it's cool in the tech world, Silicon Valley, to be scruffy and have some jeans with the cutout knees and, you know, no comb through your hair in the last week or so. You know, again, just be professional. Don't try and be a comedian, you know, to get their attention. Just, it's better to be conservative, be and act appropriately. Be well equipped, you know, make sure you get there to test the equipment, the sound. If there's a remote control, understand how to work it and do a quick rehearsal or a practice of your presentation. On site. Turn off any apps and any phone or anything else going to bother you during the meeting. And rehearse. I mean, really, practice makes perfect. Practice, practice, practice. You know, take the time, not just with yourself whispering to your computer, but, you know, get with your colleagues, get with your friends, and give them the pitch and get their feedback. You know, the more you do that, particularly around the time that you're going to be presenting this pitch, you need to get really comfortable with your delivery.

You also have backup. So I mean, anything could happen. Electricity can go off. You know, have an iPad where you can deliver one-on-one, have paper printouts, you know, have every way in the world to show it.

Absolutely. Be prepared and well equipped. And then storytelling, really important to think about this, that the best way to really be memorable is to share the story. You know, it engages the audience, it creates an emotional connection with the audience, it differentiates you from a pitch where someone's just reading through some ad nauseam the standard template. Yep, this is the problem, this is the solution, this is why we're different, this is why, here's the team, here's what we need for money, and you know, and then they forget to say thank you and they leave the stage. Are they going to be remembered? Probably not. But also by, you know, weaving a story into your message you're getting across helps you, you know, demonstrate your full understanding of your solution and what it's doing, you know, in the marketplace and to the customer. But keep it simple. Don't, don't, get into, you've heard storytellers where they really get into the story and this is not the forum to like, you know, speak out the novel that you need to write, but create a beginning and an end. Make sure you talk about it and come back to it. I have an example like for the company that I'm a non-executive chairman of a sports medicine company with a cartilage defect repair solution for the knee, ASCO, and I was coaching the CEO for their first, her first kind of big Series A presentation, LSI. And I suggested the story and she did a really nice job at the beginning when she was describing who the company was. And then when they got into what the product was and they have the first in human studies going on, she described the patient. She said, This is a story about a patient, Tina, in Finland, who is very active. Typical patient for this population who have knee cartilage defect problems. Active outdoor, you know, skier. And she had a cartilage defect and, you know, it was a problem. And she was really affecting her. And this is the typical patient population. And then she got into the rest of the kind of presentation about the product. But then came back to it in the end. It's like, well, what happened to Tina? You know, in the end, well, Tina was actually in the trial. She came back within a few weeks. And the fact that because our product was able to allow full weight-bearing almost immediately after surgery, she was able to rehab very quickly and get back to her cross-country skiing much faster than anything else that's out there in the marketplace. And Even the moderator's like, hey, we're glad to hear that Tina's doing well. You know, so she did a great job with that story, kept it simple, brought it, introduced at the beginning of the, the story, came back in the end and said, because of everything I just told you about how great this product is, this is how it impacted the patient. Use vivid language, incorporate conflict. You know, we have great storytellers in this group. Elizabeth Hoffines from, a medical writer and, and journalist. I mean, this is the, The power of storytelling is important to weave into your pitch and whether you're pitching an investment or just trying to sell something, storytelling is powerful. So what not to do. Here's an uh. So uh's, um's, and er's, you know, practice your presentation so you're clear, you're concise, you avoid that. Don't gabble. Don't try and speed it up and just rush through it. You really want to be, you know, speaking really at a normal conversational level, maybe even slightly slower, but be able to get your information across without running over on your time if you have a time allotment. Again, I said earlier, try not to be funny. You know, some people may think they're stand-up comedians. They may be good at that, but you never know how a joke's going to go. It might not resonate with the audience, may turn some people off. Better to stay away from that. Do not keep looking for validation. You all, you know, I've heard people in their presentations, a lot of times lawyers, you know, use this in their opening or their closing arguments with juries. You know, they they throw in, right, you know, kind of get the audience nodding with them, right, aren't it, don't you agree. And if you're throwing that in all the time on an investment pitch, it kind of says maybe you're not as confident about your idea. It's, to me, it's a little bit annoying. The point, do not dance, is yes, don't just go if you've got a podium and wrap your arms around the the podium and stay frozen there. It's okay to move, but don't be like shifting from right leg to left leg or pacing back and forth on the stage when you're presenting. Just be naturally confident. Address the audience. Don't be reading your slides. Don't be looking at the screen. They want to assess you as a confident leader of your organization. Of your investment opportunity. And so positioning and presentation is very important.

Elizabeth's got a question or comment.

Okay.

Hi. So in my experience, even doing presentations in the business arena, when I have used appropriate humor, it's been a big hit. Now, so I would just play devil's advocate here and say that perhaps, and these people are going to be presumably rehearsing quite a bit before these pitches, perhaps, you know, if they would run by one or two sort of jokes and just to see how they might hit beforehand with several people. I don't know, what do you think, Ted? I've done stand-up comedy, so I value that so much.

So yeah, no, I agree, you know, don't be so deadpan, you know, to avoid being funny because I think if you're, if you, you know, you want to be authentic, basically.

Right, right. Genuinely, right, right.

Genuine, authentic. If it's not something that comes to you naturally and you're trying to throw it in, it probably won't come across naturally. So, you know, I think it's a good idea to, you know, just be authentic, be you. If And I've seen founders, scientific founders that aren't great presenters or nervous presenters, and oftentimes they'll have maybe one of their colleagues who's going to do a better job with it, do the presentation if that's an area of being uncomfortable, you know, as the founder. That makes sense. So, yeah, my point is not to completely avoid it, but don't try and You know, you might be a great, you know, funny person or a great stand-up comic, but this is probably not the place to be making that the entire focus of your pitch.

Or force anything. Yeah. Okay.

Thanks. Yeah. So this is the 6 questions. I thought this was really good by— I need to add the credit. I'll do that to the PDF version. It was an article by Jonathan Crowder and, uh, a way to engage your potential investors. And the reason why these questions are great— so number one is, you know, you ask them after they've received your pitch and maybe they're interested. This is after the second meeting, you know, you ask them, so, you know, how will you— how will you describe us to your partners? You know, whether you're talking to a partner or maybe an associate, you're trying to get an internal champion at that group, you know, for you and your business. Make sure that they understand your business, that they, you know, empower them with the best language possible to advocate for you internally. So it's a good kind of a test question. Number 2 is, are you excited to invest in a startup like this? You know, this kind of capitalizes on their commitment and consistency. You know, they'll have a hard time changing their mind if they say yes now. But save yourself time by asking that in the first meeting. If they don't respond enthusiastically, then you've got a pretty good idea whether you should move on. Oh, sorry. Number 3 is, which of your portfolio companies is most similar to us? And here you're doubling down on that commitment and consistency bias. They're more likely to say yes if they're already thinking of you similar to another startup that they they already have backed. Number 4 is, you know, how would you solve— you're talking about your business, start getting them thinking on your side, which is what you want ideally in an investor, someone that can actively contribute besides just writing a check. But they see lots of pitches and many of them are accomplished former operators of companies. They often know best practices and how to fix your issues. So it may be a debate about your distribution channel strategy for your go-to-market strategy. And better yet, you know, as they weigh in, they start thinking of themselves as a partner in building your business. So that's a good one. Number 5 is, you know, what do you need? What else do you need to get excited? And you want to find out what the key items are. So it gives you a kind of a north star, the metrics to pursue. Keep them in the loop as you keep hitting your goal. And number 6 is, what do you, you know, what do your portfolio companies love about working with you? This is where you're interviewing them. I mean, you want to do as much research on your potential investors and their fund and how appropriately they're funded as you expect them to do on you. So it's a waste of time to be pitching, you know, to a venture capitalist that's not even, you know, doesn't have a fund, active money, you know, to provide because they it's already been around for a few years and they don't have the mandate to invest in new companies that are going to take a few years to exit. So it's a two-way street. You have to decide if you want them on your cap table. So I added this in. It's really not part of the art of the pitch, but it's part of the capital raise process.

Hey Ted, a comment or comment from Asher coming in.

Yeah, I had a quick question about VCs who are either in the industry for medical devices or, you know, have a portfolio of companies. You know, I've heard on kind of both ends, you know, on one side they are familiar with the industry, the obstacles, the struggles. They may have, you know, great partnerships and existing connections. But on the flip side, you know, if they've been burned before or they don't want to get too distracted or diluted within that industry, they may kind of be reserved to invest yet again. What are your thoughts on there? Where do you stand?

Yeah, well, it's worth, uh, certainly prioritizing, Asher, those that already have invested. But you may find, like for example, spine, which I know you're in, you know, and orthopedics, is an area where there's a lot of burned trash heaps, junk heaps on the side of the road. These VCs have burnt a lot of money on, so there's a hesitancy. So it's really important to understand that's going to be a concern going in and be prepared to share with them why that's not going to happen with your project, you know, because you know what's happened before. You're structuring your whether it's design and/or go-to-market strategy in a different way to avoid that. But you're gonna find out that, yeah, it particularly in our field in orthopedics, it's getting, I believe it's getting better in general this year, 2024, that the last couple of years has been very, very hard, not just for orthopedics, but for medtech in general. But There's now deals are starting to flow and you've got to get out there. You know, the process of capital fundraising is all about getting at-bats, you know, getting pitches, getting— and you'll get better with your pitching as you do more of them and you'll learn. And another great question, if they say no, question number 7 is I understand this is not a good fit for you, but would you be willing to introduce me to, or can you think of someone who you think this might be a good fit for? And, you know, ask for their direct feedback. You know, was there a certain issue that was a concern for you? So you can learn from it and adjust going forward.

Good question.

So, confidence. Equals competence. So, we talked about this before. The first bullet point here is, you know, have the right materials, you know, be prepared. It's important to have, I believe, to have a one-page executive overview or a teaser. And this could be a whole other presentation because there's a way to do that and there's a way not to do that. But you want to have kind of all your key metrics on one page, which is one that can be something you can get out there and can be a scanned document for an investor to determine, yeah, I want to, I want to get in and see the whole pitch. Have business cards, have the right materials that you need, backup, and even a printout of your presentation in case the power goes off and you're presenting by candlelight, but you've got something to read from. You don't want to be reading from a script, though, of course, on stage. And finally, this is kind of cool from David Walder and Mark Gibbs. They talked about The psychology of presenting and, you know, be awesome, be confident, and that portrays and demonstrates confidence as a leader for this business. But this Amy Cuddy is a social scientist who did a very famous, one of the highest rated TED Talks on your body language, you know, shapes who you are. And so there's a link here to this. It's worth watching. And it talks about in stressful situations, even your physical pose, uh, kind of really makes your mental mindset adjust to increase your confidence. So you're going into a presentation, maybe you don't do presentations a lot, uh, rather than kind of pacing around behind the screen and sitting down and biting your nails before you go on the stage, watch Amy Cuddy's presentations. She says, go to your room, go to your bathroom, wide stance, power stance, you know, you know, body language and how you present makes a difference. Think about, she's got a great slide of Usain Bolt, the sprinter, the way you get an image in your mind of that guy after he's won, you know, his, his umpteenth gold medal and he's, he's like, pointing at the crowd. I mean, talk about a confident guy. So, this more social psychology around presentation is just because you stand strong, going to prove that you're competent about what you're doing. But I think it's important just from, again, purpose of my talk today is the art of the pitch. And part of it is how you go about doing your pitch. You don't make it too cheesy. You don't make your slides too crazy. You make it easily, you know, to be easy to be followed. Keep it simple. Make it compelling. Tell a story. And do it in a confident way. And don't stand there behind the podium just trying to get through it and make sure that you you thank your audience at the end and don't just kind of rush to the answer, made it in 7 and a half minutes, and forget to say, you know, thank you. If you have any questions, I'll be right over here, you know, after the presentation, or here is my contact information.

Ted, Elizabeth's got a— yeah, thanks, that was a lot of information. Elizabeth's got a comment and then Mark Maloney.

Yeah, thanks, Ted, that was really informative and detailed. Thank you. With regard to the social psychology piece, I think I may have mentioned before, I'm a psychotherapist, recovering psychotherapist. I just practice on my teenager and my 95-year-old right now. But you know what the Amy Cuddy video is about to a great extent is taking up physical space. She talks about hands on the hips, the pose, the Usain Bolt pose is, you know, the arms are up. It's really sort of like, hey, I belong here. I don't have a problem with these things I'm telling you, perhaps a bit of gesticulation without getting too crazy. So yeah, I just wanted to throw that in.

Thank you. I forgot you had that background, but I was just reading about this yesterday and I said, I'm going to add this to my final slide. And, you know, good recommendation because not everybody's comfortable with being on stage, you know, and, you know, it's an art. Yep.

Thanks, Mark.

Yeah, but that's interesting, Elizabeth. Yeah. When I was still in the Army, I did a master's degree, USC, in counseling.

Wow.

But, uh, never actually used it. The only reason I did was that the Army had just started their volunteer Army service, and every other, every other soldier had a drug habit. So you did a lot of counseling.

The, uh, yeah, that's funny. My drug and alcohol was my specialty for a long time.

Really?

That's great.

Now it's, now it's opioids, opioid, uh, addiction.

Well, Ted, I got to tell you that the presentation today was worth a year's worth of dues to Tiger. That was phenomenal. I really hope we get a copy of it because that's a masterwork in how to do it. I have a couple of questions. First of all, I have a comment that the first thing I've always done with every sales force is the elevator pitch. And I spend days on it and I make everybody memorize it. But the next thing I try to teach and teach and teach and teach is something that kind of I, I learned in the Army is troops fight like they train. So basically the rehearsal is the single most important thing. And I've seen people spend weeks to get an appointment or an interview, and they'll spend weeks getting the interview or the appointment, and they'll spend 10 minutes preparing for it. It's insane. So rehearsal is so key. That to me was the most important thing you said today. I was curious what you think was the most important thing you said today, and I will leave you to that.

Yeah, I think practice makes perfect. I think the other thing is keep it simple. You know, it is a tendency to throw too much on a slide, go too deep because you're an expert in the area. So don't resist the temptation to just overshare in this pitch. You're going to have an opportunity if you're successful in getting a positive impression and an agreement to have a second meeting and to go deeper, to go deeper. And you can— that's that second deck, the investor deck. You can go up to 20, 30, 60 slides maybe, but well organized in a way that an investor wants to get the information. But Keep it simple. Don't overcomplicate it. Don't go too deep. Don't put too much information and too many graphics in place so that it just becomes a whirlwind of sensory overload. Aster's up.

A quick question about the topic of TAM, SAM, and SOM. If you're creating a new market itself, you're creating a new, whether it's a product category, new procedural category, whatever it may be, how do you actually come up with a realistic data-backed number for all of those? Because you're creating a new market or you're, you know, some of it is you're, there's a value proposition, there's a value add. So there's new market dollars, but you're also stealing and poaching market dollars from other market segments. And you know, I always roll my eyes like on Shark Tank when they're like, well, if we got 1% of the market, it's like, that's not a, you know, that's not a business model. So how do you kind of come up with a realistic number that's both meaningful for a venture capitalist to feel comfortable investing on you to get that ROI, but also you're not, you know, kind of just pulling a number out of your ass and saying this is actually based on X, Y, Z?

Well, I think you have to have some hard numbers. It may be a new category, but you are replacing something that's being done today for those patients. And it may be that they are just patients that have to take a Tylenol because there's not a good surgical procedure for it. Or there's some other type of surgical procedure that's ineffective. So at least have some numbers to show. This is my opinion, Tiger, or someone else in the group probably has ideas on this, but I think it's good to be as data-driven as you can be, you know, for the VCs and not just do the Shark Tank approach, which they do have to get a lot across. And I think they only have like, what, 2 or 3 minutes to do it. So It's all very high level.

Yep, good question.

Uh, Mauricio?

Yeah, with respect to the market, I only wanted to add one thing, and I think Ted mentioned it, but every time I've pitched someone, when I started pitching, I had these, uh, you know, trauma market size and it's growing at a CAGR or whatever, and those numbers, they mean nothing to investors. So it's a lot better to to find like hard procedure number data, then add your ASP to that and build your market based on that. So it's something that you can actually demonstrate that you built a market from the bottom up and not say, oh, trauma orthopedics is a $64 billion market and we're going for, you know, so that means we're in a big market and this is a good business. But actually like be very specific about how you build it.

Yeah, great comment.

Well, so just, just to kind of ask about that, because that was kind of a line of thinking I had, um, you know, are you then using software like AcuityMD to get data on CPT codes or Definitive Healthcare to get data on like ICD-10 codes? Like, where are you pulling those actual numbers from?

Uh, Acuity. For now, I've used Acuity thus far, and it gives you very solid data for a procedure, and then you can, you can build off of that.

Yeah, only problem is it's like $40 grand for like 2 years, isn't it, or something? It's expensive.

Yeah, what happens is there's a lot of organizations that help startups that have licenses. So if you're, if you're in a medtech incubator or something, you will find access to a license or like here in Florida, the Florida High Tech Corridor has access to a license from Acuity. So I just give them the CPT codes and they give me back the numbers.

Oh, interesting. Okay, thank you.

And there's a couple other, there's a couple of other organizations that can get comparative quotes from. Acuity is great. And there's one called Med Scout. You can take a look at them. It's medscout.io. And there's one called S2N Health. They've got a nice database. I've had presentations from all three of them. And I think they're all very good. It's just a question of are they the right fit for your marketplace? Thank you.

Yeah. Chris Wright had a question.

I'm sorry, I hit the wrong button. I'm actually in an airport, but love hearing what Ted had to say. And I would say that Med Scout, I actually bought it from my own consulting firm and I got it for a pretty reasonable price and I use it for each one of my clients. It's I wish I would have had it 10 years ago. I would have probably exited out of my Sonics a lot earlier, and it would have— as a commercial leader, and it's really helping me build some of these decks that I've been helping with our new clients. So that's it.

Thanks, Chris. Yeah, go ahead, Mark.

Nope.

Oh, we can't hear you.

Ted, how much should a company pay to have an outside consultant build their pitch deck?

Well, I've hired and I've gotten quotes from a number of them, but I would say a good, good qualified person that has a team that can help also on the graphic side, it's going to be probably a $15,000 to up to $25,000, you know, range. If you got someone who's going to do it for $5,000, you could probably do it yourself through some, uh, AI, you know.

And how much, uh, how much should a company pay somebody to build, to do their elevator pitch, in your opinion?

In my opinion, I agree with you, Mark, that it's, it's critically important. So that process of doing that, and today you've got even people you've probably seen on LinkedIn that are specializing in video, you know, pitches and how to do video introductions. You know, Matthew Scott White and Eric Anderson, who's also in orthopedics, are doing that even for the bigger companies. And, you know, that's gonna be, you know, depending on how much you already have available at your, you know, your own team. You know, you could get low, as low as maybe $5,000 to $7,000. But, you know, it could be for someone really to do it right for you. It's going to be probably an à la carte type thing, you know, in between $5,000 up to $15,000.

Okay, thanks.

Yeah, good question.

I got a question, Ted. Alessa is not here today, but I can speak for her. She has a rule of thumb where she will only give her slide deck in person. She will never mail it to anybody. What are your thoughts on emailing presentations versus have to be there in person?

I think you have to provide something. You're going to limit your ability to get at bats, as I call them. So create a very simple, you know, more high-level, broad, without getting into too much detail. And a one-pager to be able to put out there. And put— you can put confidential on it, but generally most VCs will not sign an NDA until they get into due diligence. So don't expect— don't wait around for an NDA before you can share your deck. But the whole idea again is just to— it's like your first interview on a job interview. It's just you're going to be impressionable to get through the noise to get the second meeting. Yeah, right. I think Alyssa needs to, needs to put it out there.

Yeah, so you need a teaser piece of information in a PDF. Um, that's a really good point. It's, it's more like dating, you know. Nobody's going to get married after the first date, or nobody's going to write a $5 million check after the first date. You're really just trying to earn the right to have another meeting.

Yeah, it's a process. It's a marathon, not a sprint. You know, it's a relationship-based— there's a great panel done by a group, Nick Paciuto at LSI. I'll send you the link to it, Tiger. I think you can kind of go to the LSI forum. They— it was one of the best panels. Is basically title of is, why the heck can't I raise capital, you know, for startups, you know. And there's all these various operating leaders and/or one startup leader, and J&J strategic guy there, and Nick Pachuta, who's been on both sides of the fence. It was a masterful panel where they talk about, hey, just do these 4 or 5 things and remember it's a relationship. It's not gonna— like, yeah, it's not like flipping a switch.

Who's, who's going to be pitching next? Uh, Anthony, Mauricio, who's John?

Oh, always pitching. Yeah, I'm— I've got 2 or 3 I'm pitching on right now. And so I was really excited to see Ted post this and get it up here because, you know, it's always good no matter how many times you've done it, you can always learn more. And it was funny as I listened to your talk, Ted, I saw all the mistakes I've made in the past. And so it was, it was really good. So thank you for sharing. Yeah, very, very helpful. You're welcome.

Yeah, there's— I think there's a— I think there's an art of leaving out a lot of detail on the— your first pitch. It's— you got to tease them a little bit. Um, don't share everything because you're really trying to get a second meeting. And the story— and the other thing is, if even if you hire an outside firm The hardest part is honing your message. You know, how are you different? Why, you know, why is the team going to prevail? No matter— there's going to be bad things that happen, and you have to convince your investors that the team can figure it out. So how do you show resilience? Asher's got a comment.

Yeah, I think one of the biggest things that I've seen, at least having worked at small and large companies, is a lot of your customers will will also help you kind of guide that pitch. I mean, you know, it's very easy for, you know, if you're working, especially if you're working at like a big company where like the marketing team is so far removed from what sales and the customers deal with, they come up with all these fancy slogans and the pitches using all the, you know, key buzzwords that the industry throws out. And then you try to actually talk to a customer with that pitch and they like, their eyes gloss over and they know you've never actually sold anything in your life. So I think a lot of it should actually be driven based on like iterative customer feedback, you know, make the pitch to an actual distributor, an actual surgeon, see how they respond, and then kind of adjust based on how they actually pitch it themselves. And then, you know, learn from the guys that are really successful at selling your own product.

And that's what you're— what you're talking about is brand. So a company can never dictate what their brand is. The brand is what your customers think of your, your products or services. Yeah, you can only— you can only get that from your customers, and that's the true brand. So yeah, I agree. Customer— the customer, whatever the customer thinks your product or company is, that's what it is. It's hard to change. Well, this has been awesome, Ted. This is, uh, this will be— so this will be available for everybody to watch again, and we'll also upload Ted's deck and the other content. So thanks, guys. We're going to take July 4th off. If you want a hat, send me your, send me your physical address. I'll send you a hat. I've already got Anthony's. So we'll see you in 2 weeks. Thanks, guys.

Thanks, everyone. Have a great 4th next week. Thank you, guys.

Thanks, Ted.

Bye-bye. Thanks, Ted.