In case you’ve ever needed to plan a big infrastructure challenge — like constructing a brand new part of a metropolis or attempting to determine how a lot water and wastewater you want in a sure space — you’ve most likely run into a number of issues alongside the way in which. “However modeling and planning,” I hear you cry. “Isn’t that what computer systems are supposed to be good at?”

Nicely, sure. No surprise, then, that Transcend scooped up a $20 million Sequence B spherical from Autodesk, amongst others.

It’s a courageous new world of design that, frankly, I don’t know all that a lot about. However $20 million doesn’t lie, so let’s see the place Transcend, er, transcends and the place it stays painfully mortal.

We’re in search of extra distinctive pitch decks to tear down, so if you wish to submit your personal, right here’s how you are able to do that. 

Slides on this deck

The Transcend staff shared its deck with us in a considerably redacted state. I’m often not an enormous fan of that, however the staff included as a lot of the deck because it may, with solely minor edits. The redactions are as follows:

• Slide 11: Proprietary provide chain knowledge level
• Slide 13: Product roadmap and monetary tasks per vertical
• Slide 14: Buyer title, challenge names, income numbers and sale dates for OEM use case
• Slide 16: Monetary aims, together with web income retention projections, CARR projections, ARR projections, money stream margin projections and complete capital projections

Aside from the above, the deck is as-pitched, so you need to nonetheless have the ability to get a reasonably good concept of the stream of the corporate’s narrative. That is the total breakdown of the slides within the deck:

1. Cowl slide
2. Abstract slide
3. Drawback and Answer slide
4. Product slide
5. Traction slide
6. Advantages slide
7. Digital demo (video) slide
8. Firm/product historical past
9. Differentiation slide
10.   Buyer section slide
11.   Worth proposition per buyer section slide
12.   Market alternative slide
13.   Product roadmap slide [redacted]
14.   Buyer case research slide
15.   Crew slide
16.   Use of funds slide
17.   Closing slide

Three issues to like

The Transcend deck has loads of actually good examples. Listed here are my prime three:

You spin me proper out, child, proper out

It isn’t precisely uncommon for a startup to be spun out from one other enterprise, however telling the story of how and why that occurred may be fairly difficult. However Transcend does it notably nicely:

[Slide 8] An in a single day success, 10 years later. Picture Credit: Transcend

There’s often a reasonably good cause for a startup to spin out of an organization. On this case, the instrument on the heart of Transcend is one which was constructed internally, earlier than the corporate originating the instrument realized that it could be helpful for others. From product to product/market match, by way of business validation, to a spinout that will get to construct its personal buyer base may be an arduous path. The nice factor, on this case, is that the spin-out was accomplished 4 years in the past. A lot of the danger related to that a part of the method ought to now have been resolved, however the advantages from being a 10-year-old product, quite than an lively four-year-old must also be seen. Having this slide within the deck helps place the corporate in time and house (and solutions the “why now?” query) .

Very nicely executed!

Similar instrument, totally different advantages

Instruments can be utilized for all kinds of issues — that’s the fantastic thing about a instrument — however it’s tough to elucidate that totally different goal audiences can discover worth for various use circumstances.

[Slide 11] The design is giving me a cluster headache — however the data conveyed is nice. Picture Credit: Transcend

Let’s say little or no concerning the design of this slide and deal with the content material. Transcend does an excellent job displaying how the totally different buyer classes have totally different features of the enterprise. Out there sizing slide, the corporate doubles down on how it’ll promote to all of those classes of consumers; beginning the dialog with what the advantages are is a good way to construct a multilayered story.

Watch out, although: It’s nice to have a number of classes of consumers, however it’s simple for a startup to look unfocused. Promoting to colleges is totally different from promoting to hospitals or governments, and also you usually want totally different gross sales strategies for every. On this case, I’ll let Transcend off the hook; the variety of organizations which have a necessity for infrastructure-scale design might be restricted, so outlining how the corporate can promote to a number of verticals without delay helps inform the “Hey, the market measurement is completely affordable” a part of the story.

Apropos market measurement

[Slide 12] Helloooo, market measurement(s). Picture Credit: Transcend.

It’s a bit odd to have a graph that appears to go up and to the fitting; you’d anticipate the Y axis to be “time.” That isn’t the case; this graph describes the varied industries. Transcend focuses on three of them (sewer/wastewater, water, and energy) and reveals that it’d doubtlessly broaden to others sooner or later.

Graphic and knowledge design apart, I really like that this slide provides a really clear indication of how massive the chance is immediately, and the way massive it may develop if the corporate added further verticals to its focus listing. I don’t know this trade nicely sufficient to know whether or not the $100 billion+ spent on design work is a quantity that Transcend may realistically go after (in different phrases, if it sucks up the entire market share, would Transcend be a $100 billion per yr firm? That appears a bit formidable, however I’m not really certain the way to sense-check that). Presumably, traders who’re lively on this house would instantly have the ability to know whether or not that is real looking.

As a startup, what you’ll be able to be taught right here is to take into account that vertical expansions can provide large alternatives. If related to your organization, paint the image — it will probably assist illustrate the scale of your ambition, and, in the end, the chance to the traders.

In the remainder of this teardown, we’ll take a look at three issues Transcend may have improved or executed in a different way, together with its full pitch deck!