Startups

VC Lotti Siniscalco shares dos and don’ts in the Pitch Deck Teardown at TC Early Stage

Comment

Perfect pitch, a singer’s ability to produce any given musical note without a reference tone, is a rare phenomenon — only 1-5 people out of every 10,000 have it. While your odds of creating a perfect pitch deck that captures coveted VC interest aren’t quite that dire, they’re not exactly in your favor, either.

Venture capital shattered records around the world in Q4 2021. The number of startups seeking funding increased 33% YOY, and the time investors spent looking at individual pitch decks dropped to an all-time low: 2 minutes and 28 seconds. That’s a 12% decrease from the previous year.

When competition for investor time and attention is this intense, you need a stand-out pitch deck. It’s the most powerful tool you have to convince investors they should schedule a meeting to learn more about you, your product and your company. 

The road to a perfect pitch deck is paved with countless revisions, and a source of constructive, expert feedback can be invaluable. That’s why we’re thrilled to announce that Carlotta “Lotti” Siniscalco, a partner at Emergence Capital, will lead an interactive session called Pitch Deck Teardown at TechCrunch Early Stage on April 14.

During this session, Siniscalco will dissect and critique actual work-in-progress pitch decks submitted by audience members. She’ll call out which elements work and which ones fall flat — and she’ll explain why on both counts.

Siniscalco is the first female partner at Emergence Capital, and she earned that distinction as a result of the extraordinary impact she’s had on the firm, the team and EC’s portfolio companies. She invests in early-stage enterprise software companies, and her portfolio includes Convex, High Alpha, Oyster, Talent Hack and Whistic.

Prior to joining Emergence, Siniscalco served at Advent International — a large global private equity fund — as an investor in financial services and financial technology companies and also as an observer on the Transunion board.

Her early career, which began as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, includes a stint in the BizOps group at Nerdwallet and as an early-stage investor at Ribbit Capital, a fintech-focused VC.

A pitch deck has but one job: get the meeting. It’s the entry point for everything you want to come next. Take advantage of this opportunity to look at pitch decks from an investor’s point of view. Join Lotti Siniscalco and learn the mission-critical dos and don’ts for building a perfect pitch deck. 

TC Early Stage sessions provide plenty of time to engage, ask questions and walk away with a deeper, working understanding of topics and skills that are essential to startup success. Register now before $249 founder tickets sell out!

More TechCrunch

The families of victims of the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas are suing Activision and Meta, as well as gun manufacturer Daniel Defense. The families bringing the…

Families of Uvalde shooting victims sue Activision and Meta

Like most Silicon Valley VCs, what Garry Tan sees is opportunities for new, huge, lucrative businesses.

Y Combinator’s Garry Tan supports some AI regulation but warns against AI monopolies

Everything in society can feel geared toward optimization – whether that’s standardized testing or artificial intelligence algorithms. We’re taught to know what outcome you want to achieve, and find the…

How Maven’s AI-run ‘serendipity network’ can make social media interesting again

Miriam Vogel, profiled as part of TechCrunch’s Women in AI series, is the CEO of the nonprofit responsible AI advocacy organization EqualAI.

Women in AI: Miriam Vogel stresses the need for responsible AI

Google has been taking heat for some of the inaccurate, funny, and downright weird answers that it’s been providing via AI Overviews in search. AI Overviews are the AI-generated search…

What are Google’s AI Overviews good for?

When it comes to the world of venture-backed startups, some issues are universal, and some are very dependent on where the startups and its backers are located. It’s something we…

The ups and downs of investing in Europe, with VCs Saul Klein and Raluca Ragab

Welcome back to TechCrunch’s Week in Review — TechCrunch’s newsletter recapping the week’s biggest news. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. OpenAI announced this week that…

Scarlett Johansson brought receipts to the OpenAI controversy

Accurate weather forecasts are critical to industries like agriculture, and they’re also important to help prevent and mitigate harm from inclement weather events or natural disasters. But getting forecasts right…

Deal Dive: Can blockchain make weather forecasts better? WeatherXM thinks so

pcTattletale’s website was briefly defaced and contained links containing files from the spyware maker’s servers, before going offline.

Spyware app pcTattletale was hacked and its website defaced

Featured Article

Synapse, backed by a16z, has collapsed, and 10 million consumers could be hurt

Synapse’s bankruptcy shows just how treacherous things are for the often-interdependent fintech world when one key player hits trouble. 

1 day ago
Synapse, backed by a16z, has collapsed, and 10 million consumers could be hurt

Sarah Myers West, profiled as part of TechCrunch’s Women in AI series, is managing director at the AI Now institute.

Women in AI: Sarah Myers West says we should ask, ‘Why build AI at all?’

Keeping up with an industry as fast-moving as AI is a tall order. So until an AI can do it for you, here’s a handy roundup of recent stories in the world…

This Week in AI: OpenAI and publishers are partners of convenience

Evan, a high school sophomore from Houston, was stuck on a calculus problem. He pulled up Answer AI on his iPhone, snapped a photo of the problem from his Advanced…

AI tutors are quietly changing how kids in the US study, and the leading apps are from China

Welcome to Startups Weekly — Haje‘s weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. Well,…

Startups Weekly: Drama at Techstars. Drama in AI. Drama everywhere.

Last year’s investor dreams of a strong 2024 IPO pipeline have faded, if not fully disappeared, as we approach the halfway point of the year. 2024 delivered four venture-backed tech…

From Plaid to Figma, here are the startups that are likely — or definitely — not having IPOs this year

Federal safety regulators have discovered nine more incidents that raise questions about the safety of Waymo’s self-driving vehicles operating in Phoenix and San Francisco.  The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration…

Feds add nine more incidents to Waymo robotaxi investigation

Terra One’s pitch deck has a few wins, but also a few misses. Here’s how to fix that.

Pitch Deck Teardown: Terra One’s $7.5M Seed deck

Chinasa T. Okolo researches AI policy and governance in the Global South.

Women in AI: Chinasa T. Okolo researches AI’s impact on the Global South

TechCrunch Disrupt takes place on October 28–30 in San Francisco. While the event is a few months away, the deadline to secure your early-bird tickets and save up to $800…

Disrupt 2024 early-bird tickets fly away next Friday

Another week, and another round of crazy cash injections and valuations emerged from the AI realm. DeepL, an AI language translation startup, raised $300 million on a $2 billion valuation;…

Big tech companies are plowing money into AI startups, which could help them dodge antitrust concerns

If raised, this new fund, the firm’s third, would be its largest to date.

Harlem Capital is raising a $150 million fund

About half a million patients have been notified so far, but the number of affected individuals is likely far higher.

US pharma giant Cencora says Americans’ health information stolen in data breach

Attention, tech enthusiasts and startup supporters! The final countdown is here: Today is the last day to cast your vote for the TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 Audience Choice program. Voting closes…

Last day to vote for TC Disrupt 2024 Audience Choice program

Featured Article

Signal’s Meredith Whittaker on the Telegram security clash and the ‘edge lords’ at OpenAI 

Among other things, Whittaker is concerned about the concentration of power in the five main social media platforms.

2 days ago
Signal’s Meredith Whittaker on the Telegram security clash and the ‘edge lords’ at OpenAI 

Lucid Motors is laying off about 400 employees, or roughly 6% of its workforce, as part of a restructuring ahead of the launch of its first electric SUV later this…

Lucid Motors slashes 400 jobs ahead of crucial SUV launch

Google is investing nearly $350 million in Flipkart, becoming the latest high-profile name to back the Walmart-owned Indian e-commerce startup. The Android-maker will also provide Flipkart with cloud offerings as…

Google invests $350 million in Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart

A Jio Financial unit plans to purchase customer premises equipment and telecom gear worth $4.32 billion from Reliance Retail.

Jio Financial unit to buy $4.32B of telecom gear from Reliance Retail

Foursquare, the location-focused outfit that in 2020 merged with Factual, another location-focused outfit, is joining the parade of companies to make cuts to one of its biggest cost centers –…

Foursquare just laid off 105 employees

“Running with scissors is a cardio exercise that can increase your heart rate and require concentration and focus,” says Google’s new AI search feature. “Some say it can also improve…

Using memes, social media users have become red teams for half-baked AI features

The European Space Agency selected two companies on Wednesday to advance designs of a cargo spacecraft that could establish the continent’s first sovereign access to space.  The two awardees, major…

ESA prepares for the post-ISS era, selects The Exploration Company, Thales Alenia to develop cargo spacecraft