LivePlan

Start with the problem, not the product.

Communities, forums, Reddit threads, competitor reviews. That's where the real market signal lives. If frustrated customers are already complaining somewhere, you've found a pain point worth testing. If nobody's talking about the problem, that's a signal too.

Then get brutally honest about three numbers. What you'll charge. What it costs to deliver. How many customers it takes to replace what you're earning now. No optimism, no rounding up.

Now take your biggest assumption, the one the whole business depends on, and ask what happens if you're wrong by half. Maybe your price point is 30% lower than you hoped. Maybe demand is thinner than you expected. Does the business still work? If the answer is no, the idea isn't ready yet.

DoorDash's pitch deck had one A+ slide and one slide that completely ignored their biggest competitor.

45 minutes after the DoorDash founders put up the Palo Alto Delivery website, the first order came in. One founder drove it over himself. That's the literal start of the $80 billion company.

Their 2013 YC Demo Day deck had one slide that earns an A+ in any pitch class. A single number, 31%, week-over-week growth, backed by over $1.5 million in annualized restaurant sales from one suburb where the four co-founders were doing the deliveries themselves.

Then there's the competitive landscape slide. A two-by-two with DoorDash sitting alone in the empty quadrant, a couple of named competitors plotted around them, and the biggest competitor of all nowhere to be found. Restaurants handling their own delivery, missing. Customers deciding to skip delivery entirely, missing.

Always pressure-test your competitive slide before an investor does it for you.

Try our new Pitch Deck tool using the link in our bio.