Dogpatch Labs

Creating an Early-Stage Pitch Deck

RyanSpoon — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 22:29:28 +0000

Note: This article originally appeared on TechCrunch (“How To Create An Early-Stage Pitch Deck For Investors”).

It is the first in a series of posts / decks that I will be doing on those questions I get asked most commonly. Of course we will start with the question I get most: how to create a great pitch deck!

When raising capital, a combination of your company’s product, vision, team and execution are what ultimately attract investment. And while the pitch deck is ultimately less important than vision and product, it exists to convey both elements and get investors hungry for more.

Like other investors, I come across hundreds of pitches each month — some in person, others in email; some as PowerPoints, and others as full-fledged business plans. Your goal is to craft a deck that is both:

- crisp: succinct enough that it is easily digestible (in person, email, etc)

- and complete: thorough enough that it conveys the big vision and current traction

I looked back on many of the pitches I reviewed over the last couple years (good and bad) and compared it to public pitch decks of familiar, successful companies like Airbnb, Foursquare, and Mint. The output is this guide to creating an early-stage pitch deck. It’s intended for companies seeking seed and series A investments.

There are five core themes followed by a suggested structure:

1. Have a great one-liner
2. Know your audience
3. Keep it to 10-15 slides
4. Beware of the demo
5. Expect the deck to be shared

And remember: it’s the story and the conversation that is important – not the imagery and colors. If you can convey the passion that drives you (and your users / customers!), you will have created a powerful pitch deck.

Why Dublin is probably the best place in Europe to launch your startup

Noel Ruane — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 18:57:17 +0000

When deciding where to ‘do’ a startup………you’re looking for: Human capital, financial capital, an established tech community combining both the most successful tech companies in the world and early stage peers. An environment that’s pro-business . A location that’s easily accessible and somewhere that’s vibrant, energetic and where you have a great quality of life. Across any and all of these measures……….Dublin is that location.

Human capital – whether that’s management or top tier graduates, they can be found in Dublin. There’s a cadre of management in Ireland with global experience across all functions whose skills have been honed leading and building out both Europe-wide and global operations for companies like Microsoft, Google, Ebay, Paypal and more recently Facebook and Linkedin – all here in Dublin. On the more junior side, Ireland ranked first in the world for most-highly employable graduates according to a European Commission Study of international recruiters last year.
The presence of companies like Google, Facebook, Linkedin, Microsoft and Twitter means emerging companies who are developing on their platforms or looking to partner with them in some shape or form can access key personnel easily – they’re all located within a couple of miles of each other and most of them within walking distance.
From an investment and financing perspective, there’s never been a better time for early stage teams forming a business to locate in Ireland. There’s over US $250m available in seed funding in Ireland at present. Again that’s US $250m! This is comprised of four dedicated seed funds totaling US $145m, further matching funding from Enterprise Ireland of $80m, add in initiatives such as the Competitive Start Fund, angel funds from structured groups such as HBAN and private investment from high net-worth individuals and……………………well as I said you’ve got a quarter of a billion US dollars available in seed funding in Ireland right now. For a country with a population of 4.5m people……..that’s a lot of money and non-Irish entrepreneurs should take note and perhaps re-think where they’re going to launch their next business.
In addition to the above, there’s a bunch of other supports available here. There’s more than five Y-combinator inspired accelerator programs in Dublin alone, including Propeller, Startupbootcamp, Create, Launchpad and Hothouse that provide the classic 3 month program with mentors and funding by way of stipend. For companies further down the track, there’s the opportunity to potentially be part of Dogpatch Labs Europe.
Less than 10 days ago, one of Europe’s largest tech events, the Dublin Web Summit drew an audience of over 1500 people over 2 days. In tandem with that, F.ounders for the second year running brought 150 of the worlds’ most prestigious and successful tech founders to Dublin – including the founders of Netflix, Rovio (Angry Birds), Linkedin, Skype and Paypal – on an invite only basis for an intimate get together. F.ounders has since been lauded by the Wall Street Journal, Techcrunch, Mashable and more as amongst other things “the best event I have ever attended”.
Dublin is a vibrant and energetic city – those who move here love living here and comment frequently about the great quality of life. In addition to that, one can hop on a plane and be anywhere in Europe in less than 2 hours. And NYC/Boston is a pretty short hop in the other direction. In fact one of my colleagues from NYC who was over here last week noted that it was a quicker flight for him than heading out west to California.
So again, I think by any measure Dublin is a phenomenal location to launch and grow a startup and the question that founders from across Europe and further afield should ask themselves isn’t why would l locate in Ireland………… it’s why would I not?

Dia dhaoibh Europe!

Noel Ruane — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 14:34:41 +0000

As many of you know, Dogpatch Labs are established communities in the major tech hubs across the US: New York City; Cambridge, Mass; and the Bay Area in California. The latest Dogpatch Labs in Dublin, Ireland, is our first non-US outpost and henceforth will be known as Dogpatch Labs Europe. For those of you this side of the Atlantic not familiar with the concept here’s the quick skinny:

Each Dogpatch Labs is a community of like-minded, like-driven startup teams that work side by side in open-plan spaces…… share ideas, refer connections, have banter, play pool, ping-pong, darts……but most importantly support each other and help each other out in whatever way they can as they build great companies.

In Dublin, we provide free desk space for teams of up to 5, connectivity, meeting rooms, lots of espresso, beers, free lunch and pizza a couple of times a week and networking events with domain experts, serial entrepreneurs and investors.

Beyond each immediate community, teams that are resident in one of our Dogpatch Labs are part of a network of communities that now span two continents. For emerging European startups we hope that Dogpatch Labs in Dublin can serve as a gateway into the US market by helping plug teams into our already established communities there. So whilst not a traditional accelerator, we hope to assist early stage European teams accelerate their growth through facilitating connections both in Europe and the States.

In just over 2 years in the US over 300 companies have had their origins in one of the Dogpatch Labs communities. Just under 120 of these have raised between $100k to $10m, with a total combined raise of almost $150m. Companies like Instagram, Jibe, Formspring and Turntable.fm are US Dogpatch Labs Alumni.

We’re just 4 weeks in at Dogpatch Labs in Dublin but already 12 companies are resident here including Intercom, Logentries, Profitero , CoderDojo and Trimod.

So, whether you’re in Madrid, London, Copenhagen, Bucharest, Prague…. wherever, if you’ve got the guts of a great team, have a scalable proposition that you believe can compete or lead on the world stage and or even define a new category or vertical, we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch: dublin@dogpatchlabs.com

Cheers, Noel

Dogpatch Cambridge Hiring like Crazy!

gusweber — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 15:03:55 +0000

I posted an update last week about some of the successes that our residents are celebrating, and about the awesome community that makes Dogpatch such a vibrant place to come and build your company. One thing that struck me was the sheer number of open jobs that our residents are trying to fill — over 35 of them! If YOU want to be part of an awesome community working on the ground level with some disruptive and innovation companies — then check out the partial list below of who is hiring at Dogpatch (and our neighbors at TechStars too!). Impressive companies to say the least!

Take the Interview:

Ginger.IO

YesWare

Localytics

Web Designer

Promoboxx

PHP Developer

Practically Green

GrabCAD

Azavea:

Software Engineer

Labtiva

Relay Technology Management

UI Web Developer

Shareaholic

Software Engineer

Locu

Evertrue

Kinvey

Dogpatch Cambridge is Rocking & Rolling!

gusweber — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 20:36:00 +0000

In some places, summer means relaxing on the cape, traveling around the country, or perhaps just working your standard 35 hour work week. Not in DPL Cambridge — here is means cranking on product, fundraising and hiring! It’s been an amazing summer for the Dogpatch Cambridge community, and I wanted to share some of the awesome accomplishments and progress that residents are making. Folks here are here in Dogpatch every day and they’re killing it. It shows in the successes listed below, it shows in the energy at the ping pong table, but most importantly – it shows in the strength of the community. That community is the backbone of Dogpatch and the source of amazing amounts of energy. Ask any resident, they’ll tell you. Everyday I’m more amazed at the generosity of our community and to the commitment that they’ve made to each other to help everyone hit the next milepost in stride!
With the addition of Dogpatch in Dublin, the Dogpatch community now extends across 4 cities (and 2 continents!), and at any given time there are over 75 collective companies actively participating in the Dogpatch community (with over 300 participating as alumni!) So what’s been happening you ask? A ton! Here’s the rundown in Cambridge, in no particular order:

Take The interview closed a $775,000 seed round!

Peer Transfer closed a $7.5mm series A round.

Practically Green launched their business product (Practically Green for Business) and was selected to power the SxSW eco-challenge.

YesWare officially launched their Product and closes a $1mm seed round.

Get Privy was named a Mass Challenge top 26 finalist

Locu closed a $600k seed round

Art Venue launched product and was named a Mass Challenge top 26 finalist!

Boundless Learning graduated from Dogpatch and moved into permanent space!

Crave Labs has launched its beta product!

Localytics won IBM smartcamp!

OnChip Power graduated from Dogpatch, and moved into permanent space!

We’re also thrilled to welcome a few new members of the Dogpatch Community: (there’s also a bunch we can’t talk about yet!)

Arcbazar is a first-of-its-kind crowd-sourcing platform for small to medium scale design projects. It allows an easy and fast interface between clients, designersand contractors.

BISON is the Boston Illiquid Security Offering Network. A web-based platform designed to promote fundraising and capital formation for alternative investments.

Locu is founded by MIT graduates and computer science researchers, Locu is creating the world’s largest semantically-annotated repository of real-time small-business data.

ParElastic is an elastic database middle-ware that creates a virtual elastic relational database from a collection of unaffiliated, free-running, industry standard relational databases.

Shareaholic is the the home of the most insanely easy-to-use sharing tools on the web. Reaching over 200 million users. Are you plugged in yet

If you’re in Kendall Square, feel free to swing into 1 Cambridge Center (6^th floor) and say hello! If you’re interested in joinging the awesome Dogpatch community, You can apply here.

Awesome Week in Dublin!

gusweber — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 19:49:45 +0000

In case you missed it, last week we officially announced the opening our 4th Dogpatch in the European Tech Hub of Dublin (in the amazing Grand Canal’s neighborhood).

We’re just back today from spending the week in Ireland at the official launch & grand opening, and all I can say is — WOW! What an amazing place to to launch our European presence.

In addition to much of theDublin community, we were thrilled to have Enda Kenny, TD, Ireland’s Taoiseach (Prime Minister) attend the grand opening and meet with each of the first companies to comprise the DPL Europe community.

While we were there, we also had the opportunity to meet the inaugural class of DPL residents, that is group of creative and talented entrepreneurs with diverse backgrounds (PhD’s, IBM, Google, etc).

And they’ll be led by a the newest member of the Dogpatch Team, Noel Ruane. Noel, a previous entrepreneur himself, embodies what it means to be part of a community, and is one of the main leaders of the broader European start-up community.

Back in the States, we’re excited to welcome Noel and the first Dogpatch companies to the collective community of over 300 companies that currently comprise the Dogpatch community. Once Noel gets settled in the new digs, we’ll do a proper introduction to each of the Dublin companies.

Read more on Dave’s blog, Ryan’s blog, or the Polaris Venture Partners Blog

DPL-SF: Remembering Our Inspirational Home, Preparing for Next Chapter

gusweber — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 22:46:32 +0000

Since 2008, Pier 38 has been the Dogpatch Labs, San Francisco (DPL/SF) inspirational home to nearly 250 entrepreneurs. Using the shared space and mentorship that DPL/SF has provided, these creative minds formed roughly 150 innovative companies.

Unfortunately, our Pier 38 home will soon be changing.

The Port Authority of San Francisco notified all Pier 38 tenants today that they must vacate the building by the end of September. This action stems from specific building code violations that were provided to Pier 38 building management in mid-August.

While today’s action creates a difficult set of relocation challenges, we want to use this moment to recognize and celebrate a few important milestones from our two-and-a-half years at Pier 38.

First, DPL/SF companies secured over $100 million in funding. Second, eight companies moved to acquisition, including AppJet, Wild Pockets, Thing Labs (Brizzly), Rec Rec, Movity, Fridge, and LOLapps. Other big names to remember include Instagram, Formspring, TaskRabbit, Yardsellr, StyleSeat, LearnBoost, MyPad and Recurly.

For our current and former entrepreneurs, the time spent at Pier 38 developing these and other companies has been significant. Long hours, group coffees, lunches, speaker presentations, successes and failures will all be remembered and associated with this first home.

We will also remember our dynamic Pier 38 neighbors, namely Twilio, 99 Designs, Jambool (Google), Social Media (Living Social), Automattic /Wordpress, Threadsy, and True Ventures.

Over the next few weeks, we will be working with each of our 18 current Dogpatch Labs residents to help them ensure that they have a suitable workplace going forward.

And as we seek a new location for Dogpatch Labs, our commitment to supporting early-stage startups is unchanged. We look forward to beginning a new chapter in our history very soon.

Updates from the Pier on DPL San Francisco

gusweber — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 21:13:29 +0000

If you’ve stopped by Dogpatch at Pier 38 over the past few weeks, you’ve probably noticed a bunch of new faces! We’ve had a whole new crop of awesome entrepreneurs working on some pretty cool projects. At any given time, across the 3 dogpatch location, there are over 80 companies at work, representing well over 225 entrepreneurs. Stay tuned for some updated from DPL in Cambridge and New York!

Here’s the rundown of who has joined us in San Francisco:

Bombfell: Bombfell’s the clothing subscription for guys that’s like having a fashion-savvy girlfriend send you one stylish item of clothing every month.

KarmaStore: Solves important problems around the world by connecting people who want to see change with great charities focused on making an impact.

LimeLig.ht: Is creating meaningful interactions with the world’s most interesting people

Open Home Pro: Open Home Pro is a platform for real estate agents to convert more leads and communicate more effectively with each other.

Rally Commerce: is a social commerce platform built from the ground up for online merchants.

RushRez: is a risk-free ad network for local businesses

SocMetrics: Socmetrics is a SaaS tool for finding social media Influencers for any given topic- e.g. we have the top 10,000 most relevant, authoritative, and influential people who tweet, blog, post videos on YouTube etc. about any topic, from Cloud Computing to Travel to Moms.

TapSense: is building exciting new distribution tools for mobile app developers. Stay tuned.

Zoom Learning: Zoom is personalized learning on iPad. We use cloud technologies and analytics to automatically update learning content, show performance report card and provide tips and tricks to improve and excel.

Looking to Apply to Dogpatch?

gusweber — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 17:18:03 +0000

We’ve created a standard application process that covers all 3 US locations of DPL. You can apply here: http://bit.ly/dplapplication.

Things are hustling at Dogpatch Cambridge!

gusweber — Tue, 10 May 2011 15:34:35 +0000

It’s been a crazy couple of months at Dogpatch Cambridge, and I wanted to share some of the awesomeness that happening here in our new space in Kendall Square (thanks Microsoft!). In the past few months, we’ve added a bunch of GREAT companies, had a couple graduate and have seen a bunch of companies celebrate successes in fundraising and reaching critical milestones in their pursuit to build a kick-ass business.

If you haven’t yet stopped by Dogpatch in Cambridge, swing in! We’re in the heart of Kendall Square, at 1 Cambridge Center (next to the MIT Redline Stop). If you’re interesting in applying to Dogpatch Cambridge, send Gus a note: gweber@polarisventures.com.

Let’s start with a little news on the goodness that is happening in the Dogpatch Community:

Boundless Learning closed a $1.7m seed round!

Practically Green won the William James Foundation Award for Socially Responsible Businesses and was named a MITX innovation award finalist.

Take the Interview was accepted into DreamIT ventures Summer program in NYC

Social Sci hit a huge product milestone

Localytics closed a $2.5m funding round

OnChip Power closed a $1.8m funding round

Blogger offer officially launched their product

OsComp Systems graduated Dogpatch and have moved into permanent space!

In addition to a bunch of huge wins for DPL residents, at last count there are over 30 companies that make up the Dogpatch Cambridge community. In the past few months, here’s who we’ve added (in addition to several companies operating in stealth).

Art Venue: Changes the game for artists by making it simple to book shows in local businesses

Blogger Offer: Is a new style of advertorial content where brands and merchants can offer deals to a targeted audience leveraging a blogger’s trusted voice

Boundless Learning: Is taking a big swing in the education space!

Deal Gator: Is daily deal aggregator and coupon organizer. It collects all the deals in each city and provides easy-to-use tools for personalizing the daily listing.

Django Zoom: Is a privately funded technology start-up whose mission is to make software development teams more successful through continuous deployment.

Five Spark: Helps small and medium businesses go head-to-head with their larger competitors by offering them a sophisticated but affordable web-based mobile application builder.

Kibits: Is working on new approaches to mobile real-time collaboration

Practically Green: Is an online service that motivates and inspires people to make green andhealthy changes in their lives

Privy: Is a self service promotions platform empowering small business owners with tools to create and launch pre-paid deals and gift certificates directly from their websites

Spotly: Is a location-based media app, letting you drop video, music, or images in a physical place for others to find it

Take the Interview: Is a cloud-based video interviewing platform for employers and candidates

Yesware: Is building services to help salespeople close more deals. Our product focus is the intersection of email, CRM and sales workflow

There’s lots of great momentum in the Dogpatch community in Cambridge (and in the Boston start-up scene in general). Here’s to an awesome spring and the start to an even more awesome summer!