This document provides a template and sample pitch for entrepreneurs seeking funding for their business. The template includes sections for key elements of a funding pitch such as stating the problem being addressed, the solution or business proposition, market opportunity, competition, financial projections, and founding team. The sample pitch uses this template to present a hypothetical mobile gaming startup. The document emphasizes keeping the pitch concise while demonstrating traction, market size, revenue modeling, and risks to investors. It aims to help first-time entrepreneurs structure and practice their funding pitches.

1. Pitching your Business for Funding?
Use this template!
Includes a live example inside!
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal

2. Quick tour
• I have seen first time entrepreneurs struggling to get
their funding ppt right.
• This deck (specifically targeted at Indian entrepreneurs)
helps to solve that problem by suggesting what can go
inside the ppt. There is a live example later.
• This slide can also be used by entrepreneurs to reflect on
their own business and understand it better!
• I volunteer to be test driven (be the dress rehearsal
audience) for your pitch and give you feedback!
• IMPORTANT – WARNING: This is not ‘the’ only way to
make a funding pitch. There are important ‘Tips &
Disclosures’ you MUST read (Slide No 49) before you
attempt to make your own deck.

3. Start of Template TEMPLATE

4. State your Business/Service
Product/Platform Name clearly
Notes:
1. Mention your Company’s name only if required.
2. State a tagline ONLY – repeat - ONLY if you really
know what your business is about, or it’s an existing,
established tagline.
(Else, you risk creating an impression about your
business that may spook the investors and/or start
the discussion with a debate.)
Read – Tag Lines are out, Benefit Lines are in.
TEMPLATE

5. Benefit Line
• What does your business do, for whom, and
how?
– Try and keep it really crisp
TEMPLATE

6. What is the Problem
you are addressing?
• Clearly state the need or the pain that you
have identified.
TEMPLATE

7. Your Insight/s
to Solve the Problem
• Powerfully & crisply explain how you have
thought through a solution of this big pain-
point that you have discovered.
• This will probably be the most important slide.
The problem identified and solution found
should be ‘business worthy’ enough to
proceed from here on.
TEMPLATE

8. Visual Reference
• At this stage, it would be great if you show the
PROBLEM and the SOLUTION visually.
• If your Startup is a website/app – set up a live
link so that you can present it directly if
required.
• Investors like to SEE the solution just as much
as they can imagine it.
– This also sets the stage to prove that you have a
prototype built out already!
TEMPLATE

9. Your Business Proposition
• Describe crisply at a high level, what is your
business proposition?
• What will you offer, to whom, why, for what
and the benefits of doing so for you.
TEMPLATE

10. How does your business work?
• In simple language, explain the PROCESS of
executing your business.
• Use a flow chart, a logical sequence of screens
or a live example (if you are very confident of it
working*)
(*I have seen Internet connections fail, VCs not
able to connect to their wifi setups, websites
not responding, etc etc. It’s best to leave live
examples for later.)
TEMPLATE

11. Do you have proof
of traction? (if any)
• If there is any proof of early success, show it!
Talk about audience growth/customers using
the service/brands signed up/clients who have
paid/etc etc.
TEMPLATE

12. The Market Size and Potential
• What is the market opportunity? How LARGE
is the market for your solution?!
• Describe your vision of the long term market.
How and why your solution will remain
relevant (and grow) in the next 3-5 years?
(Simply said, your concept should be forward
looking – not backward thinking.)
TEMPLATE

13. Competition Mapping
• Explain boldly, without fear, who is your
competition, what they do, how ahead or
near are they to you, who has funded them,
has there been any acquisitions in this space?
• Clearly state how different you are from the
competition.
TEMPLATE

14. Go to the Market Plan
• How will you go to market? What will be your
strategy? Who will you go to and how?
• It’s best to show a literal 120-180 day plan
that clearly bullets out the most important
tasks you will achieve in your roll out.
TEMPLATE

15. What is the Core Strategy?
• Without hocus pocus and fancy ‘strategy’
charts, just explain the ‘No brainer’ reason
why your business will succeed!
• The investor reading this slide should say, “Oh
yeah, this makes so much sense!”
TEMPLATE

16. Financial Modeling
• It’s important to discuss HOW to think of revenue
MODELING – NOT ‘HOW MUCH’ revenue you will
make here.
• The investor needs to understand that you get the
MODEL right – then assume scale will apply itself.
• Having said this, have a clear understanding how
large your business can ever become in revenue
topline etc (It’s a fav VC question, “How large can
this become?”)
TEMPLATE

17. What are you looking for?
• Since it’s usually the money – simply state it!
• If it’s relationships, partnerships with portfolio
companies, etc., ASK here!!
TEMPLATE

18. Cash Flows
• Dimension the COST of doing business that you
want to build here.
• Take an 18-24-36 month window and detail the
COSTS (capex and P&L) here (not revenues) – to
demonstrate what will it take to BUILD the
business.
• Please factor-in some survival salaries for
yourself and your partners in this slide.
TEMPLATE

19. Revenues and Scale
• If you have a clear vision, try and tabulate a
SIMPLE table to understand Revenue
projection.
• Please exclude silly calculations like
‘depreciation’ etc – it immediately sends a
wrong signal to an investor - that this is a silly
academic exercise.
TEMPLATE

20. Threats/Deaths/Weaknesses
• Can you be bold in detailing what could kill
your business? What is your darkest
nightmare that could come true? What are
your weaknesses?
• It reassures the investor that you have
thought with pessimism as much as with
optimism and also saves him/her the time and
energy from finding loopholes/pitfalls.
TEMPLATE

21. Outcome of the Business
• What do you expect your business to
become?
• I would like to hear realistic ideas of WHO will
buy your business and why (if it’s an
acquisition etc.)
• If you think this is IPO stuff, then prove the
companies in your industry who have listed (if
any?)
TEMPLATE

22. The Founders and Team
• I usually present this last. Some decks present
this first.
• The reason I keep this last, is that in the first few
minutes itself, the entrepreneurs and investors
(me for sure) discuss what each of them have
been up to/done in the past.
• Please keep the points interesting and relevant.
No one wants to read your bio-data here!
TEMPLATE

23. Did you have these Questions in mind?
• I do this for my pitches.
• I mention some mock ‘questions’ that may further
explain the pitch better.
• Also, if a couple of investors ask you questions, then I
can assure you that others will probably ask you the
same ones. Add these here, as you go along your
pitch process!
TEMPLATE

24. That’s it! Add the ‘Thank you’ slide!
• Notes:
• I NEVER advocate discussing “valuations” and
“what equity will you give away” etc at this
stage.
• Investors want to think, discuss and come
back with a ‘conversation’. Keep things and
some topics open.
TEMPLATE

25. Sample Pitch SAMPLE PITCH ONLY!

26. Gamecurry.com!
Taking hot, free online games
to Smartphones.
SAMPLE PITCH ONLY!

27. Gamecurry
Wants to partner owners of successful online
games to migrate their titles to Smartphones,
and in doing so, create a massive new revenue
stream for the games owners and themselves.
SAMPLE PITCH ONLY!

28. The Market Problem
• Online web games attract over 600 million
unique online players a month, but even the
largest websites in this business earn meager
revenues.
• The reason for low revenues is that these
online games earn revenues only via
‘advertising’ – something that never scales
and is difficult to optimize beyond a point.
SAMPLE PITCH ONLY!

29. Our Insight
• If a popular online game is converted into a mobile game and
offered to consumers as a ‘free-mium’ game (free for the first
few levels and charged for the subsequent levels), then the
revenue potential from these games explodes.
• If a game has succeeded online, there is a good chance that it
will work on smartphones also – because consumers like
great game mechanics.
• Example – Angry Birds generated over 300 million $ last year.
It’s a loose copy of a very popular online game called ‘Crush
the Castle’ (a game that you have probably not heard of and
one that did not generate any significant revenues).
SAMPLE PITCH ONLY!

30. Under the Hood
• Illustrative example of how a smartphone game generates
200% of the revenue of an online game
SAMPLE PITCH ONLY!
Descriptions Online game Smartphone game
Players who play per day 1000 players 1000 players
Ads generated (10 ads per player) 10000 ads served 10000 ads served
Revenue generated @ US$ 1.00 CPM (per 1000
ads) per day
US$ 10.00 US$ 10.00
Cost of playing all 40 levels Nil 0.99 cents cost
after the 20th
level
% of players who will pay to play additional levels NA 2%
Paying consumers NA 20 players
Payment received from players -70 cents per user
(99 cents less 30% net of iOs/Android share)
NA US$ 15.00
Total revenues earned per day US$ 10.00 US$ 25.00

31. Our Business Proposition
• Is to approach popular online game owners and
propose that Gamecurry be allowed to convert their
game to a smartphone game – without any cost to
them and also with a promise to share a 50%
revenue upside (after deducting our stated costs of
making the game).
• As a Company, we want to fund the cost of the
converting popular online games and benefit from
the upside when these titles become successful.
SAMPLE PITCH ONLY!

32. SAMPLE PITCH ONLY!
How the business process will work

33. Proof of Concept
• We worked with online games Company games2win.com on
this concept and were able to prove the hypothesis with one
of their successful games called ‘Super Mom’:
SAMPLE PITCH ONLY!
Description Super Mom Free Web
Game (link)
Super Mom Paid iPhone
Game (link)
Revenue earned in 1st
week
of Jan 2012 in US$
$ 295.85 $ 1575.00
Revenue stream Only ads Ads and downloads
Per day revenue $ 42.26 $ 225.00
Cost of development of the
game
$ 3000 (funded by the
company)
$ 3000 (funded by us)
ROI time of the game 75 days 15 days!

34. The Market Size and Potential
SAMPLE PITCH ONLY!

35. Competition Mapping
Company Primary Audience Revenue Stream Estimated Annual
revenues 2011
ngmoco Kids and Teens Virtual Goods on iOs 10-30 Million US$
Rovio (Angry Birds) All ages Download of Games 50-60 Million US$
Outfit7 (Tom Cat) Kids Download of Games 10-20 Million US$
SAMPLE PITCH ONLY!
• The early movers are scaling well in revenues. They will be
our primary competition (in luring titles from online games
companies for development and marketing by them).
• It’s possible that online game companies will want to migrate
their online games to smartphone games themselves.
• We will win because we will go after smaller, lesser
recognized and sometimes riskier, but better researched
titles.

36. Go to Market Plan
SAMPLE PITCH ONLY!

37. SAMPLE PITCH ONLY!
Core Strategy – why will Gamecurry work?

38. What’s the Financial Model of GameCurry?
SAMPLE PITCH ONLY!

39. What are we looking for?
• 3 million US$ cash investments (covers 3 years
of cash cost and basic Capex)
• Introductions to online game companies and
game owners with whom we could get started
immediately.
SAMPLE PITCH ONLY!

40. US$ 3.0 million over 3 years to be used for:
SAMPLE PITCH ONLY!
Cost for making 24 Freemium
Games in 36 months
Cost per
month in US$
Costs for 36
months in US$
Notes
Salary Cost of 3 founders 15,000 540,000 CEO, COO, CTO
Occupancy Cost 5,000 180,000
Office rent for 25 seater office in South
Mumbai
General Office Overheads 2,000 72,000 General office costs
Technology Costs 4,000 144,000 Costs of Hosting, Bandwidth, etc.
Game teams – 7
engineers/programmers, 5
artists, 3 creative, 2 marketing, 1
admin and accounts 36,000 1,296,000
Averaged at 2000 US$ per person per
month
Travelling and Accommodation 10,000 360,000 Local and International traveling, etc.
Marketing and Advtg 10,000 360,000 Test marketing, PR costs, etc.
TOTALS 82,000 2,952,000
Effective cost of each game = 123,000
US$

41. Revenues Potential of Freemium Games
SAMPLE PITCH ONLY!
Key Metric Addressable
Audience
% who
convert
Revenue per
user – over the
game life
Revenue
Potential
per game
Smash Hit 15 mn 20% 3.00$ 9 million
Huge Hit 15 mn 15% 2.00 $ 4.5 million
Hit 15 mn 10% 1.50$ 2.25 million
Just Miss 15 mn 2 % 1.25$ 400 k
Forgive and
Forget
15 mn 0.5 % 1.00$ 75 k
Tragedy 15 mn 0.1% 0.70$ 10k
•Angry Birds has 12 million paying consumers from 41 million downloads –
conversion of 30%
•Talking Tom has 6 million paying consumers from 40 million downloads – 15%
conversion

42. Conservative Revenue, Profits and
Cash flow Projection of Gamecurry over 3 years
SAMPLE PITCH ONLY!
Key Metric –
performance of the
24 games
Games that we
will create in this
category
Revenue Potential per
game in US$
Total Revenues
Smash Hit Nil 9 million US$ 0
Huge Hit Nil 4.5 million US$ 0
Hit 1 2.25 million US$ 2.25 million
Just Miss 4 400 k US$ 1.60 million
Forgive and Forget 10 75 k US$ 0.75 million
Tragedy 9 10k US$ 0.09 million
Totals Revenues 24 total games 5.50 million
Less costs held back 3.00 million
Revenue available to
share
2.50 million
Our 50% share and
net profit
1.25 million

43. Our Threats/Deaths/Weaknesses
• Bad choice of choosing online games results in
very poor hits and unsuccessful games
• Competitive market leads to games
companies demanding minimum guarantee
• Changing revenue shares policies of iOs and
Android market
SAMPLE PITCH ONLY!

44. Outcome of the Business
SAMPLE PITCH ONLY!

45. The founders and team
Mahesh
Khambadkone –
CTO
He knows how to
make games!
Alok Kejriwal – CEO
He knows how to run
a Company, get it
financed and how to
market it and its
products!
SAMPLE PITCH ONLY!

46. Did you have these Q’s in mind?
Q - Will gamecurry.com be a distribution channel also?
A – Yes. We will have a website and an app, but will not build it
as a ‘destination’ site. We will let consumers discover it as
they go along.
Q – Who will own the IP of the games developed by you?
A – It’s a good question. We will own the IP in the 50-50 ratio or
higher depending on how we negotiate the deal (e.g. IP ratio
starts with 100% when we launch the game and sets to 50%
when we recover cost).
SAMPLE PITCH ONLY!

47. Did you have these Q’s in mind?
Q – How will you drive awareness of the apps? Isn’t marketing a
big budget that doesn’t feature in your costs?
A – Well, we believe that selecting the right game type and title
is half the battle won. Also, we will extract certain media
promotion from the games publisher since it helps them.
Finally, we believe that apps get discovered virally more
than anything else. We just need to make fun, exciting apps!
SAMPLE PITCH ONLY!

48. Thank you for your attention!
SAMPLE PITCH ONLY!

49. IMPORTANT DISCLOSURES/TIPS
• Copy the ‘template’ slides in a new PPT document and begin filling
them directly. (Remove the Rodinhood logos using the slide master.)
• Do not refer to the ‘sample pitch’ unless you have to.
• This is NOT a DEFINITE business plan. It’s worked for me for FIRST
ROUND pitches. Different investors expect different pitches. So use
this at your own risk. There is important critical feedback about this
deck (concerning number of slides and verbosity) available here that
you should review.
• Describe yourself/your team mates when you feel comfortable. It
could be the last or the first slide.
• My suggestions are not to discuss dilutions and valuations, etc in the
first round. Let the ppt resonate in the investors’ mind and let them
come back with ‘we like’ this before you start negotiating.
• I am happy to offer my services if you are interested. Contact me at
alok@rodinhood.com

50. Your ideas!
• If you have counter viewpoints, opinions,
ideas, etc., e-mail them to me. I will be happy
to review them and add them as
comments/reactions to this PPT!

51. Connect with me!
e-mail - alok@rodinhood.com
Facebook -
facebook.com/rodinhood
Twitter - @rodinhood
My social network for anyone
enterprising!
http://therodinhoods.com
Presentations –
www.slideshare.net/rodinhood