Back in January, Natasha coated Juro’s Series B spherical, which added $23 million to its coffers. Juro goals to place an finish to contract negotiation insanity, shifting the workflows out of Microsoft Word and a handful of different sub-par instruments to an all-in-one, web-based platform for contract negotiation-to-signature workflow. It looks like an excellent concept. The deck labored; it helped Juro increase a tremendous stack of {dollars}. But is its deck any good? Let’s take a better look.
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 firm used a 15-slide deck, which it shared with TechCrunch, making just some mild redactions; all of the slides are there, however the firm blurred out a part of its future highway map and the precise numbers for the financials.
- Cover slide
- “It takes ~5 tools to process just one contract” — drawback slide
- “Initiating contracts in MS Word files compounds the pain” — drawback slide
- “We’re making contracts browser-native” — resolution slide
- “Companies are switching to Juro’s browser-native format” — traction slide
- “ARR is at $XXm+, growing predictably and sustainably” — monetary traction slide
- “We‘re the only all-in-one system adopted by legal teams” — competitors slide
- “We have a repeatable GTM engine, driven by inbound” — buyer acquisition slide
- “While churn is trending strongly downwards” — retention slide
- “Our community of champions compounds growth” — buyer slide
- “Helping us grow ARR with a land/expand motion” — go-to-market/market enlargement slide
- “We have an experienced team on board and engaged” — crew slide
- “With a track record of capital efficiency” — monetary spotlight and funding companions slide
- “And a wider aim to become the default way to agree terms” — product highway map slide
- Closing slide
Three issues to like
There are a whole lot of actually good issues concerning the Juro deck, however the readability of its story is a specific spotlight.
Yup, that’s an issue all proper
[Slide 2] Excellent drawback description. Image credit score: Juro
Anyone who’s needed to take care of contracts, particularly contracts which are customized or not less than versatile to each buyer, has skilled this drawback in a single kind or one other. This reveals up for everybody who does giant B2B or company offers; when you’re negotiating with somebody greater than you, it’s possible that their in-house authorized crew has capital-T ideas about your contracts, and that you simply received’t be capable of use your lovingly crafted boilerplate contracts the way in which you had hoped.
For startups, this reveals up in due diligence once in a while; you each must have contracts with all of your prospects and suppliers and be capable of find and present the signed variations of them within the due diligence course of if prompted. If your contracts reside in your e mail or (possibly) in a shared folder (someplace, hopefully), this may flip right into a irritating nightmare.
The extra-cool quirk right here is that almost all VC offers fall into this class; the time period sheets are sometimes fairly normal, however by the point the funding paperwork are full, there’s a bunch of customized language that may sneak into every contract, various from deal to deal. The upshot is that this firm would in all probability have been a reasonably simple promote to a whole lot of VCs which are this deck: While the corporate isn’t particularly for the startup and VC ecosystem, Juro is, not less than partially, fixing an issue each VC has skilled one time or one other.
If your organization does one thing that VCs are very more likely to be accustomed to, you should use that to your benefit; it hastens the “this is why this is useful” narrative considerably. What a fantastic perk!
Juuust sufficient product to make sense
[Slide 4] Yessss. This is how we do a product slide. Image credit score: Juro
A whole lot of startups fall for the temptation to spend approach an excessive amount of time speaking about their product. The product is vital, after all, however not often as vital as founders suppose it’s. This is a Series B deck, and Juro tells the proper story right here: If you’ve gotten a whole lot of prospects (and, as will word in only a second, Juro does), you don’t have to spend so much of time in your product. The prospects adore it, they’re providing you with cash, and they’re staying. For Series B, we’re speaking about development. Yes, the product must be ok to not actively scare prospects away, however when you can signal them up and hold them round, you’re on the proper path, not less than.
In this slide, Juro shares simply sufficient element so buyers can get a high-level overview of what the product is and what the advantages are. Very effectively executed, and it retains issues excessive sufficient stage to make all of it fairly simple to know. Well executed!
As a startup, what you may be taught from this slide is to not get slowed down within the particulars. Keep it so simple as you may. With my pitch teaching shoppers, I typically problem them to inform your complete story with out mentioning the product as soon as. A little bit excessive, after all, but it surely helps strengthen each different a part of the story sufficiently to the purpose that when you add product again in, it takes on the suitable period of time and power in a pitch.
Traction, traction, traction
[Side 5] If you possibly can use a single slide to lift capital, it will seem like this. Image credit score: Juro
If Juro has ‘number of contracts signed’ as its most vital KPI, this graph is phenomenal.
Traction is the only most vital slide you should have in your pitch deck. If you’ve gotten it, lead with it as early as you may. Well, we’ve made it to slip 5 in Juro’s pitch deck and we’ve already talked concerning the slides that preceded it. Realistically, that is the earliest the corporate might speak about how effectively it’s doing. And goodness, is it ever — that’s as exponential a graph as you will notice for any startup, and if Juro has “number of contracts signed” as its most vital KPI, this graph is phenomenal.
You’ll have observed the “if” within the above sentence. As an investor, I like this graph. I like that the corporate is increasing quickly. But there’s a quirk right here: According to its pricing web page, the corporate doesn’t instantly earn more money if it offers with extra contracts. Of course, the 2 might be strongly associated, however I’d have beloved to see a extra direct traction metric right here. ARR, maybe. Number of paying prospects. Leading with a gorgeous graph for a secondary KPI all the time comes throughout as somewhat suspect. I’m letting them get away with it right here as a result of slides 6 and seven cowl the corporate’s ARR development, which is the actual metric numbers-driven VCs will care about.
The lesson? Be cautious which metrics you lead with. Some are vital internally however much less vital to buyers. Some might be invaluable to sure facets of the enterprise (time to buyer help ticket closure and system uptime, for instance, are essential to customer support and technical operations groups), but it surely appears curious to see them present up in pitch decks.
In the remainder of this teardown, we’ll check out three issues Juro might have improved or executed otherwise, together with its full pitch deck!