You know what really stupid? Your IoT devices can’t call home. Rarely a problem when you’re in the center of a densely populated urban center with masses of cell towers, but think of that water temperature buoy floating in the Atlantic Ocean, an autonomous drone flying above the rainforest or a glacier creep measurement probe high in the mountains. The fact is that about 90% of the planet has no mobile coverage at all, and Satellite raised a €10 million ($11.4 million) financing round. to change that.
The company has shared its pitch deck with us to take a deeper look, and we will! Here’s the good and the bad about this high-flying space deck.
We’re looking for more unique pitch decks to break down, so if you’d like to submit your own pitch decks here’s how to do it.
Slides into this deck
The deck of Sateliot consists of 18 slides and is almost as thrown; the company has redacted some of the information that goes into more detail about how its technology works.
- Cover slide
- “90% of the world has no mobile coverage” – problem slide
- Team slide
- “To connect all NB-IOT devices from space under the 5G standard” – slide with solution
- “Near real-time connectivity” – value proposition slide
- “Standard Protocol” – product slide
- “Sateliot is the number 1 satellite operator” – “why us?” slide
- Market size slide
- Competition slide
- Business model slide
- “MNOs Enabled and Tech Integrations Underway” – Traction Slide
- “Early Adopters Program” – go-to-market slide
- Interstitial slide
- Advantage slide
- Progress slide
- Slide from the NGO program
- Slogan dia
- Closing slide
Three things to love
It’s always interesting to see how companies try to make a huge impact on the space in which they operate. Sateliot is making room for an incredible opportunity, removing the need for infrastructure to make IoT solutions work virtually anywhere in the world with a clear view of the sky. It’s a story that can be told in so many ways, and I was excited to see how the company launched things.
Clear vision of the opportunity
[Slide 2] Fresh and easy. Image Credits: Satellite
I like a deck that states very clearly what problem it solves, especially if it can also emphasize the benefit of solving that problem. Sateliot does that brilliantly on its second slide – 90% of the world has no mobile coverage, and this company promises to change that. There is not an investor in the world who does not see the benefits and financial potential of this.
As a startup, if you can elegantly distill your problem, solution, and opportunity, you have a great launchpad to weave your story into your pitch.
“Why us?” This is why…
[Slide 7] Being the right team for the job is a critical aspect of pitching. This is damn convincing. Image Credits: Satellite
If you have a reason why no one else can really solve the problem as well as you, shout it out. It makes you a much more tempting investment target.
One of the big questions an investor will ask themselves is whether a particular company is well positioned to lead a market. In other words, is there something about this team or company that gives them an unfair advantage over the competition? This slide is labeled “value proposition,” which is a little confusing. The slide does not describe a value support but a competitive advantage. It describes the “number of contributions to the 3GPP standard”, but it doesn’t say what that is resources. Wikipedia has an answer that seems to indicate that this is very relevant, but I’d like to see the company contextualize it on this slide.
These caveats aside, if contributions to the standard turn out to be directly relevant to the company’s success and demonstrate that it is particularly well positioned to capture this market, this absolute design disaster and word soup of a slide could in fact be a powerful tool for storytelling can be.
Scanning the lists of companies that contribute more and less, there are many big suppliers. Seeing Sateliot in the top 25 or so – ahead of many other well-known companies – might suggest that there is a significant moat.
I wish the company had connected the dots for me, but if this slide means what I suspect it means, it makes up for the obviously underpowered “team” slide (which we’ll discuss later).
What you can learn here as a startup is that if you have a moat, or any other reason that no one else can really solve the problem as well as you, shout loudly about it – it makes you a much more tempting investment target.
Strong social mission
[Slide 14] Having a social mission component can give investors the warm and fuzzies. Image Credits: Satellite
Some investors have a social responsibility mandate as part of their investment theses. That can work to your advantage if, in addition to doing good, your business is aligned with doing good. But what’s also true is that all investors are human, and it never hurts to have a sincere side to your story. Sateliot explains that once its satellites are up and running, there is almost no marginal cost to offer its services to certain customer groups. In other words: if you want to GPS track rhinos, you can do it for almost no money.
As I said, that doesn’t matter to all investors, but in this case you create a win-win situation. Zero marginal cost means there’s no real downside to offering the company’s services to planet-improving causes and plenty of potential benefits. In addition to making the world a better place, there are PR opportunities, ESG benefits and fringe benefits for the company. Sateliot very easily could not have included this in his story, but it makes me happier that they did.
The lesson here is to think about whether you can tell your story in ways that engage the audience in multiple ways. Giving an investor the chance to brag about a company they’ve invested in doing some good in the world never hurts, so if that’s true for you (and it’s a natural, logical part of the story), why don’t you throw it in the mix?
In the rest of this teardown, we take a look at three things that Satelliot could have improved or done differently, along with the full pitch deck!
