The world is full One of the companies trying to help simplify the process of setting up a company. Doula is one such startup, and has raised a cool $12 million so far since its inception in 2020. Closed $1M Strategic Investment Round from HubSpot Venturesis less than a year away from its $8 million Series A, and today we’ll take a closer look at the pitch you used to raise that round.
Usually, when a startup raises a small amount of money after a decent-sized round, there’s something weird going on — it’s a spinoff for something it’s not. completely Go plan. However, in Doola’s case, HubSpot’s involvement makes sense: The marketing software company reaches a lot of customers, so Doola’s toolset could be a good fit for HubSpot’s business model.
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Slides in this surface
The AI deck review tool estimates that there is only a 15% chance that Doola will successfully raise capital using this deck alone.
Doola shared her 14-slide deck without any editing.
- Slide cover
- Finance timeline slide
- Slice the problem
- Solution slide
- Product segment
- Strategy slide
- Product portfolio segment
- Market size segment
- How does the chip work?
- Segment the US market opportunity
- Segment of global market opportunities
- Vision chip
- Team segment (?)
- SIM card
Three things she loves
To be honest, I can tell just by looking at the list above that there is a lot Of information missing from the deck. In fact, my AI toolkit review tool estimates There is only a 15% chance that Doola will succeed in raising capital With this deck alone. We’ll get to that later, but first let’s focus on what Doola did right, because it does a few things Unbelievably Good:
Great use of a composite slide
I like to use two slides that work together to tell a compelling story. Doola uses slides 6 and 7 to great effect:
![](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/pitch-deck-teardown_-doola_s-1m-series-a-extension-deck-slide-6-of-14.png)
[Slide 6] And create. . . Image credits: A doula
![](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/pitch-deck-teardown_-doola_s-1m-series-a-extension-deck-slide-7-of-14.png)
[Slide 7] . . . What a reward! Image credits: A doula
This is a quite effective way to build on the business model explanation indirectly. It also paves the way for explaining the business model and monetization plans over time.
Subtle and elegant problem statement
This is a perfect example of a company that knows its audience. The slide presents a range of issues, but Doola knows it’s talking to investors, so it resists the temptation to explain every issue. Investors are Painfully Familiar with many of these issues and how they present themselves for startups.
![](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/pitch-deck-teardown_-doola_s-1m-series-a-extension-deck-slide-3-of-14.png)
[Slide 3] Simple problem statement – It’s a bit of a gamble, but it works here. Image credits: Doula
Keeping things simple is always a gamble, but in this case, I think Doula won the bet. Yes, they are complex, frustrating, and expensive problems, which makes them definitely worth solving!
An interesting bottom-up approach to increasing market size
![](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/pitch-deck-teardown_-doola_s-1m-series-a-extension-deck-slide-10-of-14.png)
[Slide 10] It’s interesting, but is it a good idea? Image credits: A doula
Most startups have a fair amount of success with a top-down approach to estimating market size (using the TAM/SAM/SOM model). But it’s interesting to see Doola take a different path to reach a potential market size of $4.5 billion per year. As I’ve written before, great founders often have to resort to a bottom-up approach to market size, because nothing else compares to what they’re building out there.
I’m not sure if this is the right approach here since this space has few competitors, but I enjoy the clarity of this chip.
As I mentioned earlier, there is a tremendous amount of information missing from this presentation. In fact, it’s basically useless as a traditional presentation platform. I suspect that Doola was already talking with HubSpot Ventures as part of its original round and that something prompted HubSpot to write a check anyway — perhaps the investor had already made up his mind before he saw this combination.
In the remainder of this analysis, we’ll look at three things Doola could have improved or done differently, along with its full presentation!