DressRush Pitch Deck (opens in new tab)

If I had this level of design skill, I'd be tempted to write a pitch deck like this for the SEO benefits alone. This is the best job I've seen of a startup creating something which pushes the buttons of a link-rich audience in recent memory. It is orders of magnitude easier to get links out of the techy crowd than it is to get them from brides, ushers, or the bridal-industrial complex (where virtually all coverage is pay-to-play).

(DressRush also benefits from the inevitable knockoffs since, if they get mentioned, it will likely be in the same breath as "The concept was, of course, stolen directly from <linky>DressRush's ridiculously beautiful pitch deck</linky>.)

Am I the only one who doesn't get this UI? If I have to scroll anyway, what's the point of those next buttons? What is the purpose of page numbers at the top when there's already a scrollbar showing where I am? I think it does nothing but adds clutter and distracts from the message they are trying to convey.

A simple web page with the same infographics would tell me the same story, take less time to design, print well, work everywhere, and (in my humble opinion) look just as good.

The numbers for acquisition look way off.

$.17 per click X 33% conversion...

I just ran an experiment with google ads for dating keywords. There were a few gaffs with hugely expensive keywords but overall, $2.45 CPC. We spent $200 and ended up with 1 conversion. Totally amateur, I know.

From other research I've seen, I think conversions tend to be way lower than the double digits. Like people first click on your ad and then check out and pay you money. From the per click of your ad they are often in the single digits or fractions of a percent.

It's a great looking pitch deck. Im concerned that they skewed their focus a little too much on looks over sound information.

Edit: Seems the company is live and moving product to real customers? If those are the numbers they're actually acquiring customers at, I take it back however improbable from my limited experience.

31% conversion rate? That seems very high to me -- is this just in the bridal niche?

Also, the LTV is 5-7x the CCA, which it says is 0.55, so that means the LTV is about $3 ? That seems very low given their market. I wonder if they are counting "converted" as something other than "sold a product."

The design looks impressive, but at the cost of usability. When I reached the Team slide, I could see the first two people, but I'd have to scroll down to see the next two. But, I can't scroll the way I normally do, because hitting the down key scrolls right past the other people to the next slide. So, I had to manually grab the scrollbar and drag it down to see the rest of the "team" slide, then hit the down key again to see more of the presentation. I ended up giving up on the magic arrow keys and just manually scrolling through the pages of the presentation.

The "Market" slide makes a very effective point.

On the "Problems / Solutions" slide: "save ... up to 100% off retail" says absolutely nothing, except perhaps that the author doesn't know how percents work. "save ... up to 100%" means "save somewhere between nothing and everything".

On the graph in the "Customer Acquisition" slide, the "reduce customer acquisition cost through SEO" point implies a lower cost to acquire a customer, not a higher long-term value per customer.

The "Traction" slide provides four useful figures, attached to giant meaningless arrows made of up-and-to-the-rightium.

This pitch still sits on a webpage, so why don't the logos on the "Press Coverage" slide link to the actual coverage?

One accuracy problem with the info...under 'Problems/Solutions':

> Our curated collections save brides up to 100% off retail.

So they give away dresses free? If they mean they cut the price in half, then it's save 50% off retail. That's a pretty common mistake.

Double going up, half coming down.

Edit: Btw, I think this presentation/slide deck is awesome.

The average price of a wedding is $28,000? That doesn't sound right. I know many do cost that much, but the average?

It's pretty, but this lacks substance on many levels. For example, it talks about how large the market is. That's cool, but less important than talking about your own addressable market. Also, some of the numbers need backing up (31% conversion rate from adwords? That's optimistic enough to require some explanation)

To be totally honest, I really wonder how long it took to create this and whether it was really a good use of their time. It is beautiful, full stop. But it also appears as if it took a ton of time to create and put all the bells and whistles in, which would make me at the very least question their judgement of how they spend their time.

Is Flipboard that big of a deal? Why integrate with it? What have I been missing?

Is it strange that as potential investor my biggest concern about this deck would be that its for a bridal product with 3 Men and only one woman on the founding team?

Gorgeous. It looks like the bulk of the functionality here is made possible by jQuery Waypoints (http://imakewebthings.github.com/jquery-waypoints/). The custom script that contains the bulk of the in-page logic is pretty basic. I'll definitely have to check out this plugin at some point in the future.

Beautiful execution.

I'd give people a way to print out or download your deck so that associates can hand a hard copy to the investing partner.

Edit: Also really quick, not sure if this is the correct use of market size. What is your actual segmented address market? 28k is the average wedding but that must be skewed by 500k+ weddings. Next, I'd like to know how your 2.0 products are going to be able to capture pieces of the market you're not in already (maybe this returns better margins at a higher acquisition cost? not necessarily .55 flat).

Start-ups need to be realistic with their market size estimates. Their provided number is too inflated after adding wedding guests to their market estimate. Wedding guests are not the ones paying for weddings dresses. Plus, under this assumption, the groups of wedding guests are mutually exclusive. A better estimate should not factor in the guests at all. Lastly, how is every person paying that much for a single wedding? That last calculation is absurd.

So how come 3 of the 4 people are on google bicycles?

I don't get the market estimate where you include the guests. It seems like you're treating each wedding as an independent event. I'm attending two weddings in the next month. Are you counting instances as the same person at different weddings as the same person?

Otherwise, the presentation looks amazing and it's interesting to see a company be so open about their deck.

A bit off topic but nevertheless important: The wedding is overrated. Plan and think about the marriage.

The bit that struck me is that they're asking brides to buy wedding dresses without trying them on first. I guess that Zappos has proven that free return shipping is a viable clothing model, but I'm not sure how well it's going to work for wedding dresses.

How were these slides created? Basically I'd love to be able to make a similar pitch deck for my startup.

A little embarrassed to ask b/c I'm guessing it may be obvious to those who use these tools every day (not me, though).

do people really want something like this. I would think investors would want a no hassle, no bs way to review a company. It looked nice, but the experience was no good , compared to a standard ppt deck with notes.

Nice pitch deck, but 100% off retail prices? free??

One thing to note: 4) says 444.5 million people x 28 k = 75.6 billion spent each year. The 75.6 billion came from 2.7 million * 28K.

Great iteration of the slide deck. If I were an investor I would prefer this over powerpoint any day. So much smoother.

Shouldn't "Sara Morgan" be the first person listed on the team as she has the most Wedding experience?

Thanks for all the comments! I've already started implementing some of your feedback in the UI.

I'd like to see links to the team members' Twitter and LinkedIn profiles on the team page. :)

That is one weird map of the US (the one where they indicate the US dress retail centers).

I thinks this is the clearest pitchdeck I have seen. it gives people the template to use to do theirs.

Lovely design.

The "500 Startups" Logo sticks out like a very sore thumb.

Errr their market size calculation assumes everyone going to a wedding pays 28k??