Reinventing the conventional pitch deck
Argyle's founders raised their Series A funding in 2020. Back then, they already knew that a conventional pitch deck wouldn’t work for them—that’s why the team put their notes together in Notion. In round B, the pitch deck provided compelling and well-structured data, spiced up with storytelling techniques and interactive animations. Pre-reading this pitch, potential investors would have come to the table with more info and more profound questions about Argyle.
“Spreadsheets filled with hundreds of columns and numbers are the bedrock of Argyle’s business. They make for dry, humdrum visualization. To attract funds and grab attention, we had to find a way to leverage our data through a narrative approach. Readymag offered tools to help bring our story to life,” says Shmulik Fishman, Argyle CEO and Co-founder.
Designing narrative animations on the go
At first, Argyle planned to launch just an interactive website with embedded videos and animations. Its structure was drafted and sketched in Figma. But the most painstaking part of the project was to animate illustrations for each chapter. “I took the PSD illustrations, exported all the layers and threw them into Readymag, designing narrative animations on the go,” says Argyle product designer Pavel Kedich.
The Readymag project was supposed to be a reference, just a prototype for engineers; but eventually the team decided to make it the main medium. Readymag allowed them to create a pitch deck without engineers, an advantage since they were completely overstretched with other tasks. Secondly, it enabled Argyle to make impressive interactive animations with little or no coding. As the project grew, the team discussed many design options as they mapped out navigation, and chose between burger menus or table of contents. The pitch deck was becoming larger and more detailed, eventually taking up 10 chapters.
“Structure is the most crucial part of this funding presentation. Our business has a lot of detail, but we were able to structure the pitch deck around ten main themes and organize them based on a clear narrative approach,” Shmulik Fishman adds.
Creating the feeling of exclusivity
The finished project was embedded in the Argyle website, all accessed via a waiting room and Twitter/LinkedIn login. The Argyle team could see who asked for access and accepted (or refused) their inquiries. This gave Argyle extra data about their audience and provided potential investors with a unique experience. As of February 2022, the Argyle pitch deck had scored about 1.5k views.
“Capturing attention and investment is about marketing a product well. We used LinkedIn and Twitter not for security, but to create the feeling of an elite experience. Our investors felt like they had been accepted at an exclusive members-only club,” explains Shmulik Fishman.
An in-depth understanding for investment memos
“Ultimately, we spent more time developing the pitch deсk than most would consider reasonable. From concept to construction we’d been refining the website for over nine months. Six were dedicated to our initial buildout and had nothing to do with investors. To some extent, we did this to clarify our strategic roadmap. Taking our time allowed us to examine questions like, “what should we become?” and “how should we focus?” The feedback on the website was excellent. Investors said it gave them an in-depth understanding and all the information they needed for their investment memos,” says Shmulik Fishman.
This unconventional narrative approach to fundraising secured the company a $55 million Series B round. With Readymag, they could bring this approach to life without distracting their engineers. Based on these experiences, Argyle is planning to use the tool for other future projects.
