Hate your Deck | The hard truth about your deck

Don’t HATE YOUR DECK!?
You Should.

Your deck might be the reason investors aren’t calling you back.

YOU ARE NOT ALONE

Fundraising isn’t fun. You put all of this time and effort into building a great business, and then need to pause operations to ask others for money. You may go through templates, watch videos of successful founders fundraise, and get support from mentors or accelerators. In the end, investors don’t respond positively and everyone seems to have feedback on how you can improve your deck.

We are a team of investors who build decks to include all of the things we look for when investing!

OUR SERVICES

Deck Destruction

We bring in a guest VC and do an initial ‘VC screening’ for your eyes only, on video, to give you a clear understanding of where your deck stands.

We’re nice about it, but this part always hurts. However, once this is done, you know what part of your story works and what doesn’t.

OUTPUT: You know exactly what a VC thinks when they see your deck.

Storytelling Workshop(s)

You fill out our template (yes…everyone has one of those). We then spend a significant amont of time with you doing three things:

1) Turning the chaos into a linear story
2) Anticipating investor questions and putting answers into the story
3) Giving you feedback on weak points around your business model

OUTPUT: Your deck story and language is ready.

Build your Deck

Busy? Not a designer? We build the deck for you.

OUTPUT: Your fundraise deck in Canva (that way you can always update the deck and export as you like).

Raise Support

We provide ongoing support during your raise around building the investor pipeline, investor outreach, and storytelling / communication with prospective investors.

OUTPUT: An investor list, your elevator pitch story, email outreach prep, and ongoing advisory.

WHY US?

INVESTOR PERSPECTIVE

We know what investors look for because we are your audience.

A PROVEN PROCESS

Our three step process is proven to work with founder storytelling

WE CARE

No seriously. We are do-gooders and care about your success.

THE HATE YOUR DECK TEAM

We’re a combination of venture investors, accelerator operators, powerful storytellers, and concise copywriters. For each project, we bring in the RIGHT investor(s) from our vast network to ensure your deck is perfectly tuned to hook investors and compelling enough to keep them engaged. We know the parts of your story investors care about.

Bill Jones

Background

Bill had his own facilities design and project management company for 16 years until he exited and joined Venture Creations, Rochester Institute of Technologies’ high-tech incubator in 2007. In 2009, he was assigned responsibility for its NYSERDA-sponsored clean energy incubator program, and was named Director of Venture Creations in 2010. During he tenure, the incubator graduated 40 companies which generated over 500 jobs and raised $70M. He is now a NYSERDA Entrepreneur-In-Residence, specializing in mentoring clean energy startups.

Superpower

Location

Rochester, NY

Chandler Carlson

Background

Chandler has spent his career supporting startups from the Accelerator, VC, and Operating lenses. He is the Managing Partner at Sunday Ventures where his team supports mission-driven founders in scaling impactful solutions.

Superpower

Surfing and Kitesurfing

Location

Honolulu, HI

Dianthe Skurko

Background

Dianthe has been working in startups since 1995 and has been through 2 acquisitions and 1 IPO. Her focus predominately has been on marketing, GTM, and investor relations. In 2018 Dianthe co-founded a startup accelerator in Silicon Valley with the intention of helping diverse and female founders get funding but quickly realized that accelerating companies wasn't the answer but being on the VC side was so in 2020 Dianthe made the jump into VC and now focuses on Fintech, DevOps, and SpaceTech. She also mentors founders at Founder Institute Silicon Valley, Founder Institute Austin, and Alchemist.

Superpower

Networking & Connecting People

Location

California

J.J. Gilmartin

Background

During his 20+ year career J.J. has been a copywriter, creative director, product owner, market researcher, account executive, and education strategist. In a world of increasing specialization, he's a marketing generalist with a unique perspective and hard-to-find skills. He currently runs his own firm, Sullivan Hill Consulting, LLC, that helps businesses and nonprofits find, strengthen, and tell stories that drive growth and distinguish their brands.

Superpower

Falling without getting hurt

Location

Boston, MA

Michael Lightman

Background

Mike is a former VC and startup ecosystem builder. He founded HYD after watching too many startups struggle after receiving 'mentorship' with fundraising.

Superpower

Gets along with all dogs

Location

Buffalo, NY

PARTNERS

COMING SOON

Skylight Law

Attorneys that care

Venture Capital Copy

Specializes in writing compelling copy to attract investors to your idea.

LA Designers

Expert designers for branding pitch decks and branding solutions.

Testimonials

“We started sending out our new leave behind deck and have already seen like a huge amount of resonance with investors. They are getting the fundamentals of our story much quicker and we’re getting into diligence call conversations much faster. We highly recommend working with them if you’re an early-stage founder and want to accelerate your fundraising process.”

Peter Glenn

Founder

at EVLife

“The Deck Review provided tremendous value. We went into it thinking that our deck needed just a little bit of work, and what we discovered is that we were approaching our pitch from entirely the wrong perspective. When you live and work in the business, it’s hard to see these things from an outside perspective.”

Chris Miano

Founder & CEO

at Memory Fox

” I was in the midst of an angel round when I started working with Hate Your Deck. My efforts in collecting checks really accelerated after the deck that came out of this process.”