Sample Series A pitch deck: Faye’s $10M deck

one year ago, Mike Butcher explained that Faye is expected to do for travel insurance what Lemonade did for general insurance, and that is as good as anything Faye does. The company was kind enough to share its (mildly redacted) pitch deck with me so I could take a look under the hood to see the story it devised to close its $10 million pitch. Could

We’re looking for more unique pitch decks to tear down, so if you’d like to submit your own, here’s how you can do so.

slide in this deck

Faye kicked off its Series A round with a 19-slide deck, some of which has been lightly modified to shield sensitive data from prying eyes:

1. cover slide
2. summary slide
3. team slide
4. problem slide
5. market size slide
6. Insurance Market Overview Slide
7. product overview slide
8. Product Features Slide 1
9. Product Features Slide 2
10. Product Features Slide 3
11. Product Features Slide 4
12. go-to-market slide
13. Financial Growth Metrics Slide
14. Customer Development Metrics Slide
15. Customer Verification Slide 1
16. competitive landscape slides
17. ask slide
18. Customer Verification Slide 2
19. Closing slide with mission statement

three things to love

Let’s get this out of the way right off the bat: this is a truly excellent pitch deck. I’m going to add this to my rotation of decks as great examples of how to turn a potentially complicated story into an easy-to-follow narrative.

love a good summary slide

As I mentioned in my post about summary slides, the combination of the cover and summary slide sets the context for the rest of the conversation. Faye did a great job with showing how a good, concise slide can set the pace.

The company cites traction ($M in sales) and market penetration (available in 48 states) along with market size and market growth rate. These four figures paint a picture that presents a very compelling investment opportunity.

If we take all the numbers at face value, the next step in the story is to convince investors that this is the right team to take on this market.

Which takes us to Slide 3, the company’s team slide. Unfortunately, it’s not that great, so we’ll talk about it later in this article in the “What Could Be Improved” section. For now, let’s move on to another slide that did a great job of connecting Faye’s story.

Great story on a market-sized slide

[Slide 5] This is a great way to use market size to your advantage. Image Credits: faye

Again, the data here has been modified.

Faye numbers aside, this is a rare example of a market size slide that also provides the rest of the context. I thought it was really well done.

Showing that the market size is (potentially) huge, and then essentially saying, “But TAM could be bigger by increasing service offering and international roll-out,” is very clever. It shows that there is a good opportunity available now and the opportunity may grow further.

The data points on the left are also excellent, as they contextualize the business to the larger market.

This slide taught us that you can tell an overarching story without confusing the message. I imagine the voice-over for this slide would go something like this:

The market we’re looking at is $xx right now, and could be as large as $yy once we fully address it. What is In right terms However, the exciting thing here is that the market is easily disrupted. There is little innovation, no recognized consumer brands, the brands that operate have little market penetration, and the overall market is growing at 10% year-on-year.

The narrative ties it all together, portraying travel insurance as a very interesting opportunity.

intermarket comparison

Faye is targeting travel insurance, using some adjacent markets (car and home insurance) as comparisons to show that travel insurance is a better opportunity. Again, the numbers are edited out here, but as far as storytelling goes, this is a really cool approach:

[Slide 6] Insurtech galore. Image Credits: Faye

I suspect the company added this slide to assuage investors who have become disenchanted with other insurtech plays. Assuming the numbers are good, this is a really inspired way to position the market — and Fey within it. Really well played.

In the rest of this teardown, we’ll take a look at three things Faye could have improved or done differently, with its full pitch deck!

three things that can be improved

I’ve already said that Team Slide can do with a little love, so let’s start there.