Usefulness
Content
Freshness
"Get Backed: The Handbook for Creating Your Pitch Deck, Raising Money, and Launching the Venture of Your Dreams" is the visual and content strategy guide to improve your business pitch with content meant to connect with your audience, not an expensive business plan.
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There have never been so many investment options for entrepreneurs and businesses. Kickstarter, IndiGogo, peer-to-peer lending, micro-lending and others have totally changed the playing field. But coincidentally, with an increasing number of businesses looking for funds, seeking investment has never been so much of a challenge.
What is the Book About
The first part of “Get Backed: The Handbook for Creating Your Pitch Deck, Raising Money, and Launching the Venture of Your Dreams” covers the pitch, specifically a way to deliver called the pitch deck. Unlike a sixty-page business plan (which the authors and other quoted experts claim is outdated), the book advises a series of carefully created slides that demonstrate the story, structure, and growth potential of your business. These carefully created slides eliminate the need for fancy graphs and business jargon. Instead, they connect people directly to the business idea in which they are investing.
In “Get Backed,” readers will find tips and recommendations on the content to be included in your slide presentation. These tips include minor (but important) details on color schemes, typography and graphic design. Near the end of Part One of the book (Chapter 6, specifically), the authors provide visual examples of pitch decks and their results along with advice on optimization, if needed.
Assuming that your pitch deck is ready to go, the book then carries readers through Part 2 (“Get Backed”), which delves into the places where the information in your pitch deck can be shared, including on AngelList, with venture capitalists, friends and on crowdfunding platforms. The authors go over the pros and cons of each funding resource along with recommendations on how to build relationships with those investors (through email and social media).
About the Authors
Evan Baehr (@EvanBaehr),Yale and Princeton graduate, is the co-founder of Able Lending, a low-interest loan financing company for small businesses.
Evan Loomis (@EvanLoomis), is an investor, current President of Clarion and VP of Corinthian Health Services, in addition to serving as a business mentor.
What Was Best About This Book
The best part of “Get Backed” is the way it visually demonstrates its content. The book itself is designed visually like the pitch deck the authors promote. The book’s highly visual focus with varied typography, color and arrangement of text, along with its emphasis on story (starting from the authors’ own personal experiences) all exemplify the clarity and connection being proposed to readers.
What Could Have Been Done Differently
“Get Backed” does an incredible job of capturing the essence behind pitching an idea. Though they can help, fancy documents won’t get you funding. It’s the underlying story that wins out. This focus, however, minimizes the complexity of pitching in a world that is overflowing with business ideas. More attention on the struggles and obstacles faced by businesses (preferably those who have used pitch decks in the past) might have been beneficial.
In other words, the book presents the winners, but needs to share the battle scars and defeats as well as the triumphs for a balanced view.
Why Read This Book
“Get Backed” is a creative and concise look at the standard way of doing things and why that might not be working anymore. For anyone pitching an idea (business or otherwise), this book offers some insight and pointers to improve delivery, refine content and stimulate creative thinking.
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