A Chat with Serkan Ferah, CEO and Founder at Pitch Deck Building Platform: PitchSpace

PitchSpace is a UK startup dedicated to bringing standardisation into startup investments and our first product is an automated pitch builder for startups seeking investment.

With our product today, founders can build all their pitch materials simply by answering a series of guided questions following the instructions and examples on their dashboard. Then, using their answers, the algorithm automatically generates their pitch deck, executive summary and investor outreach message.

Our Beta users finish their pitches merely in hours without having to deal with fiddly pitch deck templates or second-guessing what investors need and potentially missing a crucial detail.

They download all their materials in editable Powerpoint, submit them for expert review if they want and launch their rounds the same day.

The whole process is a first in terms of linking startups with Venture Capital markets.
 
 

 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 
I helped 100s of startups either directly or through Virgin Startups’ to build a strong pitch deck and secure funding from angel investors and VCs. The success rate was 95% but I saw a pattern that showed me almost all founders were making the same mistakes and asking the same questions.

Yet, there was no viable solution other than the overly complicated pitch deck templates which never solve the actual problem of founders.

I still can’t believe that there are dozens of legal-tech and marketplaces but nobody thought of automating the most important element of the fundraising process, the pitch.

Besides, when I show the product to investors, they love it because, with a universal pitch standard, it would be much easier and quicker to filter the deals and make decisions.

So clearly, there’s also a need for an automated solution on the investor side, too.

That’s how we decided to bring standardisation into investment markets starting with deal offerings and built an automated pitch builder.
 

 

How has the company evolved during the pandemic?

 
To be honest, I never worried about a potential Covid driven downturn in startup investments. We started to build the company in the middle of the pandemic with a fully remote team.

All market signals were showing an increased global appetite for private investments and entrepreneurship. I even think the pandemic may have helped us to attract the 500+ startups we have on our Beta programme in 8 months with no marketing.

The fast-track digital adaptation of humanity and incredible developments in Web 3.0 has also helped us to develop a clear vision for the future and think about new ways of deal-making. That lead me as a founder to update our direction and come up with an even more exciting roadmap than our initial one.
 

What can we hope to see from PitchSpace in the future?

 
Our short-term focus is building products that will enable standardisation in deal offerings. Next quarter, we will release a new version of automated pitch builder and initiate our community. And then, we are planning to expand pitch builder’s capabilities with deal sharing features tailored for DAOs and Syndicates.

Ultimately, we want to create a Distributed Deal Network that runs on universal standards and reward its participants for their contributions to the startup ecosystem.