Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “OpenAI gears up for a big announcement, and Apple Store workers authorize a strike | Equity Podcast”.
Hello and welcome back to equity Tech, Run’s Flagship podcast about the business of startups. This is our Monday show where we take a look at the weekend and get you ready for the week ahead. Today is Monday May 13th 2024 and I’m Becca scoutek a senior reporter here at Tech crunch on today’s show. We have Al looming strike for workers at Maryland, Apple Store. What to expect from open ai’s live stream today and a pitch deck tear down for a software supply chain platform called cloudsmith. Let’S get started our first big story. We’Re diving into today takes a look at some recent employment news coming out of apple.
To start the unionized retail workers at Apple’s towns and Maryland store this Saturday voted to authorize a strike now listeners. If the towns and Maryland Apple Store sounds familiar and you don’t live near that store specifically, it might be because that is the first Apple retail store. With a formally recognized Union which came from a vote back in June 2022, well, the date of the strike for the towns and Maryland store Union is TBD. The union has been negotiating with apple since last January.
Over a list of issues including work, life balance, unpredictable scheduling and wages in a statement by the International Association of machinists and Aerospace workers Coalition of organized retail employees, also known as I am core quoted. This vote is the first step step in demonstrating our solidarity and sends a clear message to Apple. The passage of the strike sanction vote highlights IMC, core’s, unwavering commitment to advocating for the rights and well-being of workers in the face of challenges. As discussions with apple management continue, we remain committed to securing tangible improvements that benefit all employees, and that is not the only employment news coming out of apple this week. According to Bloomberg, a store in Shield New Jersey tried to vote to unionize and failed last week as well and earlier in that week, the national Labor Relations Board ruled that Apple violated federal labor laws When They confiscated Union flyers and interrogated staff about unionizing efforts. At the Apple Store in New York’s World Trade Center back in 2022, but not all the news coming out of apple this week was employment related.
It was a busy week for Apple in general. All this news comes on the heels of Apple’s big iPad event. Last week, which we have plenty of coverage on over on TC, if you missed it or want to dive in deeper also last week, Bloomberg reported that apple is closing in on a deal with open AI to use chat, GPT features on its iOS 18 software. This is part of a broader push to bring AI features to Apple devices and is actually the perfect segue to our next story of the day.
Our second story of the day involves a company I sure you have heard of. If you have followed anything in the tech sphere over the last 2 years, open AI, open aai is trying to set expectations ahead of its live streamed announcement today, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern on Friday, Sam Altman put a stop to the rumors that the company was going To use use this live stream to release a Google search competitor in a tweet, Sim Altman said not GPT 5, not a search engine, but we’ve been hard at work at some new stuff. We think people will love feels like magic to me. The information in Bloomberg had previously reported that open aai has a search product, partly powered by Bing.
According to the information which isn’t too surprising, giving Microsoft’s partnership with and investment in, open Ai and will work as a feature within chat GPT, allowing the chatbot to search the web and site sources according to Bloomberg, per TC’s, Anthony ha in theory at least opening eye. Could announce a search feature which means Altman’s insistence that it’s not a search engine could still be true, but I mean hey. I think all of us are in agreeance here that it would not be bad for a another search engine to get started.
If you have ever used any of the current ones available in the past few years, that’s it for me this morning, but keep an eye on Tech runch for even more Tech, startup and Venture news, as the week goes on. As always, if you want to dive deeper into anything, we talked about today, we’ll have links to the stories we covered in our show notes. Now, let’s check in with haa comps for today’s pitch deck, tear down, take it away, haa all right, everyone, I’m haa, and I’m back with another pitch deck tear down this week, we’re looking at Clouds Smith’s deck cloudsmith secured a $ 15 million series, a funding for Its Cloud platform, the 2021 round, was the largest series a for a company from Northern Ireland since 2005, so clearly they got a thing or two right. I took a closer look to to figure out how the company pulled it off. Cloudsmith had a 36 slide deck, which is a little bit excessive. As I wrote last year, most startups need around 16 slides to tell their full story.
There’S a few slides in there that aren’t needed. Nobody wants or needs to see a full org chart, for example, but that aside, let’s dive in and take a Clos look at what did work. I really love how cloudsmith created a great summary slide. It really helps investors understand the stage and status of the company. Really really well and a way to think about that is in the first couple slides you really got to set the stage, so the investor can get a context for what they’re trying to understand about what you’re trying to do. So that means understanding what space you’re in, what you’re trying to accomplish, how much money you’re raising how far along your journey.
You are all those kinds of things putting all of that together helps the investor contextualize, what they’re about to see, and they can start thinking about why your company is such a good investment opportunity. Cloudsmith uses a then now next structure, which I think is a really good idea. It really helps tell the history of where you’ve been capture, what you’re doing with a current fundraise and then lift your eyes to the Horizon, to explain where you want to go next. Now the pass is important because it helps explain how you got to where you’re going, and it helps tell the story of why you’re a good founding team, but that’s not where you’re spending most of your time, the investors are investing in the future of your company.
So keep your focus on the immediate future and the long-term vision for where you want to go. The other thing I really liked about this deck is that they have a great traction story and, most importantly, they’re using graphs to show the traction over time. The reason that is so important is that it helps show not just that you’re growing, but also that you’re growing cumulatively, and that the growth is accelerating. Accelerating growth is really what your investors want to see in order to understand that You’ found your product Market fit and that you know how to continually keep growing this company exponential growth is what VCS love to see so make sure you highlight that at every possible Turn I always say that it’s much cheaper to learn from somebody else’s mistake. So, let’s see what we can learn from cloudsmith and the things they didn’t quite get right. So here’s three things that cloudsmith could have improved about this deck. I was surprised to find that they had two solution slides in there, which I was a little confused by you – don’t have to spend that much time on a solution, especially for a company that is working and is generating Revenue. Realistically, the solution and the product slides explain that you have understood what your customer need, but really the story is about your traction.
The thing to keep in mind is that your solution slide is meant to be strategic. You’Ve explained the problem that you’re solving and the solution is kind of the highlevel Strategic way that you are thinking about how this problem can be solved. Now it’s important to separate that from your product. Your solution is typically the big strategic Vision, a company very, very rarely pivots on the solution.
If you coming up with a completely different solution, you’re, probably talking about a completely new company. That does happen from time to time, but that probably means winding up one company starting a new one and starting a fresh now the product. However, as you’re learning from your customers, you can have quite a lot of leeway with how you pivot and change and evolve. Your product, so the way to tell the story really.
Is you start with the problem? Make sure that your investors agree that that’s a problem and that it’s a problem worth solving, then you go into the kind of strategic levels like hey. We think this is a good way to solve this particular problem, and then you talk about the product layer. Now the product layer is always about the past right, it’s what you’ve built so far and as Founders, it’s often very very tempting to spend way too much time here. The truth is your investors probably don’t give much of a crap about this specific problem at all.
What they care about is whether your customers see this as a viable solution to the problem, so the way to allot your time really is to make sure you spend a fair amount of time on the problem. So that’s fully understood a little bit of time on the solution and then as little time as you can possibly get away with on the product itself. People don’t care, don’t waste! Your time there cloudsmith. I have to talk with you about your team slide. It’S a paradox, wrapped in a PowerPoint, and I don’t understand what’s going on here, you clearly have a really good team. You got to this point and somehow none of that comes through on the team slide at all. Remember that, especially at the earliest stages, your team is really the only thing your investors have to go on to figure out whether or not you’re a good investment on this slide deck, it’s so fuzzy. What I really want to see is why this team is the right team to build this solution for this problem. That’S really all you have to to do so. You tell that story by explaining what you’ve done in the past and what your superpowers are like. Why are you the right person to do this? The use of fund slides was a real face palm moment. For me, it’s kind of a perfect example of what not to do.
The company includes the runway, so how much time will they have after they raise this money and a set of percentages for where they’re going to spend the money? The problem is that doesn’t actually help the investors understand whether or not you’re going to execute well think about it. This way, if you were going to build a house and you hired a general contractor – and they told you hey – it’s going to cost $ 1 million and we’re going to spend 30 % of the money on the kitchen 30 % on the bathroom 20 %. On the outside walls and 20 % on the roof, I don’t know if that adds up to 100 % pretended it did. The point, is you don’t care how many percentages they’re trying to spend on the various parts you just want to know? If you have a livable house at the end of it same is true for the investors.
They want to understand at the end of spending the money they just invested. Are you ready for the next round of investment and the way to explain that is like Hey? We’Re going to hit these milestones and we’re going to hit these particular goals and we’re going to do it by this time. The best way to do that is to use so-called smart goals. Smart is an acronym meaning, specific measurable, achievable, relevant and timely.
If you manage to translate your goals, I.E what you’re going to spend money on into good smart goals, it helps the investors understand that you have a clear plan for what needs to be done. And if you manage to deliver on your plan, they have a really Clear Vision for what happens at the end of it. Are you ready to raise more money? Is your company in a good place? That is the right way to do your ask and use a fund slide. So just a quickly recap make sure you set the stage for what you’re about to tell your investors tell the history of your company briefly, but Focus mostly on the future.
Tell your traction story really well and graphs. Are your friend here don’t Focus too much on your product cuz. Honestly, nobody cares make sure that your team slide completely shines and finally explain what you’re going to accomplish with a cash. That’S the whole point of raising money in the first place, all right, that’s it for today’s episode, but don’t you worry Equity will be back on Wednesday if you want to keep up with us in the meantime, you can follow us on X and threads under the Handle Equity PB, if you want to submit your pitch deck to get your very own pitch deck.
Tear down check out today’s installment in the show notes and follow the submit your deck link. Thanks for listening and we’ll talk again soon, Equity is produced by Teresa. Lo cons, solo with editing by Kell Bryce, Durban is our illustrator and we’d like to give a big thanks to our audience: development team and Henry pet who manages Tech crunch audio products thanks so much for listening and we’ll talk to you next time. .