LinkedIn’s Series B Pitch Deck starts off with the 3 components/services of LinkedIn that cover all 3 areas of professional people search to establish the market they are in.
They continue with a clear problem statement and why current solutions don’t work (in a way establishing this market is real).
Then it gets into a broader notion that they keep on emphasizing throughout their pitch: the concept of Internet 2.0, which is basically search/interact through networks instead of flat directories. They give bunch of examples but I liked Google vs alta vista the most:
They go on to show that they dominate the current market mainly in terms of active user count. They also mention that major groups/brands already exist to bolster their argument.
Furthermore, they not only show current dominance but try to prove that their dominance will be long lasting into the future by referring to social phenomena and patents.
Then they show that network directly leads to revenue (showing why revenue is not that important at that stage of the company). They emphasize this because they know their only weakness is not being revenue-rich.
They then go on calculating the market by measuring the potential of each of the 3 services they have.
After elaborating on these services, they show their launch plan for each service to signal that revenue is on the horizon and their potential to be a business with high margins.
What I would steal from this deck is the emphasis given to known weak-points. Including why this is the right and talented team to build this (ideas fade but talent persists) alongside the assumptions they admit they make and why they are easily (or already) reached.
One question could be: What evidence shows customers will pay for these services rather than only using the free network?
