Pitch Deck Teardown: Queerie’s $300K pre-seed deck

Queerie is a courting app aimed particularly at LGBTQIA+ people. It’s a really early-stage firm that’s elevating simply $300,000 — a spherical dimension that sometimes falls into the “family and friends” class.

Relationship is a fiercely aggressive area, and there’s been a good quantity of M&A exercise over time, so I used to be desperate to take a better look.

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Slides on this deck

Queerie shared its full, unredacted, 13-slide pitch deck with TechCrunch.

1. Cowl slide
2. Cowl slide half 2
3. Mission slide
4. Downside slide
5. Resolution slide
6. Market dimension slide
7. The way it works slide
8. Traction slide
9. Competitors slide
10.  Group slide
11.  Ask and Use of Funds slide
12.  6-year (!) financials
13.  Contact slide

A few issues to like about Queerie’s pitch deck

The very first thing that struck me about Queerie’s deck is that it feels contemporary and enjoyable. Using language and graphics is clear, easy and fascinating. A terrific start line for a shopper model!

Lead with the mission

[Slide 3] I like an excellent rallying cry. Picture Credit: Queerie

For those who’re making an attempt to make the world a greater place, you’re most likely going to draw mission-aligned traders. So why not spell out your mission entrance and middle? It’s a robust storytelling method that’s nicely executed within the Queerie deck.

Speak about a hard-hitting downside

[Slide 4] That’s actually an issue price fixing. Picture Credit: Queerie

This downside slide gave me pause: It stood as a reminder that in a whole lot of locations, isolation and psychological well being challenges are rife in queer areas.

The corporate is positioning itself much less as a courting app and extra as an answer for loneliness. Whether or not traders will purchase it and whether or not this app is the suitable answer to the issues the corporate identifies are separate questions. What is for certain, nonetheless, is that the issue Queerie outlines is one price fixing.

4 issues that Queerie may have improved

I really need Queerie to exist, so it pains me to see that the best way the corporate is pitching makes it basically unfundable.

Is that this the suitable workforce?

I see no less than one courting app pitched each month, which is sensible: Relationship and discovering the suitable accomplice(s) is a vital a part of many individuals’s lives, and it looks like such a simple factor to do higher than what’s at the moment on the market. The upshot is that many of those startups have founders with a lot of expertise within the courting world.

[Slide 10] Hey Quuties. Picture Credit: Queerie

However the place are the ladies? For a corporation that’s constructing an “inclusivity-designed platform,” that looks like a little bit of an oversight.

There’s some fascinating expertise right here, however the general public appear nearly too senior for this startup. I do know that’s a uncommon factor to complain about, however one of many CTOs has been a web site reliability engineer at Google for 18 years. That’s a really specialised job, and whereas scaling an app like Queerie goes to be vital, I’m discovering myself doubting how a lot overlap there’s between scaling Google’s infrastructure and scaling a web site like Queerie.

General, from studying the workforce’s LinkedIn profiles and what’s on this slide, I discover myself concluding that they could be capable of construct a extremely good, well-functioning app with an ideal person expertise — however that isn’t sufficient to construct a profitable firm. There’s a enormous hole on the gross sales and advertising aspect, and there’s not a whole lot of startup expertise throughout the workforce both. If this slide may add a seasoned marketeer with shopper advertising app expertise, I believe the workforce could be extra plausible proper out of the gate.

That is simply describing a courting app

I actually don’t perceive what this slide is making an attempt to perform:

[Slide 7] Sure, that’s a courting app. Picture Credit: Queerie

This slide is a little bit of a waste. It doesn’t present any of the key sauce for why Queerie goes to achieve success the place others have failed; there’s nothing new or modern right here.

Slides in a pitch deck ought to assist an investor determine to take a position. If somebody reads the slide and it’s prone to be impartial (and even adverse), it’s greatest neglected.

That’s not traction

[Slide 8] This isn’t actually exhibiting traction. Picture Credit: Queerie

The corporate says it has a “closed model of the cell app,” however this 13-slide deck doesn’t embrace a single screenshot of the app. The corporate says it has 95 beta testers, which is nice, however that isn’t actually “traction.” Traction could be how these beta testers are interacting with the platform. Are they paying? What are the DAU/MAU (every day/month-to-month lively customers) stats?

I’m penning this on March 31, which is the final day of Q1 2024, so I’m confused why the corporate says it surveyed 3,000 individuals in Q2 of 2024? The corporate additionally says it’s planning to develop the preliminary person base with “sturdy progress” in Q3, however then says it’s launching the app in June, which is in Q2. This isn’t an enormous deal, however it’s a little complicated.

Basically not enterprise scale

This slide, which describes how shortly the corporate desires to develop, raises some pink flags.

[Slide 12] This isn’t a startup. Picture Credit: Queerie

After the primary 12 months, the corporate is just planning to spend $40,000 per 12 months on app improvement. That doesn’t even get a half-decent part-time developer. For a corporation that’s a tech startup, that’s a terrifying oversight: Is the corporate not planning to proceed to develop its apps?

The expansion right here is means, means too sluggish. Elsewhere within the deck the corporate says it’ll purchase 1,000 customers within the first half of 2024, however then it’s going to hit 20,000 month-to-month lively customers by the top of the 12 months. Then instantly the expansion drops to “merely” doubling in 2025, and doubling once more in 2026. For a hypergrowth early-stage startup, these numbers are terrible. Startups sometimes need to be rising 10% week-over-week within the early phases. For those who begin with 1,000 customers, after a 12 months of 10% week-on-week progress, you need to be at round 130,000 customers:

10% week-on-week progress with a 1,000 person foundation appears like this. Picture Credit: TechCrunch / Haje Kamps

Even worse, nonetheless, with the present six-year financials, Queerie is planning on doing slightly below $10 million of income in 2029. That’s fairly dismal and signifies that the founders don’t have a very aggressive progress plan in place. Its personal numbers present that it solely expects about 15% of its clients to be paying $8 per 30 days.

Elsewhere within the deck, the corporate says, “Our cell app will enable us to develop to extra cities as we increase extra capital,” which is superior, however the monetary overview doesn’t present extra fundraising occurring within the enterprise, so it’s unclear when or how a lot the corporate is planning to boost.

In a nutshell, this slide exhibits that Queerie could possibly be a fairly profitable way of life enterprise, however I concern that no traders would go anyplace close to this as an funding; it’s too unambitious, and it exhibits that the corporate’s founders don’t perceive what is anticipated of them as startup founders.

The total pitch deck

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