You enter startup life when you don't need or want to raise money, but an opportunity presents itself to raise a great new round and bring in a strategic investor.
Danish animation and motion capture company Rococo was founded this summer. I wrote about a $3 million strategic round that valued the company at $80 million—a round specifically designed to get Zeppetto to buy Rococo's hat table.
When things like this happen, you usually don't need a depth chart; Investors are already convinced they want to invest, and you want investors. Besides, if the deal doesn't go through... you don't need the money anyway.
When I mentioned Rococo, I thought to myself: what kind of game do you use in this particular situation? Fortunately, the CEO of the company was more than happy to share the range with me. So I have something unusual to complete this week: a strategic stretch!
Let's take a closer look.
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Slide on this platform
- Cover slip
- Procrastinate the problem
- Solution slide
- Slide-out product guide
- Market Size Slips
- Market tracking slide
- "Flying Business" - business model slide
- "Rococo Platform in 2 Years" - Product Roadmap Slide (Updated)
- "Get Started in Healthcare, Conquer New Verticals" - Market Opportunities/Expansion Slides
- Group slide
- "We're on our way to the world's most powerful human activity dataset" - market tracker slide
- "Business Background" - Statistics and progress slide (updated)
- Financial Accounting (Revised)
- "Rococo at a glance" - KPI slide
- "Funding History" - Slideshow of your fundraising journey with rankings
- Close the slide
Three things to love
If you are building a company and not a founder, you will have a good range. And, my God, Rococo delivers that face.
Full transparency
[2 slides] Problem slides. Image credit: Rococo
The photography is great and inspires action and movement. Anyone who has tried to move something with their hands knows how difficult it is to make natural movements. The two images go a long way, and the text goes even further: We live in a world where animators must embrace a wide range of activities to make life easier. It's not hard to imagine this being true for games, animated movies, etc. I love how simple this slide is and how it works. It's a great way to start a conversation.
A great bargain with a great bargain on the side
You know all the praise I gave Rococo? It's getting better. I am already convinced that it is a good option, but then we are told that there are many other options:
[4 slides] Secondary market. Image credit: Rococo
If you are building a company and not a founder, you will have a good range. And, my God, Rococo delivers that face.
This means that creators (especially low- and medium-budget game and animation makers) have a large and growing market. Rococo examines (against) market spreads to see exactly what investors want to see.
For a lot of companies, I'd pull back at this point, there's a lack of separation and focus, but I really like the way Rococo tells the story in this case: they're in health and life sciences, web3, sports and more. Use cases, but don't do too much. This shows that they are looking at things without taking too many resources. At least I hope so. If I had to invest, I'd ask them how many resources they use, but the way this slide is designed and feels, I'm sure they're doing a pilot/early test.
The exception is "robotics and automotive," where the company suddenly counts Tesla, Volkswagen, BMW, Ford and Mercedes as existing customers. It underlines what's going on, but it's a great way to tell that part of the story. Yes, the question immediately comes to mind: How will they use your product? What is the contract price? How did you find them? What can you do to increase your presence? How to attract more customers in the field of robotics and automotive? But from a historical perspective, it points to a strong core market (innovators) and some potentially profitable market expansions. It's a good place to start.
Oh, and for those inventors…
When I first played Rococo I was confused by the order; I'll skip to slides 4 and 5. But when I look closer, I see what they're doing. Instead of saying "our heart and other options", they do it differently. Slide 4 lays the groundwork, then Slide 5 examines the target audience, showing it has great potential for growth.
[5. Slide] About these authors... Image credit : Rococo
This round is about bringing in an investor who already wants to participate, so I'll forgive Rokoko for that, but if this is a typical VC round, I invite you to talk more about this "high rise". It looks like a number.
For the rest of this roundup, we'll look at three things we can do better or differently with any Rococo Pitch-Mac.
