AASU Conference Pitch Deck Teardown: A Fundraising 101

Introduction: The Educational Pitch

The AASU Conference deck, titled "Financing Your Dreams: Fundraising 101," is not a traditional startup pitch deck seeking investment. Instead, it is an instructional guide presented by David Chang. The deck functions as a roadmap for student entrepreneurs, particularly those from the Asian American Student Union (AASU) community, to understand the mechanics of the venture capital ecosystem. It balances high-level strategy with granular tactical advice, such as how to handle dilution and how to sequence investor meetings.

Slide 1: Title Slide

The deck opens with a high-resolution image of a sailboat under a starry sky, establishing a theme of navigation. The text identifies the speaker as David Chang and provides his social handle (@changds) and personal website. The subtitle "Fundraising 101" sets the expectation that this is a foundational educational session rather than a specific business proposal.

Slide 2: Professional Background

Slide 2, titled "Detour into the startup world," establishes the presenter's credibility. It features a skyline of Boston and a collection of logos representing companies where Chang likely has experience. These include established names like TripAdvisor, PayPal, and ETRADE, alongside startup-focused entities like edocs, m-Qube, and gradifi. The slide serves as a "Team" equivalent, proving the speaker has seen the full lifecycle of startups from early stage to acquisition by giants like IAC, VeriSign, and PayPal.

Slide 3: The Founder's Dilemma

Slide 3 poses the question, "Should you join or start a company?" It features a split-screen image: a corporate skyscraper on the left and two people working on laptops in a modern office on the right. The center of the slide features the book cover for "Entering Startupland" by Jeffrey Bussgang. This slide frames the presentation as a career-path decision tool for students.

Slide 4: The Economic Reality of Student Founders

Titled "Disproportionate impact," Slide 4 addresses the specific hurdles faced by the target audience. It cites two key statistics: "9 out of 10 borrow for college" and those students carry "2x amount of debt." This slide contextualizes the risk of entrepreneurship, acknowledging that financial burdens can dictate whether a student can afford to start a company or must seek traditional employment.

Slide 5: Mapping Capital Sources

Slide 5 provides a comprehensive visualization of "Capital Sources" plotted on a graph of Cost vs. Size. The data, attributed to Jean Hammond and MassChallenge, shows a wide spectrum of funding. Low-cost, small-size options include Grants, Competitions, and Personal Loans. High-cost, large-size options include Traditional VC and Private Equity. Interestingly, "Customers" are listed as a mid-size, low-cost source of capital, reinforcing the idea that revenue is the best form of funding.

Slide 6: The Venture Ladder

Slide 6, "Venture Capital Stages," uses a rocket ship metaphor to describe the progression of funding. It lists four tiers: Friends & Family at the base, followed by Angel, Early Stage, and Growth Equity at the top. This slide helps founders understand where they currently sit in the lifecycle and what the next milestone looks like.

Slide 7: Quantifying the Ask

Slide 7, "How Much to Raise," offers practical heuristics. It advises founders to build a financial model of cost drivers and revenue, forecasting monthly for at least two years. The "Fundraise rule of thumb" is stated as "12-18 months’ cash." This is a standard industry benchmark that allows founders enough time to hit milestones before needing to raise again.

Slide 8: The Roadmap

Slide 8 acts as a transition slide, breaking the upcoming content into three sections: Fundraising Basics, How to Raise a Round, and Key Tips. The visual style shifts to a chalkboard aesthetic, signaling a move into the "how-to" portion of the presentation.

Slide 9: Investor Filtering

Slide 9, "Target Criteria," uses an archery target metaphor to explain how founders should narrow down their list of potential investors. The filters move from broad to specific: Stage, Location, Industry Vertical, Investment Thesis, Business Model, and finally, a Social / Trust Filter. This encourages founders to be surgical rather than using a "spray and pray" approach to outreach.

Slide 10: The Socialization Phase

Slide 10, "Socialize," outlines the pre-marketing phase of a raise. It suggests a 2-3 month networking period to find the strongest connections to 30+ targets. Tactics mentioned include lead generation, cold calling, and warm introductions. This slide emphasizes that fundraising is a long-lead-time activity, not an overnight event.

Slide 11: Tactical Execution and FOMO

Slide 11, "Go for It! Create FOMO," covers the active raising phase. It advises founders to approach top candidates simultaneously to create competitive tension. Key advice includes landing an "anchor investor" as the "first domino" and using triggering events to improve term sheets. The speech bubble "I’m closing a round" is presented as the ultimate psychological tool to move investors from "maybe" to "yes."

Slide 12: Valuation and Dilution Mechanics

Slide 12 provides concrete examples of how equity changes over time. It shows a bar chart for Valuation ($M) with Seed at $1M, Series A at $12M (with a $6M raise), and Series B at $30M (with a $15M raise). A pie chart with a question mark over the yellow slice asks, "what’s your end stake?" This slide forces founders to confront the reality that raising capital means giving up significant portions of their company.

Slide 13: The Investor Relationship

Slide 13, "Find the right investors," features a black-and-white photo of a wedding. This metaphor is common in the industry, emphasizing that an investment is a long-term commitment that is difficult to "divorce." It warns founders to choose partners they can work with for years, not just those offering the highest valuation.

Slide 14: Team Composition

Slide 14 uses a picture of Han Solo with the text "Don’t go solo." This is a direct piece of advice against being a single founder. In the eyes of many VCs, a single founder represents a single point of failure. The slide advocates for building a team to share the burden and increase the chances of success.

Slide 15: Strategic Focus

Slide 15, "Focus your experiments," shows a row of matches burning. This is a visual warning against spreading resources too thin. For early-stage startups, the goal is to find a repeatable model, which requires intense focus on a few key hypotheses rather than trying to do everything at once.

Slide 16: The Power of the Individual

Slide 16, "Big things start with one person," features a silhouette of a person at sunset. This serves as an inspirational closing note, reminding the student audience that every major corporation began as a single idea from a single individual.

Slide 17: Pitch Deck Checklist

Slide 17, "Typical Parts," is perhaps the most useful slide for a founder in the process of building a deck. It lists 12 standard slides: Overview, Problem, Solution, Market, Revenue Model & Business Model, Traction, Marketing Strategy, Team, Financial Projections, Competition, Money Being Raised and Use of Funds, and Conclusion. This provides a structural blueprint for the audience to follow.

Slide 18: Resource Recommendation

The final slide in the sequence is a screenshot of The Noun Project (thenounproject.com), a site for royalty-free icons. This is a practical tip for founders who may not be designers but need to create professional-looking visual aids for their presentations.

What Works in This Deck

The deck excels at demystifying the jargon of venture capital. By using clear metaphors—a rocket for stages, a wedding for relationships, and dominoes for closing a round—it makes complex financial concepts accessible to students. The inclusion of Slide 4 (student debt) is particularly effective because it acknowledges the specific socio-economic reality of the audience, making the advice feel tailored rather than generic. The tactical advice on Slide 11 regarding anchor investors and FOMO is high-level strategy that many first-time founders miss.

What Is Missing

Because this is an educational deck, it lacks the specific metrics of a business. There are no unit economics, no specific market size (TAM/SAM/SOM) for a particular industry, and no competitive analysis of current market players. Furthermore, while it mentions "Financial Projections" as a typical part of a deck, it does not provide a template for how those projections should look beyond the 12-18 month runway rule. The deck also omits the legal complexities of fundraising, such as the difference between a SAFE, a convertible note, and a priced round, which are critical for founders at the Seed stage mentioned on Slide 12.

Founder Takeaways

Founders should copy the structural clarity of Slide 17 when building their own decks. The 12-part checklist is the industry standard for a reason: it covers the narrative arc investors expect. Additionally, the investor filtering process on Slide 9 is a vital exercise for any founder to perform before they start sending emails. Instead of reaching out to every VC on a list, founders should apply the stage, industry, and thesis filters to ensure they are only talking to people who are actually empowered to invest in their specific type of business. Finally, the emphasis on the "anchor investor" is a crucial takeaway; the hardest part of a raise is the first 10%, and once that is secured, the rest of the round often follows through the FOMO mechanics described on Slide 11.