Breeze Pitch Deck Teardown: A Hyper-Local Marketplace

Executive Summary

Breeze is a peer-to-peer marketplace tailored for the unique constraints and opportunities of college life. The 12-slide deck presented in 2018 outlines a strategy to capture the 'student economy' by facilitating small-scale tasks between peers. While the deck is visually clean and identifies a clear niche, it functions more as a project proposal than a high-growth venture capital pitch, lacking detailed financials and a specific investment request.

Slide 1: Title Slide

The deck opens with a minimalist dark gray background featuring the brand name 'BREEZE' in a thin, sans-serif green font. The tagline, "Let’s work together to make college easier!" immediately establishes the mission. The slide lists the core leadership: Co-founders Kirby Wang and Solomon Park, and Marketing lead Nathan Chen Lin. It is a standard, professional entry point that focuses on the team and the high-level goal.

Slide 2: The Problem

The problem is visualized through a circular flow diagram representing the four main pressures on a student: Academics, Social, Extra-curricular, and Professional. The text states that students have many responsibilities and are "often too busy to complete basic tasks and chores." This slide effectively identifies 'time poverty' as the primary pain point for the buyer side of their marketplace.

Slide 3: The Solution

Breeze defines itself as a mobile app connecting "busy students" with "cash-strapped students." The solution is two-fold: it allows one group to make "quick money for simple tasks" and the other to "outsource tasks and focus on other responsibilities." By framing the solution as a benefit to both sides of the marketplace, Breeze establishes the dual-incentive structure necessary for a peer-to-peer platform.

Slide 4: How it Works

This slide uses a circular process map to explain the user journey. The steps are: Signup with student ID , Add tasks, Offers, Communicate, Meetup, Complete Task, Rate and Review, and finally, Get Paid! The inclusion of "Signup with student ID" is a critical safety and trust feature, signaling that the marketplace is a closed, verified loop exclusive to the campus community.

Slide 5: Size of the Problem (Market Size)

Breeze uses the standard TAM/SAM/SOM framework to quantify their opportunity. They cite a Total Available Market (TAM) of 21 million students nationally. The Serviceable Available Market (SAM) is narrowed to the Northeast Region with 2 million students. The Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM) is estimated at 1 million students based on their internal survey data. A pie chart shows that the Northeast region represents 8% of the total student population in the country.

Slide 6: Market Research

This is one of the strongest slides in the deck because it provides primary data. Based on a sample size of 300 college students , Breeze identified the demand for specific services: Cleaning (28%) , Moving (21%), Buying Groceries (19%), Food Delivery (18%), and Laundry (14%). This data validates the specific categories the app needs to support at launch to ensure liquidity in the marketplace.

Slide 7: Landing Page

The deck shows a mockup of the Breeze landing page. The design is modern, featuring a mountain-scape background with a blue-to-green gradient. It includes "Get it on App Store" and "Get it on Play Store" buttons, though the text contains placeholders like "Tagline Text should be here." This indicates the company was in the early stages of brand development and web presence at the time of the pitch.

Slide 8: MVP (Minimum Viable Product)

The MVP slide lists five core features: News Feed Tab, Category Tab, Post task button, Message Tab, and Profile Tab. A mobile mockup shows a "News Feed" for Northeastern University. Interestingly, it displays a "Meal swipe" task for $12 and a "Laundry" task for $20. The meal swipe inclusion is a highly specific campus use case that general competitors like TaskRabbit cannot easily replicate, as it involves campus-specific currency.

Slide 9: Go-to-Market Strategy

The strategy is divided into three pillars: 1. Facebook and Instagram advertisements for accessibility; 2. Campus ambassadors for customer education and brand awareness; and 3. Partnerships with school and Greek organizations for mass promotional events. This is a standard "boots on the ground" approach typical for successful campus-based startups like early Facebook or Tinder.

Slide 10: Competition

Breeze compares itself to TaskRabbit, Thumbtack, and GoPuff. The key differentiators are being "Exclusively for students" and the fee structure. While TaskRabbit takes a 30% fee, Breeze proposes a $1 - $2 fee per transaction . This positioning targets price-sensitive students, though it raises questions about the platform's ability to cover operational costs like payment processing and insurance.

Slide 11: Team

The team slide features five individuals. Kirby Wang (Baruch, Statistics) and Solomon Park (Northeastern, Finance) are the co-founders. Nathan Chen Lin handles marketing. The technical side includes Stuart Smith (Technology Advisor, JP Morgan) and Jayser Mendez (Back-end developer, Bronx Community). The team appears well-balanced for an early-stage student venture, combining data, finance, marketing, and engineering.

Slide 12: Milestones

The timeline spans 2018 to 2019. Key achievements in April 2018 include the landing page, participation in the Husky Challenge, and a $500 grant from CUNY . Future goals for August 2018 included securing funding and meeting with schools. The timeline concludes with a Beta Launch in December 2018 . This slide shows the company was in the pre-launch/early-testing phase during the creation of this deck.

What Breeze Does Well

Breeze excels at identifying a hyper-local niche. By focusing exclusively on students and requiring a student ID for signup, they solve the 'stranger danger' problem inherent in gig-economy apps. Their market research (Slide 6) is specific and actionable, showing they listened to their target audience before building. The inclusion of 'meal swipes' in the MVP (Slide 8) is a brilliant example of identifying a 'gray market' that already exists on campuses and bringing it into a formal, safe platform.

What is Missing from the Deck

The most glaring omission is a clear Financial Ask . The deck mentions "Funding" as a milestone but never specifies how much capital they are seeking or how they will allocate it. Furthermore, there is no Unit Economics slide. A $1-$2 transaction fee is very low; the deck doesn't explain how this covers the cost of Stripe/Braintree fees, let alone the cost of acquiring users. There is also no mention of Liability or Insurance , which is a major hurdle for any marketplace involving physical tasks like moving or cleaning in dormitories.

Founder Takeaways: What to Copy

Primary Research: Don't just guess what users want. Breeze surveyed 300 students and used that data to prioritize their feature set. · Niche Features: The 'Meal Swipe' feature is a great example of building something that only works for your specific target market, creating a moat against larger competitors. · Safety as a Feature: Using the .edu email or student ID as a barrier to entry is a low-cost way to build high trust in a marketplace. · Clear Competitive Matrix: Slide 10 clearly shows why a student would choose Breeze over TaskRabbit (price and community).