LABELit.cc Pitch Deck Teardown: A Crowdsourced Affiliate

Slide-by-Slide Teardown

Slide 1: Title Slide

The cover slide introduces LABELit as 'Social driven eCommerce.' The tagline, 'Label the web. Buy anything you see online,' establishes the core value proposition immediately. Visually, it uses a high-quality lifestyle image with an overlay of a digital product tag, showing a 'Hipster Hat' for €29.99. This provides an instant visual context for what the product does before the presenter even speaks.

Slide 2: The Problem

The problem is framed as a common consumer frustration: seeing an item in a photo but not knowing where to buy it. The slide uses a 'street style' photograph of a man and a thought bubble asking, 'That shirt looks great! But where can I get it?' It is a simple, relatable pain point that requires no complex explanation.

Slide 3: The Solution

The solution slide mirrors the problem slide but replaces the thought bubble with a functional 'label.' It states that purchase information can be attached to images on any website by any user. The visual shows the specific product (a light blue shirt) with a 'Shop now' button and price (€17.95), effectively demonstrating the transition from discovery to commerce.

Slide 4: How does it work?

This slide introduces the 'Want and Haves' terminology. A 'Want' is created when a user asks the community to identify a product in a picture. A 'Have' is a completed label with price and info. The slide uses two examples: one asking for a bow tie and another identifying a blazer worn by Natalie Portman. This highlights the crowdsourced nature of the data entry, which is critical for the platform's scalability.

Slide 5: Business Model

The revenue model is explained through a flow chart. It claims an average 9% commission on every purchase from shops like Nike, ASOS, and Zalando. The commission is split 33/33/33 between the User (who does the work), the Publisher (whose content is used), and LABELit (the product). This is a transparent breakdown, though it raises questions about how they manage affiliate relationships across so many different retailers and publishers simultaneously.

Slide 6: Technology

The technology slide lists four tools: the main website, a browser app, a web plugin, and mobile apps. It uses status indicators: the website and browser app are 'Done and working,' the plugin is 'under development,' and the mobile app is in the 'production pipeline.' This gives a clear view of the current technical maturity and the roadmap ahead.

Slide 7: Marketing

The marketing strategy is divided into three phases: 'Friends and trendsetters' for the beta, 'Social media' (specifically 'Wants of the Day') for community management, and 'Targeted advertising' on Google and Facebook for scale. The slide mentions they have 'a lot of experience' with targeted campaigns, though it doesn't quantify this experience or name the individuals who possess it.

Slide 8: Key Competitors

The competition slide is well-segmented into 'Consumer Space' (TheHunt, Pinterest, Polyvore) and 'Business Solutions' (Stipple, Skimlinks). A footnote adds a geographic angle: 'at least in the US. In Europe there’s still a lot of potential for new solutions.' This suggests the company is positioning itself as the European leader in a space already proven by American counterparts.

Slide 9: Why LABELit?

This slide attempts to define the 'moat' or unique selling proposition. It claims to be the only product combining a consumer platform with a business approach (the web plugin) while providing financial benefits to all parties. It uses a Venn diagram-style graphic to show how consumers, publishers, and the central hub (LABELit.cc) interact.

Slide 10: Financial Planning

This is the most data-dense slide in the deck. It states the company has been bootstrapped for 18 months and is seeking €0.65m in seed funding. A 5-year table projects a break-even in Q3 2016. Revenue is projected to grow from €26,525 in Year 1 to €34.7M in Year 5. The table also tracks headcount, marketing spend, and server costs, providing a granular look at their assumptions for scaling the business.

Slide 11: Contact Slide

The final slide provides the company address in Hamburg, Germany, and a general email address. Crucially, it lists four individual email addresses for Endrik Hasemann, Helgo Magnussen, Goetz Magnussen, and Nicolas Kittner. While this identifies the key people, it is not a substitute for a proper team slide.

What Works Well

The clarity of the 'Want and Haves' system (Slide 4) is a highlight. It explains a potentially complex crowdsourcing mechanic in two simple steps. By using real-world examples like celebrity street style, the founders make the utility of the product immediately obvious. The business model slide (Slide 5) is also exceptionally clear; the 33% split is easy to remember and suggests a fair ecosystem that incentivizes all participants.

The financial table (Slide 10) is much more detailed than what is typically found in a seed deck. While the projections are highly optimistic, the inclusion of specific line items like 'Server' costs and 'Affiliate commissions' shows that the founders have at least attempted to model the unit economics of their growth. This level of transparency can build trust with analytical investors.

What Is Missing

The most glaring omission is a dedicated Team Slide. In seed-stage investing, the 'who' is often more important than the 'what.' While names are listed on the final slide, there is no information regarding their backgrounds, previous exits, technical expertise, or why they are the right people to build a social e-commerce giant. Without this, the deck feels like a plan without a pilot.

There is also a lack of current traction metrics. Slide 6 says the website is 'Done and working,' but there are no figures for current monthly active users (MAU), the number of labels already created, or the current click-through rate (CTR) on existing tags. For a company that has been bootstrapped for 18 months, investors would expect to see some evidence of user engagement or early revenue, rather than just 5-year forecasts.

What a Founder Should Copy

Founders should emulate the way LABELit handles the 'Problem/Solution' transition (Slides 2 and 3). By using the exact same image for both slides and simply changing the overlay, they create a 'before and after' effect that is visually powerful and requires very little text to understand. This is a highly effective way to demonstrate a product's value proposition.

The competitive analysis (Slide 8) is also a good template. Instead of a standard 'check-box' grid where the startup magically wins every category, LABELit categorizes competitors by their market focus (Consumer vs. Business). This shows a sophisticated understanding of the landscape and acknowledges that different competitors threaten different parts of their business model.

Final Analysis

LABELit.cc presents a logically structured argument for a crowdsourced affiliate model. The deck succeeds in explaining a three-sided marketplace (users, publishers, and retailers) without getting bogged down in technical jargon. The visual design is consistent, and the financial ask is clear and grounded in a detailed (if ambitious) 5-year plan. However, the total absence of founder bios and current traction data makes this a 'vision' deck rather than a 'proof of execution' deck. To move from a pitch to a term sheet, the founders would need to provide significant evidence that their 18 months of bootstrapping have resulted in a community that actually wants to 'label the web.'