“What, you are making a desktop app in 2020? Well, we (the U.S.) have moved totally into the cloud now, everyone is using Google Docs to collaborate. Maybe people in less developed countries might find your product interesting if it is offered at a low price (i.e., people who cannot afford Google Docs and/or are using pirated copies of PowerPoint. Your next challenge is to make your product available in non-English languages and get sales distribution in these markets (do you need some contacts?).”
OK.
I now start to feel first hand what entrepreneurs go through when talking to others (especially investors) with their product. I am not raising money at the moment, but here is a possible way of answering a question like this.
- On the one hand SlideMagic is a desktop app, on purpose. Presentation design requires a super snappy interface, and deep access to the operating system (dragging things between 2 files open in a window for example).
- On the other hand, SlideMagic is not a real desktop app. It is written in HTML and Javascript and runs on Google Chromium, the current web development setup, and the app is updated very frequently in the background (sometimes daily).
- SlideMagic focuses on 1 (huge) issue in presentations: story clarity and design, not online collaboration, not enterprise security, not cloud file storage, not data analysis, not stunning animations, not knowledge storage and search, not intra-employee information sharing. All these are important issues that have great software products built for them, by billion dollar companies.
- SlideMagic’s economic setup allows it to do this: a super lean cost base, and a former strategy consultant, presentation designer, computer scientist brain combined in one head to try and get product-market fit for what no one has managed to do: get people to make better presentations. Millions of dollars of VC money, huge teams of people with the objective of dethroning Microsoft or Google is not what were are doing here. SlideMagic needs very little to turn profitable, SlideMagic can afford to take its time with product iterations to get there. Only when the formula catches on, investing is growth is on the agenda.
In short, SlideMagic might sound like a crazy idea, but it is a calculated risk where the whole combination of technology, idea, economics, and entrepreneur is in balance and hangs together. It might not work, but it could work, and when it does, presentations will become a lot better.
You see how I tried to answer the question: factual, reasonable, and even a bit vulnerable. Not every investor will agree with you, not every investor will think she is a fit with your business (these are 2 different things) but every one of them should think that you are a sensible person and see where you are coming from.
Photo by Andre Mouton on Unsplash