Pitch Deck Library: IPO Investor Presentations (Part 2)

5 Pitch Decks of Startups that went Public

Previously we spotlighted nine early stage pitch decks from top startups in Silicon Valley. In this article,  we look at the five that became a public company. For each, we found the first investor presentation or shareholder letter that the company released. This presentation or letter in many ways acts as the company's "pitch deck" to the world. It explains what the company does, its market opportunity, and attractive metrics like growth or profit.

Dropbox

Dropbox IPO'ed in 2018. The earliest presentation we could find was from Q1 2020. Dropbox was founded in 2007, so the company took slightly over a decade to go public.

Uber

Uber IPO'ed in 2019. Similar to Dropbox, the earliest copy of an investor presentation was from Feb 2020, which is roughly 6 months after its IPO. Founded in 2009, Uber took a decade to go public.

Airbnb

Airbnb went public December 2020. Instead of the investor presentation, Airbnb focuses on their shareholder letter which contains everything in the investor presentation and more. Founded in 2007, Airbnb took ~13 years to go public, and it benefited greatly from the remote work and digital nomads of the pandemic, so its market timing is particular good.

Coinbase

Coinbase went public in April of 2021, making it one of the latest IPOs in this batch of start-ups. It's survival post-IPO has been quite phenomenal given the collapse of FTX in late 2022 and the concurrent crypto winter. Founded in 2012, it took slightly less than a decade to go public.

Facebook

Facebook IPO'ed in 2012, taking only 8 years to go public, which is the shortest timeframe of the companies on this list. (Even though Google is not listed here, we'll make a note that it took 6 years for Google to go public.)

The Other Four Startups

There were four other start-ups in our original feature. They are by and large successful but not independently publicly traded companies today. Here's where those other players are at:

Tinder merged with the Match group in 2017 being part of the umbrella brands that also includes OKCupid.

SEOMoz rebranded as Moz was acquired in 2021 by iContact Marketing Group.

LinkedIn got to both go public and be acquired. It must have been an excellent training ground for its finance folks! LinkedIn IPO'ed in 2011, and then was acquired by Microsoft in 2016.

YouTube by far had the quickest exit -- after being founded in 2005, it was acquired by Google in 2006 for $1.65B. Then the rest is history.

Pitch to Public

The importance of pitch decks extend beyond the role it plays in the early stages of fundraising. Long-form memos and powerpoint presentations are how businesses speak to mass audiences. Knowing that the mature product is an investor presentation puts the pitch deck's importance in a different light. One day that pitch will not be just for angel investors or seasoned venture capitalists, the audience will become nation-wide institutions and everyday individuals.

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_References

_{Data was gathered from each of the respective companies and wikipedia for this article.}