Matt Gore Pitch Deck Cowboy
@GoracleOfDelphi
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I help founders make killer pitch decks || More than $2 Billion raised || Mediocre Angel || Hot take Factory || Part-time VC Prof || Founder at OPTIO
Denver, CO
Joined April 2021
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Four simple rules for making killer pitch decks:
1) Be simple, not precise - no one reads the 5th bullet
2) Show, don't tell - visualize everything
3) Say what you mean - State your argument clearly on every slide
4) Tell a story - think campfire, not conference room
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I make 8x more money than my wife.
But the bank ignored ALL my income for our mortgage.
Apparently Banks read “business owner” as “unemployed liar”
Am I alone, or is getting a mortgage as a founder/SMB owner miserable?
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My dad's parenting style was... unique.
Was he a genius or a menace? Examples:
> When I won an xbox, he made me sell it and buy a gun. I was 11 and very happy with the trade.
(his thinking: video games bad, guns fine)
More 👇
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@Guiness_Pig
I want to know when my employees are just thinking about leaving.
Why?
So I can help them find their next job.
I’ll shop their resumes around. Make calls.
Result?
1) they’re happy
2) my friends who hire them are happy
3) I have tons of time to backfill
Win-win-win
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I wanted to go to Duke for college.
He bribed me with a new F-150 to go to Davidson, where I'd gotten a scholarship.
$22k truck saved him $250k
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UPDATE: he bought a horse today for the grandkids
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This is the worst feature Apple has ever released.
Hundreds of false positives, each with a little jolt of worry.
Has this ever actually helped someone?
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He let me work at a safari camp in Africa as a sophomore in high school.
I emailed some people and someone said I could come work for free.
Spent the summer tracking animals and setting ambushes for illegal poachers with the police.
Mom wasn't thrilled.
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I was so desperate to avoid working for his landscaping company in high school that I started my own.
Made $18 an hour instead of $7.25
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You have to get jacked or die.
You can have only 1 piece of equipment.
Can't be a kettlebell.
What is it?
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Earliest memory: laying sod for his landscaping company.
I'm sure at 4 years old I was a real asset.
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As a 7 year old he'd give me $25 bucks and make me negotiate alone for a motel room on family road trips.
If it was more than $25, we'd keep driving.
If I could negotiate it below $25, I got to keep the change.
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Got my first machete when I was 5.
BUT I could only use it when I wore shoes (the tyrrany)
Saved him from having to clear the bamboo out of the backyard
(I have all my toes and fingers still)
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@Phillustrates_
The bank approved us on my wife’s salary
But, they panicked when they heard she was an “intern”
I had to explain that’s just what they call new doctors
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Easiest clients to work with:
- Navy SEALs (coachable, zero ego)
- YC alums (smart, decisive)
- Anyone in AA (thoughtful, disciplined)
Hardest clients to work with:
- Anyone over 60 (“back in my day”)
- Lawyers (“we can’t say we have a ‘solution’”)
What did I miss?
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What’s the best client gift you’ve ever received?
Trying to figure out what I’m going to give my clients
This is my current idea:
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The greatest threat to your wealth: divorce
Stop optimizing your portfolio and take your wife on a date
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I was in a fraternity
Super involved. Even pledge master (read: haze master) x2.
But any frat on a resume is a 🚩
Agree?
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What's the best watch between $10k-15k?
No Rolexes. I'm not an overweight car dealership baron in Topeka.
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Married men of twitter:
How many useless pillows do you have on your bed?
I’ve got 7
I remember the good ol days when I had just one pillow and an animal hide instead of a duvet
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Negotiating hack:
When clients ask for a discount, I say,
“I’m terrible at negotiating. I just had to stop.”
90% of the time they laugh and pay full price.
What’s your go-to move?
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@gvh41
My wife’s in surgical residency (think: Grey’s anatomy)
I’m running a small business
We’re in full survival mode together
Last night we went on a date and it was like “oh man I like you - this is fun”
I love having a battle buddy with me
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Hiring 3 people in the next 3 months
What (non-obvious) questions do you like for interviews?
Some of my favorites:
- What tabs do you have open right now on your browser?
(Shows what they actually do on their computer all day)
More 👇
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@RocketRosieVT
@Guiness_Pig
Exactly!
It turns out when you want your employees to be happy, do amazing work, take vacations, and end up rich, they don’t want to leave
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Dream car?
I’m making a pitch deck for a company restoring and electrifying iconic classic cars
It’s got me thinking about upgrading from my twelve-year-old F150
What’s your dream car?
Here’s mine:
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An employee is taking 5 minutes off to watch the eclipse
Should I fire him?
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Hired a kid right out of college
This week he had his first meeting with a giant company, one of our partners
His response:
“That was so weird. That could have been an email. Is that what normal meetings are like?”
4 truths:
1) There are 2-hour meetings that could have been a 30-minute call.
2) There are 30-minute calls that could have been a 5-line email.
3) There are 5-line emails that could have been a Slack message.
4) There are Slack messages that could have been a LMGTFY.
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Working the night shift will kill you.
It’s roughly the equivalent of smoking a pack a day.
This is why I refuse to hire folks in Asia to work US hours.
I hire Filipinos to work the US night shift, and folks in LatAm to work day shifts.
I refuse to kill my employees.
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Have you been stalked on a run?
Two women just told me multiple stories of cars and people following them on runs
One ended up hiding behind a bush until her mom picked her up.
She confronted the guy in the van who’d been chasing her for 15 minutes
Is this a thing?!!?
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Can you actually reduce your tax bill by buying a car?
I run a consulting business and my f-150 is 12 years old.
My accountant says no.
But TikTok says yes...
What's the real answer?
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I need to hide money from the IRS
(Legally)
How do yall do it?
(I run a cash flowing agency and wife is a surgeon)
401k? HSA? Car washes? Money launder-mats? Expensing G Wagons?
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I regularly sell $5-15k projects in 30 minute meetings.
Steal my strategy:
1) Open by complaining and laughing about something random (5 min)
A crackhead drilled a hole in my truck to steal gas, and I sold 3 projects off that story. Have fun.
2) Ask about their needs (20 min)
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Columbia Business School refused my rec letter for a student.
Why?
I didn't have a BUSINESS CARD.
Is it 1996?
Had to mock one up in PPT just to submit the rec letter.
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My wife’s a doctor in residency
That means she has to work a lot of holidays, including today
So our Easter celebration is a coffee and a cookie outside the emergency room
Making marriage work, one day at a time
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The best thing you can do for your business: go on vacation
- Things will break. Now you know what systems to build next.
- People will step up. Now you know who to promote.
My goal is to become unnecessary. Vacations are scorecards.
Florence here I come 🍕✈️🫡
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What are client 🚩?
I’m trying to get better at spotting bad clients early.
Here are mine:
- Red-lining my simple contract
- Negotiating hard on price
Every client that has done both has become a nightmare.
What are yours?
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Parents - it seems that the greatest risk today is not giving kids enough adversity.
Is that crazy?
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This CEO randomly deletes all recurring meetings
They call the software “chaos monkey”
To reschedule the meeting, you have to calculate the cost
(Avg. comp per hour x attendees x meeting length)
Good idea?
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@AlecStapp
Buddy is a real estate developer
Outbid another guy for a property
99% of noise complaints have come from the guy who lost the bidding war
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Starting a new college class: “How to Get Rich”
(I’m a part-time professor)
Each week, interview someone who took a different path to wealth (CRE, ETA, FIRE, Founders, VCs, etc)
What books should I assign?
-Psychology of Money
-Rich Dad, Poor Dad
-Millionaire Next Door
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@curmudgeonland
@Guiness_Pig
100%
And they recruit talented friends for your
Or they’ll hire your company when they become CEO
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OK hear me out:
IKEA Tiny Home Kit
What a beautiful disaster that would be
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Can the cartels please start making Ozempic?
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We’re fully booked.
Like ignoring-hot-inbounds fully booked
I’ve been feeling stressed and guilty about that, but I think it’s actually a great sign.
We’re going to institute a waiting list and grow our capacity into it.
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Today we sold 4 pitch deck projects
But I didn’t sell them all
An employee sold his first project
I am so fired up. That kid’s gonna be a partner.
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A founder just told me is going to practice his pitch 100 times (literally).
That’ll take hours.
But he’s going to do it.
It’s that sort of grit that makes me believe he’ll raise a big series A.
And build a huge company.
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First time founder: “Sign this NDA so no one can steal my idea”
Second time founder: “please tell everyone; I want feedback”
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@itsmarkmoran
@WallStreetOasis
When I was at BCG, one of my friends jumped off the building at lunch.
I was working across from him all morning.
He had a lot of other stuff going on. But the pressure didn’t help.
I think about him a lot.
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I brought cookies to an interview for a scholarship
It was scheduled for the late afternoon. I knew the committee wouldn’t have eaten for hours.
I got the scholarship.
About 90% of what you think are emotions are, in fact, blood sugar fluctuations
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@girdley
What if you get a snug sense of superiority from having the alcohol tolerance of a Russian dock worker?
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My new passport photo is the best photo ever taken of me
How did this happen
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@seattle_tax
I married to a surgeon and now my life mission is to Normalize Trophy Husbands
(And yes I sell t shirts)
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Relationship hack:
I keep a $50 present for my wife hidden in my sock drawer at all times.
That way, when I inevitably forget a special occasion, I can pull out a thoughtful present immediately.
Saved me many times and this is only my 3rd anniversary.
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I fired my lawyer.
He was fighting to give me every possible advantage in my standard client contract.
I don't want every possible advantage.
I wanted a fair deal in a simple agreement.
Why is that so hard?
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I double my prices when a company has in-house lawyers
Why?
Because lawyers are miserable to work with.
I had a lawyer say “we can’t call it a ‘solution’ slide”
Good CEOs keep lawyers as councilors, not decision-makers
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Signed my first recurring revenue client!
Deck-a-month subscription service for an accelerator.
“Recurring revenue” may be the sweetest words in the English language
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What’s the craziest way you’ve heard of someone making a million bucks?
I’ll go first: friend realized the Texas “exit here for Taco Bell” signs were underpriced. Bid on the contract, guaranteed Texas 2x the money from the previous contract.
He cleared $3M in the first year.
This lady calls me yesterday. Wants to buy some property to set up her business. I ask what she does.
"I rent luxury bathrooms"
$1600 per event. I have over 20 of those and the new thing is these luxury shower - bathroom combos.
People make money doing the craziest things.
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How I got a job at BCG:
Had 5 scotches and 2 cigars the night before the interview with a current employee
He went to bat for me and I beat the Harvard kid (who presumably couldn’t handle whiskey) for the last spot
Hot take - knowing how to drink a beer socially and responsibly is under appreciated business skill for relationship building in networking groups
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Best interview answer of all time:
I asked a candidate in El Salvador who his worst boss was.
His answer: THE SCAM CALL CENTER MANAGER
So I asked him - “you worked as a scammer?”
Yup. The answer was yes. FOR YEARS.
So no, he did not get the job.
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@ChrisGure
It was three, but I had only had tax filings for two years because we hadn’t filed yet. So as far as they were concerned, no.
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My median class size in college: 2.5 people.
How? I discovered my profs got paid extra to teach “independent studies” (1:1 classes). I found the best professors and made up classes we’d both love.
Also: since I wrote the curriculum, participation was always 30% of the grade
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The willingness to look stupid is a superpower
- Ask “dumb questions” and slowly become the smartest guy in the room
- “Look poor” by not spending and end up the richest
- “look blue collar” by running a small business and be the envy of your banker buddies
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I'm great at managing workaholics
- I pay them well
- I honor hard work & excellence
- I make them rest
But I'm terrible at managing normal people
- I don't watch them closely enough
- I don't know how to motivate them
- I end up overpaying them
How can I do better?
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Quick re-introduction:
I help founders make killer pitch decks. So far our decks have helped founders raise >$2 Billion, mostly in $2-5M chunks.
I love startups but I’m building a boutique white-collar service business.
On the side, I’m a part-time VC professor at Texas A&M,…
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Mom was a prison librarian
An inmate requested "The Art of War" but it was already checked out
So mom recommended Machiavelli's "The Prince"
I told her to stop.
She was making the gangs wars way more complicated.
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Did I just make my first sale off X?
Here's how it happened:
->I made an unhinged comment ->
->Founder noticed ->
->Saw what I do for a living ->
->went to my website ->
->booked a call
Not closed yet, but I had a blast meeting some great founders.
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Interviewed a killer young engineer yesterday. Ambitious. Obsessed with planes.
After one summer at Boeing, he’s out. Consulting instead.
He wanted to be the first one in and the last one out.
They literally forced him to go home at 3 pm.
No wonder their planes can’t fly.
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You don’t know paranoia until you go to the bathroom mic’ed up
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Friends and family at the worst clients
So my friends and family discount is 20% extra
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I wouldn’t have started my business if my wife hadn’t told me too.
First night back after the honeymoon, I tried to ignore her to make pitch decks all night.
She told me no.
But also: that I had to go all in.
She was still in med school, but she believed.
I’m so grateful.
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I am raising $1 Billion to fund a hostile takeover of Zyn
We’ll fix their logistics, double their value, and exit
I went to 5 stores to find 1 can
What are finance bros good for if not this
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Negotiating hack -
When clients ask for a discount, I say:
“I’m terrible at negotiating. I had to just stop.”
90% of the time they laugh and pay full price.
They feel like they won.
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@amredman
I insist my accountant stay up to date on the latest trends on Chinese spyware apps
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Every culture has its own practices to mark the passing of a loved one
In America, we make widows argue with bureaucrats
I’m watching a family member argue with life insurance, health insurance, county officials, and corporate HR bureaucrats
Have you experienced this?
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If your designer uses a PC, you’ve got a problem
If your finance guy uses a Mac, you’ve got a problem.
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My wife fractured her elbow.
She tripped on her normal 3:30 am run.
She still went to work at 5:30.
The other surgeons had to tell her to go get an X-ray and some help.
This makes me feel:
- proud of her grit
- soft for complaining about work
- scared for my safety
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Today’s my birthday.
I’m turning 31.
I don’t have lessons, but I do have some things I’m grateful for
👇
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@ContrarianSaver
Hahaha so true. Much worse than a PhD - putting “MBA” in your email signature
John James, MBA
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Judged a pitch deck competition with a bunch of VCs yesterday.
The simplest slide won, every time.
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You know your pipeline is full when you're THRILLED to be stood up for a sales call
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I love Loom and MarkUp.
I pay nothing for Markup and very little for Loom.
I emailed both product teams telling them they could triple my prices and I’d stay.
Loom ignored me. Markup referred me to a very confused customer service rep.
🤦
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I put a meme in a pitch deck
The client loves it
Winning 💪
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