It’s typical on TechCrunch Live for founders to talk about fundraising while flipping through their last pitch deck. But Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz didn’t have a pitch deck to share. That’s because Deel raised a total of $629 million without one.
Rather, Andreessen Horowitz partner Anish Acharya pitched Deel to let a16z lead the company’s Series A, Acharya explained alongside Bouaziz on TechCrunch Live on Wednesday.
Throughout the chat, we touched on a few key takeaways, including how to raise without a pitch deck. For Acharya, a serial founder with extensive fundraising and investing experience, Deel’s momentum comes from Bouaziz.
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“I think it’s hard to meet Alex and not get the feeling of inevitability,” Acharya said. “And that’s how a lot of the best founders are. There’s just this feeling of momentum, and they’re in a hurry — Alex is always in a hurry.'”
Acharya came back to this point several times throughout the discussion.
“There’s a feeling as if it’s going to happen, whether I’m a part of it or not.” This FOMO led Acharya to pitch a16z so that Deel’s founding team understood the investment firm knew how to leverage the market.
When asked what a16z’s pitch deck looks like, Acharya smiled and said he couldn’t reveal all his secrets.
Bouaziz explained his strategy behind raising without a deck, noting Deel focused on highlighting strengths rather than weaknesses — in particular, Deel’s burn rate. Even now, the company’s burn rate is generally one round behind, Bouaziz said. When Deel was raising its Series A, it still had the majority of its seed capital in the bank.
“If you have good momentum, you have a lot of money in the bank, and then people want to invest,” he said.
And there’s practice, too. Bouaziz pointed at the company’s early pitches with co-founder Shuo Wang.
“You probably should have had her instead of me,” Bouaziz said, laughing. “She’s the interesting one on this type of show. And she’s the smart one on the team.”
In early pitches, Bouaziz explained, Deel positioned her as the smartest one on the team.
“We had a really good, well-rehearsed pitch that highlighted our strengths against our weaknesses,” he said, “Which, to be honest, we had no idea what we were doing. When there’s nothing, [the pitch] has to be about team cohesion, who you are, what you’re going to build and why you’re building it.”
Lastly, Bouaziz added that the founders have to believe in the mission. “You have to feel it, be passionate” about the idea, but most importantly, be able to get others to share in your excitement.
Deel just announced last week that it surpassed $100 million in ARR. So I asked Bouaziz if the company was still a startup. He thinks so. As for when Deel was filing its S-1 and headed to public markets, Bouaziz wouldn’t say anything past that he thinks the company still has time.
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