It’s rare that I come across a pitch deck that checks almost all the boxes. It’s so good, in fact, that I plugged Plantee’s deck into an AI tool I built, and it determined that there was a 97.7% chance that Plantee would collect funds. This tool typically determines that only about 7.5% of all pitch decks are up to par, so Plantee’s is frankly off the charts.
What the bots haven’t figured out, however, is that Plantee’s Kickstarter campaign was canceled before it was completed, and there are a few other confusing elements as well. Let’s see what works and what could be improved.
We’re looking for more unique pitch decks to tear down, so if you’d like to submit yours, here’s how.
Slides in this deck
- Cover slide
- Summary slide
- Team Slide
- Advisors and investors slip
- Mission Slide
- Market validation slide
- Problem Slide
- Solution Slide
- Product Slide
- Competitive Landscape Slide
- Traction slide
- Target Customer Slide
- Shift in market size
- GTM slide
- Slide on Pricing and Unit Economics
- Visual slide
- Slide Request and Use of Funds
- Operational plan slide
- Closing slide
- Annex Slide I: Products in Development
- Appendix slide II: Sources and references
Three things to love about Plantee’s pitch deck
It turns out that the Plantee team read my Pitch Deck teardowns very carefully, and it shows. The company includes tons of details in its deck.
This is how you make an introduction!
Slides 1 and 2 together (slide 1 is at the top of the article) set the stage for an investor to 100% understand the what, why and how of the business:
(Slide 2) A one-page summary to applaud. Image credits: Planted
The Plantee Innovations pitch deck opening slides are rock solid. Between the two slides, the founders provide a clear and engaging introduction to what the company stands for and aims to achieve. This succinct overview captures the audience’s attention early on, but also serves a dual purpose: establishing an effective level for investors and filtering interests based on alignment of investment theses. The cover slide includes “IoT Smart Home / B2C Consumer Electronics / AgriTech / Raising $1.7M” – this is essentially a keyword bingo that helps investors decide whether to look into the game or if they should throw it away immediately. This is a good thing: if this company is not suitable for investors, they can leave immediately.
Gotta love a good tech solution
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a raging nerd and I love a good gadget. I also like plants; I have dozens of them all over my apartment and I can keep most of them alive. As noted, I love Plantee’s approach to foolproof plant parenting.
(Slide 8) Technology, AI and happy plants. Image credits: Planted
I would bet that most plant owners think about light exactly once: when they first bring the plant into the house. They’ll remember to water as often as they can, hopefully before the plants are a dry, crusty, sad mess on the corner of the dresser. I’m glad there’s an AI that takes care of everything else, because I didn’t know plants needed that much!
On the one hand, it’s a relief. On the other hand, maybe I’m just a naive, newbie plant dad, but this left me a little confused. I’ve never heard anyone mention air humidification and floor heating. I could be persuaded that these things make a difference, sure, but I’m really curious to what extent it’s worth worrying about.
A good competitive landscape
It’s a market that doesn’t have many competitors. Seen from one perspective, that’s a good thing: it means there’s a thriving market, and Plantee can see what its competitors are doing, right or wrong, and position itself accordingly.
(Slide 10) That’s a lot of competitors. Image credits: Planted
As a competition presentation slide, this one is pretty comprehensive. It separates the competitive landscape between “hard to grow” and “easy to grow” growers and specialty growers (e.g. mushroom/avocado growers) and generalist growers. This all makes sense, but there’s still one small piece of the puzzle missing: The only real outcome in this space that I’m aware of is ScottsMiracle-Gro’s acquisition of AeroGarden, for around $50 million. It’s not the smallest acquisition in the world, but it’s not hugely encouraging either.
The other question I have is whether this dichotomy makes sense. If someone plants a bonsai – a specific use case offered by the Plantee team – they probably won’t repot the plant, which presents an interesting challenge. If you position yourself in the market as “you can grow anything”, I assume you would want to replant from time to time. The small bonsai, however, can grow for up to 800 years, so it’s hard to argue that the “makes all plants grow” argument is such a strong selling point.
Three things Plantee could have improved
At first glance, the Plantee deck is quite extraordinary, and the AI tool gives it a 97% chance of success. As a human investor, I am less convinced and disagree with AI for several crucial reasons.
Does this make sense as a product?
I love a good indoor growing system, and many have tried (and failed) in this space. GROW raised $2.4 million in 2017, before shutting down. I reviewed the $1,000 Abby a few years ago, which, like Plantee, had pre-sold $100,000 worth of product on Kickstarter, and it was pretty awful. I also built my own hydroponic system for less than $150, which is obviously a lot more work, but it shows that these types of systems don’t have to be expensive.
Plantee faces some pretty formidable competition. On the low end, for just $40, you can get a pod-based hydroponic system. If you want to spend a little more, Click & Grow has your back. Rise Gardens recently raised a $9 million seed round. People kill houseplants all the time, but most of them are pretty easy to care for. If you need help, a quick Google search for “AI plant growing app” gives you dozens of options, most of them free.
My biggest challenge with the Plantee deck isn’t what’s there, but what’s missing: a broader context. If we take all of the company’s claims at face value, this is an extraordinary opportunity. However, zoom out a little and talk to a few plant enthusiasts, and you’ll realize that there may not be as big a gap in the market as you might think. It seems that the assumption inherent in the Plantee story is that people who are bad at plants will spend $1,400 on a fancy automatic flower pot.
I would say that this is a mistake and that people who are bad at plants tend to buy a kitten, or take up watercolors, or get a plastic plant, before they are ready to invest four months of mortgage payments. car in sophisticated technology.
So what happened to that Kickstarter campaign?
(Slide 11) Plantee makes the strong case that its Kickstarter campaign is part of market validation. But there is a catch. Image credits: Planted
Plantee actually persuaded 109 backers to pledge just over $100,000 for its product. The campaign was fully funded in less than eight hours but was canceled just under a month later.
What happened? Image credits: Screenshot from Kickstarter
This puts the Plantee team in a strange position: they claim that the Kickstarter campaign proves market validation. And that might be true: the company claims to have successfully lured its customers into pre-ordering for a CAC of $275. Selling 109 units, basic calculations indicate that the company spent approximately $30,000 to achieve $100,000 in sales. That’s not too bad, assuming there’s enough margin on the product for this customer acquisition cost to make sense.
The problem, however, is that the company does not mention anywhere in the pitch deck that the campaign was canceled, nor does it talk about it. Why it was cancelled. He could argue that he never intended to do the Kickstarter campaign and that it was simply a marketing test to confirm whether there was a market for this sort of thing.
I’m not sure this makes sense. Before Plantee’s campaign, EcoQube ($300,000 funded in 2019), GroBox ($70,000 funded in 2019), Herbert ($280,000 funded in 2019) and dozens of others had already succeeded, and it’s unclear really what Plantee learned from this exercise. Since then, many others have run successful Kickstarter campaigns (Herbstation, MarsPlanter, GrowChef).
Simply put, I’m having a hard time understanding how the Kickstarter campaign fits into the overall narrative, and by seeming to skirt around the issue in the deck, Plantee is doing itself a disservice. Maybe I’m being extremely sensitive after one of my own Kickstarter campaigns caught fire a decade ago and ultimately took the entire company down with it, but personally, I’d include a “So what’s next” slide did he pass with Kickstarter » the annex to anticipate this part of the story. Bad news should travel quickly.
A little dramatic
I love good storytelling, don’t get me wrong, but parts of this pitch deck seem to have lost all perspective. Phrases such as “never lose another green child”, “It started when my good friend died” and “stress affecting producers’ mental health” are undoubtedly powerful and emotionally charged, but for those of us who have lost a good friend, had serious mental health issues, or lost a human child, it seems rather tasteless to compare the immense and almost unbearable pain that this causes with the loss of a plant indoor.
(Slide 5) I’m sorry for your loss, Ondra, but this borders on poor taste. Image credits: Planted.
The complete pitch deck
If you’d like to have your own pitch deck teardown featured on TechCrunch, here’s more information. Also check out all of our Pitch Deck Teardowns, all in one convenient place for you!
techcrunch
