Pitch Deck Teardown: $4 million Protecto seed set

In an era where data is king and is increasing in volume and complexity, Protecto It aims to eliminate the long-standing dilemma that companies face between harnessing the power of AI while ensuring data privacy. With the increasing adoption of generative AI tools like ChatGPT, it has become easier to find stray data, manipulate it, and do bad things. Protecto’s APIs are designed to protect sensitive data across the AI ​​lifecycle while maintaining its utility.

The company announced that it had raised A $4 million seed funding round Led by Together Fund, with contributions from Better Capital, FortyTwo VC, Arali Ventures, and Speciale Invest. This round brings Protecto’s total funding to $5 million.

We’re looking for more unique presentations, so if you want to submit your own, here’s how.

Slides in this surface

Protecto made adjustments to short-term and five-year goals and specific details of its near-term product roadmap before submitting its pitch to TechCrunch. The timeline of goals and milestones for the seed funding round has also been revised. However, there is still a lot to learn from the 14-slide deck:

1. Slide cover
2. Slice the problem
3. Urgent slide
4. Platform interface
5. Technology overview slide
6. Results slide
7. Solution slide
8. Case study slide 1
9. Case study slide 2
10. Competitive alternatives segment
11. Team segment
12. Go to market segment
13. Roadmap slide
14. Ask and use the money chip

Three things to love about the Protecto promo

there a lot Missing from this set, but there are some good ones to highlight as well.

Competitive alternatives

This slide does not talk about direct competitors (There are one or two). But the company does a good job of showing this information anyway:

Competitive alternatives are businesses, methods, or techniques that differ from your own but meet the same customer needs or solve the same problems. For example, if you run a coffee shop, your direct competitor would be another coffee shop, while a competitive alternative might be a coffee shop or fast food restaurant that also sells coffee among other beverages. These competitors are important because they represent alternative solutions for your customers, which highlights the importance of understanding broader market dynamics and customer preferences.

Understanding and analyzing these competitive alternatives can be powerful as an additional layer of insight, revealing potential opportunities for differentiation and helping to identify unmet customer needs. Having said all that, Protecto should have included direct competitors, but this chip is still a great example of how a startup explores its market niche.

Hello team

This team segment is very powerful – the only downside is that they put it in the eleventh segment:

[Slide 11] Solid team segment. Image credits: protection

To stand out in the suddenly crowded AI space, you’d better bring receipts that prove you have the chops to get the job done. The left side of the slide has a lot of information (why are finance, product, and customers on the team slide?) but the part on the right has a lot of great information.

According to his LinkedIn, CEO Amar Kanagaraj spent nearly eight years at Microsoft, including a stint in research and artificial intelligence. CTO Baskaran Alagarasmy spent seven years as a director at Apple India. I would have liked to see more details about exactly what he was managing there (and why this slide says 18 years, while his LinkedIn says seven years), but this is the beginning of a really strong team. If I were investing in this area, a team of this caliber would interest me and I would probably organize a meeting.

Elegant solution

Privacy and AI can become painfully complex, fast. I appreciate Protecto’s efforts to simplify it to the point where most people can understand what’s going on with the technology.

[Slide 5] Take sensitive and private data. Replace it with similar fake data. It has meaning to me. Image credits: protection

Three things Protecto could have improved

The design of a presentation surface isn’t usually that important, but this one’s design is particularly poor. There are also more serious flaws hidden among these pages.

Case Studies These are not case studies

In a set of 14 slides, Protecto wastes slide 4 as an interstitial ad (it just says “Our Platform”). Then he wastes two slides titled “Case Studies.” However, a more accurate term is “use cases”.

[Slide 8] This is not a case study. Image credits: protection

A full case study will include a lot of information about how well it worked (did the product successfully remove all confidential data? How was this measured?), how long the integration took, and how happy the customer was with the solution. . Slide 9 is another similar “case study”: a use case, not a case study.

The slide headline is a promise that the rest of the slide must deliver. In this case, I was let down both times, as I expected one type of information and got another. Proper case studies would have been really helpful in telling the story here.

Not a great “use of funds” slide

Revisions aside, there’s not much here.

[Slide 14] Almost completely irrelevant information. Image credits: protection

The company set out to raise $3 million. However, the use of funds is very thin; Every point here makes me want to ask: “But how do you know it works?”

• Expand geometry: Yes, but why, for what purpose, and to what extent?
• Marketing Engine: Yes, but with what goals? Before when? How much growth?
• Building a sales channel: Yes, but which channels will you follow first? Why?
• Push developer evangelism: What does that even mean?
• Select category: ????

Basically, this is all just corporate-level jargon. Even if the founders themselves buy it, investors probably won’t.

Yes, it’s scary to be so predictive and specific. What if I fail? All plans and forecasts are forecasts. We know. Investors know. The goal is to show how you think through these expectations; Investors can learn a lot about you as a founder. This is very valuable – and not optional.

This is a brainstorm, not a plan

[Slide 12] This go-to-market is very ambiguous. Image credits: protection

There are a number of problems with this chip. The company says it will grow through product-led growth. This is great, but it rarely works in isolation and must be done in combination with other marketing channels. “If you build it, they will come” is not a thing in the crowded startup ecosystem.

I’d like to know what these integrations actually mean, and how customers find them. I would like to understand how Snowflake and Databricks play a role in this plan. And what do you envision with “solution integrators”?

This slide is a pile of words on a page, not an actionable, measurable plan to get to market.

Then there are all the things missing from the deck in general…

• How big is the market for this kind of thing?
• What traction do you have so far? Did you pay for “case studies”? If yes, how much? Did they continue to use the product?
• There’s nothing about the business model: How will you charge? how much?
• How can this be defended? Does the company have patents? Is there some kind of special magic sauce?

The problem with this group in general is that it doesn’t explain why this problem is so difficult to solve and why this company is the one solving it. Maybe it’s too simplified in the group, but based on what’s here, I think I can gather a few developers and build most of this product over a couple of weeks. That can’t be true, can it? Because if so, there is nothing here. But since that’s likely not the case, it means there’s simply a problem with the storytelling. Yes, this is a big problem; Now explain why the problem is so difficult to solve.

Full pitch surface

If you want your pitch to be featured on TechCrunch, here’s more information. Also, check out All of our teardowns are at Pitch Deck All collected in one convenient place for you!