Send one file
A PDF is the easiest thing to open on a phone. PPT or PPTX is fine if that is the working file. If you also have a data room, do not lead with it. Put the link on the last slide.
If you use a permissioned link, set it so anyone with the link can view, or upload the file on the pitch form. A link that asks for a login often ends the read.
Ten to fourteen slides is enough for a first email. An appendix can exist. It should not be required to understand the round.
A structure that earns its length
Cover
Company name, one sentence, city, and the round if you know it. Put your name and email on the cover, not only in the form.
Problem
A specific customer and a costly job. A paragraph about a global trend is not a problem slide.
Product
What a person does with it, in order. One picture or a short sequence beats a feature grid.
Why you
The unfair starting point: domain experience, access to the customer, or a technical result. Skip adjectives.
Customer
Who pays first. If you cite a market size, cite the source and the year, and name the slice you can actually reach. A regional number with no source is easy to ignore.
Traction
What has happened, with dates. Revenue, pilots, letters of intent, waitlists, usage. Label each item as paid, unpaid, verbal, or signed. If you are pre-revenue, say so and write what you learned from real conversations.
Model
How money comes in, the price, and who the buyer is. If you do not know gross margin, do not invent a precise figure.
Alternatives
What the customer does today, including doing nothing or using a spreadsheet. Name competitors where they exist. Contempt is not a strategy slide.
The raise
Amount, currency, and the instrument if you have chosen one. Three uses of funds, and a rough time horizon. If the instrument is undecided, say that in one line.
Team
Who works on it, and whether that is full time. Relevant proof only. Advisor logos are not a team.
Ask
The email address, the city, and anything you want besides capital, stated specifically. “Introductions to freight forwarders in Jebel Ali” is a request. “Strategic investors” is not.
Lines that are specific to Dubai
These usually need a sentence, not a whole slide, unless the business is the licence.
- Where the company is incorporated today: DIFC, another Dubai free zone, mainland Dubai, Abu Dhabi, somewhere else, or not yet.
- Where the customers are. A Dubai company selling in one foreign market is a clear story. Hiding the customer’s country is not.
- If a regulator is involved, say what you hold and what you do not hold. A conversation with a regulator is not a licence. Do not title the slide as if it were.
The page on angel investors in Dubai explains why those three lines come up. It is orientation, not legal advice.
Leave these out of the first email
- A five-year forecast with monthly precision and no drivers.
- A cap table you cannot explain, including unnamed advisor slices.
- Stock photos of a skyline in place of the product.
- Logos of firms you have not worked with.
- A request that the reader sign a non-disclosure agreement before seeing the deck. Describe the sensitive part at the level of the outcome. A cold NDA usually ends the read.
If a number is an estimate, call it an estimate. A reader who trusts the small print will read the rest.
How this site handles the file
PDF, PPT, or PPTX up to 10MB, or an https link. The file is attached to the email sent to pitches@dubaiangelinvestor.com. It is not posted on a public page. The site does not virus-scan uploads, so do not send a file you would not open yourself.
When the deck can survive a first read, submit the pitch.