Before you attach the file
Read the deck once as if you have never heard of the company and you are on a phone between meetings. If a slide only makes sense when you narrate it, rewrite the slide or drop it. Then check this list.
- One sentence: who the customer is, and what you do for them. If the sentence needs a second sentence to be true, the first one is not finished.
- Who pays, and whether anyone has paid. Separate signed revenue, unpaid pilots, and conversations.
- Where the company is incorporated, or a plain statement that it is not incorporated yet. DIFC, another free zone, mainland, Abu Dhabi, and “not yet” are different answers. The note on angel investors in Dubai explains why.
- The round: how much, in which currency, and the instrument if you have chosen one. If you have not chosen, say you have not chosen. Do not draft a fake term sheet for the email.
- Use of funds in three lines, with a rough runway. “About fourteen months” is allowed. A monthly spreadsheet with no drivers is not required for the first email.
- A deck of about ten to fourteen slides. The deck guide has a slide-by-slide version of this list.
- A way to open the deck without a login. A file upload on the form solves this. A locked link does not.
What to cut
- A market slide that says a region is enormous and cites nothing. If you use a number, name the source and the year, and define the segment you can reach.
- Team biographies that are only university names. Write what each person has done that matters to this company, and whether they are full time.
- A chart that only goes up. If the forecast is a hope, label it as a hope or leave it out of the first file.
- Any claim that a meeting with this desk is already arranged. It is not. The form sends an email.
Write the one-liner before you open the design tool. If you cannot say it, the slides will not save it.
How to send it on this site
Use the pitch form. It asks for the founder, the company, the one-liner, the sector, the stage, the location, an optional raise, and either a deck link or a file up to 10MB. The submission is emailed to pitches@dubaiangelinvestor.com. You will not get a copy. If an angel is interested, they may write to the address you entered.
There is no fee and no guarantee of a reply. If you are still deciding whether the deck is honest enough to send, stay on the deck guide for another hour. A shorter true deck is a better pitch than a long one that smudges the facts.