At WP2 Investments, we believe that "smart money" means more than just capital. It is active support, knowledge sharing and working together to achieve ambitious goals. The workshops we launched this year are intended to be a space for open conversation, planning and identifying key areas where our support can bring the greatest results.

Each workshop is a several-hour meeting, during which we focus on the key aspects of the company's operations. We analyze the current situation, discuss plans for the coming months and long-term goals. Thanks to this formula, we can better understand the challenges faced by the team and indicate specific areas where our support will be most valuable.

The scope of the workshop includes, m.in:

• assessment of development strategies, including international scaling,
• discussion of operational priorities and areas for optimization,
• review of challenges related to reporting results and KPIs, customer acquisition or capital,
• Identify potential resources and tools that can accelerate your goals.

What is our goal? First of all, we want to better understand the needs of each company in order to provide tailor-made support. It often happens that the daily operational work absorbs the attention of teams – our workshops are a moment for reflection, planning and looking at the business from a different perspective. We hope that this will not only allow us to better tailor our activities, but also to develop specific solutions that will really accelerate the implementation of key plans.

Meetings with the first companies are behind us. We are happy to see teams openly sharing their ideas, successes and challenges. Thanks to this, we can better adjust our activities and support the development of their businesses even more effectively. We can already see that such meetings allow you to identify needs faster, develop specific solutions and make decisions that really accelerate the achievement of goals.

Will this format work? We hope so! The first reactions are positive, so we hope that the workshops will become a permanent part of our cooperation calendar. We plan to organize them regularly – every year we will meet with each company to build a strategy and support you on your way to further successes.

We can't wait to meet again!

Text prepared with the support of AI tools.

There are many articles or publications that clearly tell you what and how many slides a good pitch deck should consist of. In principle, it is a simple presentation that uses all the knowledge that founders have about their startup. And yet, many pitch decks contain errors that often determine the company's existence or non-existence and are an obstacle to obtaining financing.

Let's start with what a pitch deck really is. The dictionary definition is quite long and is as follows:

The most important in this definition are a few key words - a short presentation, on a dozen or so slides, presenting the startup in such a way as to convince investors and obtain financing, often deciding about the company's existence or non-existence.

Where to start creating a pitch deck. It is worth playing the role of a small child while preparing it. Probably many of you have or have had a small child around you who is exploring the world. At a certain stage, there is a tendency to ask constant questions - why, and what for? Regardless of how the answer is given, there is almost always another "why?".

When preparing a pitch deck, it is worth asking yourself such simple questions at the very beginning - why, how, when, why now, with whom, for how much, They allow you to build a story - the story of your idea, your startup, which you will then be able to "sell" to potential investors. From these simple questions, you will be able to develop information about what problem on the market your solution - product/service - takes care of, why you are solving it, why now is a good time to enter the market with such a solution, why your team has a chance to solve this problem, who you will compete with on the market, how big the market is, how much and how you will earn on your idea and how much funds you need to implement it.

With the narrative built in this way, you can start building the deck. By browsing through the available sources, it is very easy to find what such a presentation should contain. Lech Kaniuk wrote about it in his book "Angel in Hell" or Szymon Janiak in his book "Start-up and venture capital. What should you do to effectively obtain financing for your company?". Synthesizing information from these and other publications, it can be assumed that a good deck contains the following slides:

1. problem - what market problem have you diagnosed as important for your end customers?
2. solution - how do you plan to solve this problem
3. product - what the tool (product) you are building to solve the problem will look like
4. team - who will build the startup and be responsible for its key elements
5. market - the size of the market in which you will operate
6. business model - how do you plan to make money on the solution
7. competition - who will you compete with on the market
8. finance - forecasts of costs and revenues for the coming years
9. "the ask" - how much capital you are looking for and what part of the shares you are able to give away for it.

With a story built, you are able to easily prepare most of these points. Of course, especially in the case of the so-called "first founders", it can be difficult to prepare financial forecasts or a business model, and even questions asked yourself will not be able to help. If you have a CTO or CFO on board, you have a solution. But if not, it is worth using widely available knowledge, either from the publications mentioned above or in the form of pitch decks of other startups, often the larger and more experienced in raising capital, and follow their ways of showing the market or business model.

When arranging a story into a deck structure, it is also worth avoiding certain mechanisms and errors that can interfere with its reception. Below are the subjective 10 commandments of preparing a good pitchdeck. Of course, there could be many more. If we were to convene a "council" of VC funds or investors, the list could have 100 or 200 of them, but each of them would point to a few of the most important ones. This is also the case with the following ten.

Importantly - these tips may seem simple or even trivial, but after analyzing several thousand decks that have been received by our fund over the last 4 years, even these seemingly "trivial" rules have often not been applied.

Commandment 1:

Do your homework and check who you are talking to - whether you will be talking to someone who is supposed to be an investor, or a client, or a person experienced in finance, or a person experienced in technology. All this matters and affects the next steps in building a pitch deck.

Commandment 2:

Choose the material for the interlocutor - after following the first commandment, in the next step you should choose the material for the interlocutor. If our startup operates in the deep tech sphere, and on the other side we have a person experienced in sales or HR (because it happens anyway, VC funds or investors are not obliged to know everything), then too industry-specific language and going into technological details will make the other party misunderstand your idea.

Commandment 3:

Highlight your strengths - but wisely. If you want to say that your solution is "the best in the world" - do it, but support it with appropriate evidence (market research, analysis, etc.). The desire to be the best in the world supported by evidence that this is the case or can be so is not an inflated ego. It is getting to know and defending one's value.

Commandment 4:

Don't hide your flaws – be honest and clearly communicate if you don't have something at a given stage yet – whether it's an area not yet covered by the team's competences, or some functionalities in the product that will be added in a moment. Not to mention more complicated and invisible at first glance matters (legal, property rights, etc.). Most funds and investors will do their research anyway and ask the market about your project, in addition, before signing the due diligence agreement, they will most likely show "corpses in the closet".

Commandment 5:

Be flexible - do dry runs, test the choice of material and practice it in a closed group. Be prepared for the proverbial everything, so that you are not surprised by any question or situation.

Commandment 6:

Avoid the curse of knowledge - as the one who knows the most about his idea, avoid overloading your deck with knowledge. On the other side, there can often be someone who does not have to be an expert in a given field. Too much content, especially specialized content, can overwhelm him and disrupt the message that was supposed to reach him. Language adapted to the recipient is the key. 

Commandment 7:

Also, beware of too much text and content on your slides. They should only include the main messages, the most important ones that should resonate and that best reflect the topic of a given slide. 

Commandment 8:

Support yourself with data where possible - whether it is data collected by yourself to authenticate the market need for your solution, or data from various types of industry reports, etc. In the age of the Internet and many research institutions, access to data is much simpler. 

Commandment 9:

Stand out - VC funds and investors receive hundreds of deck emails from startups looking for capital. Each of them potentially contains a presentation or a link to the presentation. We are a society that absorbs more and more content in short video forms, reels, etc. Such a form of presentation? Maybe this is the future.

Commandment 10:

Don't make mistakes - none, neither logical nor spelling. Make sure that both in terms of data and spelling, the deck is flawless. The story must be consistent and reach the recipient. If you come across a fan of data and there is an inaccuracy in the deck - the story will be marked by this error until the end. If you come across a spelling fanatic, and there is a spelling mistake on one slide - he will look for more mistakes until the end of the deck and not focus on the message. Take care of it, because the first impression is made only once.

With a ready deck, you will fight to take away something that is very valuable to investors. And it is not just money. It's all about time.

According to DOCSEND data, the amount of time spent on decks is very small. This is due to the amount of money that goes to the mailbox, the limited human resources of VC funds. That's why it's so important to prepare a deck that will attract attention.

You can't create one pitch deck that will satisfy everyone. Therefore, you cannot focus only on its content (which, as I mentioned, many other publications have treated). The approach to its preparation is also important. Therefore, let the above list be an inspiration for the creation process, thanks to which you will be able to create decks even for the most demanding recipients.

Szymon Górak - Investment Director at WP Kwadrat. He supports companies in the fundraising process, including the preparation and adaptation of decks for investor talks.

On November 19, 2024, we had the opportunity to once again welcome our guests to the Google for Startups Campus in Warsaw. It was then that another conference organized as part of our ScaleUP program took place - this time entitled "People vs. Business".

We gathered over 150 people in the room - representatives of startups from the WP Square portfolio, because the conference was dedicated to them, but also representatives of industries supporting founders - law firms, training or consulting companies, industry media, as well as VC funds and private investors. It is safe to say that there were people in the room who actively participate in building the Polish VC ecosystem and startups.

Before the speakers entered the stage, it was taken over by the WP Square team, which summed up the past six months in a short presentation. There were successes in the form of a biomethane fund, there were awards for representatives of the Digital Ocean Venture Starter fund, in which we are LPs as WP2 Investments. Finally, there were plans for the coming months, including the announcement of new training for portfolio companies (about AI tools) or new initiatives as part of the ScaleUP support program.

After a short introduction, Marek Kamiński entered the stage, and in his opening speech, he talked about the experiences he gained from the expeditions he had made that were useful in his career as an entrepreneur, which he is today. Maybe not every founder needs to know how to operate on their appendix while being alone in extreme conditions, but this part of the story clearly said that in the life of a startup founder you also have to be ready for sometimes extreme, albeit business-like, challenges. 

In the next part of the event, we could listen to two debates. In the first one , Henry Camilieri from Metropole Search Partners, Niko Papagiannis from Excelsior Gmbh and Adam Filipowski from Leocode shared their experiences of building startup teams in today's AI-dominated world.

Next, Róża Szafranek showed us that despite the fact that the startup path is strewn with KPIs and everyone only looks at business results, skilful process arrangement and understanding of their role (founder, CEO of the organization) will allow you to effectively enforce work-life balance and find time to build your mental health.

In the second debate, Paulina Wardęga from Heroify, Magdalena Olczak-Nowicka from DOV Starter, Michał Wrzołek from Tar Heel Capital Pathfinder and Krzysztof Kaliciński from Kozminski University discussed that both founders and VC funds should check each other, and that effective startup teams are a mix of many factors such as a healthy organizational culture, founders' experience and the ability to navigate business,  dynamic realities. 

The last block was the speeches of companies from the portfolio of WP2 Investments - Nuadu, which showed how it can support the recruitment process with exam modules, Sportigio, whose gamification tool perfectly builds team spirit, and Wellbee, whose platform supports caring for the well-being of employees.

Marcin Góra, a representative of Atos, showed that effectiveness in remote work is more than just tools – it is an organizational culture that supports communication, flexibility and work-life balance.

Damian Winkowski, on the other hand, used examples to show how modern AI tools can support teams and simplify their daily duties.

In turn, in the last speech of the day, Mateusz Kowalczyk from Foodsi and Maciej Zawadziński from Hard2Beat talked about how to take care of your own and your team's well-being as the CEO of a startup and what tools to support the development of teams.

Afterwards, a joint lunch awaited the guests, which was a continuation of the conversations started during the networking breaks. We are glad that our guests stayed with us long after the substantive part was over. This is the greatest reward for us.

The November conference is another event in the ScaleUP Academy series - an initiative carried out as part of the ScaleUP support program. In recent weeks we have been working on creating an interesting program of our meeting and today we would like to reveal the first details to you.

The HR area is a topic that is often overlooked at the initial stage of startup development. Usually, there are "more important" things - customer acquisition, product improvement. However, as the company grows and the team grows, new challenges arise when it comes to managing a growing structure. And this is what we will want to talk about during the upcoming conference. 

Questions related to these issues will be answered by a.o. Róża Szafranek - Founder & CEO HR Hints, Founder & CEO Culturivy® Institute. Leader and expert in the field of organizational effectiveness at the market-business-people interface. She is the author of Culturivy® method of increasing the efficiency of organizations by arranging, measuring and organizing the human area, which has been tested in 150+ companies in Poland, Europe and the United States and published in the form of a book, which premiered in 2023 in the USA. 

Jarosław Sroka - coordinator of the InCredibles mentoring program - will also appear among the speakers. Since July 2009, as a Member of the Management Board of Kulczyk Holding, he has been responsible for supervising the areas of corporate communication, investor relations, marketing and public affairs. A graduate of the Institute of Journalism at the University of Warsaw. He also studied at the prestigious international school of business leaders IESE Business School at the University of Navarra in Barcelona and at the University of Banking and Insurance in Warsaw. Member of the Information Governance Council at the Warsaw Stock Exchange and the Program Council of the Capital Market Leaders Academy. Member of the Council of the Civil Development Forum Foundation, the Council of the POC and Member of the University Council of the Wrocław University of Economics. President of PGA Poland.

The opening presentation will be led by Marek Kamiński - a Polish innovator, entrepreneur, philosopher and extreme traveler. He was the first in the world to reach both poles of the Earth without outside help. On May 23, 1995, he reached the North Pole, and on December 27, 1995, he reached the South Pole, for which he was entered into the Guinness Book of Records. Currently involved in the "LifePlan Academy", "Power4Resilience" and Kamiński Academy projects, which are all about building life resilience and fundamental life skills

And these are just some of the Experts who will honor us with their presence on this day. We will inform you about the next points of the program soon. 

Although the "Power of Technology" conference, which we organized in May for our portfolio companies, is behind us, we want to share with you for a moment the joy and emotions that accompanied us that day.

At Google for Startups Campus, we gathered many distinguished guests, as well as outstanding speakers who shared their knowledge and experience on the latest technologies and their impact on the VC market and start-ups. We learned what technological trends will dominate in the coming years, what tools are key to the development of companies, and how VC funds evaluate technological start-ups. There was also a discussion about the technological potential of Poland ;).

Did the conference meet our expectations? Definitely yes! Seeing the number of smiling guests and the commitment during the discussion, we are convinced that it was a successful event. And you can find out about it by watching a short video report.

We, on the other hand, carried by positive emotions and acting in advance, invite you to the next conference. We cannot reveal the title and topic yet, but it will certainly be a response to the demand you report to us. The date is here - we meet on November 19, 2024 at Google for Startups Campus - book your time!

See you!

Five two-day conventions, ten days full of knowledge and practice, twenty participants and countless new skills. The B2B Sales Executive Program 2024 is behind us – learn the details of this unique series of workshops!

Is it possible to support business activities and at the same time build partnerships and relationships with portfolio companies? Definitely yes! Partnerships and joint search for sales solutions were supported by an extensive 10-day training program "B2B Sales Executive Program". We organized the training as part of our ScaleUP powered by WP2 Investments portfolio companies support program, in cooperation with SellWise - Consulting and Training, one of the highest rated and most effective training companies in Poland.

It was a unique initiative addressed to the management boards and founders of companies, which took place in five two-day modules. The meetings were spread over time from February to May 2024. The program began with a "Kick-off" meeting, which allowed the participants to learn about the details of the series, the goals of the workshops and the trainers. The first workshops, which took place in Łódź, were devoted to modern sales and B2B sales management. Participants had the opportunity to explore key aspects of the sales process, such as researching customer needs, building value propositions, and commercial communication strategy. Magdalena Krawczak and Łukasz Połubianko, consultants from SellWise, provided a solid dose of knowledge and practical tips, which were then consolidated through homework.

Each subsequent meeting, both stationary in Łódź and online, brought new challenges and topics to work on. The participants explored the secrets of building effective teams, managing company finances, modern prospecting and analytics in sales and marketing. Thanks to the tasks to be carried out independently, each participant had the opportunity to implement the acquired knowledge in practice, as well as receive feedback from the trainers.

The "B2B Sales Executive Program" was also an excellent opportunity for networking and strengthening cooperation between participants. Joint trips to Łódź and evening integration meetings, including one in the film atmosphere at the Stare Kino hotel, enabled the establishment of lasting business relationships.

The numbers speak for themselves:

• 5 two-day sessions
• 20 participants from 13 companies
• 5 trainers from SellWise
• 40% of the time is devoted to theory, the rest to practice

We are extremely grateful to all participants for their commitment, openness and activity. In particular, we appreciate that they donated their valuable time, often stopping at weekends, to attend our workshops. We also thank the SellWise hosts for their professionalism and inspiration.

Let the photo gallery below remind the participants of the great moments we spent in the training room and not only;) And those who could not take part this time may be encouraged to follow the information about the next editions of our trainings. Because although the "B2B Sales Executive Program" has come to an end, we are already looking for topics for the next edition, which will take place in 2025.

"The Power of Technology" - WP2 Investments conference for you, our companies, this Thursday in Warsaw. Check out what we have prepared for you.

Over the last few weeks, we have been working on finalizing all the details of our event. The plan was for you to be able to share your own experiences related to the implementation of new technologies on the one hand, and on the other hand, listen to lectures by experts and practitioners from the market who have implemented or are researching the latest technological solutions. Each of you will be able to get something out of this mix of knowledge and experience for yourself and your company.

What is as important to us as the program is to give you the opportunity to present what you do to a wider audience. That is why this time we have nearly 200 confirmed people on the guest list - representatives of our friendly VC funds, Business Angels, Law Firms, marketing agencies and other participants of the startup ecosystem. We hope that you will make the most of the planned networking breaks and gain a lot of new contacts.

After clicking on the link below, you can read the full program of the event.

We are waiting for you on May 16! See you.

The second quarter of this year is thematically marked by new technologies in our fund. Mustafa Suleyman's book "The Coming Wave" fits perfectly into this topic. The creator of DeepMind and CEO of Microsoft AI has a lot to say in technology topics, showing two sides of the coin.

Mustafa Suleyman began his serious professional career as a startup founder. In 2010, he founded DeepMind Technoligies - a company that was one of the first to focus on the subject of artificial intelligence. The company was one of the first to be supported by Elon Musk. After 4 years, DeepMind was acquired by Google. At that time, it was the largest acquisition of the American giant in Europe.

After leaving DeepMind, Suleyman was announced as CEO of Microsoft's new division, Microsoft AI, in early 2024.

In his work, Suleyman very often draws attention to the ethics associated with the use of AI and other new technologies. He points out that it is necessary to constantly study the impact of artificial intelligence on the real world. 

The "coming wave" is a kind of alarm, showing the dangers associated with the very rapid development of new technologies and their impact on the world around us. 

We hope that after reading you will be closer to the answer to the question whether new technologies are more of an opportunity or a road to disaster.