The digital marketing industry is experiencing a significant boom, reaching multi-hundred billion dollars, primarily fueled by the growing demand for automation. Despite this growth, marketers find themselves dedicating substantial time to tedious, repetitive tasks. In an effort to streamline processes, many resort to makeshift automation workflows that, unfortunately, hinder their ability to concentrate on the strategic and creative aspects that truly contribute substantial value to their businesses.
“The vast majority of marketers’ time is spent on work other than copy generation, so we see significant potential in augmenting and automating these tasks,” shares Ben Hacking, co-founder, and CEO of Arcane.
By integrating with content, organic, paid, social and email marketing channels, Arcane’s AI co-pilot supports marketers in the background by automating the most mundane tasks, assessing and reporting back in real-time on their campaigns, and recommending the next steps.
“We’ve combined the latest AI technologies (retrieval augmented generation, autonomous agents and multi-modal models) to chain together workflows that capture more of marketers’ repetitive activities, giving them time back to focus on higher impact tasks,” said Ben.
Founders Ben Hacking and Jeremy Frenay, who have helped scale some of the world’s fastest-growing tech businesses (Deliveroo, WeWork, and Babylon among others) were inspired to start Arcane after experiencing firsthand the difficulties marketers face in modern workflows. The Arcane team has identified and mapped out over 100 discrete tasks capturing the majority of a marketer’s current workload. These include repurposing blog content for social channels, building competitor reports, and analyzing and reporting metrics to teams.
Arcane has raised $5m in Seed funding led by Accel, with participation from angel investors including Meta’s VP Product for generative AI Connor Hayes, Monzo founder Tom Blomfield, and WeWork President Anthony Yazbeck. Other investors include Cocoa, Firstminute Capital, Kima Ventures, and Seedcamp.
“Digital marketing has evolved into a multi-hundred billion dollar industry, yet there remains a sizable opportunity for a platform like Arcane. We’ve been incredibly impressed by the cutting-edge AI automations built into Arcane, and we believe that the platform has the potential to radically change how marketers operate everywhere,” said Sonali De Rycker, Partner at Accel in a statement.
According to Arcane, the funding will be used to expand its engineering and data teams. This strategic expansion will further enhance the platform’s AI capabilities, laying the groundwork for an open beta release. Currently, in closed beta, the company is onboarding waitlist sign-ups in the lead-up to an open beta launch later this quarter.
Check out Arcane’s 8-slide seed round pitch deck below:
What were the slides in the Arcane pitch deck?
Browse the exact example slides from the pitch deck that Arcane used to raise a $5M Seed round led by Accel.
1. Mission Slides
While mission slides aren’t a common feature in many pitch decks, when done well, they can effectively distill your company’s value proposition. A thoughtfully crafted mission statement offers investors a peek into your company’s future and can serve as a powerful motivator for them to join your startup journey.
Additionally, a clear and concise mission statement signals to investors that you, as a founder, have a solid grasp of the startup’s vision and strategic direction, instilling confidence in your leadership abilities.
Arcane pitch deck’s mission slide encapsulates the very essence of the company in just eight simple words. What sets it apart is its clarity — Arcane avoids the usual corporate jargon and articulates a tangible, achievable goal. The visual design of the slide is a testament to modern minimalism, portraying the company’s mission with, clean, and cheerful emoticons.
The Arcane mission slide serves as a valuable example, demonstrating how to captivate investors with a compelling but simple mission statement slide.
2. Team Slide
The Arcane pitch deck’s team slide is a masterclass in succinctness and simplicity. Rather than clutter the page with names and bios, Arcane stuck to just roles / titles and logos — even for the C-Suite! The team members are represented by simple color-coded blocks with their roles, and logos underneath to speak to their prior experience. Using logos as a substitute for bios can be incredibly effective, esp. if your team has prior experience working at industry-leading companies within the same industry or niche.
3. Contact Slide
Any presentation lacking a clear Call to Action (CTA) is incomplete. A well-crafted CTA encourages your audience to take prompt action. It need not be elaborate; simplicity often works best, whether it’s inviting your audience to engage on social media or encouraging them to join your mailing list.
In the context of an investor pitch deck, the CTA typically involves urging investors to reach out for more information and consider investing. As such, a common oversight is neglecting to include contact details, which can be an unnecessary obstacle to connecting with potential investors.
To remedy this, it’s crucial to include your contact information in the pitch deck, ideally on the first or last title slide. Share at least your name, title, and email address, ensuring investors can easily find your contact details. In the case of the Arcane pitch deck, the founders’ email addresses serve as a straightforward CTA slide. While seemingly simple, this approach is appreciated by time-constrained investors, underlining the importance of clarity and accessibility in fostering meaningful connections.
4. Product Demo Slide
During early fundraising rounds, particularly in the pre-seed or seed stage when traction and market validation are limited, presenting a product demo can effectively demonstrate that you have a tangible, working product rather than just a concept or shoe-string MVP.
However, incorporating a live demo into your pitch deck comes with its own set of challenges. While it has the potential to tell a compelling story about your product, there’s also the risk of encountering issues that could derail the presentation. Many pitch consultants caution against live demos due to factors beyond your control, such as bugs, internet connectivity issues, corporate firewalls, unexpected software updates, or even personal interruptions.
Despite these challenges, successfully executing a live demo can significantly enhance your chances of securing funding. Here are some “do’s and don’ts” based on Guy Kawasaki’s advice on “How to Be a Demo God”:
Do your product demo alone: Performing a demo is challenging enough for one person; involving multiple presenters makes it exponentially more difficult.
Bring two of everything: Anticipate technical glitches by bringing backup devices or tools. Murphy’s Law often applies, so having duplicates ensures you’re prepared for unexpected failures.
Organize yourself: Avoid fumbling during the demo. Be well-prepared and organized to navigate through your presentation seamlessly.
Keep it to-the-point: Start with the most impressive features of your product. The goal is to captivate your audience by showcasing the most compelling aspects rather than overwhelming them with too much information.
Cut the jargon: Simplify your language. Jargon may not impress and could hinder understanding. Clear, concise communication is always more effective.
Try to delay questions until the end: While audience engagement is valuable, delaying questions until the end prevents potential detours that could distract from the main points of your demo.
How-to create your own pitch deck like Arcane
We hope you learned something from the Arcane pitch deck, and that you are able to use these insights for your own business. If you’d like to, you can bookmark it at bestpitchdeck.com/arcane
Although it probably goes without saying that having a successful business (outside just their pitch deck) was integral to their success, it is critical for any startup to ensure your vision is portrayed properly. That’s where crafting the perfect pitch deck comes essential:
You might find our other resources on how-to create a pitch deck helpful, or benefit from using one of our expert-designed templates:
Our team has helped create decks that have closed over $100M+ in deals & funding for leading startups and even VC firms. You can leverage this experience and get a jumpstart on your pitch with one of our easy-to-use presentation templates, one-pagers, or financial models.
Creating a deck? Check out our pitch deck templates.
Every pitch requires a unique approach tailored to its audience. Our team of experts has created pitch decks for different industries, as well as funding stages:
Building an AI Startup? — You might be interested in the popular AI Pitch Deck template designed by our team of experts at VIP.graphics. This investor presentation template is built specifically for artificial intelligence & machine learning startups looking to raise seed funding.
Accelerator Pitch Deck Template — The Accelerator Pitch Deck template was crafted for early-stage founders seeking to win funding &/or investment from pitch contests, accelerators, incubators, and angels or VC firms. Winning a pitch contest or being accepted to a prominent accelerator program requires a unique strategic approach to an investor pitch presentation.
Series A Pitch Deck Template — A pitch deck template for startups and founders raising funding: Smart, actionable slides that work. This is a pitch deck template built specifically for startups, entrepreneurs and founders raising their first seed or Series A round of institutional capital.
Mergers & Acquisitions Pitch Deck Template — Perfect Pitch Deck™ is a template crafted for later-stage businesses entering more sophisticated discussions such as mergers & acquisitions (M&A), late-stage investment (Series C+), or other partnerships & financing opportunities. Our team of experts created this presentation to empower founders to present with confidence to investment banks, private equity (PE) groups, and/or hedge funds (and vice versa).
Alternatively, feel free to browse our growing selection of pitch decks tailored for specific industries and businesses.