As e-commerce continues to grow and distribution channels become more fragmented, direct-to-consumer brands and consumer apps face intense competition. Digital advertising has become the primary method for acquiring customers, but managing campaigns is time-consuming and often confusing.
MAI is trying to make things simpler with its artificial intelligence platform designed to autonomously run digital ad campaigns and optimize performance marketing, giving small and mid-sized businesses access to enterprise-grade advertising technology.
“Digital advertising is one of the biggest growth levers available to businesses, but it’s also one of the hardest to master. We’ve spent our careers building ad platforms and e-commerce engines at companies like Google and Instacart, and saw firsthand how advanced technology helped the largest companies grow,” said CEO Yuchen Wu, who spent a decade at Google developing its ads and machine-learning technology, then helped Instacart scale its logistics and growth stack.
As brands input campaign goals, audience targets, and strategic objectives into MAI, its AI agents create campaigns, analyze spend in real time, and optimize budgets, dialing up spend where it’s working and cutting it where it’s not.
“Our agents do the heavy lifting, driving results autonomously, so business owners can focus on building their companies,” said Wu.
The San Francisco company said its AI agents are already generating results for ecommerce clients, driving 40% higher sales, and managing millions of dollars in Google Ads spending each month. Since its soft launch in late 2024, MAI has doubled its customer base and attracted a wide range of users. Brands such as Dreo, DrWoof, Fanka, Flamingo, NutritionFaktory, Patpat, Velotric, and Vivaia are already using MAI’s agents to manage their ad spend and drive revenue.
The company has announced a $25 million seed funding round led by Kleiner Perkins with participation from Gaorong Ventures, UpHonest Capital and others. According to a company statement, it will use the funding to expand its product and engineering teams and accelerate the development of MAI’s AI agent platform.
“Performance marketing is the lifeblood of modern commerce, yet for too long, the tools that drive scale have only been available to the largest enterprises. Yuchen and Jian bring a rare combination of deep ad platform expertise and firsthand empathy for the challenges growth businesses face. MAI’s approach is bold and refreshingly pragmatic. We’re excited to back Yuchen and Jian as they build this out.” said Josh Coyne, partner, Kleiner Perkins.
Check out the 10-slide pitch deck MAI used to secure the $25 million Seed funding.
What were the slides in the MAI pitch deck?
Browse the exact example slides from the pitch deck that MAI used to raise a $25M round led by Kleiner Perkins.
1. Moat Slide
Moats are a set of characteristics (competitive advantages) a startup builds that makes it hard for other companies to beat them. A simpler way to understand moat is by answering a basic question: what’s stopping a company with a billion dollars to copy your product? The answer can be many things, like community, trust, network effects, users, etc.
There was a time when tech was considered a strong moat since it required large amounts of capital to be built. But in this age of LLMs where AI is spilling into software development, the level of defensibility provided by technology to startups is at an all-time low and continuing to fall faster than ever before. Defensibility at a product level is incredibly hard to achieve, let alone sustain.
Investors are most concerned with a startup’s competitive advantage, so one of the most common questions founders receive while pitching to investors is “What’s your moat?” A first-time or inexperienced founder can make a common mistake and might be tempted to just list product features, but MAI pitch deck deeply understands and skillfully explains the startup’s moat. The moat slide has a clean and professional design, including a cohesive and modern color palette that conveys a sense of trust and sophistication, and consistent, easy-to-follow typography with clear hierarchy between the title, subtitle, and body text.
However, the slide could use some improvements to make it more visually engaging and structured for better readability. For example, the slide is text-heavy and investors don’t have enough time to go through all the text. Similarly, there’s a large amount of white space at the top and sides that makes the slide feel somewhat empty.
2. Testimonial Slide
Testimonials are a great way to showcase the value of your startup to potential investors and validate you’re a legitimate company with actual traction. They help VCs trust your business and make it easy for them to understand the pain your potential customers are facing, how you’re solving it, and your customers’ satisfaction with your solution. Additionally, testimonials are a way to express your values with ‘normal people’ words—no technical or marketing jargon.
The testimonial slide could’ve slapped on a couple of quotes from customers and called it a day, but instead we find a thoughtfully created slide that walks you through the challenges MAI’s customer was dealing with, how the platform stepped in to help, and what results came out of their solution. The slide’s design is also structured, clean, and professional. The use of whitespace keeps the slide airy and uncluttered and the typography is consistent, with smart emphasis on key points.
Overall, the slide effectively balances storytelling, data, and design, making the testimonial both persuasive and visually appealing.
3. Team Slide
Modern venture capital has been investing in startups since the mid 1900s. During this time, many buzzwords have come and gone, technologies evolved, and markets shifted. But when it comes to raising early-stage financing, the single biggest factor, especially in today’s AI-everywhere landscape, is still the founding team. Investors still back people.
As such, it is worth understanding that when a team is presented to investors, they aren’t just checking resumes. They’re evaluating whether the team has the right skill mix, commitment, and chemistry to pull the venture off. Too many companies treat the team slide of their pitch deck like a formality with just a quick nod to bios and headshots before moving on.
Instead, in the MAI pitch deck, we find a comprehensive team slide that shows the team’s skills and chemistry. The grid layout keeps everything neatly aligned, making it easy to scan through names, titles, and past experience. However, just like other slides, the team slide is text-heavy. A lot of text can be eliminated by using just the logos of previous companies. The slide also lacks visual hierarchy which could be improved by giving executives a distinct background shade or layout to draw attention to key team members.
Overall, the slide conveys a team that is competent and organized under a shared passion.
How to create your own pitch deck like MAI:
We hope you learned something from the MAI 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/MAI
Although it probably goes without saying that having a successful business (outside just their pitch deck) was integral to their success, the perfect pitch deck 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:
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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:
You might be interested in the popular Martech Pitch Deck Template designed by our team of experts at VIP.graphics. This investor presentation template is built specifically for Marketing and advertising tech startups seeking to raise 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).
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