Profound is a New York City-based ‘AI visibility’ startup that offers an analytics platform that helps brands understand and manage how they appear in AI-generated content, such as responses from AI assistants like ChatGPT.
“In a zero-click world, the conversation between consumers and an AI agent is the new first impression,” said James Cadwallader. “Profound shows marketers exactly how chatbots describe their products and gives them the levers to shape that narrative. AI Visibility will become a boardroom level priority for all brands by 2026.”
The company was launched in early 2024 by James Cadwallader and Dylan Babbs, who met at startup incubator South Park Commons. Cadwallader’s experience working with big Fortune 500 brands as a former founder of data-driven influencer marketing agency Kyra helped spark the specific idea behind Profound.
The startup claims that the platform is dynamic; as AI search continues to evolve and may change what it favors (a common occurrence for SEO rankings), brands using Profound can track changes and adjust accordingly.
“In this new world of AI answers, how does Nike understand and control how they show up? If I’m asking ChatGPT for a running sneaker, it will give me four or five suggestions,” Cadwallader said. “Nike spends $4 billion a year on marketing and hundreds of millions of people are using these AI answers to research products and brands on a daily basis. How do we show up in the new world?”
According to a company statement, today, roughly 10% of referral traffic comes from those conversations. By 2027, it is expected to drive more than 50% of all online commerce, about $2.5 trillion a year.
Profound processes more than 100 million AI search queries each month, supports customers in 18 countries and six languages, and already counts enterprises like Indeed, MongoDB, and Ramp among its users. Early adopters report a 25-40 percent lift in AI answer share-of-voice within 60 days.
Now the company has announced a $20 million Series A round led by Kleiner Perkins with participation from NVentures (NVIDIA’s venture capital arm), Khosla Ventures, Saga VC, South Park Commons and SV Angel. Notable angels joining the round include Guillermo Rauch (Founder, Vercel), Andrew Karam (Co-founder, Applovin), Jordan Singer (CEO, Mainframe), Jordi Hays (TBPN), David Senra (Founders Podcast) and Kevin Wang (CPO, Braze).
Profound says that the new capital will expand Profound’s engineering and data-science teams in New York, deepen coverage across emerging AI platforms, and accelerate product innovation aimed at the coming “agentic” internet where websites are built for agentic and human use.
Check out the 10-slide pitch deck Profound used to secure the $20 million Series A funding.
What were the slides in the Profound pitch deck?
Browse the exact example slides from the pitch deck that Profound used to raise a $20M round led by Kleiner Perkins.
1. Traction Slide
The VC boom of the 2020–2021 period, marked by ultra-low interest rates and speculative capital, created a frothy environment where capital flowed easily and valuations skyrocketed on momentum alone. Even pre-revenue startups raised multi-million dollar rounds based on big visions and a few viral tweets.
But that is changing now. According to Carta, the median time to close a seed round (from 68 days in 2021 to 142 days in 2025) as well as the median time between funding rounds (2.2 years from Seed to Series A) has increased significantly.
Investors are now more rigorous in evaluation and want to see proof of traction with various metrics including real revenue (or clear path to it), customer retention metrics, and so on. Instead of MVP, they now look for “MVVP” — a Minimum Viable, Valuable Product. That means usage, loyalty, and ideally monetization.
Profound pitch deck’s traction slide calls on its Fortune 500 customers to showcase traction and prove that Profound is not just a trendy idea piggybacking on the AI hype, but actually something that the biggest companies in the world are using. The icons of these businesses (redacted for privacy) accompany the short, strong, and credibility-building heading “Fortune 500 brands rely on Profound for AI Optimization” nicely.
To improve the slide even further, a concrete proof of impact can be added. For instance, pairing the headline with a subhead like “Driving $XM in optimized value for global leaders” would make the traction more compelling and quantifiable.
2. Team Slide
When venture capitalists evaluate startups, they invest in teams more than ideas. VCs know that startups face countless obstacles and the team is the most valuable asset a startup has to navigate those obstacles.
But what exactly makes a startup team investable? VCs love teams where founders bring technical expertise, industry experience, and different but complementary skills to the table. The classic example of these skills can be a team of founders that includes a visionary, an operator, and a technical expert. In the case of Profound, Cadwallader’s experience working with big Fortune 500 brands as a former founder of data-driven influencer marketing agency Kyra helped him spark the idea behind Profound, see the big picture, and inspire others.
Ben Braverman, a co-founder and managing partner at Saga, said, “As soon as you start talking to [Cadwallader] about what he is building, the energy is dripping off this guy. The more time I spent with him, a delightful human being, talking about where the puck was moving in AI, it was a lightbulb moment, I have to spend more time with this person.”
The team slide in your pitch deck can help you show VCs that you not only have the capabilities to execute today, but the foundation to build something truly extraordinary tomorrow.
Profound pitch deck’s team slide is a great example of how to do just that. The slide gives founders the prime real estate on the left with larger portraits, more copy, and company logos so investors instantly know whose vision drives Profound. And when it comes to other team members, each person’s former employer logo (Amazon, Uber, Microsoft, etc.) acts as social proof without needing a wall of text. On the design side, a grid system keeps each column tidy, helping the eye scan top-to-bottom in a predictable rhythm. Monochrome portraits, white type, and brand logos keep the slide cohesive and on-brand with the rest of the dark-mode deck.
However, there are some improvements that can be made to the slide. For example, ‘Previously Co-founded MarTech Company Kyra’ doesn’t mean anything. Investors crave outcomes so it can be replaced with a one-line win ‘Scaled Kyra to $15M ARR.’
3. Vision Slide
Your startup’s vision is the big picture of what it wants to achieve, why it matters, and how it will make a difference. Essentially, it answers why your company needs to exist, but in a broad and inspiring way. Before you pitch to investors, you need to have a clear and compelling vision for your company that is inspiring, realistic, and unique.
It is also worth understanding the difference between the vision and the mission. The vision is a long-term, inspirational goal of the company that acts as a guiding “true north” and rarely changes. On the other hand, the mission translates the broad vision into specific objectives. These objectives are concrete, measurable, and achievable compared to a vision statement.
The vision slide is something we don’t see often in pitch decks, but it can be a great tool to get investors excited about your startup. Plus, it’s a great exercise that can help all parties see the bigger picture and define the direction your company will take.
Profound pitch deck’s vision slide presents the vision state in a language that is clear, concise, and free of jargon. The slide’s design compliments this simplicity with a monochrome palette that is clean and professional. The visuals are utilized in such a manner that avoids clutter and binds everything together to create a slide that has a polished design and exciting context.
There are some improvements that can make the slide even better. For example, the abstract icon near “The future of information discovery” feels somewhat isolated and can be integrated better with the text or visual hierarchy.
How to create your own pitch deck like Profound:
We hope you learned something from the Profound 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/Profound
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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