The Pitch Deck That Earned a $58M Series C Round

Presented by GOTO Market Institute

This week, we’re looking at the 16-slide pitch deck responsible for earning a $58M Series C round, how a 4-person startup got the attention of Stripe for an acquisition, and how generative AI tools are now being used by more than 50% of all tech startups.

• Addiction treatment startup Pelago raised a $58 million Series C round to scale its virtual care platform for substance use disorders and plans an IPO after reaching near profitability.

• Payments company Stripe acquired 4-person data integration startup Supaglue to augment its $500 million revenue and finance automation division.

• 65% of tech startups now pay for ChatGPT to increase their output, up from just 3% of startups using it in late 2022.

The 16-slide Pitch Deck Used to Raise a $58 Million Series C

Virtual addiction treatment startup Pelago just raised a $58M Series C round to scale up its virtual clinic for substance use management. With this recent round of VC funding, Pelago plans to go public next year after retaining a 300% ROI for enterprise customers like MetLife, Phillips, and GE Appliances.

Dr. Yusuf Sherwani, cofounder and CEO of Pelago, said that the startup was “able to get more cash because the team focused on efficient growth, tripling its revenue last year and approaching profitability.”

Sherwani also said that investor appetite for addiction tech startups has skyrocketed since Pelago was founded in 2017. When the startup launched with the name Quit Genius, virtual behavioral healthcare hadn't yet taken off. During the startup's first three years, Sherwani said it "felt like banging our head against the wall."

But it’s not just the platform’s incredible retention rates that have caused investors to hand over their cash. Pelago also shares the 16-slide pitch deck they used to raise their Series C round—this is on top of the $64 million in Series B funding they raised in July 2021.

If there’s anyone that knows how to get funded, it’s these guys. We’ve gone ahead and given you the link to the pitch deck, which you can check out below 👇

Read more.

The marketing playbook that led to $8B in SaaS value…

GOTO Market Institute’s founders have built tech companies worth over $8 billion, and they’re finally spilling their secrets. 

With over 10 masterclasses, 50 implementation tools, and an approach based on their real-life experiences scaling SaaS companies, GOTO is giving SaaS leaders the secrets to maximizing revenue growth and outperforming their competitors.

Want access to their playbook? Check out a sample of the training below: 

Discount: Our newsletter subscribers get an exclusive 10% discount! Use code SENTINEL

How a Tiny 4-person Startup Caught Stripe’s Eye

Payment juggernaut Stripe flexed its acqui-hiring muscles again, purchasing 4-person data startup Supaglue for an “undisclosed sum” this week. 

Supaglue's data integration abilities evidently impressed the leadership at Stripe — Supaglue, formerly known as Supergrain, is an open-source developer platform for user-facing integrations. At the same time, Stripe’s been working on real-time analytics and reporting across its platform and third-party apps for their Revenue and Finance Automation suite.

According to co-founders Goerge Xing and Thomas Chen, their meeting with Stripe was “pretty serendipitous” as they were introduced by someone in their extended network.

So despite the startup’s small size, Stripe opted to acquire Supaglue, folding the 4-person team into its larger ambitions. Between this strategic pickup, a recent sale of internal employee shares, and an unconventional partnership with electric boat maker Navier, Stripe is actively pursuing multiple avenues to maintain rapid growth.

For Supaglue, the acquisition provides instant resources and reaches far beyond what they could achieve on their own. This investment only proves that the saying “Right place, right time” extends to budding SaaS companies too. You can read more about Supaglue’s acquisition below.

Read more.

More Startups Are Paying for ChatGPT than Ever Before

Forget coffee—ChatGPT is the new daily pick-me-up for 65% of tech startups! AI adoption has exploded from 3% to over half of startups using generative AI tools to increase their output. Startups like CloudWalk and Aditude are praising ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot for letting their engineers code at lightning speeds, allowing them to streamline their development timelines.

It turns out that while ChatGPT can’t pass a university exam, it apparently makes a mighty fine coding sidekick for lean startups. 

CloudWalk says that integrating the AI chatbot has led to “improvements and efficiencies” in their overall customer experience without having to bring on additional full-time employees. And Microsoft’s Copilot has let Aditude’s small team “code at a crazy speed” (yes — these were the exact words they used).

But are these productivity gains really sustainable long-term if the bots augment the work of multiple staff software engineers? Well, according to Cloudwalk CEO and founder Luis Silva, he and his employees aren’t "asking the GPT to generate all of this stuff, but we're co-creating with ChatGPT.

In short, AI isn’t replacing people. But it’s allowing them to increase their productivity at pretty alarming rates. You can see exactly how these SaaS leaders are leveraging tools like ChatGPT and Copilot by reading more below.

Read more.

Parting Thoughts

Well, that’s the tech news for this week. Hit reply and let us know — did you learn something from today’s newsletter?

Until next time!