This is a rough draft of our pre-seed pitch deck. We received a lot of great feedback on it, and in hindsight, would have included many more screens of our early product in the deck. Regardless, we were successful in raising $1M in Seed funding and hopefully it's useful to other entrepreneurs as a reference point!
3. What is Harvest?
Harvest is the first automated and intelligent
debt management platform. We empower the 8
in 10 Americans with debt by accelerating their
journey from borrowers to wealth builders.
Source: Urahn, Susan, Travis Plunkett, and Erin Currier. The Complex Story of American
Debt: Liabilities in family balance sheets. Rep. N.p.: The Pew Charitable Trusts, 2015.
4. Debt balances above are current as of Q3 2016; figures are
updated quarterly by the Federal Reserve.
Why now?
The last recession did little to curb America’s
appetite for debt. All forms of US Household
debt are now again at all time highs. The
average household that has credit card debt
owes $16,000. That number is $27,000 for auto
loans, $48,000 for student loans, and $169,000
for mortgages.
Non-Housing Debt Balance
5. What's the cause?
The root of the problem is a lack of basic
financial literacy and poor financial habits that
result in a vicious negative feedback loop known
as the debt cycle.
There’s a disconnect between the proper
behavior (i.e. attack the loan principle) and the
default behavior (i.e. make minimum
payments).
6. From vicious to virtuous:
Harvest reverses the debt cycle by:
1. Automating the process of shrinking
balances.
2. Providing education on the responsible use
of credit.
3. Implementing a continuous fractional
refinancing strategy.
7. How does Harvest help?
Financial Literacy: At the intersection of behavioral
psychology and AI, Harvest is able to provide bite
sized chunks of education as users progress towards
financial freedom.
Attack the Principal: Aka Automated Debt Management.
By ingesting and analyzing user spending and income
data, Harvest’s AI can implement the optimal debt pay
down strategy.
Fractional Refinancing: Harvest’s AI automates the
difficult process of checking the market for refinance
and consolidation opportunities only surfacing options
when they actually benefit the user.
8. Business Model
Credit scores
Automated investing Assets under management
Automated savings
Give Away Monetize
Interest differential
Affiliate Revenue
Budgeting Tools Affiliate Revenue
Content Affiliate Revenue
Automated Debt Mgt.
Financial Literacy Affiliate Revenue
Fractional Refinancing
9. In order to aggregate, Harvest needs to
gain users. Harvest gains users by
earning their trust and creating value.
Therefore, we vow to align interests with
those of our users.
Harvest won’t sell our users anything they
don’t need, instead we aim to save them
money every opportunity we can.
Once we build up a user base, lenders
can compete for our users and their
origination fees, driving rates down and
benefiting users.
The Opportunity: Aggregation
10. Initial markets
Ready for Zero acquisition and
closure left a gaping hole in the
marketplace. Hundreds of
thousands of loyal customers are
looking for a viable debt
management alternative.
Millennials graduating with sky high
student debt burdens and a
propensity for spending the better
half of their days immersed in their
cell phones.
A borrower that pays late or enters
collections costs a lender 5x the
cost of a borrower that pays on time.
We plan to target lenders as a
solution to their delinquency woes.
Mortgages are the most common
household liabilities in the US. They
also happen to present the largest
opportunity for savings for Harvest
customers. Fortunately, homeowner
data is part of public record.
Targeting influencers across the
personal finance and financial
independence communities in
forums, blogs, YouTube channels,
and in person.
12. Competition
PFMs
Investing
Comparison Education
Lenders
If you try to be everything to
everyone, you will fail.
We are not a Personal Finance
Manager (PFM). We are not a
Swiss army knife.
At Harvest, we aim to be the best
consumer debt management tool
on the market.
14. We have raised a $600,000 Pre-Seed round for 12
months of runway to:
• Make 3-4 key hires: One Full Stack Developer, one
Designer, and one Growth Marketer
• Launch v0 of our Harvest mobile client
• Build Channel Partnerships
• Build Lending Partnerships
• Start generating content and building an audience
• Acquire 10,000 early customers
The deal
Who
Invested?
From
where?