It's rare to come across a pitch deck that ticks almost all the boxes. In fact, it was so good that I fed Plantee's deck into an AI tool I built and it determined that Plante had a 97.7% chance of raising money. This tool typically determines that only about 7.5% of all pitch decks reach zero, so Plantee is clearly off the charts.
What the robot didn't realize, however, was that Plantee's Kickstarter campaign was canceled before it was complete, and there are a few other confusing details. Let's take a look at what works and what could be improved.
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This deck slide
Cover slide Overview slide Team slide Advisor and investors slide Mission slide Market validation slide Problem slide Solution slide Product slide Competitive landscape slide Traction slide Target customer slide Market size slide GTM slide Pricing and unit economics slide Vision slide Funding slide Operational planning slide Closing slides Appendix slide I: Products in development Appendix slide II: Sources and references
Three things I love about Plantee's pitch deck
It turns out that the team at Plantee actually read my pitch deck teardown material very carefully, and it shows. The company's documentation contains many details.
Here's how to introduce it!
Slides 1 and 2 together (Slide 1 is at the top of the article) will set the stage for investors to understand 100% of the what, why, and how of your company.
[Slide 2] A commendable one-page summary. Image credit: Plantee
The opening slide of Plantee Innovations' pitch deck is rock solid. Between the two slides, the founder provides a clear and engaging introduction to the company's philosophy and goals. A concise overview not only captures the audience's attention from the beginning, but also serves his dual purpose of efficiently leveling investors and filtering interest based on the alignment of investment theory. Cover slides include “IoT Smart Home / B2C Home Appliances / Agritech / $1.7M Raised.” This is essentially a keyword bingo that helps investors decide whether to participate or immediately discard the deck. That's good. If this company doesn't suit the investor, the investor can switch quickly.
Must like good technical solutions
I'll be the first to admit that I'm a huge nerd and love a good gadget. I also love plants. I have dozens of them all over my apartment, and I'm able to keep most of them alive. As I outlined, I love Plantee's approach to making sure you parent your plants.
[Slide 8] Technology, AI, and happy plants. Image credit: Plantee
My guess is that most plant owners think about light once when they first bring their plants into their home. They'll want to water the plant as often as possible, preferably before it becomes dry, crusty, and miserable in the corner of the dresser. I never thought plants would be so necessary, so it's nice to have the AI take care of everything else.
On the one hand, it's a relief. On the other hand, maybe I'm just a simple and novice plant dad, but it confused me a little. I've never heard anyone mention humidifying the air or heating the soil. Sure, it makes sense that these things would make a difference, but I'm certainly curious to what extent it's worth worrying about.
Good competitive environment
This is a market where there are not many competitors. If you look at it through one lens, this is a good thing. This means the market is thriving and Plantee can see how its competitors are doing well or poorly and position itself accordingly.
[Slide 10] That means there are a lot of competitors. Image credit: Plantee
As a competitor overview slide, this is very comprehensive. It divides the competitive landscape into “hard to grow” and “easy to grow” and distinguishes between experts (such as mushroom and avocado growers) and general growers. It all makes sense, but there's still a small piece of the puzzle missing here. The only real exit for this space that I know of is the roughly $50 million acquisition of AeroGarden by ScottsMiracle-Gro. It's not the world's smallest acquisition, but it's not the most encouraging either.
Another question I have is whether this dichotomy makes sense. If someone plants a bonsai (a specific use case advocated by the Plantee team), they probably don't intend to repot the plant, but this is an interesting challenge. If you're positioning yourself in the market as a “grow anything,” you'll want to repot from time to time. But this tiny bonsai tree can grow for up to 800 years, so it's hard to argue that the “grow everything” claim is such a strong selling point.
Three things Plantee could have done better
On first impressions, the Planty deck is quite extraordinary, with the AI tool giving it a 97% chance of success. As a human investor, I'm less convinced and disagree with AI for several important reasons.
Is it meaningful as a product?
I love a good indoor growing system, but there are many I've tried (and failed) in this area. GROW raised $2.4 million in 2017, but ultimately shut down. I reviewed the $1,000 Abby a few years ago, which, like Plantee, was pre-selling $100,000 worth of product on Kickstarter, and it was pretty bad. I also built my own hydroponic system for her less than $150. This is obviously more work, but it turns out that this kind of system doesn't have to be expensive.
Plantee is quite a formidable competitor. On the lower end, you can purchase a pod-based hydroponic system for as little as $40. If you want to spend a little more money, Click & Grow has you covered. Rise Gardens recently raised $9 million in funding. People often let houseplants die, but most of them are very easy to care for. If you need help, a quick Google search for “AI plant growing apps” will bring up a number of options, most of which are free.
My biggest challenge with the Plantee deck is not what's there, but what's missing: the broader context. If you take all of the company's claims at face value, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But if you zoom out a little and talk to some plant enthusiasts, you'll find that there's probably not as big of a gap in the market as you think. There seems to be an inherent premise in Plantee's story that if someone hates plants he would spend $1,400 on a fancy automatic flower pot.
I think that's a misconception, and if you're a plant lover, before investing four months of your car payment on a fancy high-tech product, consider getting a kitten, taking up watercolor painting, or buying plastic plants instead. I would like to argue that you should buy it.
So what happened to that Kickstarter campaign?
[Slide 11] Plantee insists that the Kickstarter campaign is part of its market validation efforts. But there's a catch. Image credit: Plantee
In fact, Plantee convinced 109 backers to pledge just over $100,000 for its product. The campaign was fully funded within his eight hours, but was canceled less than a month later.
what happened?Image credit: Screenshot from Kickstarter
That leaves the Plantee team in a strange position. The Kickstarter campaign claims to be proof of market validation. And that may be true. The company says it was able to attract pre-order customers with its $275 CAC. Basic math says that by selling 109 units, the company would have spent about $30,000 to generate his $100,000 worth of sales. Assuming your product has enough margin for customer acquisition costs to be reasonable, this isn't too terrible.
The problem, however, is that nowhere in the pitch deck does the company mention that the campaign has been canceled or why it was canceled. They could argue that they never intended to make the Kickstarter campaign a reality, and that it was just a marketing test to see if there was a market for this kind of thing.
I don't know if that makes sense. Plantee's campaign was preceded by EcoQube ($300,000 in funding in 2019), GroBox ($70,000 in 2019), Herbert ($280,000 in 2019) and dozens of others. Although the company was already successful, it's not entirely clear what Plante learned from this exercise. Since then, many other companies have run successful Kickstarter campaigns with him (Herbstation, MarsPlanter, GrowChef).
Simply put, I'm having a hard time understanding how the Kickstarter campaign fits into the overall story, and by seemingly avoiding issues within the deck, I'm not sure what Plantee is doing to himself. It does not give any profit. Maybe I'm just super sensitive after one of my Kickstarter campaigns went under fire a decade ago and ended up involving my entire company, but personally… , I'd like to include a slide in this slide that says, “So, what happened with Kickstarter?” The appendix is meant to get you ahead of that part of the story. Bad news should travel quickly.
a little on the dramatic side
I love good storytelling, don't get me wrong. But parts of this pitch deck seem to have completely lost perspective. Phrases like “Never lose a green child again”, “It started when my best friend died”, and “Stress affecting the mental health of growers” are definitely powerful and emotional. But for those of us who have lost a close friend, those with serious mental health issues, or who have actually lost a human child, that immense, almost unbearable pain can be reduced to a houseplant. Seems in pretty bad taste to compare it to losing .
[Slide 5] Ondra, I'm sorry, but this is almost in bad taste. Image credit: Plantee.
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