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OpenDeck: 1,200 startup slide decks by category – Team, Market, Funding

203 points by stephnass ↗ HN
Hi there,

I have just released my first product: OpenDeck.app.

It's 1,200+ startup slides searchable by category: Team, Market, Competition, Funding, etc. You can also download all 60+ decks at once.

100% free.

Would love some honest feedback as it's my first product and looking at building more.

Cheers! Steph

50 comments

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fraggle222
I would want a way to view all the slides for a particular deck together, but here it seems I can only click a slide and see just that slide, no way to go back or forwards. I know in some cases the full deck may not be available but often there is more than one that we should be able to page through.
grinchygrinch
There's already MIDI platform called OpenDeck https://github.com/paradajz/OpenDeck
EGreg
You know, it bothers me so much when this shows up as a criticism. You didn’t say it as one, but when I released the Q platform, for social networking apps, which we worked for years on since 2010 and earlier, people told us “rename your library, there is already a famous library Q for promises”.

Well, now promises are native and that Q library isn’t a big deal.

But meanwhile I had to constantly defend with logical arguments, until I gave up and had our team overhaul the entire codebase and marketing JUST so the very vocal squeaky wheel developers could get past the naming issue and focus on what the actual benefits of the platform are.

Found one of the threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7334367

ci5er
This is a fair beef.

But, at the same time, sometimes when dev-teams build a system/product named after a single short common word (Looking at you, go!), or a single letter, it gets to be hard to search for and find relevant results. (The "go-lang" convention didn't get widely adopted/used until go had been out there for a while).

antonvs
I've never heard of your "platform." I've heard of the Q promises library.

At some point isn't it just easier to recognize that choosing a name requires some basic amount of due diligence? I've helped choose names for multiple products, in every case we had to put some thought and research into it.

> But meanwhile I had to constantly defend with logical arguments

There's no "logical argument" in this case. You're confusing rhetoric with logic.

Marciplan
Awesome! Could be nice to also include what Series the deck is for (Seed rounds pitch decks are vastly different than Series A and onwards)
stephnass
Hi Marciplan!

It's already included - although you cannot filter (yet) by funding stage, they are indicated on each slide next to the company name.

johnwarila
Small feedback, on my end the contrast makes it very hard to read the names of the companies over the slides.
stephnass
Ok, I will increase contrat a bit. I cannot increase too much or the text will hide the slide...
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blululu
Maybe not the intended purpose but this is a great resource for playing a round of slides roulette with friends over a video call. It’s an improv game where you go around and assign people with a random slide deck to present to the group. The more Corp speak and biz-talk the better. Fun way to hang out with friends remotely.
antonvs
You have a different definition of fun than mine.
nom
Slide roulette, improv, socializing, corp/biz speak. You just described my personal hell :D
taxcoder
Neat idea. I would try adding the names of several managers and corp-speakers for the players to try to impersonate.
giantg2
I was disappointed this wasn't going where I thought it was - a drinking game.
pk78
2 things:

- Why do you require an email if it's a free download?

- Link goes to your google drive where no more than 67 decks are listed. Why not just put a link to a single zip file on your landing page?

stephnass
Hi pk78

- I use the email to announce my upcoming product to potential users. It's also a free product and also a product for tech founders so it seems fair to me. If I cannot communicate with my users, then it's hard to build something.

- 67 decks = 1210 slides. You are the 3rd person to point this out so maybe my English is wrong. For me, 1 deck is a whole presentation that includes many slides. Please correct me if I am wrong.

pk78
Fair enough. If it's for potential customers, then it's probably better to make the email part optional?

- IMHO, a deck consists of slides(s) so a slide deck = set of slides. So using just 67 "slide decks" would have been a better title.

antonvs
"Slide deck" is an idiomatic phrase in English, which means a collection of slides. "1,200 startup slide decks" means 1200 collections of slides.

If there are only 67 decks, you would say "67 startup slide decks."

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stephnass
I just realized I did make a mistake in the title of the HN post. My apologies. It should read "startups slides" not "slide deck". You are correct.

I cannot edit the title, apparently. Sorry about that. Didn't mean to mislead anyone. It's an honest typo :/

saxelsen
Great resource! I was looking for something like this for our seed round and really appreciate the objectiveness of just showing the slide decks, instead of it being the clickbaity "10 great pitch decks for yadayada".

One point of user feedback though: the mobile view of the slides is a bit funnily cropped and difficult to distinguish the decks from each other. Would be nice with the primary slide highlighted, and then a view into the full deck if you click on it.

stephnass
Hi Saxelsen

Glad you like it.

Unfortunately, I use a no-code tool (Table2Site) which allows me zero customization of the mobile design.

If OpenDeck is successful, I will rebuild it better and include your suggestion.

tmpz22
Where is the data coming from? Clicking download all returns only about 60 slide decks, and you're using the download email link to promote a different product.
stephnass
Hi tmpz22,

The slides are from decks that are publicly available on Slideshare.

The data (company name, year, funding stage, slide category...) is manually added by me with a lot of Google search.

The download includes 67 decks which corresponds to 1,210 slides.

It is true that in the download email, I also announce my next product, which is also free and also for entrepreneurs. So this seems fair to me - but happy to reconsider my position on that.

bingdig
1,200 slide decks =/= 1,200 slides
haltingproblem
Why? You are providing a free service, you are completely at liberty to promote anything along with it.

Don't let anyone guilt you out of that.

Great job and keep at it!

tmpz22
Ya I was just a little confused by the title "1,200 slide decks by category...". Its perfectly fair to promote your product while providing a free service, but it does raise a mental flag of "if the goal is to promote product A, how valuable is token service B?". Regardless it's good to know these slides exist and reviewing them will help a lot of people (though I pray people skip the Theranos one as something that will influence their own companies).
stephnass
I just realized I did make a mistake in the title of the HN post. My apologies. It should read "startups slides" not "slide deck". You are correct.

I cannot edit the title, apparently. Sorry about that. Didn't mean to mislead anyone. It's an honest typo :/

rogerdickey
It is 60 startup slide decks, not 1,200 startup slide decks
stephnass
Hi rogerdickey

It's 67 decks i.e. 1210 slides. It's my understanding that a pitch deck or slide deck contains several slides.

Is the wording confusing or misleading? Please suggest a better one, I'll be happy to fix it (English not my native language).

stephnass
I just realized I did make a mistake in the title of the HN post. My apologies. It should read "startups slides" not "slide deck". You are correct.

I cannot edit the title, apparently. Sorry about that. Didn't mean to mislead anyone. It's an honest typo :/

chaRoule
so you are selling publicly available data as your own? Not honest and you better call it out.
Labo333
As specified in the post: "100% free"
jakeatport
Yes, but again he is harvesting emails by providing publicly available doc. Are you also with him for harvesting?
nrmitchi
Lots of business exist only to collect "publicly available data", organize it, and re-sell it. No where did OP claim that he owned the data, and frankly "ownership" of this data wouldn't even make sense. They are the slide decks of existing, well known companies.
ingvul
Thanks for this. I was looking for something similar last month.
stephnass
Hi all,

I just realized I did make a mistake in the title of the HN post. It should read "startups slides" not "startup slide deck". My apologies.

==> There are only 67 decks = 1,200 individual slides. <==

I cannot edit the title, apparently. Sorry about that. Didn't mean to mislead anyone. It's an honest typo :/

ugh123
Certainly wouldn't lead with "Steal..." Would also be good to have a filter by industry/market/segment or whatever
stephnass
Multiple filters will be for v2 :)
S-Stanley
This seem to be a cool thing to use. But I have to dig to find what is what about. I think it should be more simple with a clear slogan or USP
redrubia
Hey @stephnass Interested in adding a deck. Can you add a URL when submitting one - seems you can only do upload from PDF. This one comes from slideshare, so figured URL maybe easy for you to integrate in?