Hospitality has had a tough few years, yet Mint House has still risen to the top with their tech-savvy apartments.
Mint House offers a modern, tech-enabled experience tailored to the luxury business and leisure traveler: “The comfort of home. The luxury of a hotel”. Its recent $35 million Series B from Mohari Hospitality with Revolution Ventures, Allegion Ventures and Ingleside Investors allows it to pursue this mission. Let’s take an in-depth look at the deck used for its Series B fundraising round.
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Slides in this deck
Three things to love
I’m interested to know how they secured this round of funding, especially considering the large red flag in their deck.
Raising $35M in the hotel space during a pandemic? I’m curious to know how they managed that! It’s especially impressive considering the red flag on one of the most important slides of their deck (more in “Things That Could Be Better”).
Let’s explore the major successes!
Excellent 1-page summary slide
[Slide 2] Love summaries? We do too! Image Credit: Mint House(opens in a new window)
I’m a fan of summary slides – they really set the tone and pace of presentations. This cover slide isn’t ideal for pitches, but it’s great to send ahead to investors as it quickly covers macroeconomics, traction, progress and what the company does for whom.
This slide is perfect, though it would be great if the amount of money raised was noted on this slide or the cover.
As a startup founder, this slide highlights how to quickly provide investors with context for your company and round so you can focus on what matters most: the amount of money you’re raising, your plans, and market trends. This is especially important in later rounds—the past should just be used to prove that you know what’s going on. Investors are investing in future possibilities after all!
Front-load the longest pole in the tent
Startup founders know the biggest challenges when pitching a company like Mint House – hotels are profitable but have been done before. The opportunity lies in innovating the model, which is both risky and rewarding for investors.
Dig into the business model with us! Let’s explore Mint House together. Image Credit: Mint House
As a startup, you must differentiate yourself from the competition or risk not having a business.
Show me the numbers!
Track progress with metrics: Use Mint House to measure success. Slide 6: Measure success with Mint House.
It’s silly not to include metrics in your pitch deck when you’re a business operating and scaling up. Just as important as the numbers themselves is selecting which ones to show potential investors—it reveals how you want them to view your business.
Investors will be closely monitoring Mint House’s operating profit margin, revenue per available room, and occupancy numbers – three key metrics for determining business success. As the person responsible for driving growth in the next 3 months, you must pay close attention to these figures.
Investors typically look at different metrics than those discussed thus far. Revenue, occupancy over time, customer acquisition costs and other underlying metrics should be included here for a better understanding of the situation. Additionally, operational efficiency and cash flow should also be taken into account for a comprehensive analysis.
A glaring warning sign is the misrepresented net promoter score (NPS): it’s an absolute number from -100 to 100, whereas here it’s shown as a percentage. This inaccuracy, plus an unusual selection of metrics, point to some concerning issues with the team’s overall quality.
I question the team’s composition: tech startup founders versus hotel operators. While nothing is wrong with the latter, Airbnb has greater profit margins than someone running a chain of physical hotels. It may still be a good investment but I am skeptical as to whether it fits VC criteria.
In this teardown, we’ll explore three areas of improvement Mint House could have made and review their entire pitch deck– including that big red flag.
Three things that could be improved
Mint House’s pitch deck is great, but there were a few issues serious enough to make me wonder how they managed to raise funds. Let’s explore them.