Pitch Deck Teardown: Metafuels’ $8M local weather tech seed deck

About 2% of the world’s CO₂ emissions come from pressurized, jet-powered sausages careening by way of the air. Earlier this week, I covered one startup, Metafuels, that thinks it has a solution for lowering plane emissions.

I used to be capable of speak the corporate’s founders into giving me the pitch deck for his or her $8 million seed spherical so we may do a deep dive into the supplies it used to boost the funding.

We’re searching for extra distinctive pitch decks to tear down, so if you wish to submit your individual, here’s how you can do that.

Slides on this deck

Metafuels was variety sufficient to share its full deck with TechCrunch+ for this teardown. There are some minor redactions, however the bulk of this slide deck is unbroken.

1. Cowl slide
2. Market dimension slide
3. Product/know-how slide
4. Product manufacturing slide
5. Unit economics (manufacturing at scale numbers)
6. Distinctive promoting factors
7. Expertise roadmap
8. Enterprise mannequin slide (manufacturing)
9. Enterprise mannequin slide (licensing)
10.   Commercialization slide
11.   Market traction slide
12.   Group slide
13.   Closing slide

Three issues to like

For those who’ve been studying my Pitch Deck Teardowns, even skimming the listing of slides above will make you go, “Uh-oh, Haje’s not gonna be happy with this — there’s a ton of information missing!” And sure, you’d completely be proper. That is an fascinating problem with deep tech startups, nonetheless: If it’s going to take a scorching minute to get your product to market, there’ll, by definition, be a whole lot of issues lacking.

Is it a chicken? Is it a airplane? No, it’s a high-soaring market dimension

It takes a particular sort of chutzpah to say “all aircraft fuel” is your market, however that’s what Metafuels is doing right here.

[Slide 2] Gunning for 70% of the airplane gasoline market is hella daring. I prefer it. Picture Credit: Metafuels

The market dimension for sustainable aviation gasoline (SAF) is at present fairly restricted. In 2022, round 300 million liters of sustainable aviation gasoline was produced, and that doubled this yr to greater than 600 million liters, per the Worldwide Air Transport Affiliation (IATA). That could be a drop within the veritable ocean of all gasoline used worldwide. There was a major dip throughout the pandemic years, however in 2019, around 360 billion liters of fuel was used by commercial airlines.

In different phrases, SAF represents round 0.17% of all aviation gasoline consumed.

It’s no shock, then, that Metafuels determined to start out its projections from 2030. That’s when the corporate will hit its stride going into full manufacturing, and when the market is prone to take off. The massive forcing perform is the RefuelEU Aviation regulation, which units targets for mixing sustainable gasoline in with its petroleum counterparts.

Metafuels tells the story nicely: You get an image of a quickly rising market, and the corporate positions itself as a vital participant in it.

You’ll be able to be taught from this slide learn how to tie the “why now?” part of your story to wider macro modifications. If you recognize which approach the wind is blowing, you’ll be able to set your organization as much as take advantage of it.

Let your self nerd out concerning the tech

Once you’re constructing a deep tech firm, the tallest pole within the tent is all the time going to be the tech itself. What have you found out that no person else has been capable of nail down?

[Slide 4] Ugh, sure, speak nerdy to me, child. Picture Credit: Metafuels

Metafuels has discovered the one exception to the “your investors don’t give a crap about your product” rule: It is a deep tech firm that can fail or succeed solely based mostly on what it’s capable of ship on the tech aspect. It’s refreshing to see a three-slide set (slides 3–5) speaking by way of the method, the way it works at scale, and the way the corporate can produce the gasoline at an affordable worth.

A transparent roadmap

[Slide 7] I like the readability of Metafuels’ plan. Picture Credit: Metafuels

Make it work, then make it work at small scale, then scale to manufacturing scale. It is a fairly apparent path to take, nevertheless it’s hardly ever spelled out this clearly. Slide 10 then breaks down how the corporate can scale from 50 liters per day to 700 million liters per day — that’s a hell of a scaling operation.

The primary takeaway from this a part of the deck is to control the longer term and how one can scale later. Having a transparent view of the unit economics specifically (i.e., how the financials of your merchandise change as you begin growing quantity) is commonly a vital a part of the story.

Right here, Metafuels is speaking about producing 1 to 2 liters per day, then scaling that by 700 million. That’s . . . a hell of an endeavor. And whereas the manufacturing processes and factories for producing that a lot gasoline will likely be costly, the associated fee per liter will come down dramatically. Metafuels is tackling that superbly on this deck.

In the remainder of this teardown, we’ll have a look at three issues Metafuels may have improved or completed in another way, together with its full pitch deck!