🌊 Pitch Deck GPT
👋 Hello! I’m Ivan. Join +7.4K entrepreneurs surfing startup waves. Learn the best of what other founders have already figured out in under 3 minutes, 1-2x / month. Made in Spain, with a touch of Iberian dealflow.
Summary
🌊 Pitch Deck GPT: GPT and Assistant API building 101.
💡 Story-framing: the key to persuasive communication ft José Luis Antúnez.
💵 Iberian Deals: 10 startup deals in Spain (>€40M).
🌊 Pitch Deck GPT
Like half the world, I’ve been playing around a lot with OpenAI lately.
What’s most impressive about this technology is how it lowers barriers to entry for developing a bunch of different skills - but also how fast it enables you to move.
As usual, the best way to learn is to try to build stuff, so here’s a quick 360 tutorial.
OpenAI: Beginner Vs Intermediate Mode
Easy Mode - GPT Builders: Cool, but largely gimmicky things. You can set them up very quickly, but can’t do much beyond OpenAI’s designated playground.
Intermediate / Advanced Mode - Assistant API: This side is super interesting, basically the business building side. It allows you to do the same as GPT builder, creating an assistant, and make calls to it from pretty much wherever you want.
Level 1: GPT Builder
Lets build a startup pitch deck co-pilot GPT - to help founders with story-building.
Step 1 - Login to ChatGPT and subscribe to Pro ($20/month, worth it). Click on “explore”, then “Create a GPT”:
Step 2 - Create: give your GPT high-level instructions. Answer GPT Builder’s questions, and give it a high-level mission, approach and tone. You can also ask it to design a quick logo through Dall-e.
Step 3 - Configure: click on the bottom right to expand the text box. Give specific step-by-step instructions following this schema:
Step 4 - Train: You can either upload PDF documents directly in the configure tab, or drag and drop them unto the prompt interface with an instruction to learn. To train Startup Pitch GPT I used both methods (sometimes the system still struggles to capture text from longer PDF files / images). You can also “Create Actions” - which lets your GPT retrieve information or take actions outside of ChatGPT - but lets keep it super simple for Level 1.
Step 5 - Deploy: Share it with the world by clicking on the top right Update to public button and voilà! You have trained a GPT on YouTube, Facebook, Uber and other pitch decks + vc frameworks to help founders with their pitch decks.
👉 Try it, upload your pitch deck or slide.
Level 2: Assistant API
This is going to feel a little more in the weeds - but its worth it.
Imagine you own an ecommerce store - you want to build a virtual sales assistant.
You want this sales assistant to be trained on your sales material, your ICP, the types of products that might convert best and so on.
What the Assistant API lets you do is build your own GPT (using OpenAI’s API) and breaking it free from the OpenAI gardens, so you can deploy it anywhere you want - effectively deploying an AI Sales Assistant on your site.
This looks more complicated than it is, but it is actually pretty simple. Here’s an attempt at simplifying this YouTube tutorial by Liam Ottley that will help you pick up this skill super fast:
Quick project: Startup Pitch Deck Assistant
For the sake of this tutorial, lets build a Startup Pitch Deck Assistant - a friendly chatbot that will help you build better pitch decks when you land on our website:
Step 1 - Setup Backend & Knowledge Base:
Open Replit for your Backend (free)
Add your knowledge doc: this is essentially the training information for whatever you want to chat with. Just upload a Microsoft Word doc:
Step 2 - Setup Main.py file : You’ll see a “main.py” file where we have our API endpoints that will talk to from voiceflow (hang in there, it comes later).
Step 3 - Create OpenAI API key:
Create an account
Set up billing + set usage limits (buy like $20 worth of credits)
In Replit, click on “Secrets” bottom left (under “tools”), insert secret API key.
Finally, hit Run and you’ll now see an assistant.json file pop up on the left
Step 4 - Create the assistant function: this is basically the same basic training instructions you’d give in the OpenAI GPT builder interface. You send this information off to the Assistant API, build a new assistant, and it’ll return back the ID for your assistant. It’ll show up as “Assistant.Json”, which will save the ID so we can later recall it (stores it and reloads it every time, saves you money).
Step 5 - Create the Voiceflow Chatbot:
Download this Voiceflow template, and import it into Voiceflow (top-right icon)
Run your code on Replit, click on “new tab” within your Webview (where it should say “Not Found” - and copy the string from your browser.
In my case: http://startup-pitch-deck-gpt-assitantapi.startupriders.repl.co/
Go back to Voiceflow
Click on “Create Thread” and enter URL + add “/start” at the end
Click on “Generate Response” and enter URL + add “/chat” at the end
Step 6 - Design you Chatbot
Hit “Publish” on your project, and click “Embed Widget”
Now you are prompted with 3 sections where you can design your chatbot
Step 7 - Publish it on your website!
Copy the snippet above and paste it at the bottom of your site’s HTML code.
And voilá! Your custom OpenAI-powered virtual sales assistant, or in this case Startup Pitch Deck Assistant - anywhere you want it.
P.s. If you want one but can’t be bothered building it, make me an offer (DM).
💡 Story-framing
"Creativity is the most powerful force in business."
—Bill Bernbach
I found Jose Luis Antunez through one of his insightful and fun tweets about brand-building. As a founder and story-framing expert, he often shares great ideas about this underrated discipline. I asked him to please share some key resources 👇
Bill Bernbach’s 10 principles for good advertising:
Go to the essence of the product. State the product’s essence in the simplest terms of its basic advantage. And state this both tangibly and memorably.
Where possible, make your product an actor in the scene; not just a prop. This makes for a tremendously effective method of getting your product remembered. Because the provocative element in your advertising is also the element that sells your product. This is so simply stated, so difficult to execute.
Art and copy must be fully integrated. They must be conceived as a unit, developed as a unit.
Advertising must have vitality. This exuberance is sometimes called “personality”. When advertising has a personality, it is persuasively different; and it is the one because of the other. You must fight to get “bounce” in your advertising.
It is little less than useless to employ a so-called gimmick in advertising —- unless the gimmick itself tells the product story.
Tell the truth.
First, it’s a great gimmick.
Second, you go to heaven.
Third, it moves merchandise because people will trust you.
Be relevant. A wonderfully creative execution will get the big “So what” if it isn’t meaningful to their life, family, business etc. And always opt for an ad that’s relevant over one that’s exciting and irrelevant.
Be simple. Not simpleminded, but single minded. Who has the time or the desire to listen to advertising?
Safe ideas can kill you. If it’s been done before, your competition will be ready for it. Your only chance of beating the competition is with advertising they’ve never seen before. Which means you’ve never seen it before either! Be brave.
Stand out. If your advertising goes unnoticed, everything has been wasted.
In this year 2023, we are beginning to see that perhaps in the coming decades, AI might be the most dominant force. But let's not forget one thing: Creativity is what has created AI and is what can make it more useful and responsible.
🐇 Follow the white rabbit
Documents and testimonies about his vision and working methods.
💵 Iberian Deals
You love startups and want to enjoy a Spanish lifestyle? Come join the Spanish startup ecosystem. Here’s a list of recently funded startups:
Velca (mobility) raised 5.3M
Strong By Form (biocomposites) raised 4.8M
MiMark (health) raised 4.2M
V2C (electric car chargers) raised 4M
Crescenta (finance) raised 2M
GrowPro (travel) raised 1.5M
Gataca (identity) raised 1.3M
Check To Build (proptech) raised 1.2M
Applivery (device management) raised 1M
Guppy.es (car sharing) raised 1M
MainRail (transport) raised 850K
Aitaca (ecommerce widget) raised 635K
MasLeads (salestech) rasied 200K
P.s. IF you enjoyed this, I’d super appreciate a quick share on twitter or Linkedin 🙏🤙
Dear Ivan, this is fantastic material and thank you for taking the time putting this together. I'm using it for my own learning and thanks again for your excellent work. I've actually followed your instructions for setting up the Replit + Voiceflow to test the chatbot. It seems to be working fine until step 5 where the /start and /chat keeps resulting in an API call error. Whenever you have spare time, I'd appreciate it greatly if you could provide perhaps a bit more detailed steps in 4 and 5 in case I am stupidly messing up the .JSON or Main.py file. I've used GPT-4 to debug both and the code in Replit runs fine, however when I connect the URL in voiceflow and add the extensions I keep getting API errors.
I am very interested in the application of AI for healthcare. I help people integrate new lifestyle habits which changes the course of disease and prevents it.