Careerist claims it closed an $8 million round of funding with a tight 12-slide deck, and gave us a lot to learn from in the process. Not all in good ways, but I’m getting slightly ahead of myself. We’re looking for more unique pitch decks to tear down, so if you want to submit your own, here’s how you can do that. Slides in this deckThe team submitted this slide deck, with the note that it was submitted exactly as it pitched it to the investors.Cover slideMission slideProblem slideSolution slideTraction slide part 1Traction slide part 2Business model slideGo to market / customer funnel slideClient rating and net promoter score slide Market slide Team slide Thank you slideThree things to love. What can you do to gain a foothold in the market? What are your marketing and customer acquisition channels? This question is only partially answered by Careerist, and that worries me a littleThis deck sets off a number of alarm bells for me — I’ll get to why in just a moment — and I imagine the founding team fought an uphill battle pitching this to investors. Having said that, the company did go through Y Combinator and claims it was successful in raising an $8 million round from Cathexis, Xploration, Cold Start Ventures, Grant Park Ventures and others. Let’s dig in and look to see if we can find some clues as to why the company caught the eye of these investors.If you have traction, nothing else matters[Slide 5] Traction is king. Image Credits: CareeristTraction truly resolves any issues a company may possibly have

Hopscotch, a digital youth mental health startup, secured $8 million in seed funding.