Inside the Pitch Deck That Built a $134B Company

The Series D deck Databricks used to raise $140M

Ben Horowitz called it "one of the worst pitch decks he had ever seen"

He funded it anyway.

In 2013, seven UC Berkeley academics walked into Andreessen Horowitz with a 36-page, poorly formatted presentation about Apache Spark. Four years and several graphic design lessons later, they came back with the Series D deck that would set Databricks on a path to becoming one of the most valuable private companies in history.

That Series D deck is now public. And what’s inside reveals exactly how a team of professors pitched their way to a $134 billion valuation.

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What’s inside:

• The complete Series D pitch deck breakdown (slide by slide)

• The thesis that made investors write $140M checks

• Databricks’ full funding trajectory: $47M to $134B

• The pivot that saved the company

• Revenue growth: $22M ARR to $5.4B in 8 years

• Key acquisitions and what they paid

• Where Databricks goes from here

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The Series D Deck: Full Breakdown

May 2017. Presented by CEO Ali Ghodsi. Target: $140M raise