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Videos that are posted online often come with an explanation: “skip to 4:03”. Think about that when designing your presentation: the audience is watching a video without a remote control or Tivo. It should be interesting from 0:00 to 15:00.
A weekend post. Talking about cramming in a lot of information in 5 minutes… This entertaining video by Oliver Humpage manages to remind me about lots of math I forgot about a long time ago. I think the speaker could actually have done a better job by cutting out even more content from the story. Maybe it would have been possible in 4 minutes…
The Internet is full with layouts of investor pitches, they all go something like this:
Your pitch should address all these issues, but think about your potential investor’s mind when deciding about the structure. You might have to deviate from the text book approach.
Investors are constantly evaluating critical questions. And when they (think they) have answered them, they move on to the next one. Questions are not always in the order of your pitch deck.
If there is an obvious elephant in the room, you might as well address it early on in the pitch. Your audience will be calmer and more open to digest the other important points you want to make.
Far more important than sticking to the text book pitch structure.
Far more important than spending time repeating the obvious (i.e., stats on how big Facebook has become).
A heads up. It looks like I will be in New York April 4-7. I will be giving one or two presentations about making better presentations (VC pitching, sales). More details to follow.
I stumbled on this post on the Dutch Presentatie Blog: 3 reasons why Prezi is not a PowerPoint killer. In short (and in English):
I must say, I tend to agree with the assessment for the traditional stand-up presentation. Does that mean Prezi should be written off? I am not sure either. Where it could be useful:
The structure of your presentation sets the flow of the story. There is no one fits all structure though. I am discussing three different types of structure here, the names are invented by me and do not refer to well established definitions.
Analytical structure. A rigorous and organized framework that cuts up the material in all the components required to solve a problem or run an analysis. Management consultants use issue trees, university text books have section headings going down three levels. It makes sure you covered everything, that there are no overlaps, and that it is very easy to find a piece of information without having to read through the entire text. Despite that this structure is too boring, and too exhaustive for a presentation, it is often used.
Logical structure. The sequence of facts that provides a rock solid proof of your point, every aspect is dealt with, the logical deductions and implications cannot be disputed. Not as exhaustive as the analytical structure, it still usually uses some sort of agenda or summary page that prepares people for the logical drill that is about to follow. Market is big, competitors s**ck, etc. Better, but lacking emotion.
Implicit structure. My preferred one for a presentation. You tell a story, the audience is captivated without a rigorous agenda page, your listeners are not aware of an underlying structure of the story. It’s there, it’s just hidden.
I use the analytical structure to solve the problem, the logical structure to develop the check list of points I need to cover, and then construct my story free of these rigorous frameworks. When I am done, I go back to the first two to see whether I covered everything.
I am not suffering (yet) from Fred Wilson’s blogger’s block, but his call for blog topics is a good idea. What presentation design issues would you like me to discuss on these pages? Let me know in the comments.
A post inspired by a question on Quora: how to talk about competitors in a VC pitch?
In short be honest, but have a good story at the same time.
I have seen many presentations likes this one:
A shame. It shows that the designers of these decks understand slide design. Why not push it through to the entire presentation?
A great image of the Mohr cliffs by Christmas w/a K
A copy of a new section I wrote for my corporate web site.
In the very beginning, the only asset a startup has is often the VC pitch deck. Here are some suggestions for designing good VC pitch presentations. In the end I will list some of the resources you can tap in. There is a lot of information and advice available about startup pitches.
Different pitches for different meetings There are different investor presentations in a fund raising process. There is the line up in a big conference where everyone has 1 minute to pitch (not very effective). There is the 10 minute phone call, the 20 minute coffee chat. The first meeting at the VC office, the presentation to the full partner group. Prepare your story and deck for each situation. As you go through the investment process funnel, your story will shift from talking about what the company is about, to how the company will do it.
Do a pitch without a deck Practice a 20 minute pitch without slides in front of a friend. Record yourself, listen to your self. What sequence did you use to tell your story? What examples did you use? Where did you have the urge to take a piece of paper and sketch a framework? Where were you tempted to open your laptop to show a detailed chart with financials? All this gives you a clue about the sort of visuals you need to support your natural story.
It is about you When an investor looks at entrepreneur, 50% of the attention will go to the content of the presentation, the other 50% will be spent on making a personal assessment of you, the presenter. Are you a good person to work with, who takes input from a Board? Do you have a sense of realism? Are you fired up for the roller coaster ride or hedging by keeping your day job? Can I trust you? Can you actually sell? Can you pull it off? These are all questions that cannot be answered by the slides you are presenting, they are answered by reading in between the lines.