SlideMagic Blog

Many entrepreneurs are great presenters who can energetically sell their idea/vision to a group of investors. That was meeting 1, and you are invited to meeting 2 with questions about the practicalities of your business, how you are going to approach the market, how are you going to charge for it, where are you going to invest the money you are raising in.

Coming back with a slide deck that sells the vision (again) will not score you any (additional) points. There is also no reason to invest in (a professional presentation designer who designs a) a spectacular-looking slide deck that shows your budget. Investors know you can sell, they want to know that you can run a business as well.

In fact, boring slides can be good in meeting #2. Here are the options, I have thought about it, and I pick option number 3. Nobody knows whether option 3 is the right one (things change quickly in a startup), but at least they see someone with a cool, calm head who makes sensible judgement calls. She can be boring when she has to be.

Startups invest a lot of energy in getting into the door of well-known VCs (step 0 of the process). Strangely enough, some of them drop the ball later on wasting that earlier effort.

After you have convinced a VC partner, she has to take the idea to her other partners, often in some internal meeting without the startup being present. When a startup presents to a VC, mistakes are often forgiven,  and gaps in data can always be filled with a follow up email. Usually the VC partner wants you to succeed.

Internal VC presentations are a bit more brutal. There is less time, people do not need to be polite to guests (people say what they think), and everyone expects the perfect pitch with all information available, there is no second chance. Missing facts often lead to a turn down.

Talking to some of my VC friends, they complain about how startups further on in the investment process are slow with providing information/answer simple questions that can save them in these internal VC grilling sessions. Startups take note of this easy win.

The last Board presentation is usually the only document in the company that more or less talks about everything what the organisation is about: strategy, financials, people, product pipeline. It is tempting to harvest the Board slide deck for sales and/or investor presentations. Here is why should not:

• Board presentations talk about you, not about your (potential) customer, not very useful in sales meetings
• Board presentations reveal your weaknesses, give a too transparent comparison to competitors.
• Board presentations are all about trade offs and choices, not a clear articulation of a way forward
• Board presentations have a boring agenda-like structure, not a captivating story
• Board presentations are usually stitched together last minute with input from multiple people, not the most creative story writing process
• Board presentations are designed for long meetings, not 20 minute pitches
• Board presentations are usually Boaring…

I will be mentoring at a startup event in San Francisco early October. If you are interested to catch up, contact me. The Bay area is a big place, but maybe we find a time to be in the same place. My main presentation might be open to the public, more details to follow.

…well, highlight it. In most presentations the management bios are all crammed on one page in the presentation. If you are starting a company and your team is the only asset, you might as well spend a bit more time/space on it.

Y Combinator, a successful early stage investor, is opening its applications for the Winter 2015 program. Their advice on how to apply successfully (2009) is full of valuable advice that I apply daily when helping people to design investor presentations.

The advice is targeted at the first phase of the investment funnel: sending in a cold email with your pitch in the hope of getting an opportunity to talk in person. Paul Graham mentions a few times that writing a pitch to an investor is different from writing a CV to an HR person in a huge company.

1. Be extremely concise. Cut fluff, buzzwords, jargon. “every unnecessary word in your application subtracts from the effect of the necessary ones” These people read about 100 applications a day.
2. Say what you are doing, people need to put you in some sort of box to start thinking about your idea. Even if this means that you run the risk of limiting/narrowing down the upside potential of your idea.
3. Realise that your write-up is an excuse to figure you out, see how smart you are, how good you are at getting things done. It is not about your idea, it is about the insight you bring with the idea. Did you anticipate the obvious questions any intelligent person might have?

It is well worth to read the whole article.

Busy investors do not have (want to make) time for long verbose cover letters/emails for your presentation. Write for a skimmer:

1. Keep it really short
2. Cut out all management buzzwords and padding (synergies, engagement, strategic, flexible, ROI, etc.) that everyone else is using and which have become verbal white noise. Use conversational, human language
3. Say how you got to her (our dads were in high school together)
4. Say what you want early on (advice, money, intro to someone), and ask for a very specific next step.
5. Prioritise interesting content of the pitch (unusual facts, case example, unexpected advantage over a well-known competitor (2x as many users as Facebook, etc.) over a well structured, complete, business school essay. You are not trying to get a grade for your mid terms, you are trying to get a follow up phone call.
6. Make it highly/relevant/specific to her: complements portfolio company x, y, z, matches what you spoke about at a conference last week.
7. Use typography to break the text, to make it easier to speed read: big concept, 3 (short) supporting bullets, another concept, supporting bullets.

I will be “presenting about presenting” in Anchorage, Alaska on August 14, at 17:30. The talk will be about how to pitch your ideas to investors. Details of the event can be found here on the page of AK Entrepreneurs Meetup community. Drop by if your are in the neighbourhood!

Feedback can come from many different audiences, what to use, what to ignore? Some pointers.

• Is the person credible?
• Is the person honest?
• Is the person the right target audience?

Your mother will be really honest, but she loves everything you do, and is (likely) to be not credible when it comes to evaluating pitches, and probably also not the right target audience (if you are not raising from very close friends and family)

Busy venture capitalists are credible, and the right target audience, but not always honest (especially if they just turned you down). A vague compliment, your presentation is great, it is just not the right fit for us, could still mean that the presentation was a disaster. Small generic comments such as suggestions to cut the amount of slides, make better visuals, focus more time on the pain point, can create a lot of work for you completely uproot your approach to the presentation, while not necessarily true.

A geeky engineer can be honest, credible, but not the right target audience. When she thinks everything is absolutely clear, the other 99% of people might not be able to understand it at all.

In short, it is OK to ignore feedback from people. On the other hand, look out for genuine useful feedback from people who are credible, honest, and fit right into your target audience.

Some draft investor pitches I receive dive straight into the nuts and bolts of running the company, business model options, and roll out strategies.

But maybe it is better to first take the time to explain what your idea actually is. It may sound boring and obvious to you, but someone who has not spent the last 2 years working alongside you, these 10 minutes of explanation are a good investment.

Issues that are hugely important to you such as conversion rates, customer acquisition cost, go-to-market analysis can wait until you have managed to communicate what you are doing, what problem you are solving.