SlideMagic Blog

A few weeks ago I had a call with one of the staff of my client, who was a user interface designer for mobile apps. Although the investor presentation was not his responsibility he wanted to give some feedback, speaking “designer-to-designer”.

In the discussion I noticed that I am actually violating some design principles that are thought in design school (I never went to such a place). Being an opinionated designer, I still think that my approach is correct, but the debate was interesting. Here are my “sins”:

• Long headlines that run over 2 lines. Yes, the font looks a bit smaller, yes, the slide has less of a punchy/pretty headline, the title is basically a small text block. BUT it allows me to put in a slightly more sophisticated message which is especially useful for decks that are read on a screen, rather than serve as a background for a live presentation.
• While I cut text and clutter to the maximum extend possible, I tend to make the slide content really big, actually: too big according to the designer. The proportion between the headline and the core graphic of the slide is off. Technically correct, BUT I am trying to keep my slides readable on a mobile phone screen.
• Some of my data charts actually of a lot (too much) data in them. BUT I like to create layers in a data chart. The super simple, most important message jumps in your face, but if you ponder a bit longer, you can see additional layers of information and get the full picture of the data.
• I reduce the number of colors as much as possible (SlideMagic allows you to use only one), but I splash healthy doses of that accent color on the the slide. Designers might cringe at all that bright colorfulness. BUT it allows me to really rub in the message of chart, especially for highlighting a contrast, and/or connecting multiple “dots” that belong together.

I have seen it many times in coffee shops. Two people at a laptop. One doing the typing. The other stretching back, looking at the ceiling, and rephrasing that sentence until it is just perfect and encapsulates everything: “With flexible automation, value delivery is now ensured throughout the customer journey”. “No, I think that should be “value creation”. “Yes, you are right, change it”. “Make “automation” bold, italic, underline”, that is the key message here”. “Red color as well?” “Yes, this starts to look perfect”.

• Noisy coffee shops are not the best environments to do design work
• When you really get into the story you are touching on highly confidential issues (weaknesses, strengths, competitive positioning, development pipeline) that you do not want to discuss in public places
• Bullet point phrasing does not equal visual slide design

Image by Gavin St. Ours on Flickr

Clean crisp design work is unlikely to happen in a messy working environment. No, most employees have little influence over the interior design of an office, but your own desk? You can do it. Apple keyboards look horrible after a year of use, but are easy to wipe clean. Buy a nice pen/mechanical pencil, invest in a beautiful notebook (buy it yourself if it is against corporate purchasing policy), peel off the Intel inside sticker from your corporate laptop. Clean up the outdated post it notes on the whiteboard. Wipe the whiteboard. Open the blinds.

Art via WikiPedia

I just returned from a wonderful holiday in Japan. What a great country with such a rich culture. Having been there before in the early 1990s, I was preparing my kids (10 and 12 years old) for a small “culture shock”, but Japan has opened up a lot in the last 25 years and has become very open to visitors from the west.

Anyway, i will pick up my blogging routine soon. Apologies for violating the social media rules and dropping my blog for 2 weeks, but for me holiday = holiday, which means minimizing the opportunities for my mind to start thinking about presentations.

I am taking a short spring break with my family, so posts might appear less frequently over the next weeks. Apologies! Image via WikiPedia

Videos can make presentation files too big for email. Many corporate email server are still set to a maximum of 10MB for attachments. Some thoughts.

• Yes, there are many alternatives for email attachments, Box, Dropbox, WeTransfer, etc., and sending email attachments might look like a thing of the past. But, if you are fundraising or on a sales campaign, you want to take all possible friction out of your funnel. One in 50 recipients might be working in a company that does not support Dropbox for security reasons, another might be a 65 year old angel investor who does not know how to use box. Your document has to fit all possible audiences.
• Think about that video in documents that you sent. When you are there in the room, presenting, you can make take action when people do not connect to it (switch it of, explain, etc.). When someone is watching your video and does not have the patience for that spectacular opening animation scene, you cannot prevent her from abandoning your pitch all together. Some videos are useful or even essential (product demos, real estate project walk through), others might simply try to add some sparkle to the deck. Make the call whether they are essential.
• If you decide to take the video out and it contains essential information, don’t simply paste a YouTube link (again, think of the impatient investor watching the deck on a mobile phone, or the 65 year old angel investor), or even worse, nothing. This will take an essential element out of your story. Instead think of alternatives for a video: add a series of screen shots with explanation bubbles, or pack the message of the video in a more traditional slide.

Google is full of free investor presentation advice and presentation layouts. The problem with all of these is that they are generic and not specific to your situation. So blindly filling out a presentation template is unlikely going to give you the best pitch.

Here is another way to craft your pitch. Think of an investor you respect, and even better, an investor whose reasoning you sort of understand resulting from conversations and or blog posts. Now, jot down an imaginary conversation that could have taken place if you find yourself next to her in the check in line for a flight. The most important part of the exercise is to anticipate the likely questions are face expressions you are going to encounter: “Really, what is it about?” “Hmm, that is a sort of [x] for [y] right?” “But are any of your users actually sticking around?” “What do people pay today for this?” “But you have no machine learning expert on your team” “Yes, I know that online video consumes a lot of bandwidth, but what does it have to do with you”

 Now take you notes from this conversation and use it to craft the flow of your investor pitch. Then, go back to the standard investor presentation templates and use them as a check list to see whether you haven’t forgotten anything important.

Why is the business school, standard, investor presentation structure not always the right one?

• Investors might already know a lot about a market, a technical vertical segment, so there is no need to do the 101
• Investors might actually know nothing about a particular market, and you will have educate them before getting to the actual pitch
• There are “elephant in the room” questions screaming to be answered first, even if they allow show up on page 25 of your template
• Visual or verbal analogies might require a story sequencing that clashes completely with a standard investor pitch template
• If you have 500 pages and/or 3 hours of material there is no alternative but to structure things orderly. (“Hey, where were we again?”)  In 10 to 20 minutes, you have a bit more creative freedom to shuffle things around
• Standard presentation structures might not work in a conversational pitch style, if you start rattling down your Harvard-approved pitch the investor already gets worried: “Huh oh, we are going to get this one for the next 10 minutes” and you are likely to be interrupted with a question that invites a dialogue.

System architecture charts can be incredibly complex, and I need to include them sales/investor presentation for almost every client that I work with. They serve an important purpose: 1) demonstrate that you know what you are doing on an emotional level, 2) ability to answer detailed technology questions on a factual level.

As I dig into these puzzles, I discover that in most cases the diagram is very complex, but the underlying system architecture is not. Most diagrams are created with some kind of drawing tool. Their main purpose is system specification, make sure that people are designing the right system. They are not meant at all for communication. (In that respect things are similar to Excel: a great tool for analysis, a poor tool for communication).

The solution is to disconnect from the diagramming app and start sketching your system architecture again, purely for the purpose of communication.

• Grid, grid, grid. Line up all the boxes properly, space things out. Keep boxes the same size/shape as much as possible
• Eliminate as many overlapping connectors as you can. Try again, again, again, again, and one more time. Overlap spaghetti is a sign that you have not really understood how to explain your architecture.
• After you eliminated your overlaps, you should be left with a grouping of boxes that is more or less logical. If there is a sequential process, there is a high chance that your boxes line up according to it. If things are related, they are probably located next to each other. In the previous steps, you looked purely for overlapping connectors, now go over your diagram again and think about function.
• Next, use color to group things together. The great thing about color is that it can make a connection between objects which are not necessarily sitting next to each other on the page
• Omit, collapse boxes that are not that important (this would have disastrous consequences if we did this in the system design diagram)
• Think hard about what text, titles to use in the boxes, cut words where you can, use rectangular instead of circular shapes to fit more text if needed. Go for a smaller font size, but don’t fill the entire box with text to make your composition look calmer.

I started importing my blog into Medium a few months ago, but the process is not going smoothly. I keep up with my blog in a “write it and forget it” way, without the elaborate SEO/social media follower strategy, so reformatting and editing the same post on multiple platforms is not the best way to spend my time. I will see how it goes, but might stop the conversion all together. It is best to keep following this site.

New startups are in need of all kinds of marketing collateral: pitch decks for investors and/or potential customers, product brochures, and a web site. I think that in the beginning, people are aiming too high with the web site: super effects, video backgrounds, sparkle, and glitter.

But the experienced investor or corporate purchaser sees through the facade immediately, this is a brand new startup with hardly any customers and 6 months of VC funding left. Instead, you can build a web presence that show yes, that you are young, but that you are serious and know what you are doing.

• There is actually some sort of web page on your URL, not an “under construction”
• Use squarespace, Wix, or another template engine for a modern look and feel, with at least a premium enough version that it does not say “proudly built with Wix” at the bottom.
• Make sure your branding is consistent: accent color (you don’t need a lot of it), and a simple logo (does not have to be a master piece)
• No gmail or hotmail email addresses
• Your LinkedIn profile actually says that you are the CEO of this company, and not a marketing consultant from 2004 to present
• The company has an address that when entered in Google street view does not point to a residential street
• When the site has a “news” section, or a blog, it should contain fresh articles, if not, just don’t put it on.
• The web site should actually describe what the company is doing, without buzzword overload