SlideMagic Blog

Wearing the hat of a startup CEO (SlideMagic), I will be attending Web Summit in Lisbon the 2nd week of November. Let me know if you are there as well and would like to shake hands.

Image via WikiPedia

There are a lot of these type of industry charts around. The only message it conveys as a slide is “there are lots of players in the industry”. More information is too hard to read. I think zooming presentation tools such as Prezi do not always help make your presentation more effective, but in this case, it could provide useful in creating a “ponder chart” where you can zoom in and out of specific sections.

We recently celebrated my daughter’s Bat Mitzvah and here is the process I went through to produce my short speech:

• I did not make too big a deal out of the speech, it is not the State of the Union, I wanted to express my feelings to my daughter, and focus the attention of the entire crowd for a few minutes on her.
• I created a digital notebook accessible from all my devices weeks in advance. Here I jotted down ideas: stories, memories, jokes, anecdotes, as they came along. It is hard to come up with ideas 24 hours before
• About a week before the event, I wrote down a whole version, and put it away
• A few days later during a bike ride a crafted an entire new story in my head, shorter, simpler, and less dry. Immediately after dismounting from the bike I wrote that one down.
• I rehearsed a couple of time and created a short bullet point lay out of my talk that I could print in small font and hold in my hand. Important points are the key element of a paragraph (you can summarize those in 4 words if you have to), and lists (“what was that 3rd character trait again?”)
• During the speech i made sure that I was really “into the story” feeling the meaning of the words while saying them (i.e, not pressing play from memory and just recite text without processing what it means).
• Instead of uttering “uhm”, I tried to keep the composure and pause to form the next key idea in my mind before speaking it out.
• And yes, I did not use slides!

I see dozens and dozens of technology startups and yesterday I sat back and jotted down the similarities between my clients that manage to raise money. Disclaimer: it is not scientific, it is not conclusive, and in many cases I actually do not get updated on whether the fund raising round was successful or not.

Here are some similarities:

• More than one exceptional team member, the company is not just carried by one strong CEO
• Straight to the point discussions during the briefing meeting, no buzz words, no vague marketing frameworks, no empty discussions about flow in the absense of substance
• A positive and happy working environment. Supportive feedback, respecting people’s time instead of negative comments all the time, insisting on unreasonable deadlines, making people wait a long time, calling in person meetings to communicate something that could have been done in a phone call. These are places you want to do your best
• People are open to reposition, change things that are pretty fundamental to the company.
• Taking advice and input form people the right way. Some people get listened to, others ignored.
• A realistic awareness of strengths and weaknesses

OK, you need to have a good business concept. But looking back at the above points, these are companies that designers like to work with (and presumably investors want to work with them as well). There is a contagious, positive energy among them.

Back in the days as a junior analyst at McKinsey you would often see a deck or listen to a presentation that you would not understand completely. Being 23, I usually kept quiet and assumed that this was my problem, not the presenter’s.

Now at more than double that age, I still have the same issue: I often don’t get why something is so special, so unique, so difficult to do from reading a slide or listening to the presenter. My IQ has not changed much (it probably got worse), and yes I have learned things, but the biggest difference that I have gained the confidence to know that it is not my fault. It is OK to ask a question that might sound trivial.

Photo by Matthew Paul Argall

Some concepts are so simple to explain that they do not need a (visual) metaphor. If you don’t need one, don’t use one. They will sound forced, and actually makes the message of your presentation more difficult to understand.

Here are situations where I do rely on metaphors:

• Make size comparisons that are hard to imagine
• When there are lot of different things that need to be covered. You can set up the metaphor at the beginning of the presentation, and continue to build on it throughout the deck.
• When it is possible to compare yourself to a winning business idea that revolutionized another market, preferably a long time ago.

Image from WikiPedia

We are celebrating the Jewish new year here in Israel. I am off the grid with my family here in the Negev dessert. Apologies for the low post frequency!

You got 30 minutes with a senior executive to present your case in a highly politically charged issue. Many people bring a very long deck that starts slowly, industry trends, backgrounds, history, until finally at 25 minutes we get to the real issue.

These type of presentations are not TED talks were we take the audience on an inspirational journey. Everyone in the room pretty much knows the background and history (if they did not, they could have read it the night before in your document), probably knows the arguments both sides are making.

Your 30 minutes is best spent showing why the combination of your arguments is the best one. You need to get the point early in your presentation, and have at least one slide that puts all the options, pros and cons on a page. Other slides in the presentation are backups for the points you are making.

Yes, that one slide can be busy, but it should not be unreadable.

• Keep sentences short, think of every word you are adding to the slide whether it is worth it or not
• Group similar points into one overarching one
• Spend very little slide real estate at no brainers to which both sides agree
• Use colors, and layout to highlight the differences between the options
• Project the slide over a white board if you can, so people can scribble and write on it

Venture capitalist Mark Suster posted a quick video about this issue.

His advice:

1. What you do (he is right, some pitches are vague about this), if you can, even without slides to make direct eye contact with the audience and establish rapport.
2. The exec bio, to establish credibility, why you are the right person to pursue this opportunity
3. The body of the presentation

He has a point. BUT, I would keep that bio slide super short, maybe limit it to the CEO and/or people who are presenting in the room and put the dense, detailed CV information in a slide later in the back. Grinding through lots of CVs of everyone on the team can break the momentum of the presentation (unless everyone on your team is a unique rockstar). Also not every startup has that rock star team (which probably gets you a minus from Mark anyway).

A final note, if you are presenting to Mark, there is no question, put that full bio slide on page 2. You should research every person you pitch to, and this is how he likes to see things, so that’s what you do.

It is interesting to to see the side-by-side video shots of the presidential debate of last night.

Here is what you can learn from Hillary when confronted with an unpredictable debater:

• Keep your posture
• Maintain that “look” in your eyes at all time showing that you just stand above it all
• Prepare: Donald is looking up pondering how to respond, Hillary is reading a prepared note with a response to an attack that she expected to come
• Maintain the dominant audio track even when interrupted mid-sentence multiple time
• Practice a whole stretch, be prepared to keep everything up for 90 minutes

The second debate will probably be more interesting as both candidates will have had the opportunity to analyze the first debate. You can watch the full version of the debate in this video.