SlideMagic Blog

1. The audience did not understand a point that you thought was clearly explained
2. The audience perfectly understood what you said, but did not buy it

Different problems, different homework cut out for you

Photo by Chris Moore on Unsplash

Not all feedback on an investor pitch is useful, for different reasons:

• The audience might not know the substance
• The investor who turns you down does not want to be (painfully) honest
• The feedback giver did not actually spend any time reading your deck
• Your mother loves you, whatever you say or do

Here are some deck suggestions that you should treat with suspicion:

• Include the $5b [fill in Gartner IT market segment] to your market estimate…
• …and make that billion number stand out in bold, italic, underline. Hit them with it!
• Change the order of pages 5, 7, and 8
• Keep the deck to 8 pages max
• Combine slide 23 and 24
• Have a look at that AirBnB pitch of 2010, and follow that structure, it worked very well
• Add 2 years to the business plan projection
• You need a vision page
• Some fancy animation will put some “wow” into this page
• Show how your technology can be used in crypto as well, that is hot
• “I am so proud of you my son, I always knew you will do well”

This can come from highly experienced entrepreneurs or investors as well (who might be expert in another field, do not want to hurt you, had not time reading your deck).

Photo by Anton Darius | @theSollers on Unsplash

Wishing everyone a fantastic 2019! As the entire world except Tel Aviv winds down for the holidays. I will use the lull in blog traffic to churn out some more lines of code, hopefully you will get to experience the result in the new year.

Photo by Brigitta Schneiter on Unsplash

My development work initially focused on Windows computers, while Mac users are likely to be the ones that are early adopters of new technology (big corporates with big IT departments usually run Windows and are less flexible to try something new), the market eventually will be Windows users.

I stumbled on a new software development platform that probably allows me to write one code base and use it to deploy software on Windows, Mac, and yes even Linux at the press of a button. This will cause some delay to the development, but can still work at the stage where I am at. I need to see whether this solution grants me the deep access to the operating system I need.

To be continued.

Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash

I have been trying electronic pencils for years and years: different 3rd party iPad styli (is that the correct plural?), the previous Apple pencil itself and previous solutions by Wacom. None of these worked good enough for me to get rid of my note book.

I think has changed with the latest Apple pencil that works on a 2018 iPad Pro. The updated pencil solved a few annoyances when compared to the previous one:

• It snaps to your device (but still falls of in your bag)
• When snapped, it charges, no more need to stick it in the iPad connected
• It no longer rolls
• It has a matt finish and feels nicer to work with

The biggest issue though used to be work flow, with 2 poor options:

• Log into your sleeping iPad all the time when you want to jot something though in a meeting
• Keep your notes app running all the time and thereby letting the graphics intensive app drain your iPad battery.

That has been solved by a feature buried in the settings of the Apple Notes app: a simple double tap of the pencil on the screen wakes up the Notes app. The iPad is still locked as a security precaution, you can set the time it takes for the iPad to open a new note instead of displaying the last note you were writing to anyone who taps the screen.

Photo by Kim Gorga on Unsplash

Microsoft is on a roll, and now that I am turning temporarily into a developer, I appreciate them even more with very powerful code editors, and repeated decisions to open source their software (the entire Windows platform engine is going open source), and make other sensible decisions (moving to the Chromium browser rendering engine inside Edge).

The office apps are no exception, and I took some time to play around with PowerPoint on my new iPad.

The app looks and feels fantastic (I have something to aspire to), and all the basic design features work flawlessly. I find it easier to find my way around coming in “cold” then the keynote app for iPad. The small screen encourages you to design simpler slides, and spend less time adding stuff that is not essential to your story.

In 2018, things are still not perfect though. But most shortcomings are to blame on the iPad form factor, not Microsoft:

• Presentation design is a creative process that needs space, a big screen, accurate placing of objects (fingers are less good here than a mouse). An iPad is just not a focussed design interface.
• File management is still cumbersome on an iPad. Finding that deck from last week, opening a spreadsheet side by side, copying an image from the web browser, things that take a second on a computer are not intuitive on an iPad.
• Because of the form factor Microsoft has cut down the features for PowerPoint on iPad. In itself, this is great (I am also focusing the features in my app), but, once the genie is out of the bottle, it is very hard to have the same application on different platforms with different feature sets, especially if you are working with collaborators on different devices. “Please create this bar chart”, is emailed to the analyst working on an iPad in the taxi who then discovers that data charts are not really supported. It also hard to create custom themes and colour schemes.

Some users of the PowerPoint template store notice that the pace of new addition has slowed down as I am focusing on coding my own slide design application. If you have any specific requests feel free to forward them to me via jan at slidemagic dot com. It needs to be a very specific request (sorry, can’t do a bespoke design in this business model), or alternatively, send an existing chart with your content inside that I can use as inspiration for a template on the store (obviously I will remove the specifics).

Photo by Daniel Bradley on Unsplash

I upgraded my 9.7” iPad to the new 12.9” version after trying one out. Here are my observations:

• The size and weight of the bigger iPad is now manageable (unlike the first models). It is so light that the programmed weight to size ratio in your head gets confused. Still, this remains a “2 hand” device in most cases. If you need a 1-hand device, this one is not for you.
• The size is the main reason I got it, it enables me to read “magazines” by smaller publishers do not have the resources to invest in proper iPad apps and simply send out a PDF every month. For this purpose it is great. An A4-sized PDF on iPad is now one on one comparable to a paper one, probably even better.
• The best way to get a feel for the screen quality is to go back to your old device that you thought was great. It is not yet as stark as the iPhone 3 to iPhone 4 jump, but it is a huge step up.
• The thing is incredibly fast and snappy
• The pencil is a huge improvement. I tried working with styli and pencils right from the launch of the first iPad, none of them really worked for me. This one snaps against the iPad with magnets (although it will fall of in your bag), has a matt feel, cannot roll away due to a flat side, has a tap function to quickly change pens, and charges on the side of the device rather than sticking out of the connector. Writing and drawing is awesome. The killer question will be how it behaves in an hour meeting: unlocking the device, battery life, both of which were wrong in the previous version. Constantly messing around with buttons and passwords to jot down something, and then leaving your meeting with a drained battery. Face ID should help (hopefully).
• I did not get the keyboard, I still believe that writing long texts can be better done on a proper laptop.
• The iPad is expensive, but you can save on storage if you restrict your movie downloads to those you need on one long haul flight.

Applications with a dark background are fashionable now. I can still remember back at the end of the 1980s, when screens went the other way: light backgrounds with dark letters, even on green and amber monitors.

Research (lots of it done in the 1980s), suggests that light backgrounds are better. Light tightens the iris, and and a smaller iris can focus better. (Think squinting and pinhole cameras).

As I am coding away on my app, I need to think about this.

• Again, not all user interfaces are the same. Dark mode can be useful when reading Twitter feeds late at night in bed with others sleeping, but this is not the context of presentation design.
• We need to separate presenting and designing. Presenting on a big screen is better with a dark background, since the speaker does not get overpowered by this big wall of light. (Dark backgrounds will encourage people to dim the lights in the conference room though, encouraging sleep). In some industries, people sill print decks (banking), and a white background saves a lot of ink cartridges.
• When it comes to user interfaces, I am again on the fence. Coding on a dark background is more convenient because it is easer to see subtle differences in text color (functions, variables, etc.).
• Apps need to be more or less consistent. Switching back and forth between light and dark is tiring. If the everyone goes dark, I probably have to follow. (This was probably one of the main reasons for people to switch in the 1980s, switching back and forth from the screen to paper)
• There is an opportunity to make a starker contrast between the design canvas and the software UI, making one light, the other dark
• In 2018, dark applications give the impression of being “cool” and modern, which is what a new startup needs…

Overheard from a VC friend: an entrepreneur who was pitching suggesting that his colleague would for sure understand the opportunity, since he has an undergraduate degree in the subject at hand, A few mistakes:

1. You lost a few niceness points there
2. Your score for judgement as a salesman in sales pitches just was lowered
3. Yes, 4 years of undergraduate education in a certain subject has value, but so has 30 years of professional and investing experience.

Even if you think the VC you are pitching does not understand the subject at hand (and you could be totally right of course), hold the feedback for yourself. Instead, make it your problem to convince him.

Photo by Wynand van Poortvliet on Unsplash