SlideMagic Blog

I am experimenting with options on the SlideMagic template store. In this product, you can now select number of text lines, bullet style, and whether you want a side image or not, and the store will serve up the requested template. This is a very basic option implementation, I am looking into more sophisticated slide selections that could be useful for data charts and process diagrams for example, which would make it very easy to adjust the number of steps/years/months in these types of diagrams.

Subscribers to the SlideMagic store can download these charts (or a whole bundle full of text charts) free of charge.

I found this slide in a recent McKinsey article:

I created a make over of this chart, making it simpler:

• Remove the icons, they are faint and not clear
• Cut down unnecessary text: capture, create value, out of the business, you can say the same thing with much less text
• Use this created space to increase the font size
• Center the text, the paragraph shape of the existing text in the round shapes does not look good.
• Re-order some of the terms in the text, to make it fit the shape better, some might not like “business models” now appearing before “services” for example.
• Move around the text blocks until they fit the shape more or less. The off center moons will never lead to a perfect composition.

Here is the result:

The slide might look a little bit less sophisticated, but it is definitely easier to understand, and quicker to create. And that’s what business presentations should all be about.

I have added a modified version of the original 3-circle Venn diagram to the SlideMagic template store, you can find it here. Subscribers can download this template free of charge. If you are interested in learning more about McKinsey presentations, check out older McKinsey-related posts on the blog

People re-use slides for different audiences. And 10 years ago, you would still be able to skip a few slides quickly when they contain confidential information if - by accident - you forgot to delete the product roadmap that you used in last week’s Board meeting. (Or you forgot to mark them as “hidden”).

The smart phone with super high resolution cameras means that nothing is safe anymore. There is the accidental smartphone snap, but also the professional “slide harvesters” diligently recording every slide in your deck. An HD video just needs a millisecond to capture the slide that is being skipped.

Here are some other confidentiality pitfalls to watch out for:

• Data that still sits in the underlying Excel sheets, even when you take the data labels of your chart
• Hidden slides in presentation mode that are there for everyone to see when you send a PowerPoint file
• Speaker notes
• Collaborator comments
• File names or URL names that can still persist in a document even after its is PDF-ed
• Tiny footnotes that give away important information

Cover image by Ben White on Unsplash

People are spending too much time designing their own decks and sitting through other people’s presentations, using hours that could have been spent on making better decisions, inventing something great, or simply connecting with your family.

I am attacking the problem on multiple fronts (app, template store), and am now starting to dust of the book that I put out a few years ago. I want to raise the quality of its production, and make it much, much more practical with easy links to templates in the app and the store.

Watch this space.

Cover image by Angelina Litvin on Unsplash

I am a huge fan of the improvements Microsoft has been making to PowerPoint over the last few years, it now outshines Keynote.

One thing though, is bothering me: after every recent update it is very hard to say “no” to the question whether Microsoft can record every single one of your clicks to make the program even better. You can simply accept or learn more.

On a Mac, I managed to make the window go away by repeatedly clicking on the red cross in the top left corner of the pop-up window, hopefully that registered as a “no”.

In my spare time I am (finally) making efforts to lay down musical tracks that were playing in my head for a long time. Part of the learning process is watching documentaries of musicians going over and over and over again until that mix is just perfectly right. (This skeleton in the studio image says it all). And these are the 1980s and 1990s, for many of today’s electronics musicians, it is all about polishing and mixing so it seems.

There is a parallel here in presentation design. Instead of editing the footnotes the night before the presentation, get a good night of sleep or do one more live rehearsal of your story. Time better spent.

Cover image by João Silas on Unsplash

An investor double-clicks an attachment, you make a first impression already which is totally disconnected from the idea you are trying to pitch:

• The slides have a reasonably professional feel: not the standard Microsoft Office template, not a 1990s bevel and gradient template, no times roman font, slide formats are more or less consistent throughout the presentation, images are not cheesy and/or stretched
• The slides have a grown up language, which shows that the author understands the audience: no padding with buzzwords, no 101 introductions to a subject that any VC is supposed to master, no presentation cliches (“in this ever faster changing world where we all have become digital nomads”)
• Early in the deck it is at least clear what you are doing
• The email addresses are not gmail, and the company domain has some sort of place holder in a consistent look & feel with the presentation. LinkedIn pages of founders are consistent and up to date.
• You are sending a PDF, not a PowerPoint document, and it fits in a 10MB file

These are examples of the digital equivalent of the first impression you get with a handshake. Your deck is compared to all other decks this VC has seen in her career in more or less a second. And she has developed the intuition, what sort of decks usually are associated with good deals, and which ones to avoid.

Cover image by rawpixel on Unsplash

In some cases, a stand up presentation is an emotional story telling performance that moves your audience to do something they did not know they wanted to do 60 minutes before.

However, not every presentation is like this. The majority of slides are presented in small conference rooms, the “trenches” of the economy, where middle management tries to get a decision agreed in the middle of opposing viewpoints, office politics, and interpersonal meeting dynamics.

In these meetings your deck is actually the agenda for that meeting. Make sure things get discussed, make sure people have the facts, make sure the right trade offs are presented, and make sure a decision is made in the end.

Think about this when putting your deck together. Which facts are obvious, which facts are disputed, what info is counter intuitive, what is likely to spark a big debate, what not, etc. etc.

The presenter is telling a story, but also orchestrating a number of humans.

Cover image by Vincent van Zalinge on Unsplash

Cities are recycling their presentations to lure Amazon to put a new HQ there to pitches other candidates.

I see this many times, a company that needs to pull out all the stops to present at a major conference or pitch competition. Ideas and energy of that pitch are re-used numerous times in other presentations. It is often that wake up call to get your act together, take more creative risk to present your idea with “nothing to lose”.

There is a cost element to it as well. How can you get more return on that expensive video work? You need to try to find the balance between a personal and relevant pitch (rule #1 of sales presentations), and re-usable content. For videos, I usually request to have a clean version of the file without specific text banners or voice overs that cannot be separated. In that way you can re-use the assets for other projects.

Btw, these city pitches are very interesting. Here are 3 very different pitches. I think Detroit is the most inspiring. What do you think?

Cover image by Steve Harvey on Unsplash

A short summary of Mark Suster’s blog post where he argues that startups should send VCs the entire file, not a link:

• Tracking, tracing, monitoring, of who read what where and how long actually discourages people
• He likes to file his documents to come back to them later to look at development and self-destructing links to not allow that
• It adds friction to an already short 3 minute process
• (And I would add: do what the VC is used to, and most of them have been dealing with decks since the 1990s)

What is a good deck for sending? Well, one that does not contain confidential information: product pipelines, salaries, etc. Assume that your competition will read the slides sooner or later, and there should be no harm when this happens. I have seen it on the other side with my clients, they would forward me a deck of a competitor and we would actually not get any info out of it, but rather admire that powerful pitch that the others created. So, it might actually be a benefit if your competitors see your slides :-)

Cover image by Dmitry Ratushny on Unsplash