How to Give a VC a Hard-On [video]
500hats.typepad.com
500hats.typepad.com
But it breaks the rule Guy Kawasaki once mentioned. Use a 30pt font so that everyone can read it and don't stuff all information into once slide. slide-4 (especially) looks ugly because of that.
And he also gave out a formula (seems like he made that up), "find the age of the oldest person in the room and divide that by 2, thats the minumum size of font you can use. so unless you are presenting to 16 year olds, do not use an 8pt font".
This link might also help in making a better pitch. It's just a 2min video, but a good one http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=1177
In today's example, there were about 75 people in the room. however, the slides have already been viewed by over 1300 people online (in <8 hours).
So, if you're designing for the room -- use Guy's advice.
However if you're designing for the vast majority of people who will read your slides online, it's probably better to include most of the core material -- and that you'd be accused of reading bullets if given in the room.
so the challenge is to provide the material in somewhat complete form in the presentation, and yet still try to be entertaining/educational for the live performance.
all the above aside, i make no apologies for violating almost every rule of good presentation form & guidelines.
but then again, it works for me... and it's distinctive & unusual, and thus memorable. which achieves the design goal.
note that my presos generally contain a lot of images, not ONLY a lot of text. but my point is that sometimes more, not less, is more. at least for async remote audience.
for people in the room, your live performance, not the slides, should be primary.
your mileage may vary.
and i resemble that remark.
http://machinist.salon.com/blog/2007/06/22/supernova_startup...
Te slide deck is almost exactly the structure they recommended. What I find interesting is that these folks actually request a pitch in this structure.
I guess everyone just wants a hard-on (or to full in love).
I hate that. It makes it sound like you're so unoriginal that you just picked a random market and a random existing huge successful product/company and put them together hoping the combination will work.
you're trying to communicate plainly, and to keep their attention long enough to get to the next slide / next pitch.
thus, sometimes taking a shortcut is imperfect, but useful.
note: "X for Y" does NOT work very well if neither X nor Y are well understood for the audience. however, it can work ok as shorthand while the person "peels the onion" and gets a deeper, more comprehensive understanding of the concept.
"All great companies get you laid, paid, or made"
btw, that came out of a tweet a month back: http://twitter.com/davemcclure/statuses/1201923856
However, regarding "balls": I think VCs are in the "balls business". It is a hard/risky way of making money. (Personally, this is why I'm always looking for reasons to say "no", versus why to say "yes"... I'm looking to be compelled.)
Something to consider:
Entrepreneurs have their one horse. VCs have their stable of horses.
So, one view is: VCs don't "have balls" because they don't commit. Whereas the entrepreneurs are "all in". In this view point, the "balls award" goes to the entrepreneur because they're the ones taking the all the risk.
But: the VCs aren't in complete control of their destiny. They may be backing many horses, but they're not ever truly riding one. For highly capable and smart people this also takes large balls. You have less risk per venture but not necessarily across all your ventures.
Side-note:
The point Dave is trying to make with his presentation is how to communicate in such a way as to get above the radar while trying to keep the VCs attention (meaning, they've stopped thinking about all the reasons to say "no" and moved to "maybes"... )
Dave is good at this - look at his presentations compared to others. Generally people don't talk about VCs and raising capital this way :)