Your Startup's Pitch Needs Only These 10 Slides | Hacker News Reader

Your Startup's Pitch Needs Only These 10 Slides

blog.visual.ly

136 pointsgpresot23 comments

This is a tarted up version of Guy's 10/20/30 rule of PowerPoint:

10 slides -- because that's the max a viewer will hold in their head

20 minutes -- because that's the max people will pay attention

30 point font size, minimum -- because people can read it, and you won't cram too much on

These guidelines are useful for all kinds of presentations because it imposes some structure and some constraint on material.

Like all rules of thumb, smart people see the exceptions.

Monday Note says you only need three slides, which I also like. Broadly:

1. Who we are.

2. What we want to do.

3. How we'll make it work, the money pump.

Guy 10/20/30: http://guykawasaki.com/the_102030_rule/

Monday Note: http://www.mondaynote.com/2015/05/04/three-slides-then-shut-...

After much clicking through, it seems like this is the best view of the original:

http://visual.ly/only-10-slides-you-need-pitch

And here is a link straight to the image (which is the only important content in this case): http://thumbnails-visually.netdna-ssl.com/the-only-10-slides...

OP doesn't add much to the original[1]. They also have a full-sized infographic[2].

[1] http://blog.visual.ly/10-slides-pitch/

[2] http://thumbnails-visually.netdna-ssl.com/the-only-10-slides...

What is interesting to me about this is how quickly this simple image exploded all over the net. I linked a few sites below that all are very similar to this. They have that simple infographic, a link to Kawasaki's page and the well known adage less is more. Image has been circulating since at least march 18th and already appears at ~100 domains. Just found another on entrepreneur.com[4]

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Edit: OP I am sorry if you are a legitimate entity but this image appears on 100 different domains, the article title appears across many as well. I have found the exact fraise on different articles across the web and your account is only 16 days old with 3 comments. I apologize, but I am flagging this, it is a stub article of blogspam and is not the original source (kawasakis site) so I am flagging this.

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edit 2: I unflagged this post[5]

lifehacker[0]

marketingprofs.com[1]

finance.yahoo.com[2]

pinterest.com[3]

[0]http://lifehacker.com/the-10-slides-you-need-to-pitch-your-b...

[1]http://www.marketingprofs.com/chirp/2015/27357/the-only-10-s...

[2]http://finance.yahoo.com/news/only-10-slides-needed-pitching...

[3]https://www.pinterest.com/pin/206110120423126618/

[4]http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/244098

[5]still quite skeptical but I would rather let a spammer go free than boot a real user.

Vonklaus, I can assure you it was not my intention to spam anything. I went on Kawasaki's website before posting on HN and could not find any reference of it. Clearly, as you pointed out, I did not check if the same content was already in other sites/articles/blogs. Since it came from Inc.com, which is quite a common source, when posting it on HN I thought it would flag as already posted by somebody else. But it wasn't. Anyway, in the future I will check if any article i would like to post is already too common on the web.

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edit: I unflagged the post.

=============================

Thank you. Let's leave it to the mods to resolve. :)

this is the first time I'm seeing this image so I'm glad it wasn't flagged in the end

Images are inherently viral. They're easier to link to, re-post, retweet, &c., than text. They work on any device and in any browser. They're easy to save. They can be made more pretty than text and (although not necessarily the case here) the "A picture speaks a thousand words" feature means they can communicate ideas/concepts more efficiently.

That's the primary purpose of most infographics these days, linkbacks for search engine juice.

dave would you mind explaining that, I am pretty interested. How do you get linkbacks with an image, and is it effective/ethical?

Some other site posts your image, and includes a link back to the original page on your site as a sort of citation or attribution.

I consider it ethical if there is no consideration involved--money, favors, etc. Interesting content should be able to travel around the Web if people actually find it interesting. The creator getting compensated with a little SEO bump is ok if they actually created something interesting.

That said, HN has a policy (or tendency at least) to prefer the original source and I like that too.

Not so different from what we have known since 2007 [1], right? It would be nice if we could focus on discussing the diffs of what was cool in 2007 and what is cool now, instead of presenting a complete new deck that isn't all too different. Building on existing stuff instead of building from scratch.

[1] http://venturehacks.com/articles/deck

In my experience, this is horseshit.

You should make your deck as simple as possible but no simpler. Really, you want it customized to whom you're pitching. If your audience wants to know a lot more about your financials, then one slide probably isn't enough. If he wants you to go deep about your solution, then one slide isn't enough.

If it's just you and your audience knows your background well, then you don't really need to waste time on a slide about yourself. It just comes off as self-preening. If it's an ambitious project with a lot of moving parts, then you will need multiple slides to get through your team.

Presenting to an audience is about knowing and serving your audience. A lot of people don't want to waste time on a deck, because all it really represents is time you blew on a deck.

You can clearly see how much time Guy blew on his 10 slides presentation from how gorgeously it's laid out- a lot. When you see that sort of thing, it means a lot of copy editing happened to get the text just the right length. In other words, the tail was wagging the dog.

What's noticeably missing is any meat. If 10 slides are what you need, show me actual correlation between length of deck and closed funding and how that centers around 10 slides, and isolate other factors to demonstrate causation. You won't find that in his pitch, because there is no correlation. It's mostly about who you are and/or a demonstration of progress.

I've closed more money with a demonstration of the product's progress than the right deck. It's more important to execute (you can stop here if you like) and then for extra credit, show your pitch to multiple potential backers at the same time in order to improve odds you'll have multiple options that can hurry each other along.

+1 to killer demos, my favorite tactic as well(), but obviously only where appropriate - there's lots of things you can't 'demo' and instead use an appropriate proxy, e.g. testimonials from famous people. Works best if the demo is actually aligned with product development and not a distraction for fundraising.
-1 to whining about glossy decks: for consumer products where design is key, the decks have to reflect your aesthetic.
re killer demos - after killer demos, I immediately get hammered by go-to-market questions, thus demanding a slide deck for visual thinkers... which in turn requires integration with the demo, so you end up with the usual formula:
1. audacious vision (~1-3 slides) ==> audience thinks, "no way, can't be done."

2. ...KILLER DEMO... ==> oh sht, they did it. My head just exploded.

3. team, go-to-market, competition, etc. (~5-7 slides) ==> these guys are serious and have thought it through.

adam

(*) $100+M, 6 deals, 20 years, two recessions.

Nothing new there... It would be cool to have current and successful examples of decks by stage (concept, prototype, growth...)

I have dug out a Techcrunch article which tries to give a more data-based approach to the whole thing (looking in reality at the whole funding search process, not only at the number of slides. Clearly there are some limitation in what they tried to do, but it beats the generalistic "This-is-all-you-need-in-your-deck" approach

http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/08/lessons-from-a-study-of-per...

Yeah, instantly reminded me of Dave McClure's "How to pitch a VC" presentation from 5-6 years ago:

http://bit.ly/1g9aTMP

As note in another comment (by erikb) "what to include" has crystallized on these items (problem, team, etc..) for a while now. What has evolved has probably been the space dedicated to each (we are down to 1 slide each, and I assume Guy does not mean 20 bullet points Font 9) and possible the relative weight... e.g financial projections have definitely lost weight and apparently can now be merged with key metrics)

Url changed from http://www.inc.com/larry-kim/your-startup-s-pitch-only-needs..., which points to this.

Guy Kawasaki is awesome, but this is a bit derivative

The approach was more novel when he first started beating this drum well over a decade ago. You have to compare it to 1999-era corporate powerpoint practices. We've come a long way in terms of expectations of the medium.

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