Logistics
- December 3 and 6, presentations during class
- Two guest “mentors”
- Written Feedback that you can use
- Cosi 102a Final Deliverables due on the last day of clss (Dec 10th)
- No late submissions, extensions, or grace period!
- Today: Tips on Presenting (Cosi 45a in one lecture)
General Feedback across all Presentations and slides
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Be Open To Feedback: Really have one of the teammates read through all the comments from your peersThere are some gems in there. You don’t have to take it all, but bold or highlight the good ideas and apply them if you can!
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Ensure Listener Understands the product or service: You have to really make sure that the listener understands your product. They are seeing them for the first time, so take a moment. It is very easy to lose them and at that point they are no longer hearing the rest of your presentation.
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Make Every Slide Count: Remember every slide should have a specific job to do. So decide what it is, and then make it hit that point hard. Challenge each other to be able to say what the job is.
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If the audience has to squint to read, you’re doing it wrong: Legibility**: Don’t put too much on one slide. Fonts should be legible from a distance. Often there is just too much information on the slide or the font is too small. In this kind of presentation the slides are just a guide of the speaker and audience, don’t try to make them be a self-contained business plan. That goes elsewhere.
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Show that you went “outside the building”: You must must must have some hypothesis testing besides surveys! For surveys you should have 20 or more responses and explain what kind of people responded. Try to have evidence for all your claims. A survey is not bad, but make sure you have at least 20 respondents and that you can describe the cohort. But a survey is the weakest kind of evidence especially a small one.
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Make your Financial Model persuasive: You have to show your key assumptions on one slide, Then the financial model on another. Don’t put your whole financial model, extract they key facts and dates. Graphs are important, but any graph you have has to have a specific point it is trying to make. Be able to answer: “why is this graph here?”. A good template is a single graph that capures several related variables.
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End Strong: You must have a concluding slide so we know you are done. It should include an amount of money you are asking for and what outcome or milestone you propose to achieve with it. The amount should be based on your key financial assumptions that were presented earlier. Remember you are pitching to an angel investor. You have to say how much you are asking for and talk about milestores that these funds will produce
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Rehearse It is very obvious is someone or a team is unrehearsed. Try really hard not to read the slides out loud. That’s another reason for avoiding wordy slides.
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Rehearse It is very obvious is someone or a team is unrehearsed. Try really hard not to read the slides out loud. That’s another reason for avoiding wordy slides.
Organizing and Preparing your presentation
In your slides and presentation you must demonstrate solid understanding of your product and convey this to your audience.
Know your product:
- Everyone on your team must know all the fundamentals of your product (what is it and what is it not)
- What technical things must you tackle?
- You’ve done a lot more than what can be shown in the presentation.
- Be ready to bring in research, numbers, out of the building results, into the conversation.
Describe your product very clearly:
- Make sure your audience understand the basics of your product as well as you do
- Be able to answer rudimentary questions about your product
- Is there a big need for your product? Be specific.
- Does your product solve the problem? How?
- Convince your audience a solution is needed and that you have the right solution.
- Is there competition? How can you stand out?
Business understanding
In your slides and presentation you must demonstrate solid understanding of your business and convey this to your audience.
Have a basic business model and know it well
- Everyone on your team must know the business model
- Who are your customers? Can you reach them?
- Does it make sense to make this product now?
Basic aspects of your operating model
Presenting
And finally make sure you do a great job delivering the presentation
Be ready to present
- Prepare and show that you prepared by having every team member speak
- Consider having more data and pictures and less text
- Every slide must serve a purpose
- Maintain eye contact with
Know what you will say and how you will say it
What to put in the slides
- The number of slides you prepare depends on your rate and density of information
- It will be something in the range of 8-24. But more is not better!
Very Rough Outline (different for each product)
- Introduction (product, team, team members)
- Pains (who has them, what are they, how big are they)
- Ways your product will address the pains, what is the value proposition
- Your Product (screenshots if any, scenarios, features, menus, etc/whatever)
- Factors (technology, societal, anything) relevant to timing
- Growth Model - What will you do to achieve growth
- Operational Model: Not a full spreadsheet, key highlights, including costs and pricing
- How much $$ you are asking for, and what milestones it will get you to
- Conclusion
Bill Wittenberg’s General Pitch Outline
- Only for inspiration
- You don’t need to use it
- The world sucks today
- Imagine the world like this instead
- Why is this especially possible now?
- This is how our product or business will do this
- This is how we are going to make money
- Why us?
How to approach designing your presentation
- Don’t worry about colors or fonts or images until the end. You will save time!
- Remember your audience: they don’t know you or your product
- But don’t spend time explaining what is self-evident or well known
- A pitch deck is not a paper, essay or artcile.
- You will not put in everything you know in this presentation
- You don’t need your whole operating model. You need the key facts and results from it
- Final slide should be very obvious to the audience. No doubt that this is the end of the pitch.
Refine and finalize
- Now find a template that is nice, clean and you like
- Challenge every slide: why is it there? What POINT is it making?
- Practice presenting it and check how long it takes. It will take longer in reality.
Thank you. Questions?
(random Image from picsum.photos)