Posts Tagged ‘winner’

Tips on how to pitch, the making of (part 2)

This is the second and last part to the post explaining how and why I made the Tips on how to pitch presentation which won the Slideshare contest in the business category. If you missed the first part, where I talk about the why and the concept behind it, read it here.

Now I’ll be talking about the design and some afterthoughts of participating in the contest and winning.

Design:

As I mentioned in the previous post the idea that most influenced the design was simplicity. I remember, when I first envisioned the presentation it was going to be full of pictures and almost no text, the first few slides would have looked something like this:

However I felt it was lacking something. This is usually the case when I make presentations, I will go in one direction, pushing ahead, even if I know it’s not the direction I want to go, and at some point I scrub it all and go in a totally different direction; but I need that time of going down the wrong path to realize what it is that doesn’t work.

I always sketch my slides out on paper before I start making them on the computer, so I had almost the whole presentation down on paper, with a few sketches here and there of pictures I wanted to put in. And then it hit me, those sketches were much more simplistic and gave the feel that the pictures didn’t! Also, as I said earlier, the main idea was to give a few tips that could help people when preparing a pitch, not be a guide of dos and don’ts (which I hate), so I liked that unfinished feel I got from the sketches, it was something that people could build on and perfect.

However, most of the sketches you see in the presentation are not my own. I can make simple drawings like the chart (that one is mine), but most of them were done by my very talented girlfriend, Maite (a huge thanks to her from here!). Others are stock images that I adapted to look like sketches.

There is a comment I heard a few times which was that the graph was not very clear; which is a real shame, because I felt it was one of the most important parts of the presentation and I showed it step by step to ensure it would be understood. So I want to do my last effort to explain what I meant by it: The idea I was trying to convey is that a pitch should have 3 distinct depths or parts, where each unfolds from the previous. That way, depending on how much time you have, you would focus on the most important part.

The first is well known, the elevator pitch; if you happen to find yourself in an elevator with an important VC you would have the time it takes the elevator to get to his floor to make him interested in your project. That’s why I said it’s 30 – 45 seconds and you can basically talk about what is the problem/pain that your product/service alleviates. The support part, on the top of the graph, was trying to give you an idea of what type of support for your message you could use; in this case, a business card if you’re lucky.

The second part of the pitch would expand on what you explained in your elevator pitch or introduction. Let’s say 5 minutes more or less, where you could go into more detail about your idea and use something like an iPad to show some slides (or a whiteboard/pen and paper if you’re good at sketching out your idea).

Finally, a normal pitch, where you go to speak in front of a panel of VCs, something that should last around 20 minutes would use both parts mentioned earlier, plus go into detail of how it works (aka business model). For this you would use your slides and a projector.

The idea is not that the business model or other details are least important; it is to hook your audience so that they actually want to hear more. I hope this clears up any doubts people may have had.

Afterthoughts:

Participating in the contest was great! I followed my presentation every day and saw it go from page 20 to page 1 in 3 weeks, which was amazing. I hoped it would win, of course, but never thought I had a real shot, since, like I said before, I was one of the late entries.

The best part, however, was not winning, it was seeing all the comments and encouragement I got from people all over the planet I didn’t know. People were tweeting, posting on their blogs and sharing something I created and that felt incredible.

Best presentation of the world 2011, here I come!

Byron Stanford for Project Presentation

Monday, 10 January 2011 10:07 Written by Byron Stanford 0 Comments

Tips on how to pitch, the making of (part 1)

Over the next two posts I’m going to talk about the process of creation behind the presentation Tips on how to pitch, which won Slideshare’s Best Presentation of the World contest in the Business category. Feel free to comment or ask any question!

History:

The idea for creating the presentation was just to give a few pointers to the teams at the Tetuan Valley Startup School (you can read about my experience participating with them, here). During their last session I was helping out the teams with their decks and how they were presenting their message. By the end of the course, the teams (for the most part) had their concepts down and their ideas ready. This is the main reason why the presentation focuses only on the more technical part of the pitch, whereas I left the preparation and message stage out. If there is anything that I should mention now about that stage it would be that each pitch has to focus and identify the underlying concept of your product or service. There is an interesting article from the New York Times by Winston J. Perez that talks about this, read it here.

So, after I decided to create the presentation I learned about Slideshare’s contest and thought: why not enter the presentation? I didn’t have time to make a separate presentation for the contest or to expand on this one; I actually missed the deadline for submission. The only reason I got in was because they extended the dates. But I was late to the game and never thought I could get enough votes to be in with the finalists. Much to my surprise, I was wrong.

The concept:

As I explained, the presentation was intended for a specific group of people who had similar problems with their pitches; this is why I focused on these points and not others. If you read Guy Kawasaki’s Art of the Start or other books/articles that speak on the matter, you’ll find many other important parts of the pitch.

What I was most concerned about was to convey that simplicity was key. Most of the pitches I was seeing were very detailed and tedious; they lost the audience after a few slides. This idea of simplicity was mainly what influenced my choice in design, but I’ll expand on that later.

One of the main problems I found the teams to have was that when it was their turn to present their projects, they would introduce themselves and give their elevator pitch, then pause and say something like “ok, here’s our pitch”. I thought that they were missing the point of the pitch entirely, so I wanted to stress the importance of the structure. They should start with their elevator pitch and let that unfold into the rest of the pitch, instead of treating them as separate things. The elevator pitch is intended to capture the attention of the possible investor in under a minute, and that is what the introduction to a presentation should do as well. Then the rest of the information builds gradually on that intro. That’s where I got the idea for the graph at the end of the presentation.

Another major part of the presentation, the exercise part, came from a comment one of the participants at the Startup School made, he said he didn’t like the pitching part of doing business, he didn’t think it was necessary or efficient. This shocked me, since his project obviously needed funding and most certainly would have to be pitched to customers. This made me realize that this person, and maybe others, was not realizing that pitching is everywhere in business. I really liked a comment I received by a blogger’s review of my presentation, which said that all of what was stated in the presentation could be used for a job interview, asking for a raise or even convincing your wife about getting that new car. That’s exactly why I put in the pen exercise, it was meant to make the audience realize that pitching is important, but most of all it’s not hard or intricate, they’ve been doing it all their life.

So, in short, the idea was to create a presentation that would express that a pitch is something simple, useful, not hard to do, and which should flow as if it were a normal conversation and not just a script you’re reciting. The next stage after I had the main point was to create the design for the presentation. I’ll tell you about it and other conclusions in the next post.

Until next time,

Byron Stanford for Project Presentation.