Finally the business plan is ready. You Googled and asked around to make sure everything is inside: the market pain, the technology solution, the team, the market size, the competitive differentiation, the financial forecast, the intellectual property and patents. The result: 150 pages of PowerPoint.
Do not use this business plan to present the business plan. OK, you used PowerPoint, but not to design a presentation. You used PowerPoint to write a document that is not suitable to put on a projector screen.
How can you figure out what presentation you do need? Invite a friend over without any knowledge about your business venture. Take an empty piece of paper or a white board. Start telling your story. Scribble things on the white board. If need, zoom deep into the business plan PowerPoint file and put one chart on the screen (i.e., an overview of the competitors). After 30 minutes take a step back and see:
- What issues did you discuss, which topics did you ignore?
- In what order did you discuss them?
- What were the hand drawings you needed to explain your idea?
- Which charts in the 150-page deck did you have to pull out?
- What questions did your friend ask that caught you by surprise?
Here is the outline of your investor pitch presentation.