How to get started?

I recently answered a Quora question on what is the best way to get started with a VC/investor presentation. The answer applies to all presentations, not just investor presentations. Obviously, this is my preferred approach, yours might be different.

I use multiple approaches at the same time, in parallel:

• Scribble a story line on paper, or an iPad mind mapping app (iThoughtsHD is good)

• (Just because I like it) design a really beautiful cover page with a nice image and the right look and feel of the deck.

• Dive straight in and try to craft that ultimate killer slide, the one that makes the most important point in your presentation and finish it all the way. BANG.

Then I continue to iterate: refining the story line, adding a chart here and there. I take lots of breaks in the entire process, designing a good deck can take a lapse time of about 2 weeks. This ensures that your creative energy stays fresh. Presentations made at gun point at 3AM before the 9AM meeting never look really good.

Speaking in Barcelona

I will be crossing the Mediterranean Sea and talking about designing a good VC/investor pitch presentation in Barcelona. It would be great to shake hands with readers in Spain.



The event is scheduled for October 3, at 19:00. The location still has to be finalised, maybe the campus of the IESE business school, or another central Barcelona location. The presentation will be in English, and is free of charge. You can sign up for the event here.

Thank you Conor Neill for connecting me to the Barcelona startup community. Thank you John  and Mel Kots for this nice and hazy picture of Gaudi’s master piece that is still under construction.

Lots of layers

Here is a concept to label lots of layers in a circle without bending text, the second image shows with which components the first chart was created.

Your presentation objective?

To many, this might sound as an obvious question. “Hey, this deck is here to get my idea funded!” While this might be the ultimate goal of your presentation, it is usual to break down the process in its individual steps.

The objective of a short elevator-pitch-like-chat or coffee discussion is not to receive the investment, it is to get to the next meeting. And reaching that next stage involves intriguing your audience enough, maybe leaving out some of the tedious detail, while not forgetting to completely  nail that big elephant-in-the-room-issue (even if it means going into excruciating detail).

Page numbers?

Big graphical elements that are repeating on every page obstruct your slide design. Examples are legal disclaimers, company logos, banners, and yes: page numbers. I am not a purist here, and will most of the time put a tiny page number in light grey at the top right of the page. Too small for a keynote audience to see, but big enough to guide a page switch in a phone conversation.

Taking off the polish...

Venture capitalist Roelof Botha argues that startups should take off the polish when pitching him:

MB: What puts you off when looking at a startup for possible investment?
RB: Unnecessary hyperbole and polish — I much prefer raw authenticity

At first reading, this might suggest to save yourself some time and stop investing in your investor presentation. But I think the opposite is true: good presentation design is actually all about taking off the polish and bringing the raw story out, rather than shining everything up.

Slides with bullet points in fluffy language full of buzz words are polished. Minimalistic, beautifully designed visuals are raw. And this applies to all types of presentations, not just investor pitches.

Excel on the front page

It is shocking to see that pre-election poll results on the cover of a large Dutch newspaper are presented in a plain standard Excel template and colours with one adjustment: add some 3D effects, which makes it even worse.

Pop out of the box

If you have a person or an object standing in front of a background, make it pop out a bit: increase the size, and fade the background.

Connecting to the audience

That was quite a speech by Michelle Obama at the Democratic Convention. Political objectives translated into human story telling. Call it the inverse strategy, rather than attacking your opponent directly and saying that he measures achievement only in terms of dollars, and will never be able to understand the hardship many Americans go through because he has never experienced it himself, portray your own situation as the exact opposite. Make all the accusations implicitly



Short sentences (fits in 140 characters), natural language, no buzzwords, lots and lots of real-life stories. You see the people in the audience completely glued to the stage, hearing what they wanted to hear.

The deck is not always the issue

Some stories are really good but complicated to explain. Here, a well-designed slide deck can make a big impact.

Other stories are relatively easy to explain, but have a few big questions inside them. In these cases, effort is better spent on providing answers to the questions, rather than investing it in making the slide deck look and flow better.

If you have limited resources, choose where you are.

Let me introduce her to you

Team bio slides in presentation often resemble a C.V.: lots of information, lots of buzzwords, lots of academic degrees from 30 years ago. All team bio slides look the same.

At a cocktail party, people use a different approach to introducing someone. Out comes a very quick, personal, and memorable description of a person. Every cocktail party introduction is different.

Try designing your team bio slide more like a cocktail party introduction, and less like a C.V. page.

Actually, add the full detail of the C.V. in font 10 as backup reading material at the end of your presentation, for reading, not presenting.

Trackpad U-turn: back to the mouse

With the advent of Mac OSX Lion I moved to using a track pad for all those fancy swiping features. However, I am back to a regular mouse. For intensive design work, a track pad strains my wrist too much. You constantly need to lift your hand slightly above the track pad, which starts to hurt. Using a mouse, I can put my hand and wrist in a completely neutral position without straining any muscle.