You didn't know you need this

If you pitch your product as a direct alternative to something else, the purchasing manager might say that it is a nice solution, but we already spent our budget on something that is acceptable. Often, it is better to convince the buyer that this is a new market, a new product, that has no substitutes yet. An opportunity for startups that are out there to change the world.

Thomas Leuthard

Thomas Leuthard (web site, Flickr) is a street photographer who published his work under a Creative Commons license on Flickr (attribution is required). His work is of very high quality. His images make great backgrounds for presentations that need an urban setting.

Image by Thomas Leuthard

Consulting frameworks

I added a new set of templates to my presentation design app SlideMagic: consulting frameworks. It was an interesting journey back in time (I used to work for 10 years at McKinsey back in the 1990s).

Putting them in SlideMagic was interesting, it shows exactly what SlideMagic is supposed to do for business presentations. Take unnecessary complexity out of visual designs down to a level that the chart still says what it needs to say, but that you do not need to have a degree in graphics design to make them. I had to make slight deviations from the original here and there (Both SlideMagic and layman designers do not like curved shapes for example), but the end result is pretty good.

As to the content of these frameworks. They are more tools to help you think about a problem than slides that will get your audience jumping out of their chairs. Many of them are linked to classic micro-economics theory (demand/supply/competition). I think the strategic issues of many companies today have moved beyond these problems. Still some frameworks can work to kick start a discussion, they good old SWOT works great in group white board discussions.

Inviting SlideMagic feedback

For all of those who are beta testing SlideMagic, I would love to hear your reactions.

1. Important: bugs, glitches
2. More important: whether you like the concept
3. Most important: what is holding you back to use software like this for a real document or live presentation: a) bugs, b) cannot do what I want to do, c) a beta version is too risky d) other. Please elaborate!

Email your thoughts to jan at slidemagic dot com.

And also, and also, and also

There are so many wonderful things to say about your idea. all the problems it solves, all the things it can do, all the thought you have put in to make it perfect.

In the middle of the “and also, and also, and also, and also” the audience gets bored and wonders what it actually boils down to. In 99% of pitches I have designed, there is one original idea that is more important than all the other features.

Design your presentation around this. When describing the problem (always easier to do than selling the solution), focus on the most important issue. When presenting the solution, hammer in that one crucial innovation. After that is done, you can mention other elements of your story as a “by the way”. But, watch out not to get carried away here.

Prioritising that one big idea out of all your smaller ideas is not a matter of diluting things with generic terms: “we deliver ROI”. It should be highly specific.

Self destructing presentations

Many presentations degenerate over time. What started fresh, clean, and straight to the point gets diluted over time.

More people start editing the presentation. They do not understand all the slides 100%, so they add bubbles and bullet points with text just to make sure that the point gets made somewhere in the presentation. Bits of the same messages start appearing on slides throughout the document.

Over time, the company positioning can change a bit. Rather than starting with a clean sheet, the old presentation gets adjusted. The result: a bit of the old, a bit of the new.

Do spring cleaning now and then.

I can only explain it in 45 minutes...

I often get this issue in client discussions. So we start out, and in that first meeting, it often turns out that the client can explain it in 5 to 10 minutes. The difference? Me impolitely interrupting monologues where I got the point already, and asking questions inviting conversation about issues that are not covered.

How to do it without the help of a probing presentation designer? Take a radical approach to how much time you spend on each element of your story. If a certain section is incredibly important, but at the same time totally obvious, old news, and well known, cut it to the minimum. On the other hand there might be a tiny detail that is completely counter intuitive and merits a total 5 minute deep dive.

You are not writing an essay about your brilliant idea, you are racing against the clock to explain your idea in 5-10 minutes.

I admit that this is easier to do in 1-1 conversations than in formal presentations. Test your story in 1-1 conversations with smart people before pitching it to larger audiences.

Background overload

Professors, researchers, and teachers like to start their lectures with an extensive discussion of the background and/or context of an issue. Talking about the background is useful if it adds to the story, if it does not it is boring content that fills up those important first minutes of your talk where the audience is still sharp and awake.

Some examples of excess background:

• Tangents, side steps
• History that is important to you (when your company was founded), but irrelevant to the audience (unless you are a Champagne house that goes back to the 1700s)
• Preaching to the converted: spending slide after slide with data the audience is already familiar with, or arguing about issues the audience already agrees with

You are not giving a lecture in economics or history, you are trying to sell an idea.

How to explain magic

Some technology solutions appear to be magic, almost too good to be true. Complicated algorithms that are hard to apprehend for example. Your audience might not believe you, because they cannot understand it, you are trying to sell snake oil. How to pitch magic?

• Do not start of your audience on the wrong foot by claiming yourself that it is magic. It does magical things, but it is not snake oil, everything is science and engineering.
• Use two stories:
• One: a powerful analogy/story that explains the fundamental approach your system takes. This is to explain the concept.
• Two: a super detailed, super in-depth deep dive on one aspect of your algorithm, show how it works on one micro example. This is to show that it is tangible and real

Many people try to make story 1.5: an analogy that is too forced and complicated to understand quickly, and a technology explanation that is too vague that it leaves people wondering whether they are looking at a magician instead of an engineer.

Strangely enough, it is a visual analogy that might drive you to story 1.5. A simpler, verbal story might do a better job here.

SlideMagic beta invites update

I now have sent beta invites to anyone who requested them, including new requests from last week. Check your spam filter, also check spam filters to look for the email confirmation email. If you think I forgot about you, feel free to ping me. Sign up here to be part of the next batch.

CV language

While at McKinsey I spent a lot of time interviewing candidates. The main challenge in a first interview was to cut through the woolly CV language and build a picture of the real person in front of me. Strategic problem solvers, team workers, risk seekers, people persons, big picture people, all these expressions do not mean much since they have been used too many times on CVs.

When designing a slide about your team, it is better to replace the CV language with the actual evidence and cut it down to something that is truly unique about yourself.

Making bullet points look good

Yes, you heard it from a pro: sometimes bullet points are hard to avoid!

• In a document meant for reading rather than presenting
• In a quick internal presentation that is more a decision document than a heart and mind captivating piece of visual art
• In a document that you use to hammer out a legal agreement before handing it over to the lawyers who will expand the basic ideas into fine print
• A first and/or last page in a presentation that summarises what you want to achieve

The key to make them look pretty is stop viewing them as text, but rather see each bullet as a slide object.

• Use some light background colour to make them appear equal in size to the eye
• Spread them out big over the entire page
• Use as little words as you can, but use enough words not to sound generic

In PowerPoint or Keynote, you can use rectangular shapes for this. Even easier is it to use a table with fat white divider lines (the new

Keynote has lost some of its shine

, but the table editing functionality is really good).

In

SlideMagic, my presentation app

, it is really easy to do. Whatever you do, the app will force you to stick to a grid, it ships with a number of templates for text slides, which makes it easy to add and subtract lines.

UPDATE February 2018: I have no added many of the above bullet point slides to the SlideMagic template store, read the blog post about formatting bullet points here.

Getting used to the image

In conservative industry sectors such as finance, the use of images in presentation is not very common. When I put on in, the immediate reaction is one of: that is not how things work here. But usually, over time, people get somehow used to the image and realise that even serious presentations do not have to be boring.



This slide was created with  presentation design app SlideMagic for presentations that mean business

Confusing accounting

Accounting regulation and business reality can sometimes be far apart. A client could show incredible revenue growth because it was forced to recognise revenues early because of accounting regulations. At first sight, it looks great, but as soon as an analyst tries to dig in only a centimeter deeper (“Why does the cash flow not match?”) the story starts to unravel.

Yes, you can explain them how undo the accounting policies, yes a good analyst will probably ignore the profit and loss account (which is merely a tool to set tax rates), and focus on the cash flow. But, you left an impression of hiding the truth. And that leaves a bitter after taste with investors even if the company is actually doing very well (even without the help of obscure accounting policies).

You might have to come clean up front.

SlideMagic examples

I have started to put up some example presentations that I made with the SlideMagic app, you can check them out here. We are preparing the system for more users (replicating templates takes a lot of power at the moment), after which we will add more beta users. Sign up as a beta tester here.

Sizing up the comet

A number out of contrast is hard to put in perspective. That is why our measurements originally were all somehow related to things we can compare to: feet, kilo (1 litre of water), inch (thumb). But when things get really big, or really small it is hard to absorb the scale of something.

In presentations, you would use bar or column charts to compare 2 numbers to each other. The best comparisons are those where the audience can relate to.

Many people tried to use images to put the size of Comet 67P in perspective (example, example). Below is my attempt, where I put the 4.1km height of the big blob in perspective to the 158m height of 26 Broadway in New York. I think the vertical compositions are much more dramatic than the juxtapositions on horizontal maps.

Sales vs. investor presentations

As long as the content is right in an investor presentation, you probably will get away for poor graphics design. Even if you did not manage to draw that banana perfectly, the audience will get the point. It even shows that you are a prudent CEO of an early-stage company not to waste money on expensive graphics designers*.

That changes with sales presentations. If you show up with poorly designed slides, you will lose credibility instantly, even if the content, visual concepts, and story flow are great. You come across as an immature, brand new startup (which you actually are), and that makes people scared to buy from you.

* Note of a professional presentation designer: getting the slides to look pretty from a graphics perspective is not the hard part, it is hard to get the content and concepts right.

Check list vs. stories

When you ask a VC what to include in your pitch, she will instantly produce a check list with menu items. But taking this check list and use its components as the chart headings for your pitch deck will make a boring story. Grocery shopping lists have not won Pulitzer prices (yet).

Craft a story that will excite potential investors, then go back to the check list to see whether you covered everything. Even if the she says that the only thing that matters is the check list. VCs are human and want to be surprised, entertained, and intrigued.

Stains on MBP Retina display

I have a recent 15" MacBook Pro with Retina display and the anti-reflective coating of the screen comes of, like described in this thread on the Apple support forum. I owned many Macs before without screen problems, and I have not changed my hand washing, food consumption, domestic cleaning habits. Does any of you suffer from this? If so, please add your voice to the discussion thread.

The PGDN test

Many investors will scroll rapidly with the page down key through a presentation that is attached to an email. They will skip the cover letter in the email body (too much text), they will skip the dense summary page one of the presentation (too much text) and will continue to scroll down your slides, stopping at pictures (newspaper readers read the caption of a photo before the headline of the article).

I have seen horribly looking presentations that pass the PGDN test. When scrolling rapidly through the pages you actually get what the author wants to say.

I have seen very sophisticated, professional-looking presentations that completely fail the PGDN test (many were written by consulting firms and investment banks).

To your own PGDN test before cold-emailing your pitch.