Diagrams that bring it all together

Strategy consultants or IT architects love the diagram-that-brings-it-all-together. Customer needs, key capabilities, competitive differentiations, routes to market, all glued together in harmony to describe that perfect concept. It makes perfect sense to you.

The problem: it is too much to digest for the person who sees the diagram for the first time.

One better approach is to start with stories for the individual bits of the concept, and only in the end stitch everything together. If you feel it hard to part with that diagram early in the presentation, you can put it up and jokingly brush it aside/apologise and say you are taking it a bit slower. After you have explained a component of the diagram you can slowly build the picture up step-by-step.

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Art: Portrait of a Philosopher (Artist's brother, Pavel Sergeyevich Popov), 1915

Startup pitches are changing

A few things are going on in startup land, especially for consumer facing apps:

• It takes less and less money to launch a product (who could have thought 10 years ago that 1 person could self-finance and launch a PowerPoint alternative)
• Startup ideas and pitches are fragmenting and are everywhere around us. Most ideas are variations on existing concepts that everyone is using. "Uber for gardeners", got it.
• Business communication gets more efficient. Phone calls, coffee chats, Hangouts: the big, formal standup presentation where everyone patiently and politely let's you finish your bullet points is on its way out.

What does all this mean for investor pitches?

• Do not feel worried if you can explain what your idea is in just 2 slides. If you are done, there is no need to add padding.
• Since it is so easy to get an app up and running, the actual beta/prototype web site/app is a large part of the product pitch. Does it look polished? Does it work? Do you feel like signing up?
• Related: market size analysis is increasingly replaced with "what % of your user base are willing to pay the $10 per month for this, and how fast you growing?" 
• The big, big, big, question is: do users like it. User growth, traction, user behaviour analytics. Numbers, data. All this matters a lot. The qualitative upfront part of the presentation (emotional pictures that show the problem) gets smaller, and the quantitative what is your LTV, CAC, churn, etc. gets bigger. Pitches start to look like consulting decks again.
• Success/failure will be evident in a shorter period of time, so you need to be sure what you are doing with the money you are raising. (You are no biotech startup that raises a lot of money to "continue doing clever R&D"). Know where you spend things on shows that you are mature to investors, but is also protecting you. If you do not have good customer conversion rates, it is a waste of money to raise capital to spend on marketing and attract lots of people at the beginning of the funnel, who will then leave.

In biotech, enterprise IT, I continue to see the traditional startup pitch (pain, market, etc.). In consumer, things are different.

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Art: The Rainbow Landscape or is a c.1636 landscape painting by Peter Paul Rubens

10 tips to write better

These 10 tips by Josh Bernoff to write better are spot on. In presentations, I would take it easy with the sign posts though.

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Art: Bruno Liljefors (1860–1939), Weasel with Chaffinch, 1888

Is Microsoft cool again?

Things are changing over at Microsoft: Microsoft interfaces on new apps look great, and it is getting rid of old dogmas, opening up software to a wide range of platforms. At the same time, Apple (while still great) is taking the foot of the gas here and there. 

Feld Thoughts: Outlook on My iPhone http://t.co/MZyoFCSf5R

— Brad Feld (@bfeld) May 3, 2015

My mini review: new PowerPoint 2016 for Mac can beat Keynote if some bugs are ironed out: http://t.co/zq09OewVBx @Office

— Jan Schultink (@ideatransplant) March 12, 2015

Using new @surface and @msonenote to draw next book. This is really good. Sorry iPad. pic.twitter.com/RFagpL8vWD

— Dan Roam (@dan_roam) April 30, 2015

Pigs fly over a frozen Hell scape dropping leaflets announcing the release of Microsoft Code for Mac & Linux. https://t.co/EeeJrMIz6T

— Guy English (@gte) April 30, 2015

Using Microsoft and Open source in the same sentence used to be an oxymoron. Not so much anymore. https://t.co/aBPZv6A0Jt. #GOOD15

— Adam Daniels (@adamrdaniels) May 1, 2015

#Microsoft integrates #Dropbox- now add, edit and save file with Office online http://t.co/MSFG7jQEtV pic.twitter.com/4kgHF5lxvz

— ZotheniX (@zothenix) May 3, 2015

Personally I am still a big Apple fan and will continue using their products. (Although I am one of the unlucky people who bought a Mac Book where the screen is completely peeling of, visit www.staingate.com to sign up for the petition if you suffer from this as well). But it is good to see that Microsoft is trying to compete.

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Nicholas Chevallier, Race to the Market, 1880

The empty Board Room

Millions of web pages and PowerPoint presentations contain images of an empty Board room with plush leather seats. While this room might be the prettiest and most tidy one in your office, the image has appeared so frequently that lots of leather Board seats no longer radiate power.

Image credit: the FAEF Board Room

News media usually go for the next alternative, the name tag at the front door. I think better images are those of the company in action, a truck delivering goods, a plane taking of on the runway, a store interior, an assembly line in action, a nice group photo of employees at work.

You can do better than the empty Board Room

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Art: Vincent van Gogh, Bed room in Arles, 1888

"All presentations will look the same"

I get this feedback from early SlideMagic beta testers. SlideMagic supports one accent colour, one font, and encourages you to work in a strict slide layout grid. For certain presentations, this feedback is valid. I think we will not see any Apple product launch presentations designed in SlideMagic (yet).

For 99% of presentations though, it is actually precisely what I tried to achieve:

• When the software tool you use for presentations is incredibly simple, you spend most of your time worrying about the content rather than searching support web sites how to align the second line of a bullet point paragraph. I want 90% of SlideMagic users to master 100% of its features.
• If all presentations use more or less the same visual concepts to show trade offs, contrasts, sales over time, etc. then people will be able to read and understand them quicker

Today, I would argue that PowerPoint presentations look more similar to each other than the SlideMagic decks: lists of bullet points on a white background using the standard Microsoft Office (olive, blue, red, green) colour scheme.

Below are examples how the same SlideMagic chart would look when used in different companies. You see the impact of consistent use of colours. All SlideMagic charts will be updated instantly after a colour and logo change.

If you want to try SlideMagic for yourself, you can sign up here as a beta user.

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Art: Salomon de Bray, The Twins Clara and Aelbert de Bray, 1646

Send me your template requests

Presentation templates in SlideMagic have 3 big advantages:

1. They are very easy to customise: adding rows, columns, boxes can be done without destroying the slide layout. Colours and fonts are adjusted instantly, so templates look never out of place with the rest of your slides
2. You get them straight from a professional presentation designer
3. New templates and updates get pushed instantly to all SlideMagic users

I want to add more templates.

Let me know what templates, concepts, you need. Put requests in the comments are send them to me at [email protected]. You can even send me PowerPoint slides if you want. If you have not done so, I will strip the slides of company specific information before publishing them in the SlideMagic template library.

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Art: Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Sescau photographe, 1896

What to put in a short-term budget

In investor pitches there are usually 2 types of financial forecasts:

• Short-term: super precise, usually mostly cost
• Long-term: ball park, usually mostly revenue

Why do investors want to see some sort of short-term budget?

• While the long-term revenue outlook of a startup is highly uncertain, the near term cost drain is pretty much set in stone. Investors want to know where her money goes: in development, in an expensive, all-or-nothing/bet-the-company Super Bowl ad?
• Investors want to check the consistency of your story. You say that you are not focused on getting customers right now, so you should not be spending anything on marketing. On the other hand, you plan 25 new features in your product, where are the developers (and their salaries) who are going to make it happen

A short term cost budget does not need to contain 25 lines of Excel, by month. A simple x% of revenues number is a bit too simple though.

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Art: Marinus van Reymerswaele, The moneychanger and his wife (1539), Museo del Prado, Madrid

Slide icons

Repeating the whole story of your presentation on the last slide is boring. You want to end with a "boom" and quickly remind people of the most important message in the presentation. I usually do that with repeating a key visual (just one). Using (the cliche) that a picture says more than a 1,000 words, the repeated image brings back the full richness of the discussion you had in one millisecond. Much more efficient than writing a bullet point.

If you have to repeat multiple messages, here is another trick: use small screen shots of slides. At the end, the audience does not need to be able to read the entire slide anymore. The thumbnail is a quick visual reminder of the content. Below an example that I created in SlideMagic.

I have added this slide design to the template file of all slides I created for the blog. You can open it in the SlideMagic app here and use it for your own designs. Just change the images.

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Art: The Flute Concert of Sanssouci by Adolph Menzel, 1852, depicts Frederick playing the flute in his music room at Sanssouci. C. P. E. Bach accompanies him on the harpsichord.

Comcast pitching lessons

The Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger fell through. Fred Wilson makes the case that this is probably a good thing, not so much because of consumer choice, but on the other side of the business: content providers trying to get through to consumers with their offering (Netflix, etc.).

This article in the NYT provides some interesting background on the failed $25m lobbying and pitching effort. Some quotes:

"He was smothering us with attention but he was not answering our questions"

"And I could not help but think that this is a $140 billion company with 130 lobbyists — and they are using all of that to the best of their ability to get us to go along"

1) If there are elephants in the room, huge obvious issues that need to be addressed, you have to deal with them, somehow. Avoiding the issue will not make the issue go away.

2) Beyond a certain point, "slick" is actually working against you, when you try to convince a human. (The same point I made with respect to highly sophisticated videos).

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Art: The colossus, Francisco de Goya, 1808–1812

Let's dive straight into the numbers

The economics of most Internet startups are sort of the same. You invest CAC (customer acquisition cost per user), you convert the free user to a paying user (conversion rate), and you hope she sticks around long enough (churn rate) to get a decent LTV (customer life time value). With a decent growth rate, you have a good business.

Seasoned venture capitalists are tempted to dive straight into these figures and skip the bit what your business is all about. I would encourage you not to give in. It is important to establish that emotional connection with the problem you are trying to solve, how great your product is.

In the end, they will be investing in a business that consists of people and users, not just a spreadsheet that delivers LTV-CAC.

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Art: Jean Honore Fragonard, The Love Letter, 1770.

Bend the truth?

Should you bend the truth to make your investor pitch more attractive? Answer: no.

• Some investors will find out in the meeting, they might have seen a lot of companies similar to yours and spot an inconsistency quickly by asking a few smart questions
• Most investors will find out in meeting #2 when you open up the books of the company
• The biggest reason not to: your personal brand. Integrity issues is an absolute no-go for investors (they are evaluating you as a trusted long-term business partner). And word of a tarnished personal brand is likely to stick with you beyond this fund raising round.

Should you put out all your weaknesses for everyone to see? Of course not. Tell when asked. Think about how to visualise data. Leave facts that require an elaborate explanation out of the cold email deck, you should be in the room with the investor when it comes up.

Trust is a big asset, don't waste it.

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Art: Gerrit Adriaensz. Berckheyde The bend in the Herengracht, Amsterdam, 1685

Not all feedback is useful feedback

You show your deck to 10 people, you get 10 different sets of feedback. Feedback is useful, but you have to make the call to whom to listen, and whom to ignore. People have different backgrounds. Experts, colleagues, and insiders give different feedback than your close family. Listen more carefully to feedback from people that resemble your target audience before putting all your fundamental charts in the appendix.

The more often you give a presentation, the more you start developing your own flow. When you reach a stage where you can deliver a pitch without going back and forth between slides, and are not getting audience questions you were about to answer 3 slides later, you probably got it right. Even if people walk up to you afterwards and suggest to collapse a few slides into one to reduce the slide count.

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Art: Escaping Criticism by Pere Borrell del Caso, 1874

Hearing a story for the first time, versus the 100th time

Someone who hears a story for the first time needs to create the whole picture in her head from scratch. Give background, introduction, examples, then bring it all together.

People who have heard the story millions of times before, check your presentation against their existing mental picture. Summary upfront, neatly structured, logical.

Presentation designers fall in the second category, while most of your audience is in the first. Think about that.

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Art: Gustav Klimt, Beech Grove

How to use multiple monitors

On my desk I use 3 monitors: 2 big 27" screens and my laptop screen. While it is tempting to put all your live Twitter, Facebook, and email feeds blinking on the left and right screen, I keep them blank most of the time (well, that is a good use of the monitor) to minimise distraction.

I use them when I need a little extra desk space for a slide I am working on: a previous version of a presentation with comments, comments in email, the Finder window with images, a spreadsheet to copy data from. As soon as I am done with that, I close the window with only the wallpaper left.

In a recent software update, Apple has added a new feature: right-click an icon in the dock, click options, and you can now select the default screen the application will open. I set the default for all my smaller utilities (1Password, Evernote, the Finder window) to the small laptop screen.

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Art: Gustave Caillebotte, Young man at his window, 1875

Hillary's stock campaign video

The video in which Hillary Clinton announced her intention to run for President is too well executed. The messages are incredibly clear, you can almost reverse engineer the PowerPoint slide that contained the briefing bullet points for the script. 

But the execution is also staged and lacking raw emotion that it is unlikely to resonate with voters. I don't think it will leave a negative impression, just a neutral one. It sounds and looks like almost all advertising we see around us. This review on the Huffington Post captures it correctly.

In a similar way, Apple product videos, once admired, now almost look funny after the many parodies. 

A better way to do this? Interview "real people" on camera. It is a lot harder to do though.

It is a warning sign for those who think that big budget productions (videos, presentations) automatically translate into audience impact. The more people have been disappointed by slick presentations, photoshopped ads, spectacular videos, the harder it is to convince them that in your case they should believe you.

P.S. What do I think about the campaign logo? I don't think it is very pretty, but it will be very recognisable as an avatar on social media sites. Functional.

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Art: The Peacemakers (1868) painting by George P.A. Healy. 

Idea camouflage

Often, when I meet a high tech client, I get presented with an existing company presentation that contains all the required information but conceals the big idea behind the company. As a result, we usually push the slides away and start talking, and after a few minutes, that big idea comes out.

First versions of the redesigned presentations are all about that big idea. It is in your face. But there is a risk that over time we start diluting that pure story again. The world out there (and Gartner and IDC reports) are used to defining the technology world in certain boxes, using certain language. And as we get a lot of questions about how you compare to this, to that, we slowly, slowly, get back to a presentation that resembles the one we started of with. It looks prettier, but the big idea is hidden again.

My (and your responsibility) is to prevent that from happening.

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Art: RMS Olympic in dazzle at Halifax, Nova Scotia painted by Arthur Lismer

Data overload in startup pitches

My startup clients who have customers/sales and are raising a follow-on investment round are swimming in data. Every click, of every customer segment, at any time is recorded and can be analysed. How to use this in an investor pitch?

• Standard metrics. Some investors are highly specialised professionals who can X-ray an internet startup by analysing just a few statistics (comparing them to the other 500 startups they have seen). Google what the metrics are for your type of business, or even better scrutinise blog posts by a particular VC to see what she is really focussed on.
• Your own metrics. Before even getting into the data, understand what really makes your business tick. Back in the good old days at McKinsey, we used to spend months at this for big corporates. Customer acquisition cost, churn, repeat purchase, basket size, etc. etc. Which driver has an impact on your business, and which can you influence. Is your business national or even global (SlideMagic), or has it more of a city-by-city regional character (Uber). Once you figured out your metrics, write the entire financial section around those.
• Anticipate the obvious questions. Be one step ahead and anticipate the obvious questions. If your chart shows a dip in February, you can guess the question that is coming. If Vancouver lags behind Portland, guess what a VC is going to ask. Have answers before the meeting start and/or show the data in a different way if these hick ups are minor distractions and not key drivers of your business. And a question by one VC in a meeting does not mean that it merits rewriting the whole pitch around that for your next meeting. Within infinite amounts of data, there are an infinite number of questions, but we only have a finite amount of time.

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Art: Gustave Courbet, Waves, 1870

Should you use title capitalisation in presentations?

Most American newspapers use title capitalisation in their headlines: Every Important Word is Written with a Capital. Should you do the same in presentations?

My opinion: no, I think it does not look very good. The only exception: titles of books or research papers you are quoting as a source in the footnote.

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Art: Edwaert Collier, Still Life, 1696

"What I want to say early on"

Many clients stress that they want to get a number of points across in their presentations right at the beginning of the presentation. Sometimes they are right, sometimes not.

The fear that you are not getting your points across early enough stems from experiences with PowerPoint marathon sessions: slide, after slide, after slide with bullet points. A human attention span is short and points that have not been made before minute 10 of the 60 minute monster session will not stick. Legitimate concern.

But, some messages need a bit of preparation before you can make them. "We are flexible" as a first message is unlikely to stick. People get used to the accent of your voice, need to understand what flexibility (everyone talks about that in their presentations) actually means in the context of your particular product, and finally they need to know why over the past 50 years nobody has managed to deliver that flexibility.

There is a big risk that you will run your presentation 3 times:

1. First pass on slide one. You spend 10 minutes on this first slide, making all your points, but do it in a too generic way so nobody really internalises why they are so special. You actually spend too little time on them.
2. You spend too much time on the body of the presentation, where you repeat most of the messages of slide but now add detail after detail after detail. Thirty minutes in, you have lost your audience.
3. Then, there is always the opportunity to repeat the presentation on the final summary slide (can be the same as page 1), where you spend too much time repeating the key messages in too generic language.

How to do it better?

• Avoid PowerPoint marathons all together and keep your presentation short. Even if you get offered a 60 minute slot, don't fill it.
• Make a big point on slide 1 without giving in to the temptation of running your whole story. "We are actually the first company in 50 years that managed to offer 45 different sizes of  shoes and this flexibility is a huge deal, which I will point out to you later"
• Then run the story at such a length/pace that it fills but not exceed the audience attention span.  Make the points "you want to make early on" properly, but nothing more than that.
• Close with a reference to the opening slide: "know you see why these 45 different sizes are such a big deal"

"What I want to say early on" equals "what I really want to say". Just say it, and not much more.

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Vincent van Gogh, A Pair of Leather Clogs, 1888