Bill Joos had some interesting comments on this topic at last weeks' Art of the Start conference put on by Garage Technology Ventures. In particular, he pointed out his rule of "12 slides in 15 minutes" – his pet peeve is entrepreneurs who come in an take up the whole hour with their presentation. At first this may seem at odds with Chris' huge list of questions – you might think "how can I answer all those questions in 12 slides?" – by having your message crisp and well-defined.

One other interesting point Bill Joos raised: he's always surprised that entrepreneurs never start off their presentation by asking *them* questions. In particular, he thinks entrepreneurs would be well-served by asking two questions before presenting: "What attracted you to our company/business plan?" and "What are the top three things you would like to learn about our company/business plan in this presentation?"

(BTW: I'll be posting transcripts of the Art of the Start sessions as I have time. The first transcript, Guy Kawasaki's session on "The Art of Starting" is already available)

At the top of the list, I'd add the question "What's in it for ME (the VC)?" (Or, "How will I make money if I give you money?") The rest of the points are really a spectrum of potential answers to those questions. As Ed points out, there are a couple of dozen possible answers, but Brendan brings up a really good way to organize them – let the VCs decide by asking them what's on their minds first, then tailor the responses to their interests.

In PowerPoint you can allow for a much more flexible conversation by first presenting a provocative image and asking a question. For example, you could present a simple image of a wireless router against a simple white background, and say "What do you see is the potential profitability of the wireless market? Why hasn't any company been able to fully realize the potential?" After listening to the VCs' response, open your presentation in Slide Sorter view and go directly to the slide that connects with their interests — "Well, we're different, because we've analyzed the weaknesses of other strategies, and have come up with an approach that connects where their signals have failed. Here are the numbers."

Using PowerPoint as a "show" constrains you to a pre-ordained sequence of slides that holds an audience captive and yes, often tortures them. No wonder VC's don't like PowerPoint, any more than most audiences. But if you look at PowerPoint's Slide Sorter view as your modular "presentation dashboard", you can select relevant slides that respond directly to the VCs interests, and produce a much more targeted, tailored, meaningful, and profitable experience for everyone.

Of course, all the questions pale compared to # 6 — HOW ARE YOU SELLING?

H

Tim Oren responded to this item on his blog (which doesn't have comments enabled for some reason):

"One commenter suggests first engaging the VC in the meeting by asking their view of the market, and why the company was picked to pitch. I disagree on this one. I don't want my own views reflected back at me. I want to hear the entrepreneur's view of the market and the company's value add."

I believe Tim misunderstood my comment – I don't believe Bill Joos was suggesting entrepreneurs ask a VC ask these questions to enable them to parrot the VC's opinions. Instead, I believe the purpose of asking questions before the presentation is to allow the entrepreneur to engage the VC early in the presentation, gain insight into how they might tailor their message to the specific interests of the VC, rather than just flip into "presentation mode", blast their message out indiscriminantly, and then leg it out of there.

A presentation is like an accordian – you should be able to 'expand' or 'compress' the various sections according to your audience and their interests (expressed both overtly and implicitly through their questions, body language, etc). If, for example, the VC indicated that they were drawn to your business plan because they were quite familiar with the history of members of the management team, then you could probably compress the details of the management section of the presention and expand another area.

Tim goes on:

"The situation will get interactive soon enough if we're interested. At least at our place, it's a very bad sign to get through the first 15 minutes without being interrupted by questions."

This echoes a pet peeve expressed by Steve Jurvetson at a recent panel – entrepreneurs who weren't prepared to interact as part of the presentation and who cling to their slides and presentation format. After all, this is supposed to be a conversation – how comfortable will a VC be if you, the entrepreneur, appear to lack the confidence, vision, or in-depth understanding of your business to depart from your "script"?

How to pitch to a VC

So what does a VC want answered, and answered quickly? Check out: Feld Thoughts: The Torturous World of Powerpoint, which includes a wonderful list of questions that a VC wants answered in a simple and easy way. This is actually

So very true I had seen hundreds of good people presenting good ideas but in a very poor way!

The art of laying your idea's for someone else especially if you're not present to accompany the presentation can result and in most cases result
a very poor payoff for the work invested in creating this presentations just because they didn't follow this points!

PowerPoint: Prison or Pallette?

This week's quote supports where I come out in the recent heat around PowerPoint: My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action… Whatever diminishes constraint diminishes strength. The…

The Presentation Dashboard

talking to VCs

Rajesh links and reposts a wonderful entry from Brad Feld. He enlists questions entrepreneurs should be able to answer instantly. 1) WHAT IS YOUR VISION? – What is your big vision? – What problem are you solving and for whom?…

What to Put In Your Investment Pitch

Several years ago, Chris Wand put together a list of questions that a pitch to a VC should address. Here it is.

Yet More on PowerPoint

More PowerPoint posts continue to catch my eye.

More VC Pitch Tips

Seth Levine shares his thoughts on how to put together a good presentation. Good things to remember, such as * remember to tell them what you/your company/your product actual do * plan the presentation for the amount of time you…

Brad — This is good stuff.

1. Although content is 99 percent of the game, tools do matter — would you rather write a business plan in Word 2003 or Wordstar? Axon (www.axoninc.com) publishes a software package called Axon Solo that was designed for McKinsey and is a fantastic tool for creating presentations. PowerPoint's default templates are third grade at best, while Solo's templates provide the McKinsey look — no 3D pie charts, just classic, basic, elegant design.

2. I get really pissed when at the beginning of the presentation someone doesn't provide me with a copy of the slides. I want to take notes and write down my thoughts, and to do so on a piece of paper that shows what I'm seeing on the screen.

3. In some cases it would make sense to have more detail on the printed copy. Every data should have a source and you might want to have the source on the printed copy but not the slide.

4. I want to be told where you're going. At the beginning, I want them to say, "I'm going to cover 10 points." The first slide lists those ten points. Each point is then numbered on the corresponing slide, so I can always know where I am in the presentation (and get a sense for how much longer it is going to last).

Beginnings of an Empire

Cory Doctorow: Courtesy of Marc Hedlund's Emerging Tech talk, VC Funding for Geeks; or, How to Get Your Technology to Emerge the VC Way: a fantastic article on how to create effective PowerPoint venture capital pitches, written by a…

Out There: March 18, 2005

The Torturous World of PowerPointA great list of questions that every pitch to a VC should address.

http://www.petebevin.com/subblog/archives/#002623

The Torturous World of Powerpoint…

Dont forget though, blamming PowerPoint for the bad presentation iis like blaming the pan for the crap food.

PowerPoint is a perfectly efficient tool that's badly used.

Also, people should stop thinlking about how to pitch to VCs as such and rather consider how to pitch to people in general.

The content should be specific. The methodology shouldn't…!

In no particular order…

Hacking Google Desktop Search- Google Desktop Search can be used as an application for remotely monitoring computers across a LAN. Got Soles ? Tom Waits picks his fav albums. Make the best VC pitch while using PowerPoint. George Frost Kennan…

VC Pitch Tips (reprinted with permission – from myself

We talk a lot about messaging here, well in our day jobs as Venture Capitalists, investors are a key marketing target just like any other. A while ago we wrote a post on another blog (NW Venture Voice) translating…

Ahh yes. The sales process. I believe there is a lot that should be behind the first bullet in #6:

"What does the sales process look like and how long is the sales cycle?"

In my work with clients over the past several years, I have learned that the majority of the companies I have worked with (both startups and the extremely large multi-billion dollar ones) really do not have their arms around the sales process – it gets paid a lot of lip service, but very few companies really understand it and attack it aggressively as a key element of their go-to-market activities.

Marketing and product management tend to invent the product to be sold and then throw it over the wall to the sales force, with mounds of documentation on what it is, spec sheets, capabilities, functionality, etc. and maybe a little bit about the intended market. This leaves the sales organization to figure out who to go sell it to and how to sell it. Missing are the answers to such questions as:
- exactly who should I be trying to see?
- how should I be positioning the product/service?
- how should I position the company?
- what questions should I be asking and why?
- how can I eliminate various competitors?
- what objections will I hear and how should I respond?

It amazes me how many marketers believe that sales people just naturally know how to do all the above – they were just born knowing what questions they should ask. They don't. And if they appear to, it is just because they have been selling a long time and have some experience to guide their actions, but even the most seasoned sales person has to "figure it out" to some extent.

While I would be impressed with anybody who could articulate their sales process, I think it goes far beyond the items in the Powerpoint presentation. There needs to be a linking of the marketing strategy to a documented set of actionable sales steps that can be used by all the company's sales people Day 1. The learning curve is VERY expensive not only in terms of time to revenue, but while they are figuring everything out sales people often miss opportunities that can not be recaptured later.

This is a great thought-provoking outline and I just had to throw in my 2 cents on the sales process item because I see it as a huge opportunity.

I like your post. Thanks for the tips

Best regards,
Jenn
EntrepreneursWorldCup

Hi Brad,

For point number four, "WHO IS YOUR CUSTOMER?", would non-paying users of a consumer web-application be considered the customer of your service? Or would the customers be the companies (ie advertisers or marketing partners) that pay to allow for the service and business to continue to exist?

thanks!