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I Hate PowerPoint

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As we start 2006, I thought it’d be fun to revisit my endless rant on PowerPoint as a hint and reminder to everyone that has to interact with me this year.

We start with The Torturous World of PowerPoint and Chris Wand’s list of questions to address if you are insisting on presenting a PowerPoint presentation pitching a company to me.  Seth Godin has a Special Bonus Tactic for Avoiding Really Bad PowerPoint in his book Free Prize Inside.  Cliff Atkinson has a great blog on PowerPoint and a suggestion to simply Ban Bullets (or at least not read them to me if you insist on having them.)  Finally Ted Dolotta sent me a PowerPoint presentation that – if Lincoln had used – would have easily prolonged the Civil War by at least a decade.

Guy Kawasaki has a new blog and he starts with his own – very useful – rant on PowerPoint which he defines as the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint.  Based on what Guy has done in the past, his blog will definitely be worth following if you are an entrepreneur.

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January 2nd, 2006     Categories: Pet Peeves    
  • http://ruwald.com/bjorn Bjorn Ruwald

    I guess we are pretty much on the same page Fred–only that I’d like to say that I hate what people do with PowerPoint rather than I hate the programme itself. I also think, that other presentation media suffer from the same kind of abuse: regular writing style even :-)

    PowerPoint did in many ways democratize presentations, and that makes us look at a lot of not so good presentations, but any democratization comes at a price.

    But–in the end–I guess we’re on the same page. It’s all a matter of wording–here goes for regular writing style :-)

  • http://rfreeborn.blogspot.com/ rob

    I would forward the premise that the problem isn’t with .ppt but with the people that have no clue how to use it. I started my freshly minted MBA life with IBM consulting and the single greatest thing – no joke – that I took from there were PowerPoint skills. One of the first things that I did after starting the job was to go to a consulting “bootcamp” where a good chunk of time was spent basically learning the McKinsey/Zelazny method that is covered in one of my fav biz books of all time “Say it with Charts”.

    Please people, please stop:
    - using animated icons to “jazz things up”
    - using 8 point fonts to write a 500 word paragraph in .ppt – if you want us to read that content then give it to us in a word doc/memo.
    - making a list of bullets 15 or 20 items long and then READ it to us…..we can read faster then you can talk
    - by all that is holy, don’t use fancy/busy backgrounds, it makes it impossible to read.
    - by all that is holy part 2, stop having the slides do those funky “fly in/fly out” things…it’s annoying and not cute!

    Here’s an idea – use the ‘pixel’ format that comes standard in MS PPT, it’s simple, clean and easy to read.

    Enough .ppt ranting for one day ;)

    rob

    • Alonso

      All those tools are useless in a REAL professional scenerio. We use ExhibitView because it saves us time and we don't have to worry about funky fly in's. Plus there is a better presentation feature. They have a free trial available http://www.exhibitview.net

  • Bjorn Ruwald

    Brad, I called you Fred in my comment. Sorry. Was browsing Fred Wilson’s blog in the other tab and had you guys mixed up.

  • http://www.askderekscruggs.com Derek Scruggs

    Good tips, but I’m curious: co you think you’ve ever *not* done a deal because the presentation was bad? Conversely, how many deals have you done *in spite of* the bad presentation?

  • http://www.feld.com Brad Feld

    I’ve never done a deal because of a bad ppt. However, I’m sure I’ve quickly turned off early in the process because of a bad ppt, although that was probably symptomatic of other issues (e.g. lousy idea, poorly organized thoughts)

    I also don’t think I’ve ever done a deal “in spite of” a bad ppt. The ppt is the first impression – I’ve done plenty of deals that had a crummy ppt, but it’s because of other characteristics of the deal (great idea, great entrepreneurs, something I was excited about) and not “in spite of a bad ppt.”

    I’ve accepted that bad PowerPoint is a way of entrepreneurial life. That doesn’t mean I have to like it!

  • http://www.geekswithblogs.net/bencarey Ben Carey

    Another good resource (if you are interested in not boring your audience to death) is http://www.presentationzen.com. Great techniques, thoughts, and styles are covered on the blog.

    I actually *like* presenting with powerpoint since stumbling on the site.

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  • http://twitter.com/437341 @437341

    Powerpoint bought presentations to the lay man's office desk by getting bundled with Microsoft Office. Its contributions to the effect of enabling and popularizing digital presentations are greater than any reason to hate it.

Brad Feld

Hi, I'm Brad Feld, a managing director at Foundry Group who lives in Boulder, Colorado. I invest in software and Internet companies around the US, run marathons and read a lot.

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