Comments on: I Hate PowerPoint

By: @437341

@437341 — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 08:40:46 +0000

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.

By: Happy Birthday Return Path

Happy Birthday Return Path — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:21:16 +0000

[...] Bonus Feature: Matt knows I Hate Powerpoint and I encourage you to read his post Powerpointless and Fred Wilson’s post Presentations vs [...]

By: Happy Birthday Return Path

Happy Birthday Return Path — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 14:27:56 +0000

[...] Bonus Feature: Matt knows I Hate Powerpoint and I encourage you to read his post Powerpointless and Fred Wilson’s post Presentations vs [...]

By: Alonso

Alonso — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 18:29:03 +0000

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

By: Ben Carey

Ben Carey — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 22:04:57 +0000

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.

By: Brad Feld

Brad Feld — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 23:28:11 +0000

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!

By: Derek Scruggs

Derek Scruggs — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 20:31:19 +0000

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?

By: Bjorn Ruwald

Bjorn Ruwald — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 01:23:58 +0000

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.

By: rob

rob — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 00:59:45 +0000

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

By: Bjorn Ruwald

Bjorn Ruwald — Mon, 02 Jan 2006 23:46:23 +0000

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