I’ve been asked to give a presentation for a sort of startup accelerator. Sort of – it wasn’t an actual VC market, it was more of an open market. So my job was to give some tips and bits about slide design and delivery. I asked them if they wanted me to talk about a structure a pitch? No, we have our own pitch structure. I looked at it – the core “what is this project about and what are we looking for” was on the 9th slide out of 17, not the first slide, not even the second. I expressed my concern that investors or judges are not really interested in hearing 30 presentations starting with “our brand and media coverage”. It doesn’t make sense for an investor to know these things before the actual project and investment proposition. It is much better to put it on the first slide, like all VC decks do.
The organisers were taken aback by my heretical idea though it took us only 3 minutes out of 16.
First observation – I hadn’t prepared this «presentation» thoroughly (I didn’t show any examples since I thought it was an obvious thing in any investment project), second observation – now I know what’s worse out of ignorance and arrogance. Ignorance without an arrogance is cured easily. But arrogance… is super hell.
