It's the time of the month again where I help a few companies that are getting ready to present to the Band of Angels. I give them about 60 minutes of my time for free (a great value) to help them perhaps re-consider their pitch.
It takes me about 30 minutes of that time to get to the bottom of what the company does without fail. The next 30 minutes are focused on the story. After doing this every month for the last 7 years I thought I would share the top issues that seem to come up every time.
- 15 slides do not equal 10 minutes. My job is to get them to see that they can do it in 6-8. Trust me it can be done.
- But this person told me to it this way, not your way. A common occurrence and a fact of life being a presentation consultant. The entrepreneur is always welcome to ignore my way but my way has been developed over 7 years specifically for the group.
- For financials you only need that? Yes, I say, 3-5 years of revenue is plenty for a slide. Anything more and you end up talking about financials and not the business. And the one thing we know for certain about financials is every number is wrong.
- But we do so much more... One of the hardest things to get is that you only really do 1 or 2 things REALLY differently. The marginal benefit you bring beyond that is exponentially lower and usually not developed anyway!
- I've got a great demo or we'll have two presenters. These go together because I rarely see a demo or presentation hand off work well in a 10 minute pitch. Leave the demo for Q&A or due diligence.
Comments