Tips on crafting your Demo Day Presentation
R. Lubynsky
This is
intended to provide some ideas and advice on building your Demo Day
presentation. It’s just my opinion – so
others may have different views, and they may be right! It is not an exhaustive list. I intend to keep adding things as I think of
them or come across new ideas from others.
1. Keep things clear and simple. Stay away from industry or technical jargon. The short video below provides an example of how NOT to present your venture.
2 Understand the target. The objective of Demo Day is to tell enough of your story in 5 minutes to get people excited about beginning a conversation that will lead to the opportunity of a full pitch. Use the documents we sent called “Preparing your 5 minute pitch for VMS Demo Day” and “Demo Day Presenter FAQ” as your guides.
3. Don’t worry about format and style at the
start. First capture the facts and the
key elements about your idea and venture. Get your building materials together
first, then start crafting your presentation.
Don’t get me wrong, format and style will be very important, but I’ve
seen plenty of pitches that were all format and style with nothing behind
it. Get your fundamentals identified
first.
4. Collect and organize your key info. Use
the VMS Full Pitch Deck Outline as a way to collect and organize these so you
can draw from them. Your 5-minute Demo
Day presentation will be a subset of a complete funding pitch.
5. It’s my opinion that you must nail your product
– market fit early or the rest of the presentation won’t matter even if it is
fantastic. Product – market fit is where you clearly and
simply explain who your customer is and why they will want your product. To do this, you need to communicate:
-
a large and significant pain
-
connect the pain to a very clear customer audience, and
-
show how you will solve that pain
There are
other elements too – including a great business model, evidence of traction,
and team credibility that are also important.
But if you don’t get the product – market fit across, then the rest
can’t make up for it.
Here are
some links to resources that can help you think about characterizing your product-market
fit:
Product
Market Fit: http://bit.ly/VPvmsicorps
Value
Propositions: http://bit.ly/5vmsicorps
Customer
segments: http://bit.ly/6vmsicorps
6. The most memorable and compelling
presentations are stories accompanied by meaningful images. It’s OK to go with just a set of bullet
points on your slides. But it is far more
captivating to communicate with a story and powerful images that draws your
audience in, inspires them and builds an emotional connection with them.
https://www.ted.com/talks/nancy_duarte_the_secret_structure_of_great_talks?language=en
https://www.ted.com/talks/nancy_duarte_the_secret_structure_of_great_talks?language=en
On story
building, Nancy Duarte is one of the most popular and effective advisors. Her TED talk on storytelling is a bit long, but
she describes common structures used by the best communicators. You may find some value in applying these concepts in your own presentation.
7. Start building a story. Build
a story around an archetypical customer and their pain. Start off with the traditional bullet points,
but decide what the key message is on each slide. Keep to one key thought per slide.
8. Use
images.
It’s hard to listen to a speaker and read a slide at the same time. It gets harder the greater the density of
information captured in words or numbers.
I often find myself trying to make sure I understand a number or a
figure and end up tuning the speaker out and miss things. Of the two slides on the right, which would you rather see?
If you
started with the traditional PowerPoint deck with bullets and charts, be
relentless in reducing the number of words appearing on each slide. The best presentations I have seen have a
number of slides with no text at all, but stunning images that complement and
clearly connect with the words the presenter is speaking. Any charts and numbers are very simple – no
spreadsheet rows and columns inserted!
9. Ideas and examples. Here is an example of a very good presentation from VMS Demo Day 2014 by VMS venture PlenOptika. This was recorded live at the actual event and will give you a clear picture of the target and what things will look like when you present. It's also a great example of how much information you can cover in 4.5 minutes. (Thanks to Shivang Dave and Nicholas Durr of PlentOptika for sharing).
Get some ideas and possible inspiration from other pitch presentation examples on the web. Not every pitch is great, or even good. Sometimes it is just one slide or two that give you ideas on how to handle the same point in your own presentation.
Scan through
some and you’ll start to get a feel for what works and what doesn’t. And which kinds of styles resonate with
you. Although the presentation is all
about the audience, you have to feel comfortable and confident in delivering
it. You can find many at: https://slidebean.com/blog/startups/pitch-deck-examples
Here is a
link to a number of well-rehearsed, well-coached and well-structured
presentations from a recent TechStars Demo Day. I personally really like the Magicflix pitch. https://techstars.wistia.com/projects/hlqxbspo37
Here's a pretty good video about a generic Demo Day presentation approach - so it's not precisely on target for what we expect, but most of the advice is relevant and useful.
10 Scrub. Practice. Iterate.
Practice. Great presentations are very rarely freshly
minted from scratch. The pitch scrub
evenings for VMS Demo Day will put you into a rinse-wash-repeat cycle with
relentlessly direct feedback and advice from a team of mentors that will help
go through a number of iterations in a short span that usually result in a
transformative outcome.
Once you’ve got your presentation to a good
spot, pitch to your family and your friends.
Ask for their feedback. Pitch
while recording yourself. Just practice a lot
