Last evening was practice time for 1SS pitches in advance of the formal end-of-semester demo day this Thursday.  Overall the students produced some great work under the tutelage of their expert faculty and in spite of sometimes confusing advice from mentors like myself.   It is hard enough to create a startup when you can give it full-time focus, but for primarily undergrad CS and engineering majors under intense curriculum pressure the challenge is far greater.   Several of the teams are adhering to the revered college student “just-in-time” concept.  They’ll be completing their presentations between last night and tomorrow’s deadline for submission.   Why start too early and allow the work to expand to fill all your available time?

For this post I thought I’d offer a few comments on “style points” that were brought up in the flow of practice sessions last night.  These comments are relevant to anyone pitching a company concept or even pitching for a sale.   In this case the format is the very common method of one or two presenters backed up by PowerPoint slides.  Here’s a list:

1.   You’re a great writer, can speak the King’s English, and have a good delivery, so don’t slip into glaring grammatical errors like “me and Hank are programming this widget.”  The listener will be thrown off track by that and not hear the next few sentences.  That type of talk is okay if you’ve just won the big game and are being interviewed on ESPN, but it does more damage than you realize when you are selling yourself as a smart person who can create a company.  

2.  Look for typos in your slides.   I will admit that I am surprised by the number of typos that I leave in TechDrawl posts and in various emails and sometimes even in Tweets or on Facebook.  It’s a consequence of volume of output, auto-completes, and tiny mobile keyboards.  I fix the ones I find later in places where I can edit, but lots of them are just out there for all eternity.  My 7^th grade English teach Ms. Perry would be disappointed.   At least, however, if your PowerPoint slides have the desired economy of words, you should check and recheck for misspellings.

3.   I am no graphics designer, but it makes a world of difference if your presentation slides have a consistent master theme throughout and look like they all came from the same hand.  They need to be readable from the back row and to communicate elements that coincide with your narrative.  The more visuals the better, but be sparing in the use of two many bold graphics like arrows that may not actually represent anything.  And, I personally think it’s best to avoid any of the transitions and that for certain one should never mix transition styles in a single show.   It’s tempting to pull cool effects from the PowerPoint toolbars, but time is better spent on getting the content right.

4.   Use the PowerPoint guides and make sure your slide headings don’t “jump around” as you advance from one slide to the next.  All should be on exactly the same level and have the same font.   They may look fine when you check them individually, but it things wander around the screen during a live presentation, such movement will detract from your message.  Fonts of inconsistent sizes anywhere in your slides create the same issue.

5.  You almost can’t have too many slides.  If you are talking for more than 30 seconds over one slide, you are giving a soliloquy and not narrating a show.  Use that time to provide visual backup for your words.

6.  Always try to put your idea in context.  My biggest complaint about presentation formats that are too short is that you can’t show and discuss the desirable 2X2 grid where your idea is in the upper right quadrant.   Odds are that your audience won’t know your space all that well, and you owe it to them to show the competitors and illustrate how you match up with them.   If nothing else, that helps prove you have a “space” and that you are not out on a limb alone.

7.  One of my favorite speaking styles has been to put all my points and some jokes on index cards, have them shuffled by someone in the audience, and then deliver them in whatever order results from that.  However, I save that shtick for occasions where I’m supposed to provide some entertainment and am not trying to close a deal.  Your presentation should have a logical flow that defines a pain point, how you’re going to cure that, and why that it is a business.  You need to build to a climax that leaves your audience convinced and wanting to have a follow-up discussion with you.

8.   As to speaking styles, not everyone has the gift to be a fire and brimstone preacher.  You have to work with what is natural for you, make eye contact, and carry on an engaging conversation with your audience.   Asking a few qualifying questions never hurts, and standing out front away for a podium is a good way to command a room.   Although not applicable in these demo day formats, you will find that in live situations you won’t get very far without being interrupted by questions.  If you’ve created some engagement, these will be much easier to handle.   I saw one presentation recently where an audience member said (constructively):  “You’ll win the Nobel Prize if you can make that business model work.”   The presenter handled that with a good explanation and a reminder of his credentials.  It did, however, make me want to have a Nobel Prize visual somewhere in my next slide deck in case I ever get that question myself.  “See, here’s what I won!”

A few dozen students will finish today’s classes and quizzes and be up all night polishing up their demo day presentations, and I’m sure the results will be great on Thursday.  Hopefully they’ll all have fewer typos that I’m sure I have left somewhere in this post.

If you’re a college football fan who is following the BCS rankings, you’ve heard the term “style points” quite a lot in recent big games involving LSU or Bama.  Hence the illustration you see above.

<Image from Fox Sports>