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If you are lucky enough to still be enjoying summer holidays, then add this tutorial to your hammock reading. My favorite activity when I engage with entrepreneurs is helping them to craft their stories into investor-friendly materials. In this tutorial, I'll demystify the ever popular, yet often elusive, ten-slide presentation. Grab a coffee and crawl into your hammock or a comfortable Adirondack chair.
Guy Kawasaki's "Top Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs" and "Top Ten Lies of Venture Capitalists" both provide a great launch pad for this discussion. I've provided a snapshot of the main headlines, but if you have not read these already, I urge you to visit his blog. You may chuckle at some of these, but don't dismiss them too quickly - take a good look in the mirror and ask yourself how many times you have voiced one or two of these "weasel statements" when giving your own presentations. (My favorites are #6 and #10).
Guy Kawasaki's - Top Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs:
- "Our Projections are Conservative."
- "(Big name research firm) says our market will be $50 billion by 2010."
- "(Big name company) is going to sign our purchase order next week."
- "Key employees are set to join us as soon as we get funded."
- "No one is doing what we're doing."
- "No one can do what we're doing."
- "Hurry because several other venture capital firms are interested."
- "Oracle is too big/dumb/slow to be a threat."
- "We have a proven management team".
- "Patents make our product defensible."
- (bonus) "All we have to do is get 1% of the market."
And guess what? Venture Capitalists don't always say exactly what they mean, either ...
Guy Kawasaki's - Top Ten Lies of Venture Capitalists:
- "I liked your company, but my partners didn't."
- "If you get a lead, we will follow."
- "Show us some traction, and we'll invest."
- "We love to co-invest with other venture capitalists."
- "We're investing in your team."
- "I have lots of bandwidth to dedicate to your company."
- "This is a vanilla term sheet."
- "We can open doors for you at our client companies."
- "We like early-stage investing."
Telling Your Story in Ten Slides
Google "ten slide" and you will get a barrage of links to presentation resources. I've included some of my favorites in the "Links" section of this newsletter. In this tutorial, I want to focus on the content of the ten-slide and leave the topic of delivering the presentation to another time.
The goal of the ten-slide is to engage the investor in the discussion - to do this, you need a blend of the right content mixed with compelling talking points and served with a side order of engaging delivery. Rome wasn't built in a day, so let's start by getting the right content together.
Deciding on the content for your story is actually quite simple - if you think about it from the investor's point of view. Remember that investors are not evaluating the quality of the science - they are assessing the risk and the financial return your idea represents. Investors will drool over ideas that show an acute awareness of customer problems, competition, and customer behavior. The trick is to engage your investor in a discussion of these elements. You must do this by articulating the So what? who cares? why you? of your idea.
Those of you pitching ideas to research grant reviewers, foundation directors, or technology transfer offices, should look at these people as your investors. They ask the same questions and assess the same criteria as VCs and will therefore be equally engaged if you articulate the So what? who cares? why you? of your idea.
Here's what I mean by telling your story through So what? who cares? why you?:
The above tools are part of the So what? who cares? why you? methodology and they make excellent visual aids to include in your investor documents. Let's walk through how a few key tools from the So what? who cares? why you? methodology can be used in investor materials like the ten slide template. (Note to book owners: a complete ten-slide template with step-by-step guidance is available for download in the online ToolShed, Chapter 9 - What's your Story?).
The Ten-Slide Template
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The Problem Statement: Begin your pitch with this slide. Articulating pain from the customer's point of view is what gets an investor's attention. Include a few key points here about the bleeding pain that inspired you to discover a solution. |
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Your Idea on a Napkin: Use the illustrative picture you created in Chapter 1 here. If your idea is "new and novel," create talking points that use your analogy or a metaphor to connect with your audience. Avoid the temptation to launch into a technical discussion here. |
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The Category Map: The category map tool in Chapter 3 is used to translate ideas into market opportunities. It helps to visually tell the story of the market landscape. More importantly, it helps you demonstrate that you are aware of the dynamics of the market you'll compete in. Flesh out the bullet points I've provided here. My advice is to make a full slide of the category map and then script your talking points to walk people through your "white space" opportunity. |
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The Market Attack Plan: This tool provides a summary view of your growth plan in the market - how you will win customers. It draws from your work on the market fishbone and segment strawman exercises from Chapter 4 – Who's the Customer? Map out your customer segment attack plan by providing an overview of the key customer segments you will target and show the growth plan. Talk about any lead customers you've managed to engage at this point - it is a BIG bonus if you have customers. |
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Business Model: It's easy to fall into a rat hole with this topic, so a visual aid helps focus everyone on your plan to make money. Investors will be all ears for this topic so make the slide clear and concise - walk them through the routes to market map that you developed in Chapter 5 – What's Your Path to Market? and walk investors through it from top to bottom. Save the financial details for a separate slide. |
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The Competitive Radar: This tool shows that you have your head bolted on properly! Remember Kawasaki's 6th lie of entrepreneurs - "there's no one doing what we're doing." You can score big points with investors by doing your homework and plotting out a competitive radar. Use this tool to pinpoint your closest competitors and to show how you stack up against them with your unique differentiator. This slide will set you up to discuss why you can win. |
So there you have it - a sampling of how the visual tools provided in the So what? who cares? why you? methodology and workbook can be used to effectively tell your story to investors.
Of course, there are other slides that make up the full story, including slides about the Team, Projections and Milestones, Use of Proceeds, and Investment Highlights. These are fully covered in the templates provided to book owners in the online ToolShed. My goal in this tutorial was to provide an illustrative example of how visual tools can bring the story of your business opportunity to life and engage investors in the discussion.
As a parting note I'd like to leave you with this thought: The sign that you are telling a great story told is that the investor starts asking questions and debating points you're raising. It's a signal that the audience is engaged and interested. (If they're clicking through their Blackberry, on the other hand, you'd better start tap dancing).
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So what? who cares? why you? ®: The Inventor's Commercialization Toolkit has been adopted by The Purdue Research Foundation as the methodology for its newest program, The Entrepreneur Academy. 
