The 5 most repeated tips for pitch decks from these 6 top VCs
I thought it’d be interesting to see if some of the top venture capitalists have any widespread agreement on how to pitch them for investments. So I did a short analysis and noticed that the top 3 tips that 5 our of 6 or all 6 mentioned were applicable to any sales or persuasion situation, not just pitching investors.
I explain everything below. But first a few reasons why this is useful to you even if you’re not a startup pitching VCs. (more…)
2 Powerful Techniques Reid Hoffman used in LinkedIn’s Pitch Deck
Reid Hoffman
In October of last year Reid Hoffman posted LinkedIn’s Series B pitch deck from 2004. He packed it full of some great lessons, and a bunch of people commented on it and analyzed it.
And why not? Who doesn’t want to learn from someone as successful as Reid Hoffman?
Here’s the thing though, I don’t know about you, but when I read advice for startups (like pitching), my mind always turns to the million reasons why my situation is different.
“But we’re not a social network…We don’t have the users they have…Ugh, how am I going to get past that…(downward spiral)…they’ll never fund us….we’re going to run out of money….I’m going to lose my hipster office in the city…forget it, my life is over.”
So here’s what I thought would be an more helpful analysis of LinkedIn’s Series B pitch deck.
I noticed that Reid Hoffman uses 2 powerful principles of persuasion that are outlined in a super famous book by the renowned psychology professor Robert Cialdini that can be applied generally to any startup pitching themselves, and even more generally to any sales situation at all.
If you’re trying to convince, persuade, sell, or influence anyone right now, this should be useful. (more…)
Stop wasting time with PowerPoint and make your presentation more awesome at the same time
One thing about working with startup founders is that they love to talk about how busy they are. Hell, you’re probably reading this right now and thinking “Man I’m so busy.” Yeah, ok.
But if you’ve made it this far, keep reading because I’m about to save you time (from editing slides on PowerPoint no less), and make your investor pitch, conference presentation, board slides, or whatever a lot better. (more…)
What are the most common mistakes in startup pitches? (Probably not what you think)
Here’s a post I did on Quora about what the most common mistakes in startup pitches are. Most people focus on things like “Follow Guy Kawasaki’s 10 slide outline” or “Spend x% of the time on market size, then financials, etc.” but there are other factors that are outweigh all of those.
Agree? Disagree? Let me know in the comments! Alright here we go: (more…)
Anyone can make graphs look so much better
Just a quick note to say props to the folks at Dark Horse Analytics, who, in a single gif show how to turn a typical cluttered graph into one that is outstandingly clear…
Their article, Data Looks Better Naked, explains it in detail, so go check that out, but what I want to point out here is that it’s consistent with my current theme of Anyone Can Learn to Make Clear Visuals.
Notice that the changes they show to their graph don’t require years of graphic design study, or reading multiple books, or photoshop. They also don’t require multiple hours of work to pull off. It’s pretty simple. Remove clutter, keep the data.
And the best part is you don’t have to go to the full extent of the gif to see a dramatic improvement in your graphs. (I for one, prefer axis lines over no lines at all). Stop wherever you want between their “start” and “end” images and you will certainly have made an improvement.
Thanks Dark Horse Analytics for a great gif and a great article:
