Design To Pitch
This past Thursday, I listened to various startups pitch their hearts out to Samsung investors at the AR/VR meetup in the Samsung Next (investing arm of Samsung) office in NYC. These folks had some innovative approaches to helping solve problems or fill unmet needs through the thoughtful use of new virtual/augmented technology. The outline of the evening was simple — each startup is introduced, they give their 10-minute (!) pitch presentation, and afterwards there are a few Q&A minutes reserved primarily for the front-row seated Samsung investors.
As these pitches gained locomotion, people started clapping, questions were being fired, I began to take notice of the environment as is related to their presentations: When were people engaged? Who had the most investor questions? Who was taking snapshots of the projector screen from their phone? When were people excusing themselves to catch a swig of water?
These moments in question, factor into understanding the human engagement level. As much as hearing a pitch requires auditory as a prime component, the visual is as much if not, more responsible for the audience’s experience. Based on the decks I saw the other evening, I pulled together five things that might be helpful to avoid for your next big pitch as a startup.
One thing to remember — investors are humans. Humans who want immersive experiences, just like the rest of us. Humans are inundated with copious amounts of information on a daily basis, and it is something we need to be empathetic to when presenting something visual.
One: Crammed Content
Sharing is caring, right? Sharing is fine and well, but when you have a lot of pitch presentation content that you want to share with the world in a matter of minutes, it might not be great to 1) cram it all in one slide and 2) expect or even assume your audience will read through it, particularly if you are talking through the slide. To be clear, that is not to say remove all of your content and replace with just images. The idea (in this instance) is to share your business plan with investors face-to-face with a guided presentation. Find the most crucial information, and cut it down to be the most succinct version, represented in the most simplistic way possible. Think of delivering your message in the length of a tweet. Once you have that, re-work it to be even crisper. Once you have that, you are ready to design your slide(s). Otherwise, you might as well print out a Word document and not present on-screen at all (this is NOT something you should do). By creating concise, meaningful content, you are opening yourself up for a clear and clean visual impression of not only your presentation, but your brand.
Two: Inaccurate or Poor Visual Representations
I cannot share what I mean by this without describing a quick #fail from one of the presenters which I am keeping anonymous. A guy with a wonderful idea about empowering consumers to accomplish seamless stitching between different phone cameras, was running through his deck, and landed on a slide where he was discussing his target audience -- millennials. As he was discussing this, I could not help but tilt my head at the sight of a photo of teenagers standing staggered from what looked like a photo taken from the 90's, judging 1) by the attire and 2) by the fact that there was not one semblance of technology in the photo. Just from a quick Google search on images of “Millennials”, the first five results contained some form of technology. This might sound like a small detail that holds little significance. It is not..it is important to set a standard for your company. Who are your ideal customers, personas? What are they wearing? Are they trend-setters? What is their environment like? What activities do they engage in? What technology are they using? If you already know this, great. If not, think about it. Paint the picture, so that investors or listeners can understand in a deeper sense in one moment, who you are truly aiming to help.
Three: Default Presentation Diagrams
Sometimes we have great ideas that need a different form than just words on a screen, like for instance a chart or diagram. We are all familiar with Powerpoint’s array of charts and diagrams. But do we know there can be more done to those default selectors? This might sound obvious to many of you, but I have witnessed pure Powerpoint diagrams, and it was not pretty. It winds up looking sloppy and as if you did not allocate enough time to your presentation, or that is was a last-minute thought that was thrown into the deck. If you do not feel confident enough in creating your own manual representation of one of the charts to get pixel perfect visuals, use their diagram-creation tools — they are there for a reason. But make sure to then make it your own by incorporating your brand’s colors, match the font, see if there is any nuance you can include to help give a broader sense of identity.
Four: Elusive About Who You Are
When you have limited time to describe who you are, who your co-founder is, who your advisor is, etc. and only include the names with titles, you do not feel fully connected to these people just yet. By including a profile photo or a team photo, you and your team become more relatable. You are no longer defining yourself as a list, but a human. People want to know who you are. We identify with stories. This is also a great place to get creative. One VR startup included a team photo with each person wearing a VR headset, and the names were added next to each team member. This slide I saw people were leaning in on and investing time into, figuring out who each person was. If you want to stick to profile photos, that works, but when creating your slide, make sure to have some unifying or branded consistency that is apparent with all photos (i.e. photos taken from same shoot, same photo treatment, etc.).
Five: Lengthy Quotes
A common mistake is assuming people will take the time to read an entire paragraph of a quote or a testimonial. Target the most important component of that testimonial or quote and emphasize it to create a strong sense of what you are trying to convey. The impact of the testimonial will not be understood properly if you are hiding the most important part in a larger paragraph. Someone was able to have 6-8 meaningful and persuasive quotes (about 5-7 words max.) on one slide and it maintained the emphatic look, by having the most meaningful word bolded and enlarged so drastically that you saw 6-8 words that packed meaning. If you cared more about one word, you were able to read the short quoted text with ease. Showing this contrast in size helps viewers get a chance to navigate and follow along with the pitch without feeling the need to skim text to find your core message.
Lastly
After witnessing a few of these decks in action, I could immediately tell which startups had a designer, designer’s help, or at least someone with a fine-tuned understanding of design concepts, in creating the deck and which ones had someone (let’s just say) /not/ a designer put it together. The stark contrast in presentations jumped out to me as something early startups could learn from — even if their budget might not be flexible yet for an on-staff designer, it is good to know some common things to avoid. Hopefully these five avoidances were helpful for the next presentation you give to today’s over-saturated, overwhelmed HUMAN.