How not to pitch

How not to pitch!

Lunch ‘N’ Learn Sessions

by

What do you think a pitch is?

a) A technical presentation

b) Business Model presentation

c) Product Presentation d) Speech

NO!

YOU ARE!

Inspire Emotion Empathy Sell our vision

Art, not a Science

So, I want to talk about

Lessons I’ve learned the hard way

10 slides to an awesome pitch

Teaser1

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Problem

Solution

Market

Business Model

Technology

Competition

Marketing Plan

Team

Investment

Boring!

Today I’m going to tell you a story

The story of how I learned to pitch

THE HARD WAY!!!!

2013: Pope Francis just became the 266º Leader of Catholic Church

2013: The first 3D printed artificial ear was created

2013: SLBenfica, my football team just lost every every final (championship, cup and Uefa cup) in just one week.

2013: I was finishing my masters degree un University of Coimbra, doing my thesis and at the same time I was working in a Company called ISA

CEBT 2012: To improve my experience and know a little more about entrepreneurship I decided to register in a 3 months Program on Technology based entrepreneurship or CEBT

From january 30 to may 17, 2013

CEBT 2012 – January 30, 2013

CEBT 2012 – March 21: we needed to present the preliminary results of our project in a Public Session

CEBT 2012 – May 17: We had our final pitch presentations for Business Angels and investors

Not me!

Seven? More like 10 sins for bad pitching…

PITCH?!

1) Confusion: Know the critical point of your presentation, the main message you want to share with your audience. Based on that, create a set of slides with just one concept that contributes to your presentation and message.

1) Confusion: If the slide/graphic cannot be explained in 3 to 5 seconds, should not be there

1) Confusion: Be simple… So simple that without me the presentation doesn’t work… Slides don’t say shit, you should say!

2) Concealing: You should not hide behind your slides… Don’t put all the information in your slides so you can go to second plan. This is a mistake!

2) Concealing: You are the key element of your presentation. What differentiate your presentation from others is YOU, not the slides! Communication with the public is critical, look at the public and not to the presentation.

3) Ignorance: Know the people in the audience… Do your homework and know who you are presenting to, this is the only way to create a presentation that can transmite the message to your target audience

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4) Not shutting up: Pausing our speech allow us to think and give time to the public to absorve our message… Moreover pausing creates anticipation and maintain the public hooked!

5) Reading: avoid notes… your body language is an important part of your communication!

6) Complexity: Pitch presentations are not about explaining complex concepts… You must keep it simple otherwise you will create noise to your message.

6) Complexity : Use power point to explain complex processes its like using radio to show a video… DOESN’T MAKE SENSE!

Don’t use spreadshits, yes, it’s well written

7) Bullet Pointing: bullet points are not supposed to be used in presentation…you should not present your message as a shopping list…

Bullets are for guns, not for presentations

8) Deceive: Don’t try to deceive your audience and conceal potential risks and problems of your business… People in the audience are probably much more experienced and intelligent than you, so understand what the risks of your business are and share with your public, so they can know you already though about it.

9) Grumpiness: Smile… show that you are proud about your work, that you have passion… Is the best way to create empathy with your public.

10) Be prepared: This is the best way to avoid a bad presentation

Selling is not the coolest thing to do, but is damn important!

You need to sell to investors, clients and most of all to your first employees, you better be good at it! You have to sell them your vision, because startup life is not easy for you and your early employees.

Wrap up: Poor design is a turn off for investors, it will confuse your company's value from the very beginning

Wrap up

AVOID NOISE… NOBODY LIKES NOISE

Wrap up: Use a remote-control device to advance your slides and builds. A handheld remote will allow you to move away from the podium.

Wrap up: Remember the “B” key

If you press the “B” key while your PowerPoint slide is showing, the screen will go blank. This is useful if you need to digress or move off the topic presented on the slide. By having the slide blank, all the attention can now be placed back on you. When you are ready to move on, just press the “B” key again and the image reappears.

Wrap up: A personal story is the best way to keep the public hooked on you! We should tell our personal stories to create emotion in public and empathy.

Wrap up: Don’t be on the 99% presentations that suck.

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But first, here’s a little heads up …

Whitesmith We are a web and mobile product development studio founded in 2013 and based in Coimbra (Portugal) and London. From Devops and Internet of Things to Web & Mobile apps, we converge into solving real problems with great user experience. We are more than simple designers & developers - we are na empowered team of problem solvers.

Lunch ‘N’ Learn

Each Friday, a member of our team shares a topic of his interest, whether it’s something related with technology, business or even life-hacking. This is our way of learning something new each week and sharing a little bit of ourselves. Now we are sharing some of our knowledge with you! However, since it’s a spoken presentation, it’s natural that some information is missing from the slides. So take it with a grain of salt.

This Lunch ‘N’ Learn session was hosted by João Nogueira

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Based onSlides that Rock, How to pitch a VC, redesigned http://www.slideshare.net/slidesthatrock/how-to-pitch-a-vc-redesigned

Slides That Rock, 10 beliefs about presentation design http://www.slideshare.net/slidesthatrock/10-beliefs-presentation-design

Blue Lobster, How to pitch an angel http://www.slideshare.net/slidesthatrock/how-to-pitch-an-angel

Forbes, 11 Presentation lessons you can still learn from Steve Jobs http://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2012/10/04/11-presentation-lessons-you-can-still-learn-from-steve-jobs/

The Next Web, If you haven’t seen Dave McClure’s ‘How to pitch a VC’, now’s the time http://tenextweb.com/insider/2011/12/28/if-you-havent-seen-dave-mcclures-how-to-pitch-a-vc-nows-the-time-video/

Pitch Deck Collection http://alexanderjarvis.com/blog/2015/05/19/pitch-deck-collection-from-vc-funded-startups/