VC Presentation 10/20/30 Rule
"It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points...
Ten is the optimal number of slides in a PowerPoint presentation because a normal human being cannot comprehend more than ten concepts in a meeting...If you must use more than ten slides to explain your business, you probably don’t have a business.
The ten topics that a venture capitalist cares about are:
1. Problem
2. Your solution
3. Business model
4. Underlying magic/technology
5. Marketing and sales
6. Competition
7. Team
8. Projections and milestones
9. Status and timeline
10. Summary and call to action
Read more in this post by Guy Kawasaki. For another perspective on what a VC presentation should include, see this Brad Feld post where he identifies the following questions as being necessary to answer:
1) What is your vision?
2) What is your market opportunity and how big is it?
3) Describe your product/service
4) Who are your customers?
5) What is your value proposition?
6) How do you sell?
7) How do you acquire customers?
8) Who is your management team?
9) What is your revenue model?
10) At what stage of development are you?
11) What are your plans for fund raising?
12) Who is your competition?
13) What partnerships do you have?
14) How do you fit with the prospective investor?
15) Other
- What assumptions are key to the success of the business?
- What "gotchas" could change the business overnight? New technologies, new market entrants, change in standards or regulations?
- What are your company’s weak links?
