Monday, October 26, 2009

The art of pitching and presenting

I had an opportunity to hear an awesome lecture last week by Ken Zolot in 6.078. The topic of the class was pitching and presenting. Ken started with "Zolot's law of three nines". Per the law, Ken explained it takes 9 seconds for a person hearing the presentation to develop a gut feel, 90 seconds to hear an elevator pitch and 9 minutes to get the gist of the presentation.

I picked up several very useful tips:

- The well written headline must be terse yet descriptive

Example of a good headline: "Yahoo's profits triple despite sales decline"
Example of a bad headline: "Something went wrong in plane crash, experts say"

- Slides distract the audience from what the speaker is saying. To get the audience's undivided attention, blanking the screen is a good idea. The keyboard shortcut to mute the screen is "b" (blank the screen?)

- If the slides in a ppt are numbered, simply key in the page number followed by enter to jump to the slide. Not only does it make navigation easier, it conveys the impression that the speaker is an expert on the subject matter if they can jump to the right slide, without needing to scroll through and scan each slide.

- Skip the table of contents and use an executive summary instead.

- Be aware of what's on the screen during breaks and Q&A. Use this opportunity to display slides that could not be presented within the time constraints of the main presentation, and perhaps strategically nudge the conversation in the right direction.

- Anticipate questions and discuss them before they're vocalized. This makes the presenter appear knowledgeable and thoughtful, and lends extra credibility. For example: "One question you might have at this point is.... what we did to address this is..."

- Know how to say "I don't know" gracefully, and never say "it depends" which is a typical b-school response. One way to do this gracefully is to say "We haven't explored that option yet".

- Margin analysis is a great way to share information about cost advantages from multiple sources over a competitor's operations. It's much easier to absorb, and makes for easy comparison.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Rich Miner @ MIT

Rich Miner of Android - Google fame spoke to us at Founder's Journey on 10/13. It was a lively discussion on the future of Android vs. other platforms, and the stakes riding on Android's success. It was followed by a Q&A session, some of which I managed to capture below:

He was asked why Google does not build cell phone handsets. He responded "Our goal has never been to monetize handsets or Android. Instead of one perfect handset, consumers will have a pretty broad set of excellent handsets. If we can achieve this, we will have succeeded." Quite a contrast to Apple which perfected one widely acclaimed handset. It's a very different mindset - one vs. many, closed to the point of being paranoid vs. fully open, seeking complete control over the user experience vs. come, build and make the experience what you will, lock in with a single carrier vs. freedom to choose your favorite carrier and handset...

When asked how does one know they're a bright entrepreneur with a compelling case, Rich's instant response was "if you don't know that about yourself, you're not going to convince anyone else of it". Well said! He then expanded on it: "We never fund ideas, we fund teams we believe in. The teams we choose to fund have a decent idea that is defensible, that they can get to market, in a reasonable amount of time".

Some other thoughts Rich shared:

- In order to build a capital efficient business, the key is to assemble the right founding team so the idea can be moved along as far as possible before money needs to be raised.

- When the business model is unknown, present an investor with different options - a systematic and realistic process for how you are going to evaluate each opportunity to zero in on the business model that's the best fit or the company.

- When deciding who to raise money from, think of geography (VCs have strong local network), and expertise within the firm.

- On the value of east/west coast start-ups for a web/IT company, it is eventually a personal decision, combined with a knowledge of how effective you can be with your own network.

The constant refrain was "Know thyself!" - whether it be self-confidence in one's capabilities and ideas, knowing the markets and industry one's trying to play in, or, knowing what it takes to assemble a winning team.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Joe Hadzima @ MIT

Joe Hadzima visited us at Founder's journey on 09/30. One piece of wisdom he shared particularly intrigued me:

One reason companies fail is because they raise too much money too soon.

He explained that too much money encourages hiring mistakes - overstaffing with people with a specific skill set, which is not what is required for taking the eventual product to market. He also pointed out it causes unnecessary dilution, and distracts from the goal of selling to customers as quickly as the company can when a company is overly cushioned.

I had not thought about potential hiring mistakes as a fallout of too much money, so this was eye opening to me.