1. Explain what you’re doing.
“They will get very frustrated if instead of telling them what you do, you make them sit through some kind of preamble.”
2. Get rapidly to demo.
“A demo explains what you’ve made more effectively than any verbal description.”
3. Better a narrow description than a vague one.
4. Don’t talk and drive.
“Have one person talk while another uses the computer. If the same person does both, they’ll inevitably mumble downwards at the computer screen instead of talking clearly at the audience.”
5. Don’t talk about secondary matters at length.
6. Don’t get too deeply into business models.
“Don’t go into detail about your business model, because (a) that’s not what smart investors care about in a brief presentation, and (b) any business model you have at this point is probably wrong anyway.”
7. Talk slowly and clearly at the audience.
8. Have one person talk.
9. Seem confident.
10. Don’t try to seem more than you are.
“If you’re a hacker and you’re presenting to experienced investors, they’re probably better at detecting bullshit than you are at producing it.”
11. Don’t put too many words on slides.
12. Specific numbers are good.
“If you have any kind of data, however preliminary, tell the audience. Numbers stick in people’s heads. If you can claim that the median visitor generates 12 page views, that’s great. “
13. Tell stories about users.
14. Make a soundbite stick in their heads.
“In Hollywood, these phrases seem to be of the form “x meets y.” In the startup world, they’re usually “the x of y” or “the x y.” Viaweb’s was “the Microsoft Word of ecommerce.”“
