- Cover of An Inconvenient Truth
I am good at building and delivering presentations. I should be, I have literally written and presented thousands of slides in my 18-year business career. But for as important and frequent as PowerPoint presentations are in business, most people are complete amateurs. My presentations aren’t yet better than Steve Jobs’ keynotes or Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, but I’ll get there in a few more years. 
I decided to write this post after I got this feedback from a VC, to whom I had presented a couple of weeks ago:
“Jeff, your presentation was the most polished, fun to look at and interesting one I’ve seen in a long time, maybe ever. My job would be much improved if all the pitches were this enjoyable to go through.”
I hear that a lot. I work hard to make sure my presentations are interesting, entertaining and engaging. When I am done with a presentation, my audience has learned more about my company, our space and me as the CEO. The quality of my presentations gives them a window into how our company does business: we take things seriously and we know how to make a high quality product. If I don’t have the time to make my presentation a proper representation of me and the company, I don’t use slides at all…I whiteboard. The visuals of presentations are so strong that mediocre presos leave a bad aftertaste in the viewer’s mind.
Here are 20 tips to help make your presentations suck less. I will blog in detail on each point over the next month (or so):
- Don’t use PowerPoint, use Apple’s Keynote 09 ($79) even if it means you have to go out and buy a Macbook ($1000) only for making presentations. Even when I worked at a big company who dictated I use a PC, I brought my own Mac for presos. Like a carpenter, I am happy to bring my own tools if needed. Others agree with me.
- Deliver your presentation standing up. Don’t stand behind a podium. Don’t sit down. Even if there are just one or two people in the room.
- Demo your product/service first. Before you do almost anything else…demo.
- Buy a professional font family ($100-$900). My two favorites are Helvetica Neue and Gotham (Obama and Yahoo! both use Gotham).
- Don’t use defaults (particularly for PPT). No default templates. No default clipart. No default formatting for charts or tables. No default fonts. No defaults.
- Learn how to do bulleted lists correctly (note: the default formatting for bulleted text, even in Keynote, is completely incorrect). Examples here.
- Don’t use slide titles. If you do, they should say something
- Use lots of screenshots or images of your product or service (or team)
- Reisist slide animations. Use the “dissolve” transition between slides.
- Shorter presos are better. 5-8 slides is ideal. 10-20 for longer or more detailed presos. I posted details about better slides here.
- Limit or eliminate text. You are there to speak. They are there to interact and listen, not read.
- Send PDFs of your presentation, not PPTs as followup.
- Tell a story. Every presentation needs a plot (1-3 underlying points). For Al Gore, it was “The planet is in trouble, and it’s worse than you thought” and “We are to blame, but if we now we can also be the solution.” The rest of his amazing presentation were just supporting elements to that plot line of his story.
- Reduce the size of everything. As a default PowerPoint (and Keynote even) make everything too big. White space is your friend.
- Don’t pass out your slides (unless they are for a board meeting). Don’t send your presentation in advance (there are exceptions to this rule).
- Make your own color palette and stick with it for the entire presentation. Generally, you should only use 1-2 colors (plus black and grays).
- White backgrounds are best. Don’t use backgrounds other than solid colors of very subtle gradients.
- Charts: Reduce categories. Don’t use legends. Reduce font sizes. Reduce guide lines. Use one color with multiple shades. Eliminate or reduce line weights. Detailed post on this.
- Images: Clean up your images and graphics with alpha channel. Mask or crop your images.
- Use reasonable examples or comparisons. Don’t compare yourself to Yahoo!, ebay, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook or MySpace unless they are your competitor.
Update: I posted the first of the 20 detailed entries. The first is for #6: Bulleted Lists That Suck Less.
Update2: I have posted two more detailed entries, one #18 on making charts that suck less and one #10 on reducing the number of slides by increasing the fidelity/data each slide.
Update3: I have posted on #3, why you need to Demo First.
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so let’s see some examples yo!
Re: #10… I think we need to have a Bonforte vs. Lessig face-off!!
Cannot wait for the whole set of tips; certainly got value out of your first one.
But why the hell are you starting with #6?
Seconding Kalani’s request for examples….any decks you can share?
How do you get the financial stuff down to a couple slides in a vc pitch?
[...] Jeff “the Blog” Bonforte, Feb [...]
Love it Jeff. You may be able to save us all. Looking forward to what’s to come.
Jeff, i see the number of slides mentioned but can you comment about time per slide? Any points/rule of thumb? Sample slide would be cool too.
[...] Bonforte jagab taaskord mõned olulised näpunäited, kuidas esitlusi teha. Kuid minu arust ei ole probleem mitte selles, et me ei teaks või me ei [...]
Hi Jeff,
I really do enjoy this powerpoint series that you have created. It is true that most entrepreneurs still do use powerpoint because that’s the only way to go, fastest, simplest and cheapest.
Indeed it takes 2 hands to clap and I believe now with a different mindset, I will better to present better, not just in school but also at work!
[...] (Credits to Jeff Bonforte for his wonderful powerpoint tips!) [...]
Jeff, point number one is dead on. Use Keynote at all costs. It is just better. Also if you need to present over phone stop using webex. Clearslide is your best bet.
[...] am a big fan of cussing. It is the unwritten 21st tip in my 20 Tips to Making Your PPT Presos Suck Less. I learned at my first concert (Bon Jovi, Slippery When Wet Tour, Irvine Medows, April 22, 1989) [...]
[...] London Sucks (or PPT Tip #14 – Make things smaller) 3 03 2009 Tip #14 on my 20 Tips to Make Your PPT Preso Suck Less is to make things smaller. The default text, line spacing, bullets, titles, chart settings, [...]
[...] Post on White Space (see Tip 14) 24 03 2009 Tip 14 of my 20 tips to make your presos suck less is to make things smaller and leave more white space. There was a great post, White Space: How to [...]
[...] For more ideas on how to make presentations that don’t look like crap, see my post: 20 Tips to Make Your Presos Suck Less. [...]
How about some press release suggestions
wow…stopped reading after #1. go buy a macbook and keynote for presentations?? i need a facepalm emote.
Nice listing and tips. I must agree with the no. 10 tip which is my favorite. We should compare ourselves to the one which we can compete. Comparing with others which are far away should become our fantasies – but it may become our challenge and inspirations.
agree that Helvetica Neue is beautiful. to acquire it w/o breaking the bank, what are the essential faces? I would think
1. roman (base, though lighter than medium)
2. italic
3. bold
4. bold italic
linotype sells a package with these (plus thin/italic) for around $100 instead of $900 for the complete family. missing anything – condensed strikes me as a possible must-have…
Coming. I am going to post on “#6: Better bulleted lists” in the next few minutes.
Ok, Lessig’s presentations are SUPER dense and seemingly perfectly remembered. I am assuming most of us aren’t as good (and smart) as he is at rehearsing and memorizing our presentations. His are really papers that are performed with the help of some clever slides.
So, if you can pull that off, I endorse his style as a substitute to mine, certainly.
Good question. It was the one that was the most simple to demonstrate…and I could turn it out quickly.
Most entrepreneurs have too much data in about financials in their pitches. If you are Series A or Seed, you really just need to talk about the basics… cost of goods (fixed and marginal should be addressed), revenue opportunities, comparable startups (not Google), and risks to the plan. To have detailed spreadsheets is somewhat silly. There are typically too many variables. If you want to have crazy detailed modeling, then you should take that to the appendix and only address it if the detailed questions arise. If things get very detailed, I have a spreadsheet I bring up with boxes for each of the assumptions. I let the VCs assist in fine tuning the assumptions right in the meeting. Many times they have data points that are far more reliable than what you have dug up. It is very important to simply say, “We don’t know what we will be able to make on that piece yet.” In an early stage company, I learn as much from the VCs during this part of the meeting as they learn from me, I would say.
So my net advice is don’t over do it on financials for your preso. Know your costs. Understand what has been done before in terms of generating revenue. But keep an open mind and listen to what they tell you in the meeting and stay flexible. In general, the ways you attempt to monetize initially will fail, so only the nimble will survive. The VCs will be looking for this agility in their startup founders.
Mike:
This is an important point. Let me post something about this today.
Jeff
Excellent idea, Joe. I will do a full press release rewrite and hit up some of the big no-no’s (in my book). I will try to get some journalists to pipe in with their comments.
Condensed bold and condensed black are key. Light, regular and bold. I have a few more but don’t use them often. Probably you can find for around $300 I think.