What To Include In Your Startup Pitch Presentation

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This piece is derived from David S. Rose speech at this TED Talk. David Rose a serial entrepreneur turned serial investor is also the CEO of Gust.

So let's run through the things you've got to include in your presentation (pitch). Well, first of all, start out.

None of these big, long-titled slides with blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and I'm presenting to so-and-so, such-and-such a date. I know the day, I know who I am, I know you're presenting. I don't need all that.Just give me your company logo. I look at the logo, and it sort of ties it to my brain. And then I come back to you. I'm focused on you, OK? You do that, you give me your quick 15-second or 30-second intro, grab my attention. And then you want to give me a quick business overview. This is not a five-minute pitch. This is, you know, two sentences. "We build widgets for the X, Y, Z market." Or, "We sell services to help somebody do X." You know, whatever. And that is like the picture on the outside of a jigsaw puzzle box.That lets me know the context. It gives me the armature for the whole thing you're going to be going through. And it lets me put everything else in relation to something you've already told me.

So there you go -- walk me through, show me who your management team is. It's helpful that you've had experience and you've done this kind of thing before. And I want to know the market -- the size of the market. Why is this market worth getting at over here? I want to know your product, and that's very important. Now, this is not a product pitch, not a sales pitch. I don't want to know all the ins and outs,and the gazuntas and the yaddas and stuff. I just want to know -- what the heck is it? If it's a website, show me a screenshot of your website. You know, don't do a live demo. No, never do a live demo. Do a canned demo, or do something that lets me know why people are going to buy whatever it is.

Then I want to know -- now that I know what you're selling, tell me how you make money on it. For every X you sell, you get Y, you do your services of Z. I want to know what the business model is on a sort of per-unit basis, or for the actual product that you're selling. I want to know who you're selling this thing to,in terms of customers. And I want to know if you have any relationships that are going to be special to help you. Whether you have a distribution relationship with somebody, you know, you have a producing partner. Or, you know, again, validation. This helps to say you're bigger than just one little thing over here.

Startup Turkey also hosted David S. Rose and below is his talk at the conference.

https://vimeo.com/121111560

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