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Presentation (keeping investors in mind)



This Forbes article talks about some really down to earth yet easily forgotten issues when it comes to presentation. I am personally advising/supervising an international internship with "Virtualization with VMware" project.

And indeed no more than 20 slides. In fact 15 are enough. I personally prefer to address the audience (which can be an amalgam of techies, business managers, developers) on key issues which they can understand and even encourage them to raise questions. Thus keeping 2-3 minutes (max!) for each slide is more than enough.

Tom Taulli also gives an example of VMware:


Don't wax on about the mind-numbing details of your company's product or service. Focus on the two main things investors really want to know: the product's value proposition (why customers will pay for it) and the company's competitive advantage in providing it.

For example: VMware develops a cost-cutting technology that effectively turns one computer into a variety of servers--a process called virtualization. In one slide of its investor deck, VMware showed a picture of two servers combined into one computer with two servers inside. Another slide showed the improved return on investment relative to the old server approach. And a third slide showed a large corporation with little icons representing a sea of servers. The message: VMware was targeting a multibillion-dollar market. Then, VMware demonstrated its competitive advantage by focusing on its head start in technology and by stressing that its engineering team would be extremely hard to replicate.


Tom also has his own blog at Taulli.com.

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