Investors don’t read business plans. Ironically though, to get your pitch together you start by by writing a business plan. No need to write a 100 page long War and Peace epic. Bullets will do. You are just putting together the skeleton of your story, ensuring that you cover the major bases.
I like to put the story into 10 sections, with each section having the content that will eventually end up on 1 slide. Check out this Guy Kawaski clip, that gives a little more detail on the 10 slide framework.
The exact order / subject of the 10 slides is not a rule, you can vary it.
Once you have the 10 sections, start condensing so that you can explain the entire story in 2,000 words maximum. Why 2,000? Well when giving a presentation, you speak at around 100 words per minute so you can deliver it in 20 minutes. Ideally aim for as low as 1,000 words.
Once you have your 1,000 – 2,000 words, you condense even more. Aim for 400 words. So why 400? Firstly, we speak on average at around 150 words per minute. So, 400 words will take you 2 – 3 minutes, about the amount of time you have for an elevator pitch. Secondly, 400 words is pretty much how many fit on one piece of A4, and that then becomes your executive summary.
Once you have these documents you can follow the pitch / tease / present procedure I mentioned in the last blog. The next blog will look at the overall structure of these 10 sections in more detail, then we’ll start breaking them down 1 by 1.
