Presentation Guidelines
If you are selected to present to the Screening Committee, we suggest putting your slides in the following order (although this is not mandatory, you should have a good reason for doing it some other way):
- Company Title Page – with the name and logo of the company, the name and title of your presenter, a one-line description or tag line about the company, and the dollar amount of the round you are raising
- Business Overview – boiling down your elevator pitch to two or three sentences or bullet points
- Management Team – talent & experience, with one line background on each member
- Market – what is the environment, how big are the segments, what are the pain points
- Product – how do you solve the pain, and what exactly do you do. This can be illustrated with a clear product or screen shot, or a simple process diagram, but if we don’t know what you do, we won’t know why we should fund you. (But don’t spend too much time on this)
- Technology – brief description of Unique IP, patents
- Business Model – who pays, how much and from where, annualized revenue streams
- Customers – how many, who are they, distribution process, attracted, retained
- Strategic Relationships – if you have any, make sure we know about them
- Competition – who and how threatening, what are differentiation factors
- Barriers to Entry – how will other competitors be kept at bay
- Financial Overview – top line revenues and expenses, EBITDA, two years back and four years out
- Potential for Business/Use of Proceeds – where will money take you
- Capital Structure & Valuation – how do you come to the number & current investors
- Review – summary of what you said, same order, narrowed to five or six points
- Your Contact information
The Presentation
If accepted to present, here is what we will expect:
Slideshows with approximately 12 – 16 slides are generally most effective. Use the limited time you have for your presentation to emphasize the compelling factors about your investment opportunity and save unnecessary technology details for future meetings. The following guidelines are provided to you as a suggested format. You will have 10 minutes to present and 10 minutes for Q & A.
Your goal is to offer a high-level, summarized view of the company, to excite investors. Keep the following points in mind:
- A presentation is not a business plan on screen
- Only one to two speakers, no more
- Slides should contain concise ideas, not sentences
- No more than 5 bullet points per page
- A clean, sans-serif type face (such as Arial) in at least 24 point is easiest to read
- Dark background with white letters is an easier read on the screen
- Minimize the use of bullet points, check marks, boxes, non-information symbols
Be prepared to bring handouts of your presentation to the Screening Meeting.