Presenting to VC
The other day, I had this opportunity of spending time with some start-up entrepreneurs and dreaming-to-be entrepreneurs. One of the stuff we discussed was how to present their exclusive ideas to a VC (venture capitalist), when the need comes in for more finance to continue growing. After our discussions, I looked up articles by a lot of experts in this field and finally came out with these important facts a VC needs to know, when listening to an entrepreneur. (And they must answer Who, What, How much, When, Where, How and Why)
- What is the industry you are going to operate in?
- Do you see a problem or an area which can be made better?
- Does your idea provide a solution to that problem?
- What is that solution (product or service)?
- Do you have a team? And how are they value-adding to the growth of the idea?
- What is the business model?
- What kind of technology are you dependent upon?
- What plans do you have for sales and marketing?
- Who are your competitors?
- When – do you have a planned time-line in place?
- What are your planned milestones in the plan for growth?
- How are you going to execute these plans?
- How much funding is required and why?
- “Breather”
- Why this will work?
- Why the VC should invest so much?
- Why the VC will make money?
Again, I had the opportunity of sharing with a group of entrepreneurs and I facilitated a presentation based on the above. The same was well taken and the important agreement we could all come to is:
It is easy to show a whole lot of researched, experienced, creative complex information, but a VC is not interested in that. So what one needs to do is to take all the complex information – Discover the core concepts as mentioned above – Design a presentation story (different kinds – not just PPT) around it – Deliver it with passion and confidence.
Now, we @Storypreso can do this for you and also facilitate a workshop to help you understand Why?
Visual thinking vs Linear thinking
From the time, I got exposed to the power and usefulness of visual thinking – life has indeed been a very creative one!
I could dig into my forgotten talents (got hidden during the process of education and never came to life – serving a 9-9 corporate goal-goal work-style) and find that God had indeed placed a lot of gifts in me, which I could now use to enjoy the work I do. The add-ons are that I could use visual thinking everywhere! I remember pictorially representing our marriage life – Present, what we need to do, when we need to do what, how and why – to have a much better married life – full of joy and enthusiasm and of course love!
“Whoever best describes the problem, is the one most likely to solve it” says Dan Roam in the Back of the Napkin and the best way to describe a problem is indeed through visuals, created by visual thinking.
Visual thinking has reshaped how I spend my entire day – thanks to all the ones I consider as my mentors in the area of visual thinking.
But then yes, linear thinking does have its importance and I do use it – but with the added power and potential of visuals!
Now, I am working on a workshop to help develop the visual thinking skills in individuals and groups.
And hey, here’s a neat presentation on this:
and a history and definition of visual thinking by Dan Roam at SXSW 2010.
SXSW 2010: Dan Roam on Visual Thinking from Teehan+Lax on Vimeo.
Story of Stuff
As a parent, one of the things I am struggling with is Stuff – all kinds of stuff – right from the basic water bottles we buy to satisfy thirst to the many toys and stationery we end up purchasing to build my son! Stuff is everywhere. The other day, I picked up a new table (add on Big stuff – necessary at this point of time) and then I sat down to clean (weed) the stuff on my table and in my daily use cupboard. And I spent close to 3hours finding stuff, thinking about ‘should I keep and should I not’ and then finally removing quite a bit of stuff – so I can have a cleaner, more efficient work space.
Well, my work space does look neat, but my dustbin is overflowing, and soon the contents of my dustbin will flood this earth. So what am I doing?
Thinking about all this stuff and how it became a part of my life and where it goes – brought me to this fantastic site – The story of stuff a project by Anne Leonard. It simply floored me!
Anne’s narration is crystal clear and tells the story – but what keeps me riveted to the screen are the simple visual animations that pictorially present the story. This is the power of using visual sketching with a live person narrating the story. A presentation with facts, true stories and simple visuals – speaking the fact: Content is still king, when aided by right visuals and a compelling story.
Well, it is definitely meant to address the US market – but it speaks volumes visually and I think it is high-time every country thinks about this – and works ways to reduce their dependence on stuff.
Change always starts with one person, so why don’t you start? Now! 
PS: India is definitely not spared as Anne says in the Story of bottled water, that many empty bottles find their dumping ground in Chennai. Maybe it has a tag, “From US with love” (I have not been to this dump-site, so I don’t know the authenticity of this bottled water dumping in Chennai) But nevertheless it is shocking and tells us to act Now.
Sketchcast
Today, I came across this neat tool on the web – Sketchcast. You guessed it right – it is a place to sketch and then share ideas and thoughts. And because I do believe, one can show ideas and thoughts using simple diagrams, I find this very useful. So I did register and did a few sketches – one for fun
- and two as value-add to future clients!
The tool is pretty rudimentary as of now, but I enjoyed it. My 2 wishes are for adding audio recording and music separately and for speeding-up the sketching in presentation mode. So here’s to the team at Sketchcast – Great show!
and thanks.
Visual Capture
Good and Great Presentations do get delivered masterfully, in the midst of the many boring and dull ones. But what if, those very presentations can be made more powerful, meaningful and remembered? Welcome to the special concept of Visual Capture. Here sketch-artists work at the back, capturing key messages from the Presenter and adding the right metaphors and visuals – along with meaningful patterns and flows to create a visual map of the entire presentation. Now, this entire visual sketching can be video-taped and made to speedup (as per your need), so a new audience can get the core of the audio message, relevantly brought to life by powerful visuals.
One of the organisations I admire and which has been creating wonderful Visual Captures is RSA – Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce http://www.thersa.org/
Do find below some of their commendable work.
Now, we at StoryPreso are also working to create something like this, in the near future – so the many messages of the brilliant Indian minds can be brought to life through Visual Capture.