Something a little more visual this week. We've taken Dave McClure's original "How to Pitch a VC" deck on Slideshare and zazzed it up a little bit.

Dave is the founder of the venerable 500 Startups in San Francisco. He is also an entrepreneur and prominent angel investor.

Thanks also to Tomas Bay from Slides that Rock for his guidance on all things slide deck design.

Now the deck.

In Summary

How to Pitch a VC in 10 Slides or Less (redesigned).

1. Elevator Pitch
2. The Problem
3. The Solution
4, Market Size
5. Business Model
6. Proprietary Tech
7. Competition
8. Marketing Plan
9. Team
10. Money

Pitching to a venture capital fund or angel investors can be a daunting task. Not knowing how to prepare a pitch or how to structure that pitch is hard enough without having to sweat on the presentation itself.

Hopefully this deck can help you prepare and present your pitch with more conviction.

There is no doubt that great presentations are like magic. They captivate and thrill their audiences. Think JFK, Martin Luther King, Winston Churchill, Barrack Obama (not Tony Abbot) and many others.

And great presenters are like magicians. In addition to doing an enormous of amount of preparation and rehearsal, both are reluctant to reveal the secrets behind their performance.

We can let you on a little secret today though with thanks to Tomas Bay from Hong Kong based design firm, Slides that Rock. Bay is dedicated to the design of powerful slide deck presentations for his Sillicon Valley client base.

Bay believes that you need to take into account three key elements before you begin drafting your next presentation. But first and foremost, he believes you should remember one thing: your audience is your hero.

A fatal mistake you can make when presenting to an audience is forgetting that your presentation is not about you. Who is it about then? It is about the people sitting or standing in front of you: your audience.

Without an engaged audience, you and your business, or idea, might fade into the abyss along with countless other game-changing ideas that failed to see the light of day.

With that in mind, Bay believes you then need to know three essential things about your audience, they include: 

1. Pain

What is your audiences’ pain point? Or even better, what keeps them awake at night? This will depend on the type of audience that you are presenting to. Most external presentations in the corporate world are given to one of three audiences:

• Customers
• Partners, or
• Investors.

These groups are not the same audience. They have different pain points.  You need to consider what the biggest problem is for each group.

2. Goal

Now you need to consider what your audiences’ main goal is? What do they really want? To answer this you need to consider what their biggest dream is. People respond to emotions.

Don't sell products and services, sell dreams. Click here to see Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream speech” for some inspiration.

Our key focus at IEvoke Communications is entrepreneurs and start-ups in the midst of raising capital for their business.

This group typically has to front-up to private and institutional investors who want to invest in "the next big thing" and grow their capital base. Finding the next big thing is every investor’s dream.

3. Help

Now consider how can you help solve your audiences’ main problem? Diagnose their problem then suggest how you can make their life better.  Making their life better is much more compelling than selling another everyday product or service.

Reinventing the phone

The king of the slide deck in the corporate world was arguably the late Steve Jobs. Jobs had an uncanny ability to make audience engagement appear simple and natural.

His presentations captured an audience’s undivided attention for an hour and a half or more—something that very few presenters are able to do.

Click here to see a video of Jobs’ launch of the iPhone in 2007 as a good example of a presentation that takes into account the elements outline above.

To sum up

In order to successfully connect with your audience you need to know three things about your audience:

1. Pain
2. Goal
3. Help

Write your story based on those three things, design your slide deck, deliver on stage and successfully connect with your audience. 

Thank you to Tomas Bay and Slides the Rock for sharing their presentation philosophy.

A fatal mistake you can make as an entrepreneur or executive when presenting to an audience is forgetting that a presentation is NOT ABOUT YOU! 

Who is it about then? It is about the people sitting or standing in front of you - YOUR AUDIENCE. Without an engaged audience, you and your business, or idea, are nothing. 

Before you tell your story, before you do your slides and before you go on stage, you need to know three things:

What is your audiences major pain, or even better, what keeps them awake at night? This will depend on the type of audience. Are you presenting to customers, partners or potential investors? 

These groups are not the same audience. They have different pain points.  You need to consider what the biggest problem is for each group. For investors, they want to invest in "the next big thing" and make more money.

Now you need to consider what your audiences main goal is? What do they really want? To answer this you need to consider what their biggest dream is. People respond to emotions. Don't sell products and services, sell dreams! 

How can you help solve your audiences main problem? Diagnose their problem then suggest how you can make their life better.  Making their life better is a much more compelling USP than selling another everyday product or service. 

Once you know what your audience wants decide on three things you will give them. Write your story based on those three things, design your slide deck, deliver on stage and successfully connect with your audience! 

Doing this exercise will improve the level of engagement with your audience tenfold. 

In order to successfully connect with your audience you need to know three things about your audience:

1. Pain?
2. Goal?
3. Help?

Make better presentations and have more conviction by completing these steps. Your audience will be more engaged and you will stand out from the crowd. 

For a visual representation of these 3 principles see the following slide deck from Tomas Bay, founder of a design company called Slides That Rock based in Hong Kong.