4 ms·

How to Give a VC a Hard-On [video]

45 points by peter123 18y ago

mahmud 18y ago
A whirl-wind tutorial on pitching, for sure. For the uninitiated, the company he uses as an example "ZapMeals.com: the eBay of take-out food" is/was a complete hoax. http://machinist.salon.com/blog/2007/06/22/supernova_startups/index.html http://machinist.salon.com/blog/2007/06/22/supernova_startup... http://zapmeals.com/ http://zapmeals.com/
mikesabat 18y ago
Great powerpoint. Fun theme, interesting and relevant.
charlesju 18y ago
My favorite part was (slightly paraphrased). "All great companies get you laid, paid, or made"
- davemc500hats 18y ago
  yeah, i agree... probably the high point (low point?) of the preso. btw, that came out of a tweet a month back: http://twitter.com/davemcclure/statuses/1201923856 http://twitter.com/davemcclure/statuses/1201923856
tlrobinson 18y ago
"We're eBay for takeout orders" I hate that. It makes it sound like you're so unoriginal that you just picked a random market and a random existing huge successful product/company and put them together hoping the combination will work.
- ivankirigin 18y ago
  YouTube was "flickr for video", which turned out to be gross understatement of the community potential. Even in good cases, they are horrible analogies.
  - davemc500hats 18y ago
    note: you're not trying to be perfectly accurate, and or flowery. you're trying to communicate plainly, and to keep their attention long enough to get to the next slide / next pitch. thus, sometimes taking a shortcut is imperfect, but useful. note: "X for Y" does NOT work very well if neither X nor Y are well understood for the audience. however, it can work ok as shorthand while the person "peels the onion" and gets a deeper, more comprehensive understanding of the concept.
    - ivankirigin 18y ago
      The best thing about "X for Y" is that it is 3 words long. If there is a more descriptive 3 or 4 word phrase, use it. Tipjoy could have been "Digg with Cash" but both "Makes micropayments work" and "Simple, social payments" are more descriptive.
- wensing 18y ago
  They can be poorly written, but in Crossing the Chasm http://www.amazon.com/Crossing-Chasm-Marketing-High-Tech-Mainstream/dp/0066620023 http://www.amazon.com/Crossing-Chasm-Marketing-High-Tech-Mai..., Geoffrey Moore suggests you use a phrase like this when trying to break into main stream. Doing so provides the listener with a "product alternative" beacon that helps them mentally position your offering.
- pg 18y ago
  It's just the simplest way to start the conversation, a first approximation you then refine. If you explain yourself too generally, nothing sticks in the audience's head.
  - JMiao 18y ago
    http://twitter.com/Jeff/status/1356440716 http://twitter.com/Jeff/status/1356440716
mrtron 18y ago
I just went to a conference where the CEO of SVASE explained this in great details. He said 'Make them fall in love', not give them a hard-on, but the message is IDENTICAL. Te slide deck is almost exactly the structure they recommended. What I find interesting is that these folks actually request a pitch in this structure. I guess everyone just wants a hard-on (or to full in love).
patio11 18y ago
I have a love/hate relationship with this guy. He does wonderful Powerpoint presentations. Every slide is packed with great detail. You just have to dig through unprofessional hypersexualized fratboy nonsense to get to it.
- davemc500hats 18y ago
  if that's a left-handed compliment, i'll take it ;) and i resemble that remark.
ryuio 18y ago
how about not playing prostitute to a VC - most dont have balls anyways.
- killingmichael 18y ago
  I agree it's generally best to not "play prostitute" to most anyone. However, regarding "balls": I think VCs are in the "balls business". It is a hard/risky way of making money. (Personally, this is why I'm always looking for reasons to say "no", versus why to say "yes"... I'm looking to be compelled.) Something to consider: Entrepreneurs have their one horse. VCs have their stable of horses. So, one view is: VCs don't "have balls" because they don't commit. Whereas the entrepreneurs are "all in". In this view point, the "balls award" goes to the entrepreneur because they're the ones taking the all the risk. But: the VCs aren't in complete control of their destiny. They may be backing many horses, but they're not ever truly riding one. For highly capable and smart people this also takes large balls. You have less risk per venture but not necessarily across all your ventures. Side-note: The point Dave is trying to make with his presentation is how to communicate in such a way as to get above the radar while trying to keep the VCs attention (meaning, they've stopped thinking about all the reasons to say "no" and moved to "maybes"... ) Dave is good at this - look at his presentations compared to others. Generally people don't talk about VCs and raising capital this way :)
SingAlong 18y ago
Ah! nice funny presentation. But it breaks the rule Guy Kawasaki once mentioned. Use a 30pt font so that everyone can read it and don't stuff all information into once slide. slide-4 (especially) looks ugly because of that. And he also gave out a formula (seems like he made that up), "find the age of the oldest person in the room and divide that by 2, thats the minumum size of font you can use. so unless you are presenting to 16 year olds, do not use an 8pt font". This link might also help in making a better pitch. It's just a 2min video, but a good one http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=1177 http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=1177
- davemc500hats 18y ago
  Guy's rule works great for the people in the room. However, it actually makes the experience crappy for those who are reading the slides online after, or who don't have access to audio or video. In today's example, there were about 75 people in the room. however, the slides have already been viewed by over 1300 people online (in <8 hours). So, if you're designing for the room -- use Guy's advice. However if you're designing for the vast majority of people who will read your slides online, it's probably better to include most of the core material -- and that you'd be accused of reading bullets if given in the room. so the challenge is to provide the material in somewhat complete form in the presentation, and yet still try to be entertaining/educational for the live performance. all the above aside, i make no apologies for violating almost every rule of good presentation form & guidelines. but then again, it works for me... and it's distinctive & unusual, and thus memorable. which achieves the design goal.
  - ojbyrne 18y ago
    I think that if you're designing for the people who read your slides online, you're not serving either audience - neither the people in the room (who undergo death by powerpoint) nor the people online - who are forced to look at powerpoint bullet points rather than an actual written document with sentences, paragraphs, etc.
    - davemc500hats 18y ago
erlanger 18y ago
Arousing as it may be, I'm not showing porn to a VC.

45 points by peter123 18y ago

A whirl-wind tutorial on pitching, for sure. For the uninitiated, the company he uses as an example "ZapMeals.com: the eBay of take-out food" is/was a complete hoax. http://machinist.salon.com/blog/2007/06/22/supernova_startups/index.html http://machinist.salon.com/blog/2007/06/22/supernova_startup... http://zapmeals.com/ http://zapmeals.com/

mikesabat 18y ago

Great powerpoint. Fun theme, interesting and relevant.

charlesju 18y ago

My favorite part was (slightly paraphrased). "All great companies get you laid, paid, or made"

davemc500hats 18y ago
yeah, i agree... probably the high point (low point?) of the preso. btw, that came out of a tweet a month back: http://twitter.com/davemcclure/statuses/1201923856 http://twitter.com/davemcclure/statuses/1201923856

tlrobinson 18y ago

"We're eBay for takeout orders" I hate that. It makes it sound like you're so unoriginal that you just picked a random market and a random existing huge successful product/company and put them together hoping the combination will work.

ivankirigin 18y ago
YouTube was "flickr for video", which turned out to be gross understatement of the community potential. Even in good cases, they are horrible analogies.
- davemc500hats 18y ago
  note: you're not trying to be perfectly accurate, and or flowery. you're trying to communicate plainly, and to keep their attention long enough to get to the next slide / next pitch. thus, sometimes taking a shortcut is imperfect, but useful. note: "X for Y" does NOT work very well if neither X nor Y are well understood for the audience. however, it can work ok as shorthand while the person "peels the onion" and gets a deeper, more comprehensive understanding of the concept.
  - ivankirigin 18y ago
    The best thing about "X for Y" is that it is 3 words long. If there is a more descriptive 3 or 4 word phrase, use it. Tipjoy could have been "Digg with Cash" but both "Makes micropayments work" and "Simple, social payments" are more descriptive.
wensing 18y ago
They can be poorly written, but in Crossing the Chasm http://www.amazon.com/Crossing-Chasm-Marketing-High-Tech-Mainstream/dp/0066620023 http://www.amazon.com/Crossing-Chasm-Marketing-High-Tech-Mai..., Geoffrey Moore suggests you use a phrase like this when trying to break into main stream. Doing so provides the listener with a "product alternative" beacon that helps them mentally position your offering.
pg 18y ago
It's just the simplest way to start the conversation, a first approximation you then refine. If you explain yourself too generally, nothing sticks in the audience's head.
- JMiao 18y ago
  http://twitter.com/Jeff/status/1356440716 http://twitter.com/Jeff/status/1356440716

mrtron 18y ago

I just went to a conference where the CEO of SVASE explained this in great details. He said 'Make them fall in love', not give them a hard-on, but the message is IDENTICAL. Te slide deck is almost exactly the structure they recommended. What I find interesting is that these folks actually request a pitch in this structure. I guess everyone just wants a hard-on (or to full in love).

patio11 18y ago

I have a love/hate relationship with this guy. He does wonderful Powerpoint presentations. Every slide is packed with great detail. You just have to dig through unprofessional hypersexualized fratboy nonsense to get to it.

davemc500hats 18y ago
if that's a left-handed compliment, i'll take it ;) and i resemble that remark.

ryuio 18y ago

how about not playing prostitute to a VC - most dont have balls anyways.

killingmichael 18y ago
I agree it's generally best to not "play prostitute" to most anyone. However, regarding "balls": I think VCs are in the "balls business". It is a hard/risky way of making money. (Personally, this is why I'm always looking for reasons to say "no", versus why to say "yes"... I'm looking to be compelled.) Something to consider: Entrepreneurs have their one horse. VCs have their stable of horses. So, one view is: VCs don't "have balls" because they don't commit. Whereas the entrepreneurs are "all in". In this view point, the "balls award" goes to the entrepreneur because they're the ones taking the all the risk. But: the VCs aren't in complete control of their destiny. They may be backing many horses, but they're not ever truly riding one. For highly capable and smart people this also takes large balls. You have less risk per venture but not necessarily across all your ventures. Side-note: The point Dave is trying to make with his presentation is how to communicate in such a way as to get above the radar while trying to keep the VCs attention (meaning, they've stopped thinking about all the reasons to say "no" and moved to "maybes"... ) Dave is good at this - look at his presentations compared to others. Generally people don't talk about VCs and raising capital this way :)

SingAlong 18y ago

Ah! nice funny presentation. But it breaks the rule Guy Kawasaki once mentioned. Use a 30pt font so that everyone can read it and don't stuff all information into once slide. slide-4 (especially) looks ugly because of that. And he also gave out a formula (seems like he made that up), "find the age of the oldest person in the room and divide that by 2, thats the minumum size of font you can use. so unless you are presenting to 16 year olds, do not use an 8pt font". This link might also help in making a better pitch. It's just a 2min video, but a good one http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=1177 http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=1177

davemc500hats 18y ago
Guy's rule works great for the people in the room. However, it actually makes the experience crappy for those who are reading the slides online after, or who don't have access to audio or video. In today's example, there were about 75 people in the room. however, the slides have already been viewed by over 1300 people online (in <8 hours). So, if you're designing for the room -- use Guy's advice. However if you're designing for the vast majority of people who will read your slides online, it's probably better to include most of the core material -- and that you'd be accused of reading bullets if given in the room. so the challenge is to provide the material in somewhat complete form in the presentation, and yet still try to be entertaining/educational for the live performance. all the above aside, i make no apologies for violating almost every rule of good presentation form & guidelines. but then again, it works for me... and it's distinctive & unusual, and thus memorable. which achieves the design goal.
- ojbyrne 18y ago
  I think that if you're designing for the people who read your slides online, you're not serving either audience - neither the people in the room (who undergo death by powerpoint) nor the people online - who are forced to look at powerpoint bullet points rather than an actual written document with sentences, paragraphs, etc.
  - davemc500hats 18y ago

erlanger 18y ago

Arousing as it may be, I'm not showing porn to a VC.