Whether you’re DEMOing or watching, some links and key ideas for pitching.
***UPDATE: WebInno presenters and attendees, this means you too!***

Stay within the six minutes by focusing on what’s most exciting to THEM and by ending with what you want them to DO. Don’t try to show or tell all you possibly can. It’s never about tonnage. It’s about leverage. It’s the compelling core idea.

What is the point of being at DEMO? What is the ACTION you could stimulate? What do you want the audience (both there and remote) to actually DO when you finish? (stuff like: try out the product, tell someone else about it, blog that it’s a great thing, whatever…) Have a clear objective.

For those about to pitch, we salute you:

10 pitching rules to break
10 tips for pitching
Body language cheat sheet
Nail the “ah-ha moment”
Name who you help & how
Who & how part 2
Apply the “which means that” razor

• Think about the audience’s motivations, needs and interests. Connect and resonate with these needs when you demo.
• The pitch itself is never the ends (I did “great,” but so what?). It’s a business tool. To accomplish something.
• Focus on what you want to accomplish, and have a clean ending that leaves that thought in their heads, preferably 20-30 seconds BEFORE time is up, so your last words can settle in.
• Maybe the goal is to get them to come to you for a full product demo. Tell them that. Say “come to me for a full product demo.” If your 6 minute pitch touches a nerve with their interests and motivations, they will. But don’t leave it to chance.
• Don’t think that just by showing them “interesting” and “exciting” and “good enough,” they will figure out what they should do next to engage with the idea.

If you only have time to read one post, this one’s lightning fast and universally useful.

SCORECARD: Using the ideas above, tell us how DEMO pitches you saw stacked up. Who left money on the table? Who swatted it out of the park? What one thing would have made the most difference across many pitches? You can use the top 10 lists as “scorecards.”

(Inspired by Twittering with @loiclemeur this morning.)

Starting a business? Go subscribe to Marc Andreessen’s feed. Now.

So, you’re an entrepreneur. And you think you want Venture Capital. Because, you’re a venture. And you need capital. Right?

Marc Andreessen, stepping profoundly onto the blogging stage just this past week, has written an eloquent pair of posts on the truth about venture capitalists. Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here. The posts are thorough, candid and really, in a way, quite lovely in their honesty. He presents some simple and important insights about VC that any entrepreneur should consider before deciding that VC is their best capital development strategy.

There are so many misconceptions among entrepreneurs. I’ve even seen ‘us’ & ‘they’ mentalities, and a skewed focus on “getting VC investment” as the win. Um, starting and running a profitable company? That is the actual “win”? There are things that Venture Capital is good for, and others that it is not. No harm, no foul.

If you’re pursuing Venture Capital to finance your startup, then reading these posts is mandatory “understand your audience” homework.

Marc’s unblinking honesty is refreshing and educational, and is an absolute must read for anyone immersed in the capital development process. This entire passage on why a VC may turn you down, and what you can learn if many do, is just great (my emphasis added):

One, she can’t see the leverage — she can’t see you getting to a sale or IPO with a credible prospect of a 10x return within 4 to 6 years. If she can’t see this, and 10 of her peers at other firms can’t see it, then you may want to revisit your fundamental business model assumptions and try to understand what’s missing.

Remember, it’s in her best interest to see the full potential in your business — she is looking for high-potential startups in which to invest.

Two, she thinks that what you’re doing is too early or unproven.

This is the one that drives entrepreneurs nuts. Isn’t the whole point of venture capital to make risky investments in unproven technologies and markets?

Unfortunately, that’s life — sometimes things are simply too early for venture capital. In that case, develop your idea further with bootstrap or angel funding and then take it back to the VCs later with more proof points.

Three, she isn’t convinced that you’ve assembled the right team to go after the opportunity. This usually means she doesn’t think your technical founder(s) are strong enough, or she doesn’t think your founding CEO is strong enough. Again, it’s in her best interest to see the potential in the team if it’s there — so if she and 10 of her peers pass on your startup because of concerns about the team, then you may want to rethink your team.

Guys, when the fit is right, they can actually be on your side…

Finally, keep in mind:

A venture capitalist’s ideal investment is the one that would be a huge success without her.

Before you spend a lot of time and energy lining up meetings with prospective investors, be clear: Do you really need venture capital? Do Venture Capitalists need you? If both are truly a “yes” your job just got much easier. If you even think either might be a no, now would be a good time to rethink your strategy…

Attention (non-stealth) startups! Go check out Vator.TV (”the YouTube for entrepreneurs”) and then start working on a pitch for it. Is the Angel you dream of going to find you this way and end all your money problems? Yeah, right. But even if nobody ever *found* you there, this is a great chance to nail your pitch.

1. Keep it short and rock their interest (read yesterday’s post and especially the Update #2 link!).

2. Once your pitch is up, send links to interested people for some quick 411 on your deal.

3. Take a good look at what is already on the site, especially in your “space,” to get tight on what works and what does not.

4. Tag your post well so it gets FOUND.

5. Do NOT let your post go stale. When your pitch gets better, re-post, and continue to improve.

BONUS: Send advisors, investors, mom, etc. the link to your pitch and ask them for feedback!

Tip o’ the pitch podium to Tony Hung of DJI

While you have their attention, get to the point. The “ah-ha” moment. Connect them with what you’re doing and why it matters, preferably on an emotional or visceral level.The winner of a May Entrepreneur Idol pitching contest at Stanford swats it out of the park:

Linus Liang, 25, a first-year graduate student in computer science, held up a diapered baby doll. “What if I could tell you how you can save 4 million babies a year?” he asked.

Liang’s idea is to create “a low-cost incubator that could help infants in developing countries.” But put that way, how much of your attention does it grab? How motivated are you to learn more? Is that easy to grasp and file away in your memory? Do you already have opinions and emotional buy-in around low-cost incubators in developing countries, or do they just sound like they would probably be a good thing?

What about saving babies? Better yet, millions of them.

That answers “what’s in it for me” and gets right to the benefits, it connects something we know nothing about (low cost incubators) to something we value highly (saving babies), it contains an easily understood problem statement (babies are dying), and it’s all supported by a clear visual aid, the baby doll.

I saw a startup pitch a technology to “fine tune” chemotherapy — and minimize its harmful side effects — a couple of years ago. Their grabber? A young mother who beat Breast Cancer only to die because chemo destroyed her heart. That entrepreneur didn’t have to waste pitching minutes convincing us that chemo needs to be fine-tuned.

The “Rule of Thumb” (ROT) goes: you get a 30 second “free ride” of audience attention. How are you using it?

UPDATE: You really can help save babies today, please support the March of Dimes be a hero for babies…

UPDATE 2: The Google Reader Oracle coughed up this gem on pitching, via Seth Levine’s VC Adventure blog.

“Rehearsal Video” Videotape yourself practicing your next high stakes presentation. Now, watch it 3 times:

• Normal speed, normal volume
• Normal speed, no volume
• Fast Forward

Normal speed, normal volume: First, stop hating yourself. No, really, everyone thinks they sound and look weird, let it go. Do you think you got your ideas across? Good start. Do you think you meant business? Hmmm. Watch the video with someone else. Do they agree?

Normal speed, no volume: What story is your body telling? Does your movement have purpose? Do your gestures ADD to what you are doing, or distract?

Fast Forward: Who doesn’t love Benny Hill? It’s kind of fun to watch this way. But if FF elicits too many laughs, do you need to alter movements/gestures? “Funny” how glaring your quirks are, viewed like this. Watch for nervous movement, movement without a point and distracting gestures, all of which will jump out at you even better on FF.

“Performance Video” Videotape yourself speaking every chance you get. Get used to watching and learning from these tapes. Enlist a friend’s help, and ask them to write down:

• What they think you were trying to achieve
• What they can guess about who you were talking to
• Your 3 most important points
• Something you did well
• Something to improve

Well, how did you do?

Even if you don’t get up the nerve to view these recordings right away, keep at least a tape a year to review your progress.

Read this blog and you’ll see a lot about audience + objective = message, what that means, and why it’s important for ALL presentations (from an outgoing voice message to a giant keynote).

This post is about what that focus on the audience doesn’t mean.

Putting the audience “first” is not pandering. You’re not up there to please, make them like you, or even, necessarily, make them want the kool-aid you’re selling. It’s not a popularity contest. You don’t even need their approval. You need their response.

When you factor the audience into your planning, you do it strategically and you factor it together with your objective. The two play off each other and that’s what determines your message (and your approach). Yes, you look at who the audience is, what their needs and wants are, etc., but then you apply that knowledge to your goal.

Sometimes you want the audience to agree with you and repeat your ideas to others. Sometimes you want the audience to disagree with you and churn up a good debate about it. Sometimes you want them to be convinced by what you say, and others you need them to play off you and take it in a new direction.

Presenting with the audience always in mind is not about giving them “what they want,” it’s about reaching them where they are in order to bring them towards your objective. You’re showing character, not compliance.

How’s it work in practice?

Professional speakers are notorious for pride in their “audience feedback ratings”. Hint: they don’t matter. When I’m paid to speak, my job is NOT to get high feedback ratings. My job is to help whomever hired me accomplish what they hired me for, because the person who hired me is the real audience and my business objective is happy clients and referrals.

When I teach a seminar, I love building a close relationship with the participants, and hold my “audience” in high regard. But I’m not playing to the audience hoping they will end the day “really loving” the seminar they took, (or even agreeing with everything I said). My objective is for them to end up better at their jobs because they’ve become more effective presenters.

Incorporate the audience into planning your message, but remember you’re trying to give a presentation that kicks ___, not merely trying to kiss the audience’s ___.

Get to the point. Or else.

Lotsa bloggers been declaring “email bankruptcy” lately, deleting wholesale their inbox contents and publicly announcing that anyone with an important, recent email should just send it again.

Cool idea.

But it’s my blog bookmarks folder that’s outta hand. Call this is horrible, lazy blogging, but I’m doing it anyway. I’m declaring Blog Link Bankruptcy. Below is my current backlog of presentations links to blog about. Someday I will explain the more important ones, but I need this clean break for the moment… Call it trying to be less of a perfectionist.

On Presenting Well:
• Presentation Zen: The “Lessig Method” of presentation
• Ben Casnocha: The Blog: Physical Exhaustion
• Create Your Communications Experience: Five Key Principles to Great Communicating
• Power Presentations: Blaming the Pen Again
• cazh1: on Business, Information, and Technology: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Powerpoint
• Presentation Zen: Is it finally time to ditch PowerPoint?
• Presentation Zen: Is it broken?
• Presentation Zen: PowerPoint: sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying
• This one appears again under social web below, but the principles in her “proverb” are critical to great presentations!!!
• The Guardian Posts “best ever” speeches list (as mentioned on Tom Peters’ blog)VC/Startups/Entrepreneurs/Pitching:
• Who Has Time For This?: Startup Stuff For Entrepreneurs
• Boing Boing: HOWTO make a VC pitch in PowerPoint
• VentureBlog: Presenting Your Company
• VentureBlog: The Dos and Don’ts of Presenting at DEMO
• Ask the Wizard: Pitching Your Company
• Allen Morgan’s Pitching Tips for Entrepreneurs
• Feld Thoughts - The Torturous World of Powerpoint
• VC Adventure: Putting together a good venture presentation
• How to Change the World: The Entrepreneur’s New Year’s Resolution: “I Will Fix My Pitch”
• Who Has Time For This?: Practicing the Art of Pitchcraft
• Presentations that DO NOT Mean Business
• Are We Wasting $250 Million per Day Due to Bad PowerPoint?
• Seth’s Blog: Worst powerpoint slide ever used by a CEOSweller/Cognitive Load Theory:
• (People have been talking about the professor from New South Wales who is said to have recently dissed PowerPoint. He’s got some cool research, and I am working through some primary sources to interpret ideas to share with you here, stay tuned.)load.pdf (application/pdf Object)The Social Web: (”2.0?” I don’t like the term. The evolution of the web is neither discrete nor staged. I really see all this as “the web as it was meant to be/as it is becoming/as it will become”)
• YouTube - Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us Freaking brilliant must-watch video
• Micro Persuasion: Irrational Exuberance 2.0
• Blogging Starter Checklist on Squidoo
• Blogging essential for a good career

(nod of thanks to Seth Levine, Gordon Whyte and David Teten for blogging about these tip sheets when I first put them on my site)

1. Don’t say “Um.” Look, don’t freak out over bad verbal habits. Minimize them, but trying too hard can blow your cool.

2. One slide per minute. If you have even close to that we’ll hit you. You shouldn’t have anywhere near that many. Unless you know what you’re doing.

3. Memorize your speech. Recital is not effective communication

4. What you say is just 7% of your credibility. Whomever told you that owes you every penny you paid them.

5. Use your full time slot. Quality, not quantity. Be succinct. Be alluring. Make them want to follow-up.

6. End with a summary slide. End by encouraging the next steps in the process.

7. Speak up. Make yourself heard, but more importantly vary your tone, speed, volume & inflection to maintain audience attention.

8. Start by introducing yourself. You just got introduced. Open with some drama (or at least excitement) and get right to the “ah-ha.”

9. Answer every question they might possibly have. Aim to be complete, but don’t overkill. Your pitch is like an executive summary.

10. Sum the years’ experience on your team. 40+ years, wow! Does that mean 10 schmucks with 4 years’ each or 3 with 13 1/3?

11. Make your pitch into a story. “Story” is a hot right now, but be judicious. Don’t just string stories together or be contrived, use 1 (maybe 2) and use other techniques too, like comparisons to convey unfamiliar material in terms of something listeners already understand. (Oh and as always, give something extra)

(nod of thanks to Seth Levine, Gordon Whyte and David Teten for blogging about these tip sheets when I first put them on my site)

1. Get to the “ah-ha” immediately: Why is your business a great investment? What’s in it for investors?

2. Attend to audience and desired results first. Everything you say and show serves both or doesn’t belong in the pitch.

3. Cut the PowerPuke clutter – .ppt file is not “your presentation” it’s a visual aid. Keep only slides that illustrate your talk. Chuck the rest.

4. Those slides you kept? Chuck a couple more and streamline the rest. Try to read your slides from across the room. (Stuff the detail where it belongs – in an appendix of your business plan.)

5. Say something on slide titles – replace “Company History” with “Substantial Value Built” (Investors recognize a management team slide without you labeling it “Team” – use the title to tell them about your team.)

6. Prepare effectively. Practice in front of your team, in front of a camera, in front of a group of laypeople, get their feedback, refine the logic flow and try again.

7. Know your best style. Earnest, clear speaking beats stilted, overproduced and even “by the rules” reciting any day.

8. Interact with the audience. Refer to handouts, ask thought questions, make genuine eye contact. End by asking them to do something incremental like drop by the booth or website.

9. Ask yourself: How can I make it easier for these investors to do their jobs? (You’re in customer service and they’re the customer)

10. Features = characteristics (adjectives). Benefits = actions (verbs). Benefits matter the most. Know the difference.

11. Give a little something extra…