Presentation-Secrets-Of-Steve-Jobs
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70 CREATE THE STORY<br />
The $3,000-a-Minute Pitch<br />
During one week in September, dozens of entrepreneurs<br />
pitch their start-ups to influential groups of media, experts,<br />
and investors at two separate venues—TechCrunch 50 in<br />
San Francisco and DEMO in San Diego. For start-up founders,<br />
these high-stakes presentations mean the difference between<br />
success and obsolescence. TechCrunch organizers believe<br />
that eight minutes is the ideal amount of time in which to<br />
communicate an idea. If you cannot express your idea in eight<br />
minutes, the thinking the goes, you need to refine your idea.<br />
DEMO gives its presenters even less time—six minutes. DEMO<br />
also charges an $18,500 fee to present, or $3,000 per minute. If<br />
you had to pay $3,000 a minute to pitch your idea, how would<br />
you approach it?<br />
The consensus among venture capitalists who attend<br />
the presentations is that most entrepreneurs fail to create<br />
an intriguing story line because they jump right into their<br />
product without explaining the problem. One investor told<br />
me, “You need to create a new space in my brain to hold the<br />
information you’re about to deliver. It turns me off when<br />
entrepreneurs offer a solution without setting up the problem.<br />
They have a pot of coffee—their idea—without a cup<br />
to pour it in.” Your listeners’ brains have only so much room<br />
to absorb new information. It’s as if most presenters try to<br />
squeeze 2 MB of data into a pipe that carries 128 KB. It’s<br />
simply too much.<br />
A company called TravelMuse had one of the most outstanding<br />
pitches in DEMO 2008. Founder Kevin Fleiss opened his<br />
pitch this way: “The largest and most mature online retail segment<br />
is travel, totaling more than $90 billion in the United States<br />
alone [establishes category]. We all know how to book a trip<br />
online. But booking is the last 5 percent of the process [begins<br />
to introduce problem]. The 95 percent that comes before booking—deciding<br />
where to go, building a plan—is where all the<br />
heavy lifting happens. At TravelMuse we make planning easy by<br />
seamlessly integrating content with trip-planning tools to provide<br />
a complete experience [offers solution].” 9 By introducing