234 slide:ology
As a venture capitalist, Guy Kawasaki
has to listen to hundreds of entrepre-
neurs pitch their companies. Most of
the pitches are crap: sixty slides about
a “patent pending,” “first mover advan-
tage,” and “all we have to do is get
one percent of the people in China to
buy our product.” So he came up with
the 10/20/30 rule for PowerPoint. It’s
quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation
should have 10 slides, last no more than
20 minutes, and contain no font smaller
than 30 points. He believes that this rule
applies to presentations when the audi-
ence needs to reach consensus.
Kawasaki says that 10 slides is the opti-
mal number of slides because a normal
human being cannot comprehend more
than 10 concepts in a meeting—and
venture capitalists are very normal. If
you must use more than 10 slides to
explain your business, you probably
don’t have a business.
How Many Slides? Use the 10/20/30 Rule.
Problem
Solution
Business model
Underlying magic/technology
Marketing and sales
1
2
3
4
5
The Ten Topics That a Venture Capitalist Cares About
Competition
Team
Projections and milestones
Status and timeline
Summary and call to action
6
7
8
9
10
This content was slightly modified from Guy’s blog at www.guykawasaki.com.
You should deliver your 10 slides in 20 minutes. Sure, you have an hour
time slot, but you’re using a Windows laptop, so it will take 40 minutes
to make it work with the projector. Even if setup goes perfectly, people
will arrive late and have to leave early. In a perfect world, you give your
pitch in 20 minutes, and you have 40 minutes left for discussion.
The majority of the presentations that Guy sees have text in a 10-point
font. As much text as possible is jammed into the slide, and then the
presenter reads it. However, as soon as the audience figures out that
you’re reading the text, they read ahead of you. The result is that you
and the audience are out of sync.
The reason presenters use a small font is twofold: first, they don’t know
their material well enough; second, they think that more text is more
convincing. Total bozosity. Force yourself to use a point size no smaller
30 points. It will make your presentations better because it requires you
to find the most salient points and to know how to explain them well.
Interacting with Slides 235
Kawasaki’s approach challenges the traditional venture
capitalist approach of “walk softly and carry a big deck.”
This one-size-fits all approach might not work in every
situation. VCs being persuaded to part with millions of
dollars want to have some content in writing to sink their
teeth into and pass around in e-mails. Details and facts
are important to them, too—just as important as the
clarity of message.
This presentation used
images and concepts only with
few words. For the handouts
afterwards, the notes view was
printed two-up so it looked
more like a brochure and had
all the content available.
So it’s recommended that if you use the 10/20/30 rule,
put your script and supporting text into the notes area
of your presentation application. If you design your
slides and the Notes master layout well, these handouts
can be almost as sophisticated as a brochure.
On the next four pages, you’ll see other approaches to
slide count that work well under different circumstances.
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