Venture Faculty together with Jacob Dambergs strongly believe that pitching and presentation skills is an important part of any start-up process, especially when today it is done online. That is why Jacob decided to give our followers a short guide for preparing yourself on how to master on online presentation.
Practice makes perfect!
How do startups pitch in the new era?
So you have got this amazing idea that you have been working on with your friends in the garage and finally, it is time to take it to the public. You imagined yourself bringing this disrupting solution to a large audience in a startup conference, like Steve Jobs presenting the Iphone in 2007. Or meeting with the VCs in a fancy office building, with a nice view of the city and an aquarium in the meeting room, having a fun chit chat, and closing your big deal. But hey - this pandemic situation has eliminated all these in-person events, what now?
The good thing is, that the investors and potential partners are still open for business, and are more accessible than ever - in your laptop. You can pitch to the top VCs and Angel Investors in Silicon Valley, not even having to buy a plane ticket to San Francisco. The biggest startup conference’s attendees are not anymore limited to the capacity of their facility but can host thousands of interested people online.
So here are 7 tips from a professional pitch coach - Jekabs Dambergs, on how to nail your online presentation:
- Be prepared - although you might be pitching from your home, you still have to prepare as you would do for a face-to-face meeting. Getting out of the bed 5 minutes before the showtime won’t do. Be ready an hour at least prior to the presentation - get dressed, go through your speech script, make sure everything is working, prepare yourself mentally.
- Fix your environment - make sure you are undistracted in a room without a lot of background noises. Also, try to be in a place with good lighting and plane background, so no dirty dishes behind your back distract the meeting attendees.
- Get used to different conferencing tools - your meeting partner could be using a different tool than you are used to. Zoom, Google Hangouts, Microsoft Teams, GoToMeeting, or another provider. Make sure you feel comfortable with this tool and know how to use it. You don’t want to spend half an hour from the meeting asking “Where can I share my screen here?”, won’t look professional.
- Stand up - you probably wouldn’t pitch on a conference stage sitting down, neither should you in an online pitch. Arrange your workplace so that you can stand up in front of the camera. When standing, your body is more prepared to conquer stressful situations. Put a chair on a table or a couple of books to lift your laptop camera on an eye-level with you standing.
- Look at the camera - although you may want to be looking at the slides on your screen, remember, by looking at the camera, you will create more natural eye contact with the other attendees.
- Small talk is allowed - before and after your presentation, don’t just stare in the screen and wait for something to happen. Do small talk, tell a joke. You are still talking to people, not robots.
- Have a good internet connection - probably the most important one. You can be as good as you wish if your internet connection won’t be at its top game - it will be all for nothing. Test your internet speed here, it should be at least >8 Mbps download and upload. If not, you might be at risk of hearing “sorry, we just lost you”. So maybe a good internet provider at your home is a small cost for losing an opportunity.
Want to improve your presentation skills? Get in touch here or send an e-mail to dambergs.jekabs@gmail.com
