My presentation slides:

pitch presentation Lauren Gilmore

pitch presentation Lauren Gilmore

This week it was time to give a presentation and pitch my idea that I had been working on. Now that I had my idea, completed user research and competitor analysis, it was time to put together my presentation slides.

The Slides

To begin, I knew I wanted my opening slide to be strong. I wanted to give the audience the overall goal of my project and intrigue them to want to find out more. The opening slide says, “Giving thousands of people more confidence”. It is quite a vague statement, so it makes the audience think and grabs their attention. The design of the slide is also very simple using black text on a white background.

When approaching the other slides, I did some research into what should be included in a pitch. I then wrote a list of what information I wanted to include:

• Opening slide: short sentence of the overall goal
• Problem: Facts and statistics on public speaking
• Solution: My idea, the features of the app, and how it will help people
• User Research: Survey results backing up why it should exist
• Target audience: This shows how big the target market is
• Competitor analysis: Brief look into how other companies have approached this.
• Competitive advantages: How this app will be better than others
• Sales: How we will make money
• Recap

 

I found creating this list very beneficial as I could organise the content I wanted to include and make sure the order of it ran smoothly.

Overall, all my slides are very simplistic and are image-led. This prevents the audience from having to read lots of information and instead they can focus on what I am saying. The images also keep them engaged.

 

Practicing

For the pitch to go well, I needed to prepare. To do this, I decided to write a script including everything I wanted to say. At first, this was quite detailed to make sure I didn’t leave anything out.

The more familiar I became with the script, the shorter it became as I could remember what I wanted to say more easily. Eventually, I was able to go through the whole presentation without having notes to read off. This was important to me as I wanted to seem confident in what I was saying and engage with the audience.

I practiced saying the presentation out loud to practice timings etc and I managed to stick to the 5-minute goal. I also practiced in front of my friends and family, to become more familiar with presenting and the added pressure. This was very beneficial.

Another thing I did to prepare was to have a PDF version of my PowerPoint in case there were connection issues. I also had a backup of it on a USB. This took some pressure off as I knew there wouldn’t be any issues regarding this.

 

Final Thoughts

Before doing the presentation, I was quite nervous. However, after watching other people’s presentations and being in a relaxed environment, my nerves calmed down. The feedback that I got was positive. I was told that I came across as confident and that my idea was good and something that people would use. The only concerns were that it would be a big project and that there are some competitors I would be up against. Overall, I am happy with how it went and I feel more confident in my presentation skills going forward.