The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint

I suffer from something called Ménière’s disease—don’t worry, you cannot get it from reading my blog. The symptoms of Ménière’s include hearing loss, tinnitus (a constant ringing sound), and vertigo. There are many medical theories about its cause: too much salt, caffeine, or alcohol in one’s diet, too much stress, and allergies. Thus, I’ve worked to limit control all these factors.

However, I have another theory. As a venture capitalist, I have to listen to hundreds of entrepreneurs pitch their companies. Most of these pitches are crap: sixty slides about a “patent pending,” “first mover advantage,” “all we have to do is get 1% of the people in China to buy our product” startup. These pitches are so lousy that I’m losing my hearing, there’s a constant ringing in my ear, and every once in while the world starts spinning.

To prevent an epidemic of Ménière’s in the venture capital community, I am evangelizing the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points. While I’m in the venture capital business, this rule is applicable for any presentation to reach agreement: for example, raising capital, making a sale, forming a partnership, etc.

• Ten slides. Ten is the optimal number of slides in a PowerPoint presentation because a normal human being cannot comprehend more than ten concepts in a meeting—and venture capitalists are very normal. (The only difference between you and venture capitalist is that he is getting paid to gamble with someone else’s money). If you must use more than ten slides to explain your business, you probably don’t have a business. The ten topics that a venture capitalist cares about are:

  1. Problem
  2. Your solution
  3. Business model
  4. Underlying magic/technology
  5. Marketing and sales
  6. Competition
  7. Team
  8. Projections and milestones
  9. Status and timeline
  10. Summary and call to action

• Twenty minutes. You should give your ten slides in twenty minutes. Sure, you have an hour time slot, but you’re using a Windows laptop, so it will take forty 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 twenty minutes, and you have forty minutes left for discussion.

• Thirty-point font. The majority of the presentations that I see have text in a ten 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, it reads ahead of you because it can read faster than you can speak. The result is that you and the audience are out of synch.

  The reason people use a small font is twofold: first, that they don’t know their material well enough; second, they think that more text is more convincing. Total bozosity. Force yourself to use no font smaller than thirty points. I guarantee it will make your presentations better because it requires you to find the most salient points and to know how to explain them well. If “thirty points,” is too dogmatic, the I offer you an algorithm: find out the age of the oldest person in your audience and divide it by two. That’s your optimal font size.

So please observe the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. If nothing else, the next time someone in your audience complains of hearing loss, ringing, or vertigo, you’ll know what caused the problem. One last thing: to learn more about the zen of great presentations, check out a site called Presentation Zen by my buddy Garr Reynolds.

Comments

[Freelance Website Design]

One of my favorite things about linux is no powerpoint :) I am not a fan. But those who endure and use it on the regular... kudos... I doubt very hightly that you are having fun.

[Laura]

Guy, you are a genius. My family said that this couldn't be done, but I did it, and got great feedback. I'm onto my second presentation as a born again PowerPoint user!

[Jeff the Great]

I mean this in the best possible way:

of all the things that Guy has contributed to the business community, the 10/20/30 rule is the greatest.

[Arco]

This regime makes presentations better. Thanks. Still, ppt is a monologue at core - unable to adjust to a welcome, hopefully, new idea-detour that could arise between slide 4 and 5 making 6,7...obsolete.

http://www.arcocarib.com

[Loric]

That was so inspiring I think that my newspaper will turn out to be a big hit. Thank you.

[justin]

this one is here for your pleasure

http://www.easyzarabra.com

[justine]

what do you think of this one??

http://www.eubaspro.com

[Ed Grimes]

This will help me with my power point (I've committed a few of those sins in the past). It's a great tool in the hands of someone who knows how to use it. Most everyone else should stick to a flip chart and magic marker.

[Recensioni Libri]

powerpoint is useful when you must interact with the presentation or you must show some multimedia files, animated graphs and so on... if you have to pass a message sometimes is better to use the "ancient"... but useful paper.

[Sportsbook]

I feel powerpoint has completely taken the creativity out of presentations.

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[hannes]

Finally someone who also is annoyed from dozens of powerpoint slides. Some people seem that they just want to show how much they can do with ppt and forget about the audience.

[minikperi]

Gr8 post!
Where would u include finance in those slides. I tried to contain my presentation in 10 slides but that is one more slide i have to put in. Last discussion I had with some angel investors, whole meeting turned in discussion rather than power pt controlling the flow.

[vibhash]

Hie there,
Thanks for this great post, i'll indefinitely try to implement in my future presentations:)

vib.

[Wahyd Vannoni]

Best presentation on SlideShare is not the Best presentation live!

There is a fundamental mistake presentors make when using visual aids such as powerpoint. They confuse their notes (which is a roadmap to know what to say and in what order), with visual aids (which should only be used when a visual can render a concept more effectively than words).

In most presentations, the "slides" become the notes thus diminishing the value-added of the presenter.

SlideShare presentations however, do not have a presenter. Nobody is sitting next to you to comment on the slides. Therefore it OK to have more text than you would if it were a live presentation.

Nobody would think that a great TV ad could be a great radio ad and vice versa. Therefore, the conclusion is this: the best presentation for slideshare will not be the best one to present live.

[Ian Graham]

First time visitor, found my way here through the links from some local blogs.

Great post and sage words regarding power point and pitching.

I agree with the other comment regarding 0/10/20/30 modification.

Also wanted to mention a rule that has served me well called the 6X6 rule for text slides. No more than 6 bullets per page of 6 words per bullet. This way your bullets are speaking points to remind you what to say and avoid that painful reading from the slide thing.

Alternately a picture really is worth a thousand words and if you can make your point with a picture it can add variety to the presentation.

[sanateseri]

I have been making slideshows since 1970, back when it took 4 hours to make the original art for a color slide. PowerPoint is very good, and fast, for making outstanding slide shows. I agree with Guy on his approach to slide shows. Business pitches are a little different than training programs, but there is much more to developing a presentation.
Review this article I wrote regarding visual communication http://www.jrneaves.com/instructional_graphics.htm.

The biggest abuse I have witnessed is the use of "stupid" text animation and spot animations that add no value to the visual communication (i.e. "the dancing rabbit", "barking dog", and so forth.
The most important part of the presentation is the complete, expert knowledge of the subject matter by the presenter. Complete knowledge of the subject matter eliminates the need for "wordy" slides and reading the slide to the audiance from the slide, normally with your back turned to the audiance. Remember, the slide show is there to support the message and information transfer. It is NOT the message.
PowerPoint is a tool. It does not relieve the presenter of being and integral part of the presentation and message transfer, regardless of whether it is a business presentation or a training program.

[Thomas]

While 10/20/30 is might be good for making pitches, I am not sure this rule would be strictly applicable to all PPT presentations. I think specifially of presentations intent on presenting research results. For a general audience 10/20/30 would be appropriate, but for specialists one must expand that rule to 20 at most.

I would like to suggest a revision to your rule 0/10/20/30 Absolutely 0 animations/ transitions/ or sounds unless they relate directly to the presentation ... I can't tell you how annoying it is to listen to a speaker begin to bumble as they are distracted by animations they forgot about.

[Tony Zaki]

This is one of the best (and easiest) tips on presentation techniques that I've heard.

I also think and others may attest to it: Present the best you can, and if you have to, use powerpoint.

http://www.TonyZaki.com

[Brian Laks]

That was great! I wish I could have read that four years ago when I was giving powerpoint presentations (it seems like daily) at USC.

[sernak plywood]

This is good , thank you from Turkey www.sernak.com

[Rico]

...but you’re using a Windows laptop, so it will take forty minutes to make it work with the projector...

Couldn't help yourself could you?

What I like about your post is that it quantifies what makes an effective presentation, something very useful for technically-minded people like yours truly.

[Michael Vu]

Great article, and great book in "The Art of the Start."

My partner and I have found you to be an incredibly helpful resource in our quests as entrepreneurs. I hope to meet you one day to thank you and get you on our side =P.

What a great Guy (no pun intended =P)!

[Matt Perez]

For sales presentations, I follow and train people in the 3-to-5 rule:
* 3-to-5 slides
* 3-to-5 bullets
* 3-to-5 words

[Rob Llewellyn]

It's like alcohol abuse. Most people know that too much content won't do them any good and yet so many will still go out and make a bloody idiot of themselves in front of large groups of people. Some now and then; others at every given opportunity. There should be a health warning on every PowerPoint packet; "Excess content can cause hearing loss, ringing in the ears or vertigo".

[Anshu Sharma]

This rule rocks. I made a good (great?) presentation to a few execs but when they tried to read my slides, they squinted. And I knew I had broken 'the rule'.

Lesson learned. Others beware.