TED Talk: David S. Rose on Pitching to VCs

http://www.ted.com/talks/david_s_rose_on_pitching_to_vcs.html

What is the single most important thing VC looking for when you are pitching: You
What is VC looking in You:

• Integrity
• Passion
• Experience
• Knowledge
• Skills
• Leadership
• Commitment 
• Vision
• Realism
• Coachability

The Pitch
First 10 seconds grab their attention. The rest of the presentation has to go up from there.
Go through these:

• Logical progression
• Things I know or understand
• Validators
• Things I know are not true
• Things I don't understand
• Things that make me think (take me through it as a sixth grader without patronizing)
• Internal inconsistencies (clarify if any)

Presentation Slides (Steve Jobs example)

• Good: short bullet points
• Better: just the headline
• Best: only images

Presentation suggestions:

• Use presenter mode in PowerPoint or another tool (to see a slide before/after and notes)
• Use clicker
• The handouts you give are not your presentation. The handout has to stay without presentation.
• Don't read your speech
• Never, ever look at the screen (keep the connection with the audience)

Futurist Ray Kurzweil that made a number of accurate predictions about future says "We are only 8 doublings away from it [solar enegery] meeting our energy needs". In this TED talk he explains that 8 doublings is not too far considering the exponential growth of many technologies. Below is a screenshot of logarithmic Megawatts of photovoltaic production over 1975-2007.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJsHRltEVBc

Fixing dashed line bug when pasting Visio objects into Word

To avoid dashed lines converting to solid when pasting Visio 2003/2007 objects into Word for example, follow this registry workaround: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/837294