Pitching To VCs? Be Careful With Your PresentationPitching To VCs? Be Careful With Your Presentation

Author: by Staff

In 2007, Justin Hall co-founded GameLayers, a company with an ambitious plan to transform web surfing into a massively-multiplayer online game, using a Firefox toolbar. GameLayers took on $2 million in funding and developed this toolbar game PMOG / The Nethernet... before switching, too late, to Facebook games, and ultimately shutting down in 2009. Of the VC pitching experience, former GameLayers CEO Gamasutra's latest featureHall writes: "I started off with a stupidly fat slide deck. I thought it was important to walk through people through the idea, the history of the idea, the market context, the team, the upside, the plans." "But a rigid linear presentation was anathema for busy people who have seen a ton of pitches. Each VC had their set of questions and usually couldn't sit through more than three slides." "We learned to show fewer slides, and then just talk with potential investors. Often these were smart folks with experience building companies, so we had a lot to learn. At best, it was a good conversation, when we learned to relax on the formal presentation." "We kept a stack of slides in our appendix; if they asked about 'competitor products' or 'projected burn rate & operating expenses' or 'DAU versus MAU over the last three months' we could pull those up." Links to Hall's slide decks from these pitch meetings are included in the full feature. The full, in-depth piece, in which the current Ngmoco director of culture and communications takes us through the entire lifespan of his company, is Gamasutra's latest featurelive now on Gamasutra.