The Only 10 Slides You Need in Your Pitch: A Review

In 'The Art of Pitching' we discussed how to hook your audience with an introduction. But a business pitch is the sum of all its parts. What do you do now that you have the audience’s attention? Guy Kawasaki, author of 12 books and chief evangelist of Apple, preaches the “10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint”. He believes that a pitch should have 10 slides, presented in 20 minutes with a font of 30 on each slide.

Why, you may ask?

Kawasaki explains that no meeting should exceed ten concepts, thus the ten slides. He adds that even if you get an hour to give your presentation, 20 minutes is the optimal time. His reasoning is that the hour will be drained in setting up your computer and leaving time for discussion. Our analysis though is that you don’t want to lose the audience. As we discussed in part one, a short time slot allows you to be more focused on the absolute essentials, helping you scrape away all the unnecessary add-ons to present the core of your business.

Finally, Kawasaki states that the 30-point font size challenges you to keep your slides simple and free from overly crowded text. This prevents the audience from reading the slides rather than listening to you.

What are the only 10 slides you need in a pitch?

In the infographic above, Guy Kawasaki illustrates what the 10 slides should contain.