The presentation was doomed to fail given our guy Peter insisted on using PowerPoint.
PowerPoint is a hot mess. If you’re using PowerPoint live and in-person, you end up twisting back and forth between your audience and the projection like you’re doing some throwback ‘80s aerobic workout as you spasmodically poke your finger at your work that is now displayed for all the world to fall asleep to.
If you’re screen sharing on ZoomTeams forget about it: your audience turns into these teeny teeny squares so there’s no way to read the room despite the fact you know they are falling asleep because you’re using PowerPoint.
Note: several scientific studies conducted on South Padre Island proved a direct corollary between the launching of a PowerPoint presentation and the spontaneous production of Melatonin, Adenosine, GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid), and Glycine by audience members’ svelte bodies. It’s a fact.
Seriously, once PowerPoint shows up, it’s just over thanks to an autonomic response by all victims of the presentation: eyes glaze over while brows furrow in a pathetic attempt to mimic concentration as they daydream of doughnuts or coffee or coworker sex or all three at once.
So we were like, “Peter, come on man. PowerPoint? And why do you have custom animations and morph transitions and weird sound effects baked into this thing? They’re not even relevant. Don’t do it.”
But he did it. The worst part is the first 45 minutes of the presentation were on himself. Family, friends, upbringing, hobbies, college, first job after college, major accomplishments across his career, etc. Oh man.
We think it’s because Peter is getting a divorce so his head’s not in the game. Apparently he’s been having a series of torrid affairs with (exclusively) FedEx/Kinkos store employees for years. When his wife finally had enough and cut the cord, his response was, “So, you’re divorcing me for infidelity and what else?” As in, he was confused that she wasn’t listing all the other reasons why she should leave him.
Okay, maybe Peter’s head is not in the game all the time. Come to think of it we vaguely remember him telling us he was laid off a few years back and to solve for the income problem Peter asked his father-in-law if he could start getting paid to be married to his daughter. And he hangs dryer sheets on his desk. And he frequently describes himself as European even though he’s originally from Denver.
Thus the failed presentation could be the result of the cataclysmic combination of Peter and PowerPoint. But it’s a real bummer given this was our first attempt to reignite venture capital interest in our various schemes. It turns out AI-everything is siphoning off venture capital dollars from other sectors (ours is down 17% compared to 2024), with the biggest culprit being McDonald’s launch of AI Chicken McNuggets, despite the fact no one knows what exactly an AI McNugget does. But the venture capital pullback is no surprise: venture capitalists are the business equivalent of a The Bachelorette contestant.
Which is more reason not to lull venture capitalists to sleep with PowerPoint. Good heavens, do anything else: Excel sheet, animated video, cartoon strip, fake late night talk show interview/question and answer session, or better yet, pretend like your Tony Robbins and deliver some motivational speaking for Christ’s sake. There’s got to be some Barnum involved, some showmanship, some reason for audience to want to work with you or support your idea or at the very least cheer you on and want to take you out for a drink afterword in their McLaren 720S.
Imagine that world: presentations with no bullet points, no ridiculously broad statements, no assumptions, no evidence-free assertions, no fact-free analysis, no bar graphs or pie charts no one’s going to look at, no back-turned-to-the-audience or teeny tiny Zoom versions of Hollywood squares. It’s a magical world, because it’s just you, and your idea.
Besides, you can provide the bar graphs and pie charts later. The rest you should throw out because it’s meaningless. Which brings up the point that none of this is the fault of Microsoft PowerPoint® (we just got a call from the Executive Assistant to their Chief Legal Officer), but rather the fault of a system that doesn’t prioritize getting all the facts straight in the first place.
As for Peter, he’s still got his gig here, and while some might think it wise to ban him from future presentations, that won’t be the case. He’s enrolled in our new (MANDATORY FOR ALL EMPLOYEES) internal training program, Spiritual Combat, which teaches people how to communicate ideas, a.k.a. “present.” A skill of its own that is tragically left out of 99.9% of both higher and lower education curriculums, not to mention continuing education curriculums for professional development within organizations.
It’s crazy.
As is the fact that for some reason athletes and musicians and actors and dancers and the like PRACTICE all the time, but nobody else does. So we made that mandatory too: we practice presenting Monday-Wednesday-Friday, and making decisions Tuesday-Thursday. Then in the summer we do two-a-days like were a high-school football team in Gilmer Texas.
But don’t worry, we make it fun. People get orange slices at halftime and everything. Because thinking straight is hard work, but it’s the only way to get in the rhythm that lets you scale.
You should totally try it out.