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Bursts of Color is a newsletter for start-up leaders who work with Burst Capital. It's meant to include products, people and ideas that I think are interesting and maybe relevant for you.

Bursts of Color - The 10/20/30 Rule

Geoff Donaker

Nov 5, 2020

A few things are happening in the news this week... but I'm going to ignore that to touch on a favorite topic: tight presentations.

Guy Kawasaki's Rule for Slide Decks

As I was extolling the virtue of short presentations to my friend Sumir the other day, he reminded me of this great post from Guy Kawasaki of early Apple fame. Here's a taste:

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.

Guy Kawasaki, visiting Hobbits and talking Powerpoint (from his website)

My Two Cents

While we needn't be dogmatic about these filters, they are pretty good heuristics for most decks, whether fundraising, sales, board updates, team meetings or all hands. (For example: have some 24 point font in there? No problem. But if you find yourself with a word wall of 12 point font, bring in the editor ASAP!)