We recently attended a local event called Social Matchbox at the Teqcorner office in McLean, VA. On its eighth time around, the event is getting to be quite popular with around 150 people in a fairly large conference space. It was standing room only and with the A/C accidentally turned off at 5pm, it was a “hot event”.

The event is put on by Robert Neelbauer who runs JobMatchbox.com which is a job recruiting site and is based in the DC area. It is essentially “speed dating” for startups to present their idea, say what kind of talent they are looking for and network with those looking for jobs at a startup.

It is a nice change from the tech council networking events where startups are almost non-existent and government contracting is the topic of almost everything. It is part of the cutting edge startup/web 2.0 scene that makes up what the Washington Post calls a “Twin Tech Town” with the other half consisting of the big government contracting companies. Many familiar faces in the DC tech scene where there including our own Social Media Swami, Shashi Bellamkonda, who took some great pictures which are in a slide show below.

The list of who presented had some familiar faces but many were new and their demos/presentations were all over the place in terms of style and content. Here is the list of those who presented:

- Clearspring
- AddyMate
- 100 Dimensions
- emPivot
- Contribune
- folioFN
- Freewebs
- Hireworx
- Hotpads
- iBelong
- Innovative Query
- MixedInk
- OurCoupleSpace
- Positive Energy
- Razoo
- ScriptAct
- ShareMeme
- Ubernote
- Viscape

It reminded me of the time when I was raising money for a previous startup and my work on the venture pitch. It had to be honed and scripted and tight (usually with a time limit). This event had companies whose presentations where all over the place in terms of style, content and quality. So many people have great ideas but they sometimes have a hard time communicating to the public their concept to get people excited about joining or funding their company. This is on the heels of Jason Calacanis’ e-mail to his followers about getting ready for their TechCrunch50 conference which is a direct competitor to the DEMO conference.

Now I am not here to praise or bash particular companies that presented nor do I want to be the Simon Cowell of judging presentations, but I thought it would be good to give those small business readers out there a top 10 list of things you should know if you have to present your business to people. Let’s get started:

1.) Know your audience - Are you raising money? Attracting talent? Selling to potential customers? Tune the presentation accordingly

2.) Show your product in the first 60 seconds – This is from Jason’s list and it is critical you show people you actually have something. The best presentations of that event were where the team dove into the product to wow and amaze people.

3.) Take less that five minutes to demo – Again, from Jason and it is important because you don’t want to show them every single feature and have their eyes glaze over

4.) Leave them wanting more – This follows up Jason’s previous recommendation because if they like it, they will reach out to you and it will be up to you to reel them in.

5.) Use the 10-20-30 rule – This Guy Kawasaki’s rule from his book “Art of the Start” which should be required reading for any entrepreneur. It is essentially 10 slides, 20 minutes and 30 point font. Easy to remember, hard to actually do.

6.) Don’t use just bullets! Mix it up! – Bullet presentations are weak and most people read the slide. Incorporate pictures, graphics and keyword text to get your point across.

7.) Know your market inside out – Don’t do the “It’s a $1 Billion market and we will get 1% of it”. People will throw you out. Investors will want to know that you understand how the market is comprised, what really you are a part of and how much you can reasonably acheive.

8.) Know your competition inside out – Investors and customers want to know it from different perspectives but in the end they want to know that you have done your homework and have a product that is better than anything out there on the market today and the foreseeable future.

9.) When you don’t know something, be honest – I have seen people make stuff up on the fly or say “we can do that” when there no way they can. If you don’t know something say “let me think about that for a minute” or “I don’t know at the moment but I can find out and get back to you”.

10.) Practice, practice, practice – You would think this last one would be obvious but many people spend so much time working on the presentation they never practice it and go in cold turkey. Their speech sounds studdered and their transitions are clumsy. People may think that if you can’t do this well, how good is your product and can you really do what you say you can do?

This list could probably grow to +100 tips but I recommend everyone to read sites like PresentationZen.com for tips on general presentation style. So get started. The only way you are going to get better is if you get out there and start doing it.