One of our teams at the semi-finals in Novosibirsk had to learn the principles of mobile development from scratch in order to complete the task at the hackathon. To our question “How do you like this challenge?”, they said that the most difficult thing was to fit into five minutes of speech and a few slides what they had been working on for 36 hours.
Publicly defending your project is difficult. Even more difficult is to talk about him little and to the point. Aerobatics - to resist and not insert into the presentation everything that you think about it. In this post, we will tell you where it is appropriate to use memes with Elon Musk in a presentation and how not to turn your pitch into the fuckup of the year (which is also useful).
How to arrange slides
Remember how my grandmother said: they meet by clothes (maybe only my grandmother said that). The presentation is clothes, that is, the general vision of your project. Almost 80% of the hackathon participants postpone its preparation until the last moment and then do it in a hurry, just to be in time for the last checkpoint. As a result, slides become a graveyard of memes, pictures, jumping text and pieces of code. You don't have to do that. Always remember that your presentation is the blueprint for your pitch, so it must be structured correctly and logically.
The winner of the Moscow hackathon, the Sakharov Team, recommends setting aside about three hours for the presentation and speech rehearsal.
Roman Weinberg, team captain: “Each hackathon is unique in its own way, and so is the path to victory. One of the key factors is choosing the right track, it's different for everyone. Before the presentation, you should use every opportunity to explain the essence of the project and demonstrate the result to those who will evaluate you. Communication, as a rule, takes place in three stages: you throw ideas and, together with experts, discuss their advantages and disadvantages - then the first concept appears; then you continue to work and think better about benefits, monetization and code and show the experts something that already works - this demonstrates that you can do what you are talking about. The last stage before the presentation is to show the result of your work. This is important, because now the jury knows your project more deeply and sees the work done, which will help them evaluate you. The presentation needs to maintain a balance between holding the attention of the audience (must be ignited) and presenting the essence of the project (without missing important details). As real hackathoners say, any project can be explained in three sentences, so 5 minutes is a tough but necessary framework accepted all over the world.”
It's great if your team has a designer - he will create a design, help align all the elements, visually structure the ideas of the team and maintain the correct ratio of memes to the number of slides.
Separately, about memes. Everyone loves Elon Musk jokes, digital transformation and funny pictures. It is appropriate to insert them somewhere at the beginning of your presentation to play with the problem that your product solves, or to introduce the team. Or at the end, when you need to relax the audience a little after the heavy content of the presentation.
Here is what the jury expects to see in your presentation:
- information about the team - name, composition (names and qualifications), contact details;
- task and description of the problem (from here Elon Musk can wink);
- description of the product - how it solves the problem, who is the target audience;
- context, i.e. market data (several facts that confirm the problem and the relevance of the solution), whether your solution has competitors and why you are better;
- business model (memes about Dudya are still relevant);
- technology stack, links to Github and demo if available.
Pitch in front of the jury
There is an expression that well done job needs well done report. No one will know about your brilliant idea if you don't know how to talk about it. Usually at hackathons, up to ten minutes are given to present the project - without preparation at this time it is really difficult to fit all the key points.
Be sure to rehearse
Often hackathons are won by teams not with the best solution, but with the best presentation. If you are going for the first time, then you can practice on some already launched project - at the same time you will understand who is the most talkative in your team and knows how to respond to uncomfortable questions (and they will definitely ask you).
What might be asked:
- what is your business model?
- how will you attract customers?
- how are you different from companies X and Y?
- how is your project scaling?
- what will happen to your decision in the harsh Russian reality?
It is better to choose a “talking head” in advance - it is better to unload this person a little on the last day of the hackathon so that he has time to prepare. You can speak together - for example, to separate the business and technical parts. Crowding the whole team on stage is not worth it - you will only get a defocus of attention and awkward pauses when answering questions. But you can run out to the award
Be sure to rehearse, preferably several times, think over the answers to potential questions and negatives. Think about what advantages of the solution you want to emphasize and how best to present them, add them to the presentation. Come up with a couple of jokes.
“My team and I went through twenty hackathons, in 15 of them we were in the TOP-3 or in a special category - we won in Russia, Belarus, at the main European hackathon Jinction in Helsinki, in Germany and Switzerland. We learned a lot from them - we began to better understand how to evaluate and study markets, to master new technologies faster. If we talk about the presentation, always try to rehearse, speak the text many times in front of colleagues, analyze questions, find the strengths and weaknesses of the product. Everything may not go as planned, and this is the whole interest - to find a way and a way, even if you do not win, you leave with new knowledge and acquaintances.
But leave room for improvisation - don't be afraid to go wrong or use unrehearsed words.
Come up with a chip
We start all speeches with the phrase: “Hi, we are the Sakharov team, and we made a bomb
A hackathon is always a bit of rock and roll. Gestures, storytelling are good (our consumer Petya wants to optimize taxi costs), calls to action (who of you thinks like Petya, raise your hands). Corporate phrase, gestures, name, team mascot, T-shirt design - think as a team, how you differ from the rest of the participants.
What is important for the jury to hear in your presentation:
- you understand how the product works
- you understand what its competitive advantages are, and what else needs to be improved
- you understand the scenarios for using the product and your target audience
- you can reasonably explain why you abandoned some scenario or decided to do this feature, and not another
- you do not use high-sounding words "innovative", "best", "breakthrough", "we have no competitors" (almost always there are)
How do you prepare for defenses, improvise or follow a clear plan? Share fakapami in the comments, let's try to find the recipe for the perfect pitch.
Source: habr.com