[HackTech] Mentors Share How to Make a Bombshell Demo Fest Presentation
What is the hardest part of the hackathon: Coming up with an idea? Building a working prototype in just two days? Or maybe your presentation?
Last year’s participants, judges, and mentors usually agree that presentations are one of the trickiest parts of the whole event: creating a memorable, concise, and well-structured presentation is easier said than done.
And why is that?
You only have 5 minutes to introduce your project to a very diverse audience. And you need to include information about the audience, the team, and the expertise, tell a story, show some numbers, explain how the project works, talk about the potential, and so on.
Doesn’t sound like a 5-minute pitch, does it?
That’s why we decided to talk to our mentors, Konstantin Kuznetsov, Chief Product Officer, and Sergey Kozlov, Head of R&A, and the AdTech content team, to find out how you can cram all this information into a 5-minute presentation and make sure your audience (and investors!) gets the idea right away and is impressed!
What are the GOALS of the presentation?
The presentation is all about a structured and clear explanation of what your project is meant to achieve.
To make sure judges and investors remember your presentation out of many others, you have to touch upon these key areas of your business idea:
1. Explain the problem & solution
In other words, WHY did you create this project? What is the unsolved problem that society has, and how can your project solve it in an effective way?
2. Demonstrate market opportunities
Who is your target audience, what is your target market size, and what is your growth potential.
“Many teams ignore this part, and guess what the judges’ first question is? Right, the judges want to understand how big the market is for your project and whether it can scaled.”
3. Explain the business model and the steps
How your potential business will work and, more importantly, how you plan to make money with your project.
By the way, this is the second most popular question asked by judges: How do you plan to monetize your app/project?
4. Showcase your project/app and demonstrate how it works
This is super important – you should be able to demonstrate how your prototype works. We’ve seen several teams fail at this task when their demo didn’t go quite as planned. This doesn’t make the best impression.
5. Prove that your team has the skills and expertise to make the project work
Your presentation is also meant to prove that you are the right team to execute the project: you have the necessary skills and leadership.
It’s important to keep these goals in mind as you create your presentation, otherwise you run the risk of omitting important parts and leaving judges in the dark.
Typical problems with Demo Fest presentations
Our experts, who have helped teams at two Adtech hackathons and several external hackathons, have identified the most common presentation mistakes that ruin the impact of your pitch.
Knowing where others have messed up makes it easier to avoid those problems, doesn’t it?
- It’s completely unclear what problem your project solves
Konstantin calls this problem #1 – the project is supposed to be an answer to a certain “pain”, but it’s hard to understand what this “pain” was.
“Clearly articulate why you’ve developed this project, its value to end users, and quantify it whenever possible,” – adds Konstantin.
- You don’t show your product in action
“The focus of the presentation was on content rather than showing how the prototype worked. When a team spends 20-30 seconds showing their final results, it’s especially hard to judge. You just don’t know if everything they say can actually be implemented,” continues Konstantin.
- Poorly rehearsed presentation
Sergey points out another aspect that usually reduces the project’s chances of winning: unrehearsed pitch.
“Both from a technical point of view – the demo doesn’t work – and from a performance point of view, they mumble into the microphone, get confused, don’t know what to say. All these problems can be easily solved by going through your speech 3-4 times. This will add speed, confidence and ease to your performance.”
- Poor structure of presentation and slides
Like to add a “wall” of text to your slides? Do you think that random facts will enhance your presentation?
Yes, you have structure problems that usually lead to sad results – you run out of time, and the audience has a hard time following your logic.
Make sure you stick to the key facts, focus on one idea per slide and cut out any unnecessary fluff.
All right, so what are you going to do to increase the persuasive power of your pitch and make it stand out?
Here are some best practices that won’t increase your time, but will definitely improve your overall impression.
Presentation best practices
- Less information on slides – be concise. Too much text and visuals won’t allow the audience to focus on the most important parts.
- Differentiate: Highlight why your solution is more likely to succeed and how it differs from the competition.
- Provide real-world examples and use cases
- Show the statistics: how many people are struggling with the same challenges?
- Value through numbers. For example, “Our solution will reduce time by X times”.
- Talk about the financial side of your idea. You guessed it, show realistic projections
Ready to implement your knowledge?
Join us on November 23rd and 24th in Limassol, Cyprus, for the hottest IT event of the year – the HackTech Hackathon. By the way, our mentors can help you prepare and rehearse your presentation so you are fully prepared for a stellar performance.
See you at the Hackathon!
