Entrepreneurship for the Public Good

Helpful Presentation Guidelines

Like a business pitch, your presentation should present the salient aspects of the social venture concept.  Below is an outline for a 9-slide presentation with some questions to address.

Introduction:

  1. What major problem is it trying to solve?
  2. What is your overall strategy?
  3. What is the current status of the concept (i.e. is it just an idea, do you have a prototype, etc)? Note: this is the most important part of your presentation! During the first 2 minutes, you must clearly define what your venture aims to accomplish and how it will do so.

The Problem:

  1. Why is this problem important to address?
  2. Who and how many people are affected by this problem?
  3. How is this problem currently being solved?
  4. What are other solutions that have been tried?

The Solution:

  1. Describe your solution, your product or service in more detail.
  2. What are the features and benefits of the product or service?
  3. Why is your idea better than existing solutions to the community need?

Market Analysis and Detail

  1. Who are the proposed customers, the community members your venture will serve?
  2. What products/services are these customers currently using? What is their current solution to the problem you are trying to solve?
  3. What is the competition your venture faces?
  4. What is your sales and promotion strategy to reach your customers?
  5. Have you talked to potential customers? What are they saying?

Venture Strategy:

  1. How will your venture sustain itself, serve its mission and create value?
  2. How will your product or service be sold or provided? Through what channels? At what price?
  3. Has this strategy been proven in other ventures? Is this strategy scalable or replicable in other areas?

Operations/Development Plan:

  1. What is your current state of development?
  2. What is your timeline to develop your concept? What specific tasks must be
    completed?  What milestones will be reached?
  3. What challenges are there to the development of the venture and how will you address them?
  4. What benchmarks and systems will you use to track your progress toward these milestones or performance?

Financial Projections and Key Metrics:

  1. Provide a forecast of where your venture will be in 1-3 years and estimate your clients served (sales), revenues and other income, and expenses.
  2. Explain your assumptions in making these estimates.
  3. What are the capital requirements for you to develop the concept?
  4. How will this money be raised? How is this money to be used?
  5. Specifically, how would you use the prize money from this competition if you won?

Impact:

  1. What will be the impact of your venture toward addressing the problem?  Who and how many people will be affected by the venture?
  2. Are their other beneficial impacts that result from your venture?
  3. Have you calculated a social return on investment?
  4. What assumptions were used in making this calculation?

Management:

  1. Who are you and who is on your team?
  2. What unique experience, skills, or assets does each member bring to the team?
  3. Who are your community partners or other mentors who will assist you to develop this venture?
  4. Why is your team the right team to launch this venture?  (If you don’t have a
    complete team that is OK.  Simply say what other skills you will need to add).
  5. Who else outside the current management team will need to be involved?

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