No, Really, You Just Can't Make This Stuff Up

If it's Saturday, it must mean Air Canada Flight 786 and me.  Perfect time to catch up on some presentations from up coming entrepreneurs.  After all the commentary I and other bloggers have put up about watching what you 'leave in' with respect to your presentations, you'd think the time between receiving these screw ups would get long.  You'd think that and you'd be wrong.

[Special note to Lexington, Kentucky: This did not come from anyone in Lexington or the surrounding states. Just to put your mind at ease. :-) ]

A big Power Point deck shows up along with a fairly interesting opening email.

"Dear rick,

I've been reading your blog since 1998 and have found it really good. I have enclosed a short presentation which I hope you will review and decide to follow up with some questions which can lead to a potential financing.  There are social networks and mobile applications out there but the marriage of the two is still an elusive, gut wrenching, problem with no immediate solution. Until [].  Check out the deck and please get back to me."

Yeah. First clue: Fonts and color.  Folks, save yourself the embarrassment of being so nakedly obvious about the spamming/form letter type email, and just use plain text.  It might get past most of us.  Since I haven't been blogging since 1998, that's another clue, for sure. (There's a VC who's been blogging since 1998?).

So, I'm a plane, wtf, let's open this puppy and take a look.  Lovely. Only SIXTY FIVE (6 and 5) slides. I blast through the first 5 which are of the problem, solution, status, money, team ilk. Okay, at least to the point in the first 5. 

But wait there's more.

Slide six is titled: Audience Dependent Additional Slides

First group past slide six is titled: If stiff ass suits from RBC, TD, or Scotia  [note to non-Canadians: These are three big banks in Canada]

Then there are various slides with screen shots differentiated by the Bank Logos.

[Note: I can categorically verify that at RBC Venture Partners, nobody wears suits except for Kevin on Thursdays when he is in his Speedo explaining liquidation preference waterfalls to the kids at a Toronto Montessori School.] 

Next section says: Only Include when meeting is just with men

Three slides which have screen shots showing technology being useful in, let's us just say, meeting up. One additional slide makes a point about Location based services being useful in hooking up. Think a mobile adult friend finder kinda thing and you'll pretty much have it.

This goes on for 30 plus slides; a divider and then some slides to use.

The best section is the last one entitled various financial models.  Angel, VC, Grant, etc, all have sections and ALL have different numbers, different market size numbers, different objectives, etc. Each section has different people/bio slides. The Angel gets two people all the way up to the VC getting 6 people. The Bio information on the people is different on each slide in terms of what jobs, etc.  The VC gets a full development group in Vietnam for $19k per month. 60 people.

All in all, a fascinating way to pass the time.  Do I need to mention that keeping all these variations in separate decks and mix -n- match on a one off basis is probably better then starting with the full pile and then scaling back?  Especially, if we are going to get, uhhh, creative.

From up here it looks like there's parking at the mall.

Comments

[Pete Warden]

Thanks Rick, thats mind-blowing, the most entertaining thing Ive seen in weeks. Ive reposted it as a cautionary tale for entrepreneurs:
http://petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/2008/11/why-vcs-dont-trust-you.html

[Harrison Lung]

Rick, I am often times in LA for work as well (mostly during the week though). Shoot me an email whenever you are in town, and lets head out for a beer !