“I just wanted to make a joke, but no one understood” or how not to bury myself at the presentation of the project

Our team at the semifinals 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 such a challenge?”, They said that the most difficult thing was to fit in five minutes of the performance and a few slides of what I worked on for 36 hours.

Publicly defending your project is difficult. It’s even more difficult to talk a little about him in the case. Aerobatics - hold on and do 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 Ilon Mask in the presentation and how not to turn your pitch into a fakap of the year (which is also useful).

How to arrange slides

Remember how the grandmother said: they are greeted by clothes (perhaps only my grandmother said so). Presentation is clothing, that is, the overall vision of your project. Almost 80% of the hackathon participants put off her training at the last moment and then whip up to make it to the last checkpoint. As a result, slides become a cemetery of memes, pictures, jumping text and pieces of code. This is not necessary. Always remember that your presentation is the plan of your pitch, so it should be built correctly and logically.

The winner of the Moscow hackathon, Sakharov Team, recommends laying about three hours for presentation and 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 the choice of the right track, for each it has its own. Before the presentation, you should use all opportunities 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 better think out the benefits, monetization and code and show the experts something that is already working - this demonstrates that you can do what you are talking about. The last step 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. In the presentation, it is necessary to maintain a balance between maintaining the attention of the audience (it is necessary to ignite) and setting out the essence of the project (without missing important details). As the real hackers say, any project can be explained in three sentences, so 5 minutes is a tough but necessary framework adopted around the world. ”

Cool, if there is a designer in your team, 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 jokes about Ilona Mask, digital transformation and funny pictures. It is appropriate to insert them somewhere at the beginning of your presentation in order to beat the problem that your product solves, or introduce a team. Or at the end, when you need to relax the audience a bit 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);
• product description - how it solves the problem, who is the target audience;
• context i.e. market data (a few facts that confirm the problem and the relevance of the solution), are there any competitors in your solution, and how are you better;
• business model (memes about Dude are still relevant);
• a technology stack, links to Github, and a demo, if any.

Pitch before the jury

There is an expression that a well done job needs well done report. No one will know about your brilliant idea if you do not know how to talk about it. Usually, hackathons give up to ten minutes to present a project - without preparation at this time, it is really difficult to fit all the key points.

Be sure to rehearse

Often, hackathons win the team not with the best solution, but with the best presentation. If you are going for the first time, then you can work out 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 be asked).

What they may ask:

• What is your business model?
• How will you attract customers?
• how do you differ from companies X and Y?
• How does your project scale?
• What will happen to your decision in the face of harsh Russian reality?

It is better to choose a “talking head” in advance - it is better to unload this person on the last day of the hackathon so that he can prepare. You can speak together - for example, to separate the business and technical parts. It is not worth crowding the whole team on the stage - you will get only a defocus of attention and awkward pauses when answering questions. But to reward you can run out

Rehearse necessarily, better several times, think over the answers to potential questions and negative. Consider what advantages of the solution you want to focus on and how to best present them, add them to the presentation. Come up with a couple of jokes.

“My team and I went through twenty hackathons, 15 of them were in the TOP-3 or in a special nomination - we won in Russia, Belarus, at the main European Hackathon Jinction in Helsinki, Germany and Switzerland. We learned a lot from them - we began to understand better how to evaluate and study markets, and to master new technologies faster. If we talk about the performance, always try to rehearse, often pronounce the text in front of colleagues, analyze questions, and find the strengths and weaknesses of the product. Everything may not go as planned and it’s all interest in it - to find a way and a way, even if you don’t win, you leave with new knowledge and acquaintances. ”

But leave the place of improvisation - do not be afraid to go out of text or use unrehearsed words.

Come up with a chip

We start all the speeches with the phrase: “Hello, we are a team named after Sakharov, and we made a bomb

Hackathon is always a bit of rock and roll. Gestures, storytelling (our consumer Petya wants to optimize taxi costs), calls to action (who of you thinks like Petya, raise your hands) come in well. Brand phrase, gestures, name, team mascot, T-shirt design - think by the team how you differ from other participants.

What is important for the jury to hear in your presentation:

• do you understand how the product works
• Do you understand what its competitive advantages are, and what else needs to be improved
• Do you understand the product application scenarios and your target audience?
• you can reasonably explain why you abandoned some scenario or decided to do this feature, and not another
• you don’t use the big words “innovative”, “best”, “breakthrough”, “we have no competitors” (almost always they are)

How do you prepare for defenses, improvise or follow a clear plan? Share fakapy in the comments, try to find the perfect pitch recipe.