Guy Kawasaki’s 10-20-30 Rule of PowerPoint

Guy Kawasaki’s 10-20-30 Rule of PowerPoint

Have you heard about this? It’s an interesting rule of thumb on how to create a simple but effective PowerPoint® sales presentation. According to venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki, “A PowerPoint presentation should have 10 slides, last no more than 20 minutes, and contain no font smaller than 30 points.”

10 slides / 20 minutes / 30-point font

Why only 10 slides? Because, “a normal human being cannot comprehend more than 10 concepts in a meeting.” That also means each slide should actually contain a worthwhile concept. Kawasaki suggests:

1. Problem
2. Your solution
3. Business model
4. Underlying magic/technology
5. Marketing and sales
6. Competition
7. Team
8. Projections and milestones
9. Status and timeline
10. Summary and call to action

Why only 20 minutes? Because you almost always need time to get set up beforehand and time after for questions, and nobody wants to sit in a meeting longer than an hour.

Why a font size of 30 points or larger? Because any smaller and people realize that your entire presentation is on the slides, so they just read them and stop listening to you. Also, you then have to simmer your text down to information important enough to be broadcast large.

For more details, read Guy Kawasaki’s blog.

Check also Presentation Zen for more tips on using PowerPoint and giving effective presentations.