Reading :: The Pitch Deck Book

The Pitch Deck Book
By Tim Cooley

I saw this book on Amazon and it was inexpensive enough that I went ahead and grabbed the Kindle version. I'm glad I did, even though I don't think I will end up reading it over and over. 

Cooley nails the point of the pitch deck, which is not to sell, but to start a conversation. So what is the best way to start a conversation? Cooley goes over various lengths of arguments: an elevator pitch, a one-pager (sort of like a resume for your startup), a one-paragraph, a one-liner, and of course the standard pitch deck.

Most of the book focuses on the pitch deck, examining its anatomy and common mistakes that people make when putting them together. He contextualizes these within pre-pitch and post-pitch activities as well. At the end of the book, he shows us several slide decks with speaker notes -- and his own commentary on what does and doesn't work for each slide. 

The book sometimes tends to fragmentary advice rather than a strong overview. But since the book is also pretty short, this approach works well enough. It really feels as if an experienced pitcher is taking us through the dos and don'ts. 

If you're interested in developing a pitch for a startup, I'd definitely take a look at this book. 

Reading :: Mapping Experiences

Mapping Experiences
By Jim Kalbach

This short review is for the first edition of this O'Reilly book, which a colleague recommended to me. It's focused on how people map value in organizations and markets. Think in terms of Design Thinking's customer journey maps -- which are referenced several times -- as well as business model canvases and strategy maps. If you've been intrigued by Design Thinking or other workshop approaches that help groups of people visualize an experience, this book is definitely worth picking up.

I confess that is not the value I was hoping to take away from the book. Instead, I was thinking more generally about different types of visualizations and how they help us to explore different aspects. And although Kalbach does touch on this question -- he mentions that visualizations fall into four buckets, chronological, hierarchical, spatial, and network -- his main focus is on the specific question of value. As he mentions, these diagrams really aren't the objective. The objective is to engage others in conversations.

Still, it's a well-developed book, nicely illustrated, with a lot of thought put into how these visualizations are presented and used. If you're interested in mapping value in organizations, or even just interested in how visualizations work, definitely pick it up.