Demo Day Presentation

About this template

Start from the clock on stage

A demo day pitch has to land in five to seven minutes, and decks timed after they are written almost always run long. This file is 14 slides, so at five minutes that is about 21 seconds per slide. The order is cover, agenda, four divider-plus-body pairs, one before-and-after comparison, key figures, trend, closing; the four dividers need two seconds each. The real speaking time sits on the four body slides plus the figures and trend slides.

A time budget across the 14 slides

The agenda has seven lines – the one-line pitch, the live demo, batch results, voices from the field, three months ago versus today, key figures, trend analysis – and every one of them has a screen behind it. The first four each get a divider-and-body pair (slides 3 to 10); the last three are slides 11, 12 and 13.

• Slides 1-2, cover and agenda: 20 seconds, one sentence on what the company does.
• Slides 3-4, the one-line pitch: 45 seconds. This is where “dispatch automation for small logistics firms” fixes the definition of the company.
• Slides 5-6, live demo: 70 seconds. If you cannot run the product, substitute the timing – “40 seconds from order to dispatch”.
• Slides 7-8, batch results: 60 seconds. Put the biggest change here (monthly volume from KRW 140M to KRW 960M).
• Slides 9-10, voices from the field: 40 seconds. One customer-side result such as the 89% renewal rate is enough.
• Slides 11-13, comparison, key figures and trend: 60 seconds together. Slide 11 sets the start of the program against today, three lines each.
• Slide 14, closing: 20 seconds. Nothing in this deck covers investment terms or a next meeting, and the only ask is the raise tile on slide 12, so the amount, the reason for it and how to meet you all have to be said here.

Lines that read from the back row

The room’s back row and the live stream both have to read the three body lines, so each must fit one breath. What follows the arrow is not in the file – it is an example of the rewrite.

• “Monthly volume of KRW 960M” becomes, for example, “KRW 960M monthly, up from 140M twelve weeks ago” – a number needs its benchmark on the same line.
• “92% driver app acceptance” becomes, for example, “92% acceptance, twice the previous method”.
• “NPS 54” becomes, for example, “NPS 54 across 210 responses” – a score without a denominator gets challenged on the spot.

Reading the four tiles and the twelve-week bars

Slide 12 shows KRW 960M monthly volume, 41 customers, NPS 54, and a KRW 2.5bn raise. The first three are results and the last is an ask, so they are different in kind. Do not read all four aloud – say only the strongest one and bring the raise back at the closing. Slide 13 runs 14 in week one, 31 at week four, 57 at week eight, 96 at week twelve: the batch program curve. If the last bar is a plan rather than an actual, say so as you pass it; a judge who discovers it later will doubt the earlier numbers too. This slide has no unit field, so write beside the labels whether the values are KRW hundreds of millions or counts.

Reading the deck aloud against this budget usually shows the leak on the demo slide. Keep only the first word of each line in the speaker notes – there is no time to read notes on stage – and avoid putting key numbers at the far left and right, since the venue screen may not be 16:9.

Mistakes that show up on stage

• Spending two minutes introducing the company when the one-line pitch is a 45-second slot. Give the time to batch results.
• Reading the agenda slide aloud and losing 20 seconds of a five-minute pitch.
• Ending on thanks alone. The closing line is “let’s keep talking at the booth”, so add the booth number and the hours you will be there.