I loathe and abominate PowerPoint, but sometimes am obliged to use it because the conference organisers go bananas with anxiety if you don’t give them a presentation in advance.

For those who are obliged to use the infernal tool, here’s a great rule invented by Guy Kawasaki, a Venture Capitalist.

Before there is an epidemic of Ménière’s [disease] in the venture capital community, I am trying to evangelize the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points. While I’m in the venture capital business, this rule is applicable for any presentation to reach agreement: for example, raising capital, making a sale, forming a partnership, etc.

Ten is the optimal number of slides in a PowerPoint presentation because a normal human being cannot comprehend more than ten concepts in a meeting—and venture capitalists are very normal. (The only difference between you and venture capitalist is that he is getting paid to gamble with someone else’s money). If you must use more than ten slides to explain your business, you probably don’t have a business…

Thanks to Quentin for the link.