Make a Great Pitch: The 10/20/30 Rule

Video overview

Guy Kawasaki presents his 10/20/30 rule: roughly ten slides, twenty minutes of presentation and large, readable type. He frames the pitch as a way to progress to a further conversation or due diligence. The clip comes from a 2004 Stanford talk and is hosted on Entrepreneurship.org's YouTube channel, which Stanford embeds on its source page.

Treat these numbers as a presentation heuristic. A competition with a three-minute slot, or a document read without a presenter, needs its own format. The following exercises are original PitchPolar preparation material.

01 Work backward from the actual slot

Check the organizer's instructions before editing your deck. Record the presentation limit, whether questions are included, the file format and any required sections. For an investor meeting, ask how much time is available and whether the deck will be read in advance.

Exercise: rehearse with a timer and a planned interruption. Mark the point where you can finish the essential explanation if the available time becomes shorter. A backup ending is more useful than assuming you will speak faster.

02 Give each slide a job

Create an outline using one question per slide: who experiences the problem, what changes with the product, what has been tested, how the business works and what you need next. Adapt the questions to your stage.

Fictional example: a slide headed “Traction” shows logos, a revenue estimate and an interview count. Those items describe different kinds of evidence. Split them or choose the single claim the slide needs to support. Label forecasts and interviews accurately.

Exercise: write the sentence you want a listener to remember beneath each draft slide. If you need several unrelated sentences, reconsider the slide's job.

03 Test readability in the real setting

Review your deck on the device or screen people are likely to use. A chart that looks clear on your laptop may be unreadable in a shared video window or at the back of a room.

Check labels, units, time periods and color contrast. If a chart needs a long spoken explanation before its axes make sense, simplify the visual or move the supporting detail into an appendix.

Practice: send one screenshot to a teammate without narration. Ask what it claims and what period it covers. Use their answer to find missing context.

04 Keep evidence available for questions

Build a small appendix around the questions you genuinely expect. Useful material might include a metric definition, a market calculation, a product screenshot or a customer workflow. Keep the source and date for each factual claim.

The appendix should make an answer easier to inspect. It should not become an excuse to leave the main argument vague. Practice finding the relevant slide quickly rather than scrolling through an unrelated presentation.

Your deck review checklist

• Does the deck fit the organizer's time and format?
• Can each slide's main point be understood at a glance?
• Are charts labeled with units, dates and definitions?
• Are plans clearly distinguished from results?
• Can you finish early and still explain the next step?

Original source

Stanford eCorner: Make a Great Pitch provides the original talk context and transcript. The embedded video is published by Entrepreneurship.org.