Pivoting and Experimentation

As any experienced entrepreneur can tell you, it is not uncommon for the 'original' idea to be vastly different from the idea that is commercialized.  The popular term for this kind of shift is called 'pivoting' and it is often seen by investors as the mark of a 'good' (subjective, to be sure) entrepreneur.  The idea is simple; a start-up comes into the market with a new idea, tries to make it work, learns something from the experience, and then makes a decision about whether to pursue the original idea, make slight changes, or go in a new direction altogether.  This strategy works within corporate cultures as well, and in the scientific community the approach is usually called 'experimentation'.  In this regard, SlideStacks is no different from any other start-up out there trying to 'disrupt' (another popular, if not overused, start-up term) a particular market.

Based on my experience with boring, time-wasting meeting, the original idea for SlideStacks was to improve the way that slide-based presentations were delivered to a decision-making audience.  At first, my intention was to simply build a PowerPoint plugin that gave presenters new navigation tools, but over time the idea morphed into building a more fully-featured web-based presentation solution (pivot #1).  With some minor tweaks along the way, that's what we built, what we brought to the Rice Business Plan Competition last month, and what our beta testers have been using for several weeks now.  However, after combining the Rice experience with real user feedback, it became clear that we needed to take another look at how we are positioning SlideStacks as a solution.

After several weeks of reflection, we now believe that our next minor 'pivot' is to create a more intelligent way to measure and analyze the effectiveness of presentations and shared materials.  We are making this shift because we believe that by collecting and presenting more extensive data, our customers can gain greater insights into the needs and thoughts of their audience which in turn will inform future presentations and improve the way we communicate with an audience.  To some degree, our decision to focus more heavily on metrics is simply an extension of what we already have in SlideStacks (slide view reporting) which is why I put the word 'pivot' in quotes.  The reason this is a 'pivot' at all is because this decision means we are trying to extend the utility of the product to a different use-case (document sharing) and potentially attract new and different customer segments (corporations).

To be candid, we don't know exactly how this decision will turn out.  That's why we are planning to experiment with new features and see how our user base and potential customers react.  If it works out well, great news for us.  If we fail, hopefully we learned something useful and then we can 'pivot' again.  Although it can be stressful at times, the culture of experimentation is part of what makes being an entrepreneur exciting and fun.  Stay tuned for updates.

~Marc

Rice Business Plan Competition

Last night, the +SlideStacks team received some exciting news: we were selected to be one of 40 participating teams (out of 400+ applicants) in the 2012 Rice University Business Plan Competition!  This is the world's largest and richest graduate level business plan competition and has over $1.3M in prizes at stake.  We are honored to have been selected and are very much looking forward to the opportunity to share our vision of better presentations to a large audience in April.


Congrats to the team - we put in a lot of work to get here and have plenty of hard work ahead of us to take the next step.

Making an Impact with Adaptive Communication

In the March issue of the Harvard Business Review, Stacey Childress contributes an article titled 'Rethinking School' that discusses the failure of US education to keep up with the progress of other countries over the past 40 years.  However, despite the United State's dip in form, the author optimistically touts advances in adaptive learning technologies that have generated improvements in educational achievement for elementary school students in New York.  Ms. Childress describes the School of One's strategy of adaptive learning as tailoring educational content to the exact needs of each student using a combination of software of personal attention.  The preliminary results are very positive, with students in adaptive learning environments performing better than 98% of their traditionally taught peers. The logic is simple: technology-based and personalized lesson plans free teachers "from the demands of large-group instruction, a single teacher can tailor his or her efforts to the individual needs of dozens of students."  Although the idea of using software might suggest that the value of a teacher becomes smaller, the pilot programs find just the opposite.  By using software to cover more rote topics (such as arithmetic), teachers are then free to work with students on more advanced and dynamic skills such as critical thinking and problem solving. 

So what does this have to do with online presentation software?  A lot.

The SlideStacks strategy for creating more effective communication between a presenter in the audience is very similar to the adaptive learning techniques being used in these New York schools.  With SlideStacks, we make it easy for presenters to customize each presentation to the exact needs of the audience -sort of like a personalized curriculum for an individual student.  The personalization of content creates deeper audience understanding and connection to the materials, therefore fostering a more memorable and impactful presentation experience.  This strategy is in contrast to a common approach to presentations in which presenters deliver their message the same way to everyone, regardless of who is in the audience.

In short, adaptive learning has the potential to change the way our children learn in school.  Adaptive communication has the potential to change the way we communicate in business.  

Marc Siegel

Founder/CEO of SlideStacks

www.slidestacks.com

Development Update

Yesterday we received the first build of +SlideStacks! The team is in the process of testing things out and so far, everything looks GREAT. 


What does this mean for you? 


Well, it means we are inching closer to making SlideStacks available for beta testing. Stayed tuned for more information and look for a blog post in the near future with some screen shots of the soon-to-be greatest slide delivery software on the market!


~Marc


P.S. If you haven't done so already, sign-up to be a beta tester today: www.slidestacks.com

The Sales Trailer

Generally speaking, we entrepreneurs are enthusiastic when we tell people about our business.  It's easy to get excited about the details, the strategy, the features, etc. and perhaps unknowingly, we can end up talking too much to someone who just might not be that interested in what we have to say.  To combat this tendency, Craig Wortmann and his team at SalesEngine developed a useful and intuitive tool called the 'Sales Trailer' to not only focus the speaker, but also qualify the audience.  As defined on SalesEngine.com:

A “Sales Trailer” is to a business what a movie trailer is to a movie. It’s the concise but descriptive statement that answers the question you get 1,000 times a day; “What do you do?” The Sales Trailer does not answer all of the questions about your business, on purpose. It is meant to draw prospects into a well-structured conversation.

In other words, a well designed sales trailer is a teaser that induces the audience to say: What does that mean?  With this question, the audience is indicating that they want to learn more about your business, at which point you can proceed to the next step of the conversation.  To the contrary, if the audience does not respond enthusiastically to your trailer, there are basically two explanations: 1) your sales trailer needs to be tweaked or 2) the audience is simply not interested in hearing more.  If it turns out to be the latter, that's OK!  You've just qualified the audience/customer, which is valuable insight for any entrepreneur and can save you from wasting time talking to an uninterested audience.  Beyond selling, the Sales Trailer approach is also effective in a presentation setting; rather than talk in detail about every topic, try using a 'teaser' to introduce the topic and see how the audience responds.  If the audience wants to learn more, they'll ask, and time can be spent more efficiently by diving deep into only the topics that are of the most importance to the audience.

Writing a sales trailer is difficult and requires many iterations.  In fact, here at SlideStacks, after working with Craig, we've been through at least a dozen different versions that have been tweaked based on audience response.  In our trailer, we try to explain 1) what the product does and 2) what makes it unique, all without going into too much detail that might distract the audience.  For those who are curious, here's the Sales Trailer that is currently in the rotation:

SlideStacks is an online slide delivery software that transforms presentations into conversations.

The Sales Trailer is one of many helpful tools that the SalesEngine team have crafted.  To learn more visit their website: www.salesengine.com.

To all the readers and entrepreneurs out there, what's your Sales Trailer?

~Marc

Changing the Game

A while back, a good friend of ours, Jonas Nwuke, sent us an interesting article about entrepreneurs that included this quote.  

"Some entrepreneurs spot and ride the waves of bigger trends, acting as catalysts, pushing the market into previously unforeseen territory. Others execute so well that they creatively destroy old markets as they nurture the new." 

- Sharon Greenstein, December 20th 2011 Digitopoly

There is certainly some truth to what the author is describing here; many business are started because a trend is rising that has not yet reached it's crest.  Entrepreneurs pour in their sweat (and money) to compete against vast armies of competition to build the best widget and hope that their efforts and execution turn them into the surfer that rides the wave to profitability.  But on the other end of that spectrum lies a stable industry waiting to be disrupted, and this is where we believe SlideStacks fits into the mix.  Not only are we paddling to catch the wave of online presentations, but we are also creating ripples in a more stable, 'old market' body of water: delivering presentations with slideware.  

To many of us, presentations feel stale, linear, and predictable.  We sit through endless series of slides while listening to a narrator - sometimes even after we've seen the deck in advance!  The issue is that traditional slideware forces us to go 'start to finish' through the content before we can (finally) get to the portion of the meeting where both sides actually connect and talk about what's in front of us.  This strategy is akin to throwing all of your slides at the wall to see which ones stick with the audience.  In contrast, SlideStacks is encouraging users to feel free to let the discussion bring the most critical issues to the table.  We can then skip the topics of lesser value and instead focus on what's most important to that particular audience while still supporting that conversation tactfully with slides and visuals.


Our goal with SlideStacks is ambitious: we've set out to disrupt the traditional presentations (and group meetings, for that matter) that many us regularly endure by creating more dynamic, efficient, and interesting communication between two parties.   We do this by building a technology that allows presenters to seamlessly place visuals into a dynamic conversation while displaying a greater emphasis on the interaction between the presenter and the audience.   In the coming weeks, we'll begin beta testing, and we hope that you'll join us in a revolution against boring presentations.

~Marc

Welcome to the SlideStacks Blog!

Happy New Year, and welcome to the SlideStacks blog!

SlideStacks is a Chicago-based start-up company that was founded in the fall of 2011 by me, Marc Siegel, while attending the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.  I'm joined on the team by my colleague and trusty CFO, Jacob Jones, and together we are working to reinvent the way visuals are presented to an audience.  It's our belief that by lifting the linear constraint imposed by traditional slideware, we can not only revolutionize how we use technology during a presentation, but also make meetings more fun and enjoyable for both the speaker and the audience.  We're in the early stages of making this vision a reality, and over the next few weeks and months, you can expect a flurry of activity as we bring SlideStacks to the market.  If you're interested in becoming a beta tester, visit www.slidestacks.com and submit your email address.


We'll be using the SlideStacks blog for lots of things: product updates, presentation tips, as well as general technology, entrepreneurial, and business musings, so we encourage you to visit us often and leave comments, thoughts, and ideas.  


While you're at it, please take a moment to follow us on your preferred social network or subscribe to this blog so you can be notified of all updates and announcements:

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Thanks again for taking time to visit the blog, we look forward to sharing SlideStacks with you in the coming weeks.

Marc Siegel

Founder and CEO

SlideStacks

About SlideStacks


Founded in 2011, SlideStacks is a new online presentation software that allows presenters to match visuals an unpredictable conversation.  In contrast to traditional slideware like PowerPoint or Keynote, SlideStacks lets presenters organize their content visually by topic and then provides navigation tools that allow the audience and the conversation to dictate which materials are shown and when during the presentation.  The resulting experience is a more conversational, interactive, and productive transfer of information between two parties.  SlideStacks is currently in product development and we anticipate a release in early 2012.  We are planning an initial launch in early 2012, so sign up to be a beta tester today at www.slidestacks.com.