Exercises: Presenting a project

Explain what an elevator pitch is, how long it usually lasts, who it is aimed at and what its actual objective is, which is not to 'make a sale' right then and there.

List the essential elements of a project presentation (problem, solution, market, business model, team, and ask) and explain in one sentence what each should contain.

The figure shows the structure of a project presentation in five connected blocks. Identify the missing block, marked with '?', and indicate what information it should contain.

Explain three traits of a good short pitch (clarity, structure, adaptation to the listener) and two things a pitch is not: a technical lecture on the product or a reading of the business plan out loud.

Order the blocks of this jumbled presentation — ask, problem, solution, market, team — and reason why the problem must go at the beginning and the ask at the end.

Write two different opening hooks for the pitch of a shared book clubs app: one with a question to the audience and another with a surprising fact. Explain what a good hook achieves in the first ten seconds.

Many presentations end with an "and that's it" or a simple "thank you". Explain why a pitch must close with a specific ask (a meeting, an amount of investment, a pilot project) and rewrite the weak closing of a home composting company.

Give three practical public speaking tips for defending a project (looking at the audience, controlling the pace, rehearsing with a stopwatch) and explain what each one conveys to the listener.

An entrepreneur begins their pitch by spending five minutes explaining the product's technology, without stating what problem it solves or for whom. Restructure their presentation by indicating the correct order of the blocks and explain why the problem should come first.

Storytelling applies narrative structures to presentations. Explain how you would use the structure 'initial situation → conflict → resolution' to present a ski equipment rental company, and why it is more engaging than a list of features.

The same project, a peer-tutoring app, is presented to a group of investors and to a parent-teacher association. Indicate what emphasis you would change in each case (profitability and market versus safety and educational benefit) and why tailoring the message is not manipulation.

The inventor of a home water filter spends the first ten minutes of his presentation explaining the chemistry of filtering. Restructure his pitch with the order problem → solution → market → business model → team → ask, stating what he would say in each block, and reason why the technology must appear only as support for the solution.

An urban composting start-up presents the same project to a group of investors and to its city council. State which emphasis you would change for each audience (economic return and market size versus public benefit and cost for the municipality) and why adapting the message is not distorting it.

Apply the narrative structure "initial situation → conflict → resolution" to the pitch of a company that manufactures affordable prostheses with 3D printing: outline the story in three sentences and explain why a story with a specific person connects more than a list of specifications.

You can do it on paper and send a photo with your answer.

You are going to present the market study of a chain of stores selling pet products and services. This is the current slide, with twelve bullet points:

Original slide: «The pet care market»

1. The pet care sector had a turnover of 2.400 million euros in 2023.

2. Over the last five years it has grown by an average of 6,5 % per year.

3. 40 % of Spanish households have at least one pet.

4. Dogs are the most common pet, followed by cats.

5. The average annual spend is 650 € per dog and 420 € per cat.

6. Online sales already account for 22 % of the sector's total.

7. «Premium» products are growing faster than basic ones.

8. The segment that spends the most is customers aged 25 to 40.

9. Our company was founded in 2015 by three veterinarian partners.

10. We have 35 stores spread across 8 provinces.

11. A customer told us that their dog, Toby, now has its own «birthday» with a special cake.

12. In 2022 we redesigned our logo, which now combines green and blue.

Topic challenge. Rewrite the slide following the golden rules: one idea per slide, little text and visual support.

1. a) Classify each of the twelve bullet points into one of these three categories: stays on screen, is said aloud or is removed. Justify each decision in one sentence.

1. b) Write the resulting slide: a title that expresses the main idea (a message, not just a topic), a maximum of three text elements or highlighted figures, and a proposal for visual support (for example, a type of chart and what data it would show).

1. c) Write in two or three sentences what you would say aloud while showing the slide, incorporating the bullet points you have decided to deliver orally.

You will be assessed on: whether the final slide conveys a single idea; whether the data that stay on screen are the most relevant to justify the appeal of the market; whether anecdotal or secondary content does not overload the screen; whether the visual support is consistent with the chosen data; and whether the justification of each decision is clear.

Anticipate three awkward questions a jury could ask an electric scooter rental project (accidents, municipal regulations, competition from the big platforms) and write how you would answer each one without getting defensive.

The startup 'SaludOffice' provides daily healthy subscription-based menus to employees in a technology park. After a 3-month pilot, they have 45 active users, charge €7,50 per menu with a unit production and delivery cost of €4,20, and have a monthly retention rate of 88 %, but they need €30.000 to purchase an insulated vehicle and expand into two nearby business parks.

1. a) Draft the outline script for a 60-second pitch structured in five parts (quantitative hook, B2B problem, validated solution, traction metrics, and call to action with valuation and a specific milestone).
2. b) Justify why, in this specific case, retention and unit margin metrics are more crucial to convince an investor than a detailed description of the ingredients or recipes.

Analyze the following real transcript of the closing of a pitch before an investor panel:

“...and well, as you can see on this slide where we've put all the Excel spreadsheets with the 25 business indicators, the global pet market moves billions of euros. Our team is super hardworking and we are passionate about animals. We are open to any type of collaboration or money you want to contribute so we can see how we move forward.”

1. a) Identify the three serious strategic mistakes the team makes in this closing and explain their impact on the investor's perception of financial risk.
2. b) Completely rewrite this closing (maximum 70 words) to transform that vague farewell into a professional, quantitative call to action linked to a measurable operational milestone.

Two circular economy projects are competing for the last spot in a business accelerator program:

• Project A (Narrative/emotional approach): Presents an impactful personal story about local textile waste, shows a very attractive physical prototype, and builds a strong emotional connection with the audience, but provides no data on unit cost, scalability, or monetization model.

• Project B (Analytical/traction approach): Presents rigorous metrics (CAC of €8,50, LTV of €34,00, 400 pre-sale customers, and a gross margin of 65 %), but the presenter merely reads text-heavy slides, without eye contact or a clear explanation of the customer's real problem.

1. a) If you were the program's admissions director, which project would you select and which one would you discard? Justify your decision by evaluating which of the two shortcomings is easier to address during the acceleration process.
2. b) Design a three-point improvement proposal for the selected project, indicating what immediate changes it should apply to its pitch before presenting to real investors.

When structuring a pitch, experts debate between opening with the market problem or with the credibility of the founding team. Consider these two cases:

• Case 1 ('BioTrack'): Two female researchers with PhDs in biochemistry, 15 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, and two prior patents develop software to reduce failures in clinical trials.

• Case 2 ('PisoJoven'): Three university students with no prior work experience have validated through 200 interviews that 85% of young people in their city cannot move out on their own due to fees and deposits charged by traditional agencies.

1. a) For each of the two cases, decide and justify which section (Team vs. Problem) they must necessarily open their pitch with in order to minimize the risk perceived by the investor (execution risk vs. market validation risk).
2. b) Write the exact opening sentence (the hook for the first 15 seconds) for each project, applying the strategy you selected.

A venture capital investor states: “If within the first 60 seconds of a pitch I don't know what painful problem you solve, why your solution isn't trivial, and why the time to invest is now, I stop paying attention.”

Imagine that you are going to pitch 'EcoBalcón', a startup offering subscription-based modular hydroponic garden kits for urban homes without a garden.

1. a) Write the complete speech for that first minute (between 100 and 130 words) accurately integrating: the specific pain of the urban customer, the 'why now' factor (socioeconomic or sustainability trends), and the differential advantage of your solution compared to traditional gardening.
2. b) Justify which metric or prior validation data you decided to include in those 60 seconds and explain why omitting the technical details of the substrate or irrigation enhances the impact of the message at this early stage.

You are going to present 'BiciVecina', a P2P urban bike rental platform between individuals, in two very different situations: a 30-second casual encounter in an elevator with a business angel and a 5-minute presentation at a Demo Day before an investment fund.

1. a) Explain what commercial or financial objective the 30-second pitch must exclusively pursue compared to the 5-minute one, and argue why trying to explain the commission model or the technology in the elevator would ruin the opportunity.
2. b) Design the comparative structure of both formats: for the 30 seconds, write the complete script (maximum 65 words); for the 5 minutes, break down the percentage of time allocated to each of its 5 key sections and justify why the traction and metrics section (CAC, churn, and trip volume) must take up at least 25% of the total time.

The startup 'NutriCrunch' (healthy legume snacks) ends its presentation with this ask: “We are asking for €50.000 for 10% of our company for marketing and general improvements, and with this we expect to grow a lot next year.”

Their current financial data are: they burn €2.000/month in structural fixed costs (burn rate), their customer acquisition cost (CAC) is €4,00, and the average contribution margin per order is €12,00, with an average of 3 orders per year per customer.

1. a) Critically evaluate the ask by identifying three financial weaknesses that will lead the investor to reject the offer.
2. b) Redesign the funding proposal: if you allocate €30.000 to customer acquisition and €20.000 to an operating cushion, calculate how many months of survival (runway) that cushion guarantees, how many new customers they will acquire, and what additional annual gross margin they will generate. Write the final closing sentence based on these quantitative milestones.

Two technology-based companies, Alfa and Beta, have developed identical medical tele-assistance software featuring triage algorithms of the exact same technical accuracy.

• Alfa presents its project by thoroughly describing the algorithmic decision tree, the programming libraries used, and cloud security, assuming that “a good product sells itself.” After one year, it only has 2 unpaid pilot clients.

• Beta focuses its pitch on the economic impact for hospitals: it shows that its tool reduces ER wait times by 28% and saves €140.000 per year in unnecessary on-call medical shifts, asking for €80.000 in funding for health regulatory clearance. Within six months, it closes a funding round and 12 hospital contracts.

1. a) Using the economic concepts of information asymmetry and opportunity cost, refute the claim that “a good product sells itself.”
2. b) Analyze why Beta's approach reduces the risk perceived by funders and formulate three key questions that a skeptical investor would ask Alfa to expose the flaws of its product-centric approach.

Unit challenge. Imagine that you are leading an entrepreneurial project to promote sustainable finance among young people. Your goal is to create a low-fidelity prototype and design the presentation to attract investors.

1. Market research: Check the INE website for data on ICT equipment and usage, or survey $5$ classmates to quantify a real problem regarding digital consumption or saving habits.

2. Prototype design (MVP): Hand-draw the prototype of your solution on a sheet of paper (a $3$-screen wireframe of an app or a service brochure). Write a $5$-line justification explaining the concept of prototyping and its utility in mitigating financial risk prior to launch.

3. Presentation script: Design the script for a $60$-second elevator pitch. Structure it as follows: initial hook with the researched data, presentation of the solution supported by the prototype, and a call to action.

Submit the final document with a photo of your prototype, the economic justification, and the written script.

Assessment criteria:

• Rigor in justifying the usefulness of prototyping as a cost-saving tool.

• Creativity and coherence of the prototype with respect to the identified need.

• Persuasive structure and clear presentation of the pitch script based on real data.