Fōkcus used to host a weekly program called “City Highlights” at Apple stores in San Diego and Los Angeles to help startups on a variety of topics including pitch decks.
Each week, a different founder would pitch to a group of 8 to 10 mentors, and then get feedback from the mentors. A significant portion of the feedback would be focused on the first slide – what our CEO, Kurling, likes to call “the billboard slide.”
Imagine you’re driving down the freeway and you pass a billboard sign. How much time is there to absorb the key message? Not much. The message has to be simple, clear, and compelling.
In examining the billboard slide, we would cover a broad range of topics from company name to logo design to branding.
Here are 3 resources that can help with your billboard slide:
- Check for availability of your company name on opencorporates.com
- Automate your logo design on looka.com (or just play with the tool to help jumpstart your thinking process)
- Domain registration services, like GoDaddy, BlueHost, and Google allow you to easily search of a website name is available
You can listen to my recent Tech School talk on legal basics to learn about other great resources for startups.