A company presentation will be used for many different audiences: investors, Board meetings, sales meetings, people who know the company, people who see the company for the first time. There is the temptation to start working on a different presentation for each different audience. Resist.

First of all, I hope your story is the same for all these audiences. I have seen companies that want to change the story depending on who they pitch to. I think it is very hard to build a successful with an inconsistent market positioning and purpose. So let us assume that there is one story.

Even though different audiences require different amounts of detail for specific parts of the story, each audience still needs to put everything in that overarching framework. Leaving things out will break the flow of the story. So, even for highly a knowledgeable scientist audience, I would still put in one (place holder) chart to remind us all of the very basics of a certain medical condition.

From a practical point of view, it is also very difficult to maintain multiple versions of the same presentation. A small correction on page 10, needs to be duplicated everywhere.

The bottom line, I create one overall master deck and sit down for before every presentation meeting to cut down the presentation to size.

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