So, what does that entail? Really, it’s about remembering those key golden rules that apply to all good business writing and they are:

1.Define exactly not so much what you want to say, as what you want your speech or talk to achieve – ask yourself, “what do I want audience to be thinking as I come to end of my speech?”

2.Find out as much as you can about your audience and ensure your content is very, very relevant to them and their needs

3.Use language and tone of voice that audience will understand and identify with – and blend that in with your own natural style of speaking

4.By all means use a bit of jargon and a few “in” phrases as long as you’re certain audience understands them, but never use jargon others may not know

Cut clutter

Your success is almost entirely dependent on what your audience remembers of what you say. People have very bad memories, and if a speech has been boring or complicated or both, they will remember even less of its content and only recall how terrible it was.

When assembling material for your speech, write yourself a list of points – a structure. Try if you can to keep main issues in your presentation to fewer than five, no matter how long your speech is. If you can’t actually put it together as a traditional story, what you must do is ensure that one topic leads logically on to next using some good, workable links.

Links

It is possible to change direction abruptly in a presentation, but you need to be a practised speaker to pull it off and know how to use your stage body language as well as that other wonderful presenter’s tool, silence. Nothing gets an audience’s attention faster than a few seconds of total silence when they’re expecting a stream of words.

While these ventures may ultimately be very successful (e.g., Google and Microsoft were both launched by students), they face certain challenges in their business plans and capital raising processes. The foremost challenge is overcoming lack of experience of management team. A classis chicken-and-egg problem presents itself – management team has no past company successes to point to, and can’t prove itself unless given opportunity to launch business. While this problem is nearly always case for graduating students, it also presents itself to many entrepreneurs, particularly those who are launching their first ventures.

To overcome this challenge, these ventures must represent themselves as having a great team by attracting a stellar management team and/or advisors. By attracting a quality management team, even if team will not start until after financing, it gives investors that confidence that plan will be properly executed. It also proves that entrepreneurs have ability to “sell” others on their vision. The management team need not be complete before seeking capital, since additional members will most likely be added after capital is raised. For instance, shortly after Google raised capital from Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Omid Kordestani left Netscape to accept a position as vice president of business development and sales, and Urs Hölzle was hired away from UC Santa Barbara as vice president of engineering.