2.1.2 Executive Summary and Optional Initial Presentation Slides

2.1.2 Executive Summary and Optional Initial Presentation Slides  

Overview

The executive summary and optional initial presentation slides should evidence an attractive business idea, strategy, and team for a clean energy venture. The ideal executive summary and optional initial presentation slides will attract a skeptical audience to want to learn more about your business. The executive summaries and presentation slides will provide the basis for a screening process in which the pool of applicants will be reduced to 30 semi-finalists.  (Please note that the optional initial presentation slides you submit for the screening process are solely for the screening process.  Should your team be selected as a semi-finalist, you will be not only entitled but strongly encouraged to work within your team and with our assistance to improve your presentation slides for live presentation at the semi-finals.) 

Below are important details regarding submission requirements, executive summary and optional initial presentation slide requirements and guidelines for developing a successful executive summary and optional initial presentation slides. In addition, the Resources section of this contestant kit contains links to sample executive summaries.

Submission Requirements

Submission Deadline: Electronic submission of executive summaries and optional initial presentation slides by Friday, February 26, 2008 5:00 PM

(Please note that MIT student teams entering the Competition via the MIT 100K Energy Track should enter online at www.mitceep.com.)

Executive Summary Requirements

• Executive summaries must be no longer than 1000 words.
• An optional appendix for financials may be submitted.  While the appendix does not count toward the 1000-word limit, the appendix itself should be no more than 5 pages.
• While we will accept executive summaries in either PDF or Microsoft Word format, we strongly recommend using a PDF in order to avoid any change in the desired appearance of your document.  In either case, the executive summary file size is recommended to be under 1 MB in size.
• Keep in mind that your executive summaries will be printed out on a black and white printer.
• All pages in the document must be in vertical orientation.
• If you did not submit your entire document in vertical orientation and the resulting landscape pages get truncated, we will simply disregard the truncated pages.

Suggestions for a Successful Executive Summary

As a guide to developing the executive summary, contestants should consider the questions listed in Section 2.1.5 Judging Criteria as well as the tips and questions that appear below. This is meant to be a guide and not a rigid structure.  Please use a structure that makes sense for your business.

Elevator Pitch

In a few sentences, explain the business opportunity and what your new firm will do to capitalize on that opportunity. Make your pitch clear, simple, and compelling. Providing a few key numbers, names, and facts will make your story more compelling. Telling potential investors and strategic partners why they will benefit from involvement in your proposed business is even more compelling. Remain at a high level in your pitch, but use specific facts to make your business vision come to life.

Identification and Mitigation of Risks

Throughout your executive summary, take care to actively identify risks to the success of the business and how your team has mitigated or plans to mitigate those risks.  Some of the questions below and in our general judging criteria include tips for covering such topics as technology risk, execution risk, market risk and competitive risk.  If, as is often the case with clean energy ventures, there are significant regulatory risks, please identify and discuss mitigation of those risks as well.  Such regulatory risks might include, for example, the risk that tax incentives, environmental regulations or utility regulations will change adversely or will fail to change as expected.

Business Concept

 

What, precisely, is the product or service that you are trying to sell?

Be clear and specific. Avoid buzzwords, fluffy generalizations, and meaningless phrases like “we will make the leading end-to-end solution to reduce energy demand.” Ask yourself, “Will my mother, father, or spouse understand what I plan to sell?”

What are the benefits to customers of your product or service?

Distinguish between features and benefits - focusing only on the benefits. An example of a feature is the hybrid engine in a new Prius. An example of a benefit is that customers will cut their gasoline bill by more than half. Another benefit is that the Prius drives similarly to a regular car, and does not need to be plugged into an electrical outlet and recharged each day. Start by identifying the customer problems that you are solving, and then convert the solutions into benefits.

What types of people or companies suffer from this problem?

What is the technology (if relevant) behind your product?

To what extent has the technology been proven?

To what extent is the technology enabled by other technologies?

Is your business model different from the industry standard?

 

Sales and Marketing

How big is the market?

How many customers?

How many target customers are in your geographic market? What is the likely customer adoption rate (for example, 1% of the target market will adopt in year 1, 2% in year 2, 4% in year 3, 6% in year five, and so on)?

Who, specifically, will you sell/provide services to?

Identify the specific customers that need your product/service. Be specific. What are the customers’ characteristics, income, lifestyle, or age if the buyer is a consumer? If the customer is a corporation, who is the champion for pushing the purchase through the corporate channels (title and duties), and who are the people (titles) that must approve the purchase order? If the buyer is a government agency, what is the budget and policy driving the contracting agent to choose your business in a solicitation?

Why will they buy/consume?

What macroeconomic change, regulatory/legal change (e.g., mandatory carbon emissions limits, tax incentives for renewable energy capital investment or  generation, renewable portfolio standards, net metering rules, utility demand response regulations, utility energy efficiency requirements), environmental change, customer attitude change or other customer trend will drive customers to realize they need this new solution now? If not now, then when?

How do you position your product or service?

How will you test market your product or service?

Will you conduct focus group meetings? Will you call a group of target customers and survey their interest? Will you test market your idea by selling in a small, but representative geographic market?

How do you divide up your target niche and execute?

Who will be your first customers? First customers provide validation, cash flow, and valuable advice. Who are these first customers and how will you reach them?

Will you spend millions on advertising? If yes, where will you spend the money? Will you find a few strategic OEM (original equipment manufacturing) partners to distribute your product in their product? Will you sell through utility programs? Will you sell to the military? And, how will you sell these groups, both the selling process and the resources required.

How do you make money/What is your path to financial sustainability?

What is the possible total revenue (if relevant)?

 

Competitive Advantage

 

Who is your competition/What other organizations provide the same service?

How long have they been in business?
What are their future prospects (revenue and growth projections, if relevant)?

What alternative products or services already exist in the marketplace?

Why are your idea and team better than those of the competition?

What is your sustainable competitive advantage?  Does your business involve a technology, product or method that is or can be patented?

Are there follow-on products and services that will generate future revenues?

Financial Plan

 

Explain in more detail the assumptions used for revenue and expense projections.

What is the price of the product/service? What are the fixed and variable costs on a per unit basis? How many units will be sold in the first and second years? How many units must be sold to breakeven?

To what extent do your projections make assumptions about the existence of tax incentives or other government policies?

When does cash flow become positive?

Where will capital come from to fund the growth of your business?

If you are seeking capital, how much money are you seeking? When? What will you use it for?

What are the milestone dates and events that trigger additional funding requirements? What are the expected deliverables (results) at each milestone stage?

Where will you source the capital?

If you are seeking capital from outside investors, why should investors put capital into your business?

How will the investors make money from your business? Do the founders expect an IPO or a sale to strategic corporate buyer? If a strategic buyer is expected to purchase the company, provide some names of target acquirers and propose why the corporate executives would make the purchase?

How much money could investors make? Research to find valuations of comparable companies. Show the numbers and justify the key assumptions. If investors put in $10 million - $1 million in year one, $3 million in year 3, and $7 million in year five and the business sells for $100 million in year seven, and the investors own 65% of the company, then calculate the return realized by the investors (refer to the Palo Alto Software in the Resources section).

What year can an investor expect to cash out of the business? Why?

 

Management Team

 

Include a brief bio of each team member and the role that each team member will play in the venture.

Ideal teams will have a diverse group of leaders, such as one technology expert, one marketing expert, one financial expert, and one business leader.

OPTIONAL Initial Presentation Slide Requirements

• The deck of optional initial presentation slides should serve as a freestanding presentation of your business (as further explained below).
• The deck must consist of no more than 10 slides (including any title and agenda slides).
• The deck must be in Power Point (.ppt) format and the file size is recommended to be under 5 MB in size.

Suggestions for Successful Presentation Slides

As a guide to developing presentation slides, contestants should consider the questions listed in Section 2.1.5 Judging Criteria, the suggestions above for development of executive summaries, as well as the suggestions that appear below.

The optional initial presentation slides enable all teams to explain their business ventures in presentation format even though only semi-finalists and finalists will actually present their businesses to a panel of judges.  The slides also provide an opportunity to elaborate on important key points or to depict/explain complex details in a manner that may be more concise and easier to understand than with just text.  The optional initial presentation slides should constitute a freestanding document that clearly explains the business opportunity so it is comprehensible to someone who has not read your executive summary and has no knowledge of your company, technology, or market.

Format

Readability – Make sure that presentation highlights key points, is legible and follows good PowerPoint presentation practice. Think of ways to highlight key points, strategically use white space, present the right amount of information on each slide, etc. We suggest that you do not try to make too many points on a slide.  Keep your message simple, logical and straightforward.

Consistency – The presentation deck should be visually cohesive and consistent throughout the presentation. Think of your use of logos, colors, fonts, font size, spacing, etc.

Content

Clarity and Conciseness – Agenda slides should clearly walk the audience through the presentation deck. Titles of each slide should be clear and concise in explaining the content of that slide. Avoid filler/overly tedious/insignificant information. Can someone reading your presentation easily grasp your intended take-away points from a quick review of the document?

Informational Content – In order to allow the screening committee to adequately assess your business, the presentation should follow a logical thought progression and provide enough information to respond to each of the judging criteria.  Key points should be supported by facts that jointly lead to the ending conclusions.

The slides should cover at a minimum:

o      Market opportunity

o      Competitive advantage/technology

o      Team and execution strategy

o      Business economics

o      Clean energy benefits

Teams will need to determine what additional information is essential to presenting the business venture in the presentation.  Examples would include information regarding energy/environmental policy, utility regulations and consumer trends.

Teams can also provide additional focus on key aspects of their business by having multiple slides on that topic.  Technology companies may want to provide additional focus on their IP while a company using available/proven technology may want to focus more on their execution strategy and how they are going to compete in a more competitive market. 

Relevance – Avoid going into tangents or providing information irrelevant to the main business ideas. While the presentation deck should be presentable as a standalone document, it should form one cohesive package with the executive summary.

Citations – All information – including your own lab data, market data, quotes and other information received from third parties – should be supported by a source.  The source should be included on the same slide on which the relevant information is presented.