5-minute presentation training

You Can Present Your Work.
Just Follow a Formula.

(hopefully they're charts)

The Five-Step Formula

Every chart on this page uses the same delivery sequence. Memorize these five steps and you won't worry about what to say next. The formula applies to most visuals an analyst would create and present.

  1. Explain the horizontal axis.
  2. Explain the vertical axis.
  3. Walk through the legend or groups.
  4. Put one number into a sentence.
  5. Share the takeaway.

Before the case · Why the formula matters

Bad example

You can't present every chart. If a chart is too busy the creator didn't spend enough time on it.

Groupon — Everything We Could Possibly Measure

Too many metrics · too many scales · no single number · no clear takeaway

$6B $5B $4B $3B $2B $1B +200% +100% 0% −25% −50% −75% S-1 filed IPO Nov '11 Restatement Mason exits Billings Subscribers Marketing Net loss Revenue Adj. CSOI Share price growth real? or bought? metric excludes marketing? is this billings? or revenue? 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 Legend: billings, subscribers, marketing spend, net loss, revenue, Adjusted CSOI, share price, active customers, peers, events, and management actions

This chart resembles the same Groupon story, but it is not ready to present. Revenue, billings, subscribers, marketing spend, net loss, the share price, and a homemade profit metric all share one frame, on scales that don't belong together, with no single number the audience can hold onto.

Do not judge your presentation ability by a slide like this. No one can present it clearly because the slide does not give the presenter a path. We are going to tell the same story one chart at a time.

Practice Case · Groupon 2011–2013

The story we will use for practice

To practice the formula, we need a story with real charts and a clear narrative. We will use Groupon from 2011 to 2013.

Groupon sold one discounted deal a day and billed the merchant up front. It grew faster than almost any company in history — the fastest ever to a billion dollars in revenue — and went public in November 2011 worth about thirteen billion. The headline was growth, and the growth was real.

What the growth hid was a business that kept neither side of its market. Most of the "revenue" belonged to the merchants. The new subscribers were bought with marketing that kept rising. And the merchants mostly did not come back — roughly four in ten said they would never run another deal. A growth number can be true and still be lying about the business underneath it.

Groupon's stock fell about 80% within two years of the IPO, and its closest rival collapsed the same way. The four charts below give us enough story to practice with. The chart type changes. The delivery method does not.

Chart 1 of 4 · Bar chart

Slide takeaway

Groupon went from $0.3 billion to $2.6 billion in revenue in three years.

Groupon — Annual Revenue

Fiscal year · USD billions · 2010–2013

$3B $2B $1B $0 $0.3B 2010 $1.6B 2011 IPO Nov 2011 5x in one year $2.3B 2012 $2.6B 2013

Source: Groupon annual reports. Revenue is reported net of the merchants' share. Navy bar is the year before the IPO. Orange bars are the IPO year and after.

Presentation script using the five-step formula

  1. Explain horizontal axis "On the horizontal axis, we have fiscal years from 2010 through 2013."
  2. Explain vertical axis "On the vertical axis, we have total revenue, measured in billions of dollars."
  3. Walk through legend/groups "Each bar is one year of revenue. The navy bar is the year before Groupon went public. The orange bars are the year it went public and the two years after."
  4. Put one number in sentence "In 2011, revenue was $1.6 billion — five times the year before, and the year Groupon went public."
  5. Share takeaway "The takeaway is that Groupon grew faster than almost any company ever had. This was the number everyone celebrated."

Notice the order

The presenter does not start with the whole business story. They follow the same five-part order every time: explain the horizontal axis, explain the vertical axis, walk through the legend or groups, put one number into a sentence, share the takeaway. And if the number matters, put it on the slide so the audience does not have to do the math.

Chart 2 of 4 · Bar chart — two panels

Slide takeaway

The headline revenue was a thin slice of the cash Groupon actually moved.

Groupon — Gross Billings vs. Reported Revenue

2011 · USD billions · billings is all the cash, revenue is Groupon's cut

Gross billings (2011) Reported revenue (2011) $5B $4B $3B $2B $1B $0 $4.0B all the cash $5B $4B $3B $2B $1B $0 $1.6B Groupon's cut merchants kept the other $2.4B

Source: Groupon S-1 and 10-K. Both panels are 2011, in billions of dollars, drawn on the same scale so the gap is honest. Gross billings is the total value of deals sold; revenue is what Groupon kept after paying merchants.

Presentation script using the five-step formula

  1. Explain horizontal axis "On the horizontal axis, both panels show the same year, 2011."
  2. Explain vertical axis "Both panels measure dollars in billions, on the same scale. The left panel is gross billings. Gross billings is all the cash that flowed through Groupon — the full price of every deal people bought. The right panel is revenue, which is only the cut Groupon kept after paying each merchant. Sell a $40 dinner deal, send the restaurant $30, keep $10: billings is $40, revenue is $10."
  3. Walk through legend/groups "There is one bar in each panel. The tall bar on the left is everything customers spent. The short bar on the right is what Groupon actually got to keep."
  4. Put one number in sentence "In 2011, Groupon ran $4.0 billion of deals through its platform but kept $1.6 billion as revenue. The other $2.4 billion went to the merchants."
  5. Share takeaway "The takeaway is that the celebrated revenue number was only a slice of the business. Most of the money was never Groupon's to keep."

Chart 3 of 4 · Line chart

Slide takeaway

The growth was bought. Marketing spend tripled in a single year.

Groupon — Online Marketing Spend

Annual online marketing spend · USD millions · 2009–2012

$800M $600M $400M $200M $0 $263M $337M $768M tripled in one year 2009 2010 2011 2012

Source: Groupon S-1 and 10-K online-marketing line. The basis shifts slightly across filings; the jump from 2010 to 2011 is the cleanest reported pair. Figures in millions of dollars.

Presentation script using the five-step formula

  1. Explain horizontal axis "On the horizontal axis, we have years from 2009 through 2012 — a quiet year before the surge, the surge itself, and the year after."
  2. Explain vertical axis "On the vertical axis, we have online marketing spend in millions of dollars. This is mostly the cost of acquiring new subscribers. Customer acquisition cost is what a company spends to bring in one new customer; when it keeps rising, the business has to spend more and more just to stand still."
  3. Walk through legend/groups "There is one line. It shows how much Groupon spent to keep new subscribers coming in. The peak is 2011, the year of the IPO."
  4. Put one number in sentence "Online marketing spend jumped from about $263 million in 2010 to about $768 million in 2011 — roughly triple in one year."
  5. Share takeaway "The takeaway is that the growth was not coming for free. Groupon had to spend more and more to bring customers in, which is what you see when customers don't stick on their own."

Chart 4 of 4 · Table

Slide takeaway

Both daily-deals leaders collapsed the same way. The model was the problem, not the company.

Daily Deals — The Same Story Three Times

What grew · what was hidden · where it ended · the deals model, 2011–2013

Player What grew What was hidden Where it ended
Groupon Fastest ever to $1B revenue Revenue was a thin slice of billings; growth bought with marketing Stock fell ~80% within two years of the 2011 IPO
LivingSocial #2 deals site; ~$175M from Amazon Same weak retention on both sides Amazon wrote down ~$169M; later sold to Groupon for ~$0
Daily-deal merchants A flood of new sign-ups ~40% would not run another deal (Dholakia / Rice) Category shrank; me-too sites shut down

Source: Groupon and Amazon filings; LivingSocial press coverage; merchant-repeat figure from Utpal Dholakia's Rice University daily-deals studies. The merchant figure is a survey, not a Groupon number. LivingSocial figures are directional; it was a private company.

Presentation script using the five-step formula

  1. Explain horizontal axis "Across the top, we have three stages of the same story: what grew, what was hidden, and where it ended."
  2. Explain vertical axis "Down the left side, we have the three players in daily deals: Groupon, its closest rival LivingSocial, and the merchants who ran the deals."
  3. Walk through legend/groups "Each cell is one stage for one player. The left column is the good headline. The shaded middle column is the problem the headline hid. The right column is how it ended."
  4. Put one number in sentence "About four in ten merchants surveyed said they would not run another daily deal, and Amazon wrote down roughly $169 million on its LivingSocial stake."
  5. Share takeaway "The takeaway is that this was not a Groupon execution problem. The same growth-then-collapse hit the whole category, because the deals model kept neither merchants nor customers."

What you just practiced

The chart type changed. The approach to presenting them didn't.

The lesson: do not make the audience decode the chart alone. Use the five-part order: explain the horizontal axis, explain the vertical axis, walk through the legend or groups, put one number into a sentence, share the takeaway.