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What Deck Rooster does

Published: 12-Mar-2021
 
At Deck Rooster, we are trying to take a different approach to fixing presentations. Most of the players in the market are currently fixing presentations only from an aesthetics point of view ("professional looking deck"). While there is definitely a market for that, there is hardly anyone helping with the step that comes before making the deck, ie, what to say in the deck and how to say it. The "story" or "narrative" as the cliché goes.
We want to help with this step at Deck Rooster. Fixing this step becomes even more important for decks that are going to be used in a make-or-break situation. Like a deck to be sent to persuade investors. Or the one sent to a lead to get them one step closer to becoming a customer. Or like one of our clients, the deck they wanted to use to pitch to a potential bride's family.
To fix this step, a lot of work goes in. Take the example of an investor deck.

Step 1: Figuring out the right message to tell.

For this, we first need to understand the current story the founder is telling and the problems they are facing with it.
Ask lots of Qs to figure out what they are really trying to stay. Go back & do our own reading on the space. Have multiple calls. Make copious amounts of notes. Separate signal from noise. Then begin to storyboard & iterate till founder has an aha moment with new narrative

Step 2: Figuring out how to say it.

We break the narrative into bite sized messages with 1 message going into 1 slide. We sketch a lot to identify the right visual to accompany the message to make it understandable in the shortest time & recallable for the longest time.
Step 2 is important to avoid transmission loss - the loss of the message when converted from a story in a word doc to story in a deck.

Step 3: Bring the story to life

Once the sketches are ready, we begin the high-fidelity design. Build mood-boards, design language, etc. We then design every slide from one point of view - Is the message coming out clearly from the designed slide or not (internally, we ask if the message of the slide is clear to you within 5 seconds - if not, redo). We obsess over the information hierarchy and eye flow of the message on the slide. The idea is to not just create a stunningly beautiful slide, but one that is beautiful and clear about the message.
 
This obviously takes a lot of time. We take anywhere between 6 to 8 weeks to complete a deck but the payoff is worth it. The founder walks away confident with a clear articulation of the story they always had in their head but couldn't put on paper. And we move on to the next exciting project to start from ground zero again.

So what are we really doing here?

Making decks? No. We are actually solving a communication problem for founders. And we are solving this through storytelling and design. Decks just happen to be the popular medium through which business stories are told. But the principles remain the same whether you are telling a story via a video, a Notion document, a website or even just speaking.
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