Want a better pitch? Watch Elon Musk’s presentation for the Tesla Powerwall

Present problem, measurable impact of problem.

Present solution, and measurable impact of solution.

Have done enough initially to show that is feasible.

Fantastic.

While the presentation succeeds at conveying an appealing vision, it dramatically lacks substance. What is "one pixel" supposed to mean? I'm not a child. Give me square kilometers. Or how does the price compare to competitors? Maybe I'm different than most, but I actually care more about the numbers and cold facts than nicely prepared hot air.

Want to really dive into this? Read Duarte's Resonate (available free from the author here: http://resonate.duarte.com/ )

Same concepts, just much more in depth, with great examples.

This is a bit of a pet-peeve of mine, but I really dislike it when people focus on the aesthetic or the presentation style of Musk or Jobs.

Musk gives great presentations, but the reason he is widely respected is because he was actually able to deliver what he presented. In the most recent Musk biography, they discuss how he spent time at parties reading obscure russian textbooks on rocket physics while everyone else was having fun. He stresses the importance of estimating things from first principles, instead of relying on existing market estimates. However - these things are hard, take a lot of work, and are not as glamorous as making a fancy presentation.

Being able to communicate your ideas clearly and in a compelling way is a very important skill, especially for a leader. But I think it's very important to stress that it's a very small part of the reason certain people are highly successful - it just happens to be very glamourous, and kinda fun, so people like to focus on that.

Zuckerberg, Page, etc are all incredibly successful, yet they were not known (at least initially!) for their brilliant public speaking skills.

I understand, but here's why you can't do that..

Let's look at about a 30 seconds excerpt from his intervention in Norway[0]. From 8m7 to 8m38.

Now, he starts explaining the numbers at 8m7s. At 8m38, he's made his point and at that stage, you would be 'convinced'. The interviewer said "Uhuh" (you can hear the audience laugh when she says that). She didn't understand that he has already made his point. (1 kilometre² ==> 1GW).

She says "With you so far" and I smiled because she was completely lost and didn't even know it.

This is similar to Apple's "1,000 songs in your pocket". First time I heard that I thought "How many gigs?" and it frustrated me.

The point of these oversimplifications is to convey a point to the masses. Technical people can find out and understand this and make sense of KWh and what-not.. But you need to simplify to reach a large number of people so that at the very least, the idea of full solar power generation floats in the collective mind.

You tell a lambda citizen that the iPod has 2GB of storage capcity, it doesn't "speak" to him. You tell him "1,000 songs in your pocket" and everyone can understand that. From child to grand-mother.

You're not the target audience. Yes, it's frustrating, but you're an outlier because you can work out the numbers.

He's trying to make it mainstream. Or else the audience would've been as clueless as the journalist in Norway.

By the way, he goes into more details in that intervention. It's not "power-pointy" and the audience isn't the cheering and laughing for no reason type (they're in the Oil & Gas industry).

[0] https://youtu.be/0ZsVxSDB7NY?t=8m7s