Why a 90 Second Origin Story Video Usually Beats a 20 Slide Pitch Deck

You're seven slides into your presentation, and the investor across from you glances at his watch. By the time you get to slide eight, he's bored. You never quite understood when his interest shifted from engaged to "when is this going to be over," and you might not have a great idea of why he got bored either.

Now imagine the alternative. You start with a 90 second video. Your face appears on screen, and his eyes are immediately locked onto it. By the end, you've captured his attention. The two options may seem like an obvious choice, but the difference between a presentation full of slides versus a video telling your origin story has less to do with information, and more to do with connection.

Founders tend to default to putting together slides for their pitch decks because slides feel comprehensive, but what earns you a room's attention in the first ninety seconds isn't depth, it's connection. And that's what makes origin story videos so powerful.

Why story beats slide in theory, and why you should use both

Princeton University has a neuroscientist named Uri Hasson who has studied something called "neural coupling", where the brain activity of the person listening to a story begins to mimic the brain activity of the person telling it. When we hear a story, the parts of the brain associated with language begin to fire up, but we also engage the motor cortex, the sensory cortex, and other areas associated with remembering and recalling. Storytelling is an inherently human experience, and research suggests that we're wired to connect to it.

Slides, on the other hand, are an uphill battle for engagement. According to Prezi's 2018 State of Attention report, only eight percent of people feel that most presentations keep their attention, and almost half of people admitted to checking email during a presentation. Even if your font choice has nothing to do with it, people are notoriously difficult to engage.

Retention is also a factor - we tend to forget ninety percent of what we hear within seventy-two hours. We remember things better when there's an image associated with them, and even better when there's a video with a story and emotion attached. Some studies even show up to an eighty percent retention rate of video.

That being said, slides are still useful - and necessary. You wouldn't want to put your financials or technical slides in a video, and most people would balk at watching a ninety second video to understand someone's cap table. The power of a ninety second origin story video is that it usually comes before slides - it gets you in the door, but slides still have their place once you're in the room.

The difference between the two media is that video has emotional weight, while slides have analytical heft.

What video gives you that slides don't

Emotion

Specificity beats vagueness

Compression vs summarization

It fits with skimming behavior

What Goes Into a 90 Second Origin Story Video

There's a rough formula that works, which looks like this:

Hook (0-10 seconds)
Skip "Hi, I'm John, CEO of—." Open with the problem, not the solution, and make it recent enough that it feels personal. "Three years ago I watched a small business lose everything because they couldn't afford the tools big companies take for granted."

The problem (10-30 seconds)
Make it specific enough that people can relate to the struggle you're trying to solve. The thing that made you decide to start your company (30-50 seconds) What did you see that other people didn't?

The solution (50-75 seconds)
What did you build? Tell the story, not the specs. A brief demo can work better than a long lecture.

Your vision (75-90 seconds)
Where is this going? Always include a CTA, like visiting your website or scheduling a demo.

Some of the things that differentiate good videos from great ones:

Founder footage, beats hollow fanciness during the starting phases, where credibility is what you will be working to build. Eye contact is more important than production value. B-roll can give your eyes a rest without losing emotional connection. Text overlays should be sparse - maybe three to five cards at most - for the things that need to be read, not heard. Acknowledge the low point in your story, the moment you almost gave up, to build credibility with your audience. Use numbers to describe things like growth, scale, and impact, rather than adjectives. Instead of saying "we help thousands of companies," say "we helped a ten person agency reduce their reporting time by 85%."

When To Use Each Medium

Use video for pitches, first meetings, websites (most people say they'll buy from a company with video on its site, according to Wyzowl), LinkedIn posts, social media, and email. Use slides for unit economics and forecasts, technical slides, quarterly reviews, anything where the room needs to dig into the weeds.

The best option is usually to use both, in sequence. Put the 90 second origin story video at the beginning of a larger presentation to grab attention, or slide it into a presentation as a second or third slide to reset the skimming behavior people develop when looking at slides. The best option is almost always to show up somewhere with a video, unless there's a very good reason not to.

Where Most Origin Story Videos Go Wrong

Wistia does a lot of video analytics, and they've seen that engagement drops dramatically once videos get past two minutes, so ninety seconds is a good target to aim for. 

How To Actually Make One

• Write down your problem, the moment you decided to start your company, what you built, and where you're going.
• Flesh these out into a script, then read them aloud, cutting anything that doesn't sound natural, and aim for around 220-240 words for a 90-second video. (This is usually where founders get stuck. Knowing your story and scripting it for camera are two different skills.) 
•  Get the gear.  Your phone's camera, a nice mic, a tripod, and a window to use as a light source are all you need to make a decent video. 
• Shoot a bunch of takes, and make sure to get B-roll of your office, your product, or your team. 
•  Edit it together in iMovie, or another free editing software, add some music, and put some text on the screen if you want. (The edit is where a rough recording either turns into something people actually watch, or gets left in a folder, pacing and structure do a lot of the work here.) 
• Caption the video, and upload it to wherever you need it, making sure to put it in the right ratio for the platform. 
• Put it everywhere. Your website, social media, email, your slides, etc. DIY, and you should spend two to four weeks on it.

The Why Behind It All

Pitching with a twenty slide presentation is becoming less common, not because slides themselves are bad, but because attention spans have shrunk and people are much more likely to zone out when they're put in a position to be lectured to. Origin story videos are usually the clearest sign of why you're doing what you're doing, and that's why they're so powerful across all mediums. It's hard to quantify, but they feel right, and that's why they tend to work across audiences, from investors to customers to your own team.