Having sat through countless investor pitches, Guy Kawasaki noticed the same failure over and over — too many slides, packed with type too small to read — and distilled it into the 10/20/30 rule: 10 slides, delivered in 20 minutes, in a font no smaller than 30 points.
The demo's ✕ crams a long sentence into small type. The ✓ cuts the same idea down to a few short phrases set at 30-plus points — bigger type naturally limits how much fits on one slide, which in turn keeps the whole deck short.
Checklist: is the type large enough to read from the back row (roughly 30 points), can the whole talk realistically fit in 20 minutes, does the deck sit around 10 slides once only the essentials remain.
When to use
Use it as a cutting rule for investor pitches or any short proposal talk with a hard time limit.