A room decides, in roughly the first ninety seconds, how carefully to follow the rest of a presentation — and that decision is hard to reverse once made. Which makes the opening worth disproportionate preparation relative to its length.
A strong opening states what the room is here to decide, why it matters to them specifically right now, and what happens next once they’ve heard you out. It doesn’t need a scene-setting slide of market context before getting there — that’s worth having, but later, once the room already knows why it should care.
Do this now. Write the opening ninety seconds of your next deck as plain spoken sentences, not slide bullets: what this is about, why this room specifically needs to hear it now, and what you want from them by the end. Read it aloud and time it. If it runs long, the usual cause is leading with background before the point rather than leading with the point.
This is the same sentence from lesson one, expanded into something you’d actually say out loud in the first minute and a half.
