Chris is a storytelling strategist with a background in copywriting, sales, and business development, focused on shaping clear, investor-ready narratives.
Richard is a presentation specialist with over two decades of experience, known for combining visual design, narrative structure, and technology to communicate ideas with clarity and impact.
Their work at Hype Presentations spans hundreds of campaigns, from early-stage startups to global brands such as UEFA, BBC, Dell, and Unilever.
We didn’t fully grasp how transformational design can be for an investment story until we worked with Chris Tomlin and Richard Barnes ourselves. By addressing layout, color, and flow, they turned a solid deck into one that truly resonated on stage. We’re excited to share their INSIGHTS with our community.
What Best-in-Class Storytelling Looks Like:
Storytelling has evolved. Attention spans are shorter, and investors are flooded with hundreds, if not thousands, of pitch presentations that blur together unless something sets them apart. On stage, a clean presentation is no longer enough.
You need a clear narrative and the right design language. Bring your science to life in a way that’s easy to follow and hard to forget.
Here’s the problem:
Most slides don’t communicate innovation clearly. They flatten it. They feel like static documents, cluttered with data, dense text, or outdated templates. The message might be right, but the medium sends the wrong signal. Investors aren’t just evaluating your science, they are interpreting how you think.
As we get ready for our upcoming reTREAT at BioEquityin Bruges, we are collaborating with BioCentury to set you up as the Storyteller-in-Chief your company needs; not just to explain the science, but to communicate clarity, ambition, and leadership.
Visual storytelling is a leadership skill. That is why we are not only inviting our LifeScience ORG CEOs, but also all the CEOs presenting at BioEquity, to join us for this session.
We want everyone building first-in-class or best-in-class innovation to be able to present it with the same clarity and conviction that went into the science.
Why This Is Relevant for You
For CEOs stepping into investor conversations, your story is competing with dozens of others. The difference isn’t always in the science; it’s often in how the science is seen.
To give you an example: A study at Harvard University showed that people’s trust in data visualisations is influenced not only by accuracy, but by design clarity, perceived intent, and visual fluency. In other words, bad graphs erode trust — not because the numbers are wrong, but because the design fails to communicate in a trustworthy way.
According to research from McKinsey, investors place high value on clarity of articulation, visual coherence, and leadership presence, often above technical novelty.
Source: McKinsey & Company
If your slides are cluttered, generic, or hard to follow, innovation becomes harder for investors to trust.
Our Goals
This is a practical session, grounded in design thinking and live case studies. You’ll see how real decks (from our community), including an oncology platform, a data-driven diagnostic, and a medical device, are transformed with just a few key shifts in design.
These changes didn’t require weeks of agency work or fortunes to be spent, just clarity, intent, and the right tools.