I share short, partly visual emails, crafted through my lens as a creative director in deep-tech. Join me for insights on effective communication, marketing, design, psychology, and the philosophy of value.
How to compress complex ideas
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You’ve been immersed in your venture for years, fine-tuning every detail until it’s a vivid HD image in your mind. What’s your move? What’s the optimal compression mechanism to convey the essence of your venture in a one-hour meeting? The rational instinct might say: "Pick the most relevant facts, present them objectively, and the value will be obvious." The problem? Value does not reside in facts. Value is an effect—it emerges from the interaction between objective facts and the deeper human context they live in. Separate facts from context, and you lose the value as well. The image projected becomes a shallow, two-dimensional symbol of your venture. So what can you do? Think of image compression algorithms: Start with values—your values. What are the values that YOU see in your venture? Identify them clearly, and then focus on sharing them as directly as you can. Only include facts that support these values—not the other way around. The clearer you understand your values, the closer the investor will see them as you do—no matter the bandwidth. Yours, Sagi |
Creativity in Deep-Tech
I share short, partly visual emails, crafted through my lens as a creative director in deep-tech. Join me for insights on effective communication, marketing, design, psychology, and the philosophy of value.
Startups move forward as investors, champions, and talent choose to commit to their mission. But they struggle to accept the conditions under which that commitment must be earned. Startups waste resources trying to turn evidence into certainty, as if enough of it will eventually add up to proof. It won’t. For instance, there is no way to know in advance that an investor’s money will be better spent on your startup than on any of the other 99 startups they meet. This is baked into the startup...
Ask a founder why their solution is valuable, and the conversation often drifts toward money. I get it. Unlike value, money is objective, tangible, and measurable. But notice the circularity hidden in that reasoning. Why is my solution valuable? Because it will make money. Why will it make money? Because it does something valuable. That confusion is why so much investor communication feels like noise with little signal. Here's the thing.. Value and money are not the same thing. Value is the...
There are certain words that, as soon as you utter them, investor attention spikes. These words are not what you’d expect. They’re not buzzwords like “artificial intelligence” or “cybersecurity.” Nor are they money words - ARR, traction, or revenue to date. The magic words are: “Imagine you are…” Founders think they need a big story so they build their pitches almost entirely from abstractions and generalizations: The Problem, The market, the unmet need, the solution - trying to extract value...