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.
Is your product beautiful?
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"This picture is beautiful." These things seem unrelated, yet they all share the descriptor 'beautiful.' Why? "Pretty" is surface-level—something that looks good but lacks substance. When we call something beautiful, we recognize excellence in context. Philosopher Denis Dutton, drawing on Darwin, says that beauty signals something done well, even if we can't always articulate why. Why am I telling you this? We create things of massive complexity. Whether it’s a new technology, a software product or even an investor pitch, we are limited in our capacity to make all the decisions rationally and objectively. When you aim for beauty, you're really aiming to make the thing the best it can be. Beauty isn’t just an outcome—it’s a guide. A compass that helps us create solutions that not only function but resonate. Yours, |
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.
For years, I put off building a portfolio website. Showing the finished work never seemed enough to convey what went into it. A kind of curse of beauty: the more impressive it looked, the more I worried it would be mistaken for something superficial. Now I’m letting go. I’ve put together a portfolio I’m proud of.I’m trusting that the work can give you a glimpse of the world through the eyes of the deep-tech founders I work with. What comes through for you? Hit reply and tell me - I’d really...
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...