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.
The master watchmaker
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18th century Switzerland: A customer comes into a master watchmaker's shop asking to clean a watch he had bought.
As the watchmaker takes the fabulous watch apart, the customer notices an engraving on the back side of one of the balance wheels
"Why did you put something there that no one will ever see?" the costumer asks.
The watchmaker turns around and says, "God can see it."
How did that last line make you feel? What do you think about the quality of the watchmaker's work? The value of his creation? For me, the takeaway isn't about good mechanics or faith - it's about the master's choice of words. His reply wasn't 'fact based' or even 'rational' yet it packed the strongest punch. Here's the thing 'Communication' is not the same thing as 'explanation'. It's about cutting through the complexity, in whatever way that does it best - even if it means that logic has to take the back seat. * The story was told by designer Richard Seymour in his 2011 TED talk 'How beauty feels' - well worth the watch. |
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.
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...
In the previous newsletter, I shared a talk I gave at Nest Catalyst about investor pitching. That first talk focused on the mindset behind pitching complex ideas. This second talk is more practical. It focuses on how to approach shaping your pitch - through principles and examples. The last five minutes are especially practical: an easy framework to help you craft your narrative. This was quite challenging. After years of doing this work, a lot of it has become intuitive. Breaking it down to...