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.
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...
If you've ever struggled to move people toward a complex new idea, or if you just want to finally understand what it is that I do (like my parents), Or you just feel like watching something interesting … I finally had the opportunity to record a talk I’ve been piecing together for years. I had the pleasure of speaking to a group of scientist-entrepreneurs at Nest Catalyst - a Bay Area program supporting life science founders building companies in the biotech ecosystem. The talk is visual,...
There's a way to improve your startup by orders of magnitude in 10 seconds.Here’s what you do:Go to your email signature and add this to your title: CVO, Chief Visionary Officer. (You can keep your CEO title or replace it — I don’t mind.)Boom! You just made your startup more effective and drastically increased your chances of building a great product.By assuming the CVO title, you made something explicit that most startups leave vague: that there is a single source of intent in the system....