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 one thing your pitch must do, no matter how deep-tech
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If you're in deep tech, you probably don't think of your presentations as "conveying emotions." That's something for actors or marketers, right? Wrong. Emotion isn't a side effect of your presentation—it's the goal. Every presentation aims to inspire action. Logic alone doesn’t move us—emotion does. (hence e-motion) Researchers found that people with damage to the emotional centers of their brain (specifically the ventromedial prefrontal cortex) couldn't make decisions—not even simple ones, like what to eat for lunch Without emotions, decision-making becomes paralyzed. This doesn't mean you need melodrama—like bursting into tears over a data point. But it does mean being intentional about the emotional subtext. What emotion are you aiming to convey—excitement, curiosity, or urgency? Without an emotional connection, your audience won't act, no matter how clever your technology is. |
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...