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.
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....