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.
What lies beneath
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A startup pitch is a unique situation. Investors walk into the room expecting, in just one hour, to recognize an opportunity that stretches years into the future and demands a massive commitment. They can only see the tip of the iceberg, expecting to be able to grasp what lies beneath. You might think your goal is to make it easy for them: mold your pitch to meet their expectation and fit neatly into their evaluation framework. But it's not 👇 👇 👇 Your goal is to defy expectations.Here's the thing Meeting expectation is a losing strategy in a competitive landscape. Human minds are optimized to tune out what they expect. (Ever driven home on autopilot, only to realize you don’t recall a single thing you passed?) Especially in a deep tech, where genuine scientific breakthroughs are unfolding, your pitch is an opportunity to craft a truly novel investor experience. All it takes is the courage to lean into your passion instead of hiding in the safety of hypothetical investor expectations. Your pitch isn’t a summary of your company; it’s an invitation to explore the unknown. Yours, Sagi |
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.
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...
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,...