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.
Your solution - the least important part of your pitch
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When pitching to investors, spend as little time as possible talking about your solution. Sounds counterintuitive? Imagine this: Turns out this mom learned about the solution from another parent in the class, and almost all the parents are already using it with similar results! The best part? It only costs $7.99 a month. At this point, you are probably itching to sign up, even though I haven't told you what the thing IS. Is it an app? A book? A course? A gadget? Investors sift through dozens of pitches, where the solutions change but what they are attuned to remains the same - a sense of opportunity. There’ll be plenty of time later for them to dig into the details of your solution, but in this initial pitch, they are focused on 'markers of opportunity' like relevance or credibility. Your solution? It needs to be there as context but more than that - it becomes a distraction. P.S. |
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.
For years, I put off building a portfolio website. Showing the finished work never seemed enough to convey what went into it. A kind of curse of beauty: the more impressive it looked, the more I worried it would be mistaken for something superficial. Now I’m letting go. I’ve put together a portfolio I’m proud of.I’m trusting that the work can give you a glimpse of the world through the eyes of the deep-tech founders I work with. What comes through for you? Hit reply and tell me - I’d really...
Startups move forward as investors, champions, and talent choose to commit to their mission. But they struggle to accept the conditions under which that commitment must be earned. Startups waste resources trying to turn evidence into certainty, as if enough of it will eventually add up to proof. It won’t. For instance, there is no way to know in advance that an investor’s money will be better spent on your startup than on any of the other 99 startups they meet. This is baked into the startup...
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...