I explore this question in my short, partly visual emails, crafted through my lens as a pitch designer 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. |
What makes people see value in a thing?
I explore this question in my short, partly visual emails, crafted through my lens as a pitch designer in deep-tech. Join me for insights on effective communication, marketing, design, psychology, and the philosophy of value.
I start every new funding round project by asking, 'Who is our target persona?' The first answer is always vague: 'A VC.'Push a little, and I’ll get: 'A US-based VC specializing in healthcare.'"No, no," I insist. "I need a specific name and position." Once I get it, I pull their profile photo and attach it to everything we create—a constant reminder to evaluate things 'through their eyes.' Founders are usually slightly apprehensive about that. I get it. The funding round is an extreme form of...
A few good questions came up this week in my practice and in response to a previous newsletter: Q: Should I pitch the same way to a top tier VC as to a 'friendly' investor? A: Trying to pitch differently to different audiences stretches you thin. 'Managing versions' in your head makes you self-conscious and less present in the moment. A good rule of thumb: aim to be the same person outside and inside any meeting room. The real question is: WHO IS that person? What do they want? What is their...
This is what you think you see This is what you actually see Our high-resolution vision is limited to a small central area of our visual field (~26 degrees), yet we don’t notice it. Why? Because our eyes are constantly moving, making whatever we focus on seem sharp. It tricks us into believing our entire field of vision is high-res, even though most of it is blurry. That bias occurs in our thinking as well Because we are able to think rationally in the areas we chose to focus lots of our...