Essays

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The problem is, as you approach (in the calculus sense) a description of something that could be anything, the content of your description approaches zero. If you describe your web-based database as "a system to allow people to collaboratively leverage the value of information," it will go in one investor ear and out the other. They'll just discard that sentence as meaningless boilerplate, and hope, with increasing impatience, that in the next sentence you'll actually explain what you've made.

Your primary goal is not to describe everything your system might one day become, but simply to convince investors you're worth talking to further. So approach this like an algorithm that gets the right answer by successive approximations. Begin with a description that's gripping but perhaps overly narrow, then flesh it out to the extent you can. It's the same principle as incremental development: start with a simple prototype, then add features, but at every point have working code. In this case, "working code" means a working description in the investor's head.

4. Don't talk and drive.

Have one person talk while another uses the computer. If the same person does both, they'll inevitably mumble downwards at the computer screen instead of talking clearly at the audience.

As long as you're standing near the audience and looking at them, politeness (and habit) compel them to pay attention to you. Once you stop looking at them to fuss with something on your computer, their minds drift off to the errands they have to run later.

5. Don't talk about secondary matters at length.

If you only have a few minutes, spend them explaining what your product does and why it's great. Second order issues like competitors or resumes should be single slides you go through quickly at the end. If you have impressive resumes, just flash them on the screen for 15 seconds and say a few words. For competitors, list the top 3 and explain in one sentence each what they lack that you have. And put this kind of thing at the end, after you've made it clear what you've built.

6. Don't get too deeply into business models.

It's good to talk about how you plan to make money, but mainly because it shows you care about that and have thought about it. Don't go into detail about your business model, because (a) that's not what smart investors care about in a brief presentation, and (b) any business model you have at this point is probably wrong anyway.

Recently a VC who came to speak at Y Combinator talked about a company he just invested in. He said their business model was wrong and would probably change three times before they got it right. The founders were experienced guys who'd done startups before and who'd just succeeded in getting millions from one of the top VC firms, and even their business model was crap. (And yet he invested anyway, because he expected it to be crap at this stage.)

If you're solving an important problem, you're going to sound a lot smarter talking about that than the business model. The business model is just a bunch of guesses, and guesses about stuff that's probably not your area of expertise. So don't spend your precious few minutes talking about crap when you could be talking about solid, interesting things you know a lot about: the problem you're solving and what you've built so far.

As well as being a bad use of time, if your business model seems spectacularly wrong, that will push the stuff you want investors to remember out of their heads. They'll just remember you as the company with the boneheaded plan for making money, rather than the company that solved that important problem.

7. Talk slowly and clearly at the audience.

Everyone at Demo Day could see the difference between the people who'd been out in the world for a while and had presented to groups, and those who hadn't.

You need to use a completely different voice and manner talking to a roomful of people than you would in conversation. Everyday life gives you no practice in this. If you can't already do it, the best solution is to treat it as a consciously artificial trick, like juggling.

However, that doesn't mean you should talk like some kind of announcer. Audiences tune that out. What you need to do is talk in this artificial way, and yet make it seem conversational. (Writing is the same. Good writing is an elaborate effort to seem spontaneous.)


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