Being a One Bit Wonder

One of the biggest challenges in a startup is telling others about your idea.  Your biggest fear is that the people you most want to understand won’t, and the people you least want to understand will.  Therefore, you oscillate between telling too much and telling too little. 

As I mentioned in my last post, I am working closely with one of my companies as acting CEO for a while.  So as we explore our place in the world, I am often part of the conversation with a potential partner, recruit, influencer, etc. Learning how to describe something truly new is like learning to navigate a dimly lit room.  You bump into a lot of things that hurt, until you finally figure out how to avoid them. 

There are usually inescapable clues to suggest your vision, message, or raison d’etre is failing to stick.  It is that glassy stare, the lack of questions, or the ever-vapid queries of  “so what’s your business model?” and “so what’s your market positioning?”  Those questions are really transforms of the why would anybody ever pay for this? question that is going through the other person’s head.

Being passionate about the utter brilliance about what you are building, the natural first reaction is to blame the victim.  They just don’t ‘get it’.  And the truth is they don’t.  But it isn’t for lack of motivation or competence.  After all, the person sitting across from you is likely to be very well-informed about many related topics, otherwise you likely wouldn’t be talking to them in the first place.

One of the key mistakes we all make is what I call “throwing up on the customer.”  This is my genteel way of describing the tendency to use the but, wait, there’s more... construction in describing the new business.  Technology companies are especially prone to this for two reasons.  First, technology is a cumulative science. So the genealogical relationship between this innovation and what has preceded it is often interesting, if not important.  Second, technology is complex, making it likely that there are ‘aha!’ moments that arise from the new innovation, opening new vistas of opportunity.  Throwing up on the customer is the failure to distill all this knowledge and insight into the minimal package which is necessary and sufficient to achieve a desired result.  The listener is often left to fend for themselves in finding the one bit to assimilate.

The technology community, and VCs in particular, are constantly on the hunt for disruptive opportunities.  Hitting that communications sweet spot between incomprehensibility and triviality is very difficult.  One of the best mentors on the subject that I have ever had is Jerry Weissman and I highly recommend his books and practice to everyone who has to communicate complex ideas to intelligent people.

I have come to believe that conversations about new companies need to distill the idea into a single new bit of information, rather than the gigabytes that so often characterize these conversations.  If you can effectively state the “What’s New Here” in a single sentence, you’re well on you way to that infamous “elevator pitch” or Jerry’s WIIFY, or as my 11th grade social studies teacher used to call it, the “So What?”   

The trick is to set the right objective with the conversation.  That single bit isn’t the whole idea.  Over-communicating provokes a ‘reject response,’ what psychologists call counterarguing. That single bit should be a simple, complete idea that evokes a positive response and sets the listener up for the next bit.  In selling it is referred to as ‘the objective of this meeting is to have a second meeting.’  Failure to distill the message makes it difficult to consume. “Distillation is the process of heating a liquid until it boils, capturing and cooling the resultant hot vapors, and collecting the condensed vapors.[cite]”  Condensing hot vapors is a lot of what startup communications is about. 

I am re-learning from the inside what I initially learned twenty years ago. This is depite the fact that, as a VC, I get thrown up on several times a week.  It doesn't make it any easier for me to distill when I wear the startup hat.  But at least I am working it.  The world can only absorb one bit of information at a time about a new company. That one bit is wonderful when you finally find it.

Comments

[Megan Cunningham]

This subject of how to best pitch a complex/innovative idea --succinctly but completely-- comes up all the time in the entertainment industry, where there are millions of one bit wonders, and the Acquisition Exec's job is equivalent to the VC's. It's not easy at all, no matter how much homework you do on your audience, or how well you know your business. In fact sometimes I think the better you become at running your business, the worse off you may be at pitching it...for precisely this reason: the throw up phenomena. In fast-changing sectors, especially, there are often multiple trends that a startup is benefitting from ("riding the wave" so to speak) and distilling which one trend someone may latch on to is really a challenge. I appreciate the links to the Weismann articles, Peter. It's fascinating to hear your POV now that you're (temporarily, at least) sitting on the other side of the fence! ;-)

[Hooman Radfar]

Peter, kudos - your post reflects the dynamic tension faced by entrepreneurs quite brilliantly. It is extremely difficult to find the "one bit" that resonates with the different constituencies that you address over time as an entrepreneur. IMHO, the trick to finding the “one bit,” is to not only understand the value levers associated with your product/business, but also to understand the manner in which those levers apply to your audience. Hope you are having fun with Rafael - he has got some fantastic stuff.