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my skills are uh startup that's going to break the pattern try to be an outwire create a different future right that's how I show up in the world that's who I work with right so so what I say to Founders is your first slide I'll just
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0:13
say what you do as if I literally know nothing and so let's say you're Airbnb you want to say something like we're Airbnb we'll let you rent an extra room in your house you you don't want to say we're Airbnb we're a Marketplace for unused residential real EST State and
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what happens is you know you'll get advisors they'll look at your slide and they'll say VCS love marketplaces because they have Network effects they attractive business model and you know residential real estate is a category but the problem is as a as a normal
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person I don't know what that is I don't a Marketplace for unused residential real estate I don't know what that is I can't tangibly connect with that but even worse like most VCS will act like they understand you know they don't want
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to say I don't get it I don't know what you're talking about so they'll you know they'll say okay you're a Marketplace for unused residential real estate and and so I still don't know what you do really and now we're on to the next slide
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whereas if you just say we let you rent an extra room in your house I'm like ah I know what they do and it's like so I've been in a lot of pitches before where I'm 15 minutes into the meeting I still don't know what it does if if you'd ask me after the meeting in a
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water cooler what did that startup do I wouldn't be able to describe in a tangible way what it does then the second slide I recommend is something related to your Insight so I'm about to tell you something that you might not have heard before about the future and
1:44
you might believe it you might not believe it if you don't believe it you shouldn't invest but if you're prepared for the possibility that I'm right we can keep going so that that's what you want in the second slide so like like
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with with Airbnb it might have been something to the effect of the strength in hotels the I.E their uniform well understood experience is the weakness in their strike because people traveling especially Millennials are going to
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Value living like a local when they're embarrassed they're going to want to live like a perisian when they're in Austin Texas they're going to want to live like they're in Austin but if you're in the Four Seasons it feels the same way in both places and so we
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believe that there's going to be a set of people who value this way of getting Hospitality in the future and it's only now possible because everybody's online everybody's connected you can have ratings and reviews you can use uh online mechanisms as a alternative to
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trust which has been created traditionally with Brands and so like you could believe that or not believe that but it's an Insight right it's a it's a point of view about the future that's non-consensus maybe it's right maybe it's not but it's
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nonconsensus so that's the second slide I recommend so first slide what do we do is if I know nothing second slide what do we know about the future that's not obvious and then the third slide I recommend is if you have any traction at
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all explain what it is right like if you if you have customers how many do you have you have revenues how much if you want awards that what awards did you win if you have celebrity Founders who are they but just anything tangible that normal people would suggest would
3:25
believe oh that's tangible progress that's tangible fraction and then after that um there's a lot of variants but like if you can if you can establish those things up front you know what we do uh what's our Insight uh what's our traction I find that uh people will
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listen to the rest now they're leaning forward at the table now they're sort of like now they're asking questions with the eye towards learning more about it because they're interested rather than asking questions because they don't know what you're talking about