Assume Your Readers Don’t Like To Read
…or don’t want to…or don’t have time.
This was part of the advice I recently gave to a participant in this year’s TVC equity symposium (where entrepreneurs present to potential investors).
When writing a biz plan or investor pitch:
Get your key points in there early (executive summary) and reinforce them throughout. Save the soaring passages for your creative writing class.
Don’t make people flip to an appendix for details on your marketing strategy (”How are you going to sell it?” is one of the BIG investor questions; they don’t want to hunt for the answer.)
DO start each section with a (simple) graphic chart (product road map) or bullet points summarizing key points in that section. If they read nothing else, they’ll at least SEE the chart and the bullet points.
Me – I love to read. But, business plans? Not so much…and I read far fewer than investors (they’re bombarded with hundreds of ‘em.)
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What?! No audio?! Shouldn’t there be some subliminal soundtrack (”ka-ching!”) playing in the background, like elevator musak? Or maybe just do the whole thing on video for the ADHD crowd. Think 60 second infomercial. (The late great) Billy Mays talking really loud, really fast. That’d wake ‘em up.
BUT WAIT! There’s MORE!
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