Yes, that’s the title of this blogpost. And no, that’s not in Wingdings font.
And yes, that’s also an equation.
Surprises do better than suspense, which do better than pauses, which do better than full stops.
The first is indelible. The last is forgettable.
Let me elaborate.
| Notation | Meaning | Explanation |
| ! | Surprise | (For all you coders, the exclamation point does not stand for “not.”) You’ve shared something interesting, shocking, unexpected… something non-consensus or nonobvious. This is the easiest justification for someone to take a meeting. You not only have their attention, but their curiosity. It’s a point of contention. It allows for debate. At face glance, it may not sound right. It may outright be shocking. |
| ? | Suspense | Why? How? You’ve posed an interesting question that begs an answer. People will follow up. They may or may not take the meeting, which is highly dependent on their bandwidth and your luck in their schedule. Oftentimes, the follow up will seek some level of external validation. You need to appeal to a higher authority. References. Facts/data, and starting from universal truths. Or sometimes, a higher form of logic and reasoning. In the words of Siqi Chen, questions are “tell tale signs of objections politely withheld.” For the purpose of gauging interest, quiet objections out loud may work in your favor. |
| , | Pause | You’ve introduced a subclause before the clause. The subclause itself must be interesting enough for them to want to finish the sentence. It’s the difference between a feature and a product. If it is interesting enough, there may be a follow up, but things will usually stay asynchronous. Oftentimes, this manifests in the form of taking a large leap of faith in logic. Either one starts a premise, but has no conclusion/solution. Or the other way around. You deliver the punchline, but has no build-up. |
| . | Stop | A quick conclusion can be drawn. No further questions or curiosities. There’s nothing special. Nothing worth noting. This neither grabs attention or begs curiosity. The same as saying the sky is blue. While that may seem obvious, the equivalent in the startup world is “We are a B2B SaaS product leveraging AI to deliver insights.” You’ve said nothing. And unfortunately, all of which is forgettable. |
All that to say, if the goal is to get a conversation going, the above is a formula I often advise the founders and GPs I work with.
Then once you have the meeting, of all the meeting requests I get, the two most common reasons are:
- I need money
- I need feedback
Oftentimes, not mutually exclusive.
For the purpose of this blogpost, and as I’ve written about the former in the past, I’ll focus on the latter.
Feedback
The vast majority of people also suck at asking for feedback. Take pitch decks, for example.
Most founders and GPs ask: “Can you give me some feedback on my deck?” Unfortunately, the ask is nebulous. What kind of feedback are you looking for? How honest can I be? What are my parameters?
Should I be worried about hurting your feelings? Are you looking for validation or constructive criticism?
Am I the best person to give you feedback on this? Am I supposed to give feedback from the perspective of me as [insert your name] or a different persona?
So, unless you’re best friends with the person you want feedback from AND they are the ideal archetype you’re trying to target, you need to be more direct and focused on what you’re looking for.
Love-Hate-Forget
One of my favorite set of questions of all time happens to be something that was designed to be asked in groups of strangers. Something that came from the social experiments I hosted pre-COVID. Not original, but I forget the attribution.
- Who did you notice? Who, for whatever reason, rational or not, did you like?
- Who, for whatever reason, did you not like or feel it may be hard to be friends with them?
- And after all that, who did you, for whatever reason, not notice at all?
Similarly, in the case of deck feedback…
Love
- Could you go through the whole deck, spending an average of half a second on each slide? While you do so, could you note, which slides you spend longer than one second on, for whatever reason?
- FYI, leave it up to them if they want to elaborate. Sometimes you don’t need to ask. Oxygen usually rises to the top.
- If you were to keep just one slide and throw everything else out, which slide would you keep?
Hate
- Could you spend up to five seconds per slide? Which slides do you dislike, for whatever reason?
- Why?
- FYI, typical feedback is usually too messy, no punchline (I don’t get what you’re trying to say), or I don’t agree. The last of which is actually not always bad, depending if it’s a point of view of the world or you’re misrepresenting a fact.
Forget
These are not questions you ask the feedback giver. Rather, these are questions for introspection.
- Which slides did the person giving feedback totally ignore?
- Why might they have?
More often than not, these are table stakes slides. Delete these slides if you can.
Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash
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The views expressed on this blogpost are for informational purposes only. None of the views expressed herein constitute legal, investment, business, or tax advice. Any allusions or references to funds or companies are for illustrative purposes only, and should not be relied upon as investment recommendations. Consult a professional investment advisor prior to making any investment decisions.