Prototype it, Focus, Pitch Perfect
Read time: 3½ minutes
Hi 👋 It’s Dmitri, and welcome to Point-Blank, my weekly practical advice and perspective on startup operations. Subscribe with other founders and operators.
Now, let's get to the point.
Prototype it
Your deck is nice, but a UI prototype is cool.
That's what I said to a very early-stage founder starting a pre-seed fundraising journey.
Potential investors have already seen the deck and have a general idea of what the startup is all about. They took the meeting, didn't they?
But people want to see the product. They need to touch and feel the idea—even if it’s a little rough and doesn't fully work. Slides on the screen can’t do that, but a UI demo can because people are visual creatures.
I told the founder he could generate the UI for his app with AI tools in an hour or two, or in 20 minutes. And that the meetings with investors and a quick demo flow better, and they are certainly more engaging and memorable.
There is no excuse not to do it for pre-product fundraising.
Bonus: you get to think through the interaction with the product at a lower depth, which leads to some exciting discoveries.
Maniacal Focus
I sound like a maniac when I discuss focus with founders. Laser-sharp focus on the problem, a product that solves it, and relentless execution to get that product to market.
Then I thought, "What's the alternative to this?". Well, it's busyness - the universal hideout. We all know that it's easy to be busy and hard to say "no" to all the things diluting the required focus. But that luxury is not available to early-stage startups. It just isn't.
Busyness gets you no medals.
Instead, you get gold stars for smart prioritization by saying "no." Trophies for turbo-charged efficiency and purposeful productivity. Awards for tackling the tasks that truly tip the scales and move the needles. No ribbons for just spinning your wheels.
Maniacal focus.
How to Pitch Perfect
Here's an 8-second ultimate, universal, definitive guide on how to:
- Do a product demo
- Pitch your startup to a VC
- Explain a new project
Shower Thought
The oxymoron of “sponsored results” is that if they’re sponsored, they’re not results, aren't they? They are ads.
Hotels, Yelp, and Amazon too, prioritize cash over what's true. But messaging matters, wording matters. Prioritizing cash over truth is a losing bet in the long run.
And that's the point.
If you're a founder of an early-stage startup and could use some hands-on help, find me at PreScaled.com or reply to this Point-Blank.
Thank you for reading. I hope you found it valuable.
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Until next week, stay on point!
- Dmitri
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