Everybody Deserves 100 words

It's around 2a in Toronto, midnight here in Edmonton. 260 summaries, plans, ideas, and virtual napkins are staring at me with an evil grin. Grinning because on the flight over, I plowed through 150.

I could delete em and claim and email bug/screw up.

I could send out a canned, I looked but passed, when I really didn't.

I could do two a day and answer the complaint emails with sorry, busy.

Or:

I could plow through them because everybody deserves a shot.  I got my shot doing a start up (Chapters), got my shot doing this VC stuff, and generally got breaks along the way from people who thought I deserved a shot.

Your 100 words? Make em count. Problem, Solution, and why somebody will care (and pay).

Back in the days of 640 x 480 generally fixed screens, same fonts for everybody, etc, I was trained at the 600 email a day palace called Microsoft. The cardinal rule? Keep it to one screen.  These kids today? Text messaging.  The fixed length limit means to the point.

An exercise for you: Try to put your elevator pitch in a Twitter Tweet.  Then graduate to 100 words.

Back to the grind.

Comments

[Martin Edic]

Do you know what people are saying about your brand in social media? We do.

That should fit in a Tweet...

[Keith Glover]

Rick,

I'd be happy to go through all those summaries, plans, ideas, and virtual napkins for you. I could create a secure website for you with all of these sorted by category, given a descriptive title, a 10 word or less synopsis (problem, solution, execution) and a link to final proposal for more information. This is service I could provide on an ongoing basis if you like :)

[Jack Poller]

Rick:

Venture hacks had 2 posts on this topic: "From Incoherent to High Concept Pitch" (http://venturehacks.com/articles/incoherent-to-high-concept) and "Hollywood Pitch: Feedburner for iPhones" (http://venturehacks.com/articles/pinch-media).

Once you've gone through the high concept/twitter/100 word pitch, and you're interested, do you want to read the executive summary?

I just wrote up yesterday's SVASE Executive Summary Workshop (http://www.ventureadventure.net/2008/05/29/svase-startupu-executive-summary-workshop). One of the points that Chris Gil, the presenter, made is that, for an executive summary, 1 page is usually not enough, and 3 is too long, so the executive summary will almost always be 2 pages.

What are your thoughts?

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[The VC Whisperer - Paul]

I like the 100 word rule. What people realize is that being succint is in fact so much harder. I refined an old post I had on my previous blog, and it's very similar in philosophy to the 100 word rule: http://vcwhisperer.blogspot.com/2008/06/no-one-understands-what-youre-saying.html

[Paul Marshall]

Whether raising money or not this is a great exercise for a Company to go through. When we are close to something at a tactical day to day level we tend to complicate things not simplify them. This exercise helps in making sure the strategic direction and major initiatives are still aligned with the pointed message.