VC Minute – quick advice to help startup founders fundraise better.
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One of the most powerful things that you can do in your email deck is to break the reader’s frame of reference.
This is where the idle skimmer flipping through decks, “Pass. Gonna pass, gonna pass, gonna pass…” and BAM! You hit ’em over the head with something that they can’t ignore. You break them out of the monotony of skimming 62 pitch decks a day.
The easiest way to do this is if you have incredible revenue, drop your revenue chart in there. In fact, put it right at the front. One of our portfolio companies from Fund I, the very first slide after the title slide was their revenue and it was amazing.
Hands down, my favorite example of breaking the reader’s frame of reference was the pitch deck from Allhers. Allhers is a private community for local women with style. And I’ll link to the site and the show notes, I’ll link to it in social. In fact, on my social, I’ll include an image of this slide.
I’ll do my best to describe this, but it really is something that you need to see. So make sure that you go and check it out.
At the beginning of the deck, they’re building up to all of the problems that women have to deal with when making purchases off of Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace or anything along those lines, it’s just a shit women have to deal with.
And the next slide says, ” Question: what’s the solution? Answer, not men.” Except it doesn’t actually say “not men.” It’s Men, with strike-through, and it’s brilliantly done.
It is such a powerful slide. That’s all, that’s on the slide. Immediately, it broke my frame of reference that, “oh, I’m a man reviewing a business, being built for women.” And I literally laughed out loud when I saw it because it was so good.
Not every business has this and that’s sort of a slide from Allhers can go wrong if it’s done poorly. They just happened to really nail that one.
You have to think, “what is the way that I can break the reader’s frame of reference?” How can I get the idle skimmer to stop, and look at what I’m doing and pay attention. It could be a big stat that blows their mind, an amazing revenue chart, or it could be something to make you stand out. Because again, the purpose of the email deck is to get the meeting.
What’s it going to take to get the meeting? You have to stand out. How do you stand out? Break the frame of reference.
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