Okay, this will be a bit of a rant (I will make up for it at the end with some real-world advice)… Recently my intolerance for pitches which state that company X or product Y is “revolutionary” seems to have increased - same goes for bull shiitaki (wonderful new term borrowed from Guy Kawaski’s new book ‘Reality Check‘ - more about this later this week) like “unique”, “game changers” and so on.

Frankly - I understand that you truly and fully believe that your idea and thus your startup is simply revolutionary. I did the same when I had my first startup back in 1998. But trust me - unless you have a working prototype of a cold fusion reactor or just cooked up a pill against cancer your product is in fact not revolutionary. And pitching your company as revolutionary in your first email to a VC will not win you any friends. Instead of the intended reaction “Uh, wow - a revolutionary company. I need to read this email and get back to this guy!” you will more likely get a reaction along the lines of “Revolutionary? Prick. Lets delete this email immediately and get on with life.”

So - what to do? Easy - strip your email from all bull shiitaki (this alone will win you a lot of friends) and focus on talking about the customer benefit instead. An email which clearly tells me why your product solves a real world problem will certainly be high on my list of things I want to know more about.

Posted in Entrepreneurship