75% of venture-backed startups fail.

According to a recent CB Insights report, 14% fail because of poor marketing and 29% fail because they ran out of cash — which happens when startups don’t attract customers fast enough, and can also be attributed to poor marketing.

Considering the vast and multifaceted state of modern marketing, “poor marketing” could mean any of a number of things. Perhaps they weren’t driving enough traffic to their website, or maybe they were failing to build trust with potential customers — or maybe they just weren’t reaching the people they needed to reach.

Regardless of the actual reason, it all boils down to a single misconception: a good product will sell itself.

While I don’t have any hard evidence to back this claim up, I would be willing to bet the startups that failed due to poor marketing would strongly disagree with this statement.

Instead, I believe the following to be true:

A good product helps real people solve real problems. A good marketing strategy identifies who these people are, how the product can solve their problems — and, most importantly, conveys this message in a way that is both engaging and informative.

There’s a reason that any good marketer knows that “Content is King”. Having a good product is important. Knowing your target audience is also important. But generating valuable content that draws readers in, builds trust, and converts visitors into paying customers — that’s gold.

So how do you convey the message that “my product can help you solve your problem” in a way that isn’t obnoxious, invasive, and pushy?

Well, you start by NOT doing the following five things:

1. Making it All About You

What all startup founders need to remember when developing content is that people don’t care about your product. They don’t care about your solution. They don’t care about your software.

All they care about is their problems. And they want to know if you can help them solve their problems.

That’s why Moz, the SEO behemoth, doesn’t write this:

“Our all-in-one toolkit is built by a team of industry experts and includes both SEO tracking and research.”

They write this:

When you’re writing your content, you need to start with your customers.

Who are the people you’re trying to reach? What are their problems? And how can you help them solve their problems?

Of course, the answers to these questions aren’t going to drop out of the sky on a golden platter — you’ll have to do some rigorous contemplation and research to figure it out. If you’re interested in starting this long, arduous journey, we wrote an article with some tips to help you out.

(Note: talking about yourself isn’t always bad if it helps increase transparency and build trust with your customers — Ben and Jerry’s does a great job at this. It’s just important to talk about yourself with your customers in mind.)

2. Focusing on the Feature, Not the Benefit

Let’s say we’re a company selling commercial jets, and we introduce our newest product as such:

“Our company’s new XYZ model offers a wide range of options for passenger capacity and length. Our smallest model seats 50 passengers; the largest model seats 100 passengers. This model is available in three different lengths: 20 m, 33 m, and 45 m.”

My deepest respect for anyone who managed to get through that mind-numbingly boring paragraph. But let’s dive deeper — why, exactly, is it so boring? Because it focuses on the features. There is no attempt to understand what readers’ potential problems may be, or how the XYZ model can help solve these problems.

Let’s rewrite the paragraph with a more reader-focused strategy:

“The XYZ model is our most fuel-efficient model yet, giving our clients an edge in a highly competitive market.”

This paragraph does a much better job focusing on the reader problems they might be having — fuel is expensive, the market is very competitive, and they need a solution that will help them get ahead — and how the product will benefit them.

3. Forgetting to Tell a Story

Humans have been telling stories for thousands of years. Storytelling is the way we share information, learn from collective experience, and teach moral values to the younger generation.

Storytelling is so hardwired into our brains, that we are able to better retain information when it is conveyed to us in the form of a story.

If founders want to sell their product or promote their company, they need to start by telling a good story.

But beware: telling a good story doesn’t mean “telling the story of you”. As Cheryl Corner noted in her article “Selling by Story Telling”, “If you talk primarily about yourself, you are missing the chance to share the most compelling story of all: The ones your customers would like you to tell”.

4. Boring Readers with Industry Jargon

“We are a SaaS company that provides a fully scalable solution with an intuitive UI that operates seamlessly across multiple platforms.”

You’re a what now?

Shorthands like “SaaS” or “UI” become so ingrained into our everyday conversation, that it’s hard to imagine a time when we didn’t know what these words meant — and, more importantly, that they’re not part of most people’s daily conversations.

In short, smart people are cursed with knowledge — and in order to successfully market your product or solution, you need to learn how to become un-cursed.

5. Ignouring Grammar and Speling

Spelling and grammar mistakes are one of the easiest ways for your company to lose credibility. In a survey of over 1000 Britons, 59% said they would never use a company with poor grammar on their website — and a whopping 82% said they wouldn’t use a company that incorrectly translated its material into English.

Besides that, spelling mistakes can completely distort your meaning — take it from the content strategist who published an article that contained the line:

“Preceding the 2013 Wimbledon tennis tournament, Evian’s UK branch launched a cleaver marketing campaign rooted in user-generated content.”

Such a minute spelling error may leave an unsuspecting reader mistakenly believing Evian is pivoting into the knife business. (The content strategist in question owned up to the mistake, and wrote a great article about how to avoid spelling mistakes in your own writing).

Luckily, spelling and grammar mistakes are relatively easy to fix. To avoid embarrassing (and potentially revenue-killing) mistakes, we’d recommend doing the following:

First, read the content aloud to yourself. If you can do so without disturbing people around you, we’d recommend reading out LOUD, rather than just muttering under your breath.

Second, give the content a sweep through Grammarly, a great spelling and grammar tool that is guaranteed to give a completely objective opinion, and often manages to find a few blatant mistakes.

Finally, find a fresh set of eyes to catch any errors you may have missed.

Wrapping Up

In sharp contrast to the gaudy advertising of marketing past, modern marketing has evolved to meet the demands of the shrewder and less easily manipulated eyeballs of the present day — which means high-quality content has never been more important.

Fine-tuning your marketing strategy and generating informative, useful, and engaging content that will establish trust between yourself and potential clients isn’t going to be easy — but it’s absolutely necessary if you want your startup to be one of the 25% of startups that *don’t* crash.

For more blogs and articles about writing, startups, and content marketing, check out our blog!

This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by +421,678 people.

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5 Ways Terrible Writing Can Crash Your Startup was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Your pitch deck is supposed to be short and sweet…while also including enough information to convince investors to give you money

To make matters worse, everyone has their own opinion about what to include in a pitch deck. Some, like Guy Kawasaki, argue that a pitch deck should be 10 slides MAXIMUM, while others put this figure at around 20 slides.

Slidebean put together a graphic that visually shows how opinions vary between different venture capital firms and successful start-ups — it seems like we just can’t agree on what makes a pitch deck ‘good’.

f you’re struggling to figure out what to put in your pitch deck, the good news is that you’re not alone.

When you’re thinking about your pitch, try thinking about it in the framework of telling a good story.

First, you draw your audience into the story. Then, slowly build up your story until you reach the climax, and finally send everyone off with a happy conclusion.

What does this look like in the context of a pitch deck?

Part 1: Introduction

Make investors sit straight in their chairs and start paying attention.

Title Page

Summarize your business in 10 words or less, and include your business name and logo. This is exactly what Airbnb did in their original pitch deck from 2008 — from the very first page, it gets investors thinking (Book rooms with locals? How can that be?)

Problem

What is the problem you’re going to solve? How big is the problem, and why should investors care?

Airbnb also does a fantastic job laying out the problem in the hotel and travel space, and connects with investors on their level. At this point, investors are thinking: Yes, price is an important factor. Yes, hotels are full of tourists and you don’t get the ‘local’ experience. Please, tell me more.

Part 2: Story Development

Show them what you’ve got

How is your product going to solve the problem? Make sure you clearly lay out the benefits of your solution. If you can, include three benefits that get the message across loud and clear.

Show them who wants it

What is your target market? How big is the market? The more stats and data you can accumulate, the better.

If you have any fans raving about you on social media, now would be a good time to pull that out.

The point of this slide is to show investors that there is a large, untapped market for your product — and hundreds of people excited about your product and posting about you on social media is pretty solid proof that your product has a market.

WeWork clearly shows this in their pitch deck, looking at the rise of freelancing as a profession and the growing demand for flexible work spaces.

Business Model

This is an absolutely essential part of your presentation. How are you going to make money?

Investors want to be assured that they’re going to be able to make their money back, which means they are going to want to know exactly how you’re planning to earn revenue (and why this means investors are looking at getting a good return)

Spend extra time on this slide, making sure it is clear and informative.

Talk about the competition

Who are you going to go head-to-head with in the market? For Airbnb, it was hotels. For Uber, it was cabs.

Although many assume that talking about the competition would reflect negatively on you (because it draws attention to the businesses that are doing something similar to what you want to do) this couldn’t be further from the truth.

First of all, competition can prove that a market exists for your product. Second, talking about the competition shows investors that you’re thinking seriously about the state of the industry, and how your start-up fits into the landscape.

Talk about why you’re better than the competition

In other words, what makes you special?

Maybe this is where you talk about your proprietary technology. Or where you talk about how your product fills a gap that competitors aren’t filling.

Go-To Market Plan

How are you going to get customers? And how are you going to rake in millions of dollar of revenue and make your investors happy?

Talk about your amazing team

To build a successful business, you need a good idea and a capable team — investors know this better than anyone, which is why the ‘our team’ slide is the second most-viewed page in a pitch deck.

Who is your team? What are they good at? And why are they going to help lead your business to success?

Blow them away with some impressive stats

You’ve lead investors up to this point — they know the why, they know the how, and they know that you’re going to do it better than anyone else. Now is the time to finish off the presentation with some impressive stats that are going to send the message home.

Part 3: Epilogue

Bring it back

End with your business name, logo, and the sentence that sums up your company in 10 words or less.

Give investors a moment to marinate on how awesome you are, and then leave ample time for questions.

For more tips about how to create a pitch deck, read our other article “9 Tips for Making a Pitch Deck that Blows Investors Away”, or explore our website to find more resources for starting a business.

Originally published at www.intellicore.press.

This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by +415,678 people.

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How to Structure a Pitch Deck for Investors was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This post was translated and adapted from “Weniger schlecht über IT schreiben” by Christina Czeschik and Matthias Lindhorst

As we discussed in our previous articles, the first part of this equation is understanding yourself — and understanding that you (and everyone) suffer from the curse of knowledge.

The next step — and arguably the most important step — is understanding your audience.

When we sit down to write, it is all too easy to get wrapped up in yourself and what you want to say, that we forget that we’re writing, presumably, so someone will actually read what we write.

If we want people to actually read what we write, we need to understand who our readers are — and write in a way that speaks to them.

How do you get to know your readers?

Readers are people, and people are fickle. But you should be able to get a general idea of the topics your readers enjoy and the issues they care about. If you can pin this down, you’ll do a much better job of writing content that brings value to their lives.

Questions and Example Answers

How old are your readers? Gender? Nationality?

Men and women; 20–40 years old; mostly (although not all) native English speakers

What kind of educational background do your readers have? How much do they earn? Where do they stand in the corporate hierarchy?

Predominantly degree holders. They don’t hold a managerial position, but they earn enough to treat themselves to an exciting new gadget every now and then

What do your readers value? What don’t they value?

They care about health, and want to learn more about privacy and how to protect their data. They aren’t interested in learning how to hack devices or data.

What technology do your users use?

New smartphones; fitness devices and apps

What triggers strong emotions in your reader? (i.e. fear, anger, impatiences, happiness, pride)

They are impatient when looking at unclear and lengthy technical texts; happy when testing the new function of a new piece of hardware or app.

What kinds of things might your readers say?

“I couldn’t finish the article during my lunch break, I was pulled away by an important call”; “Is there an app for this?”

How do you find the answers to these questions?

Honestly, it depends on how much time you can (and want to) invest.

For a one-time guest post on an acquaintance’s blog, you might not need to bend over backwards figuring out exactly who your readers might be.

But if you’re writing the text of a brochure that you want to push into the hands of potential customers for the next two years, you might way to spend a little extra time researching your target audience.

Here are a couple of useful sources you could consider:

• Forums and online communities that your target audience participates in
• Comment sections in blogs and online magazines
• Mailing lists that may also be targeting your readers
• Potential readers’ social media profiles (i.e. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Xing)
• Search for relative keywords on Twitter
• If you have a blog or website, check data analytics (i.e. Google Analytics, Piwik)

Final step: buy a rubber duck

Or a stuffed elephant, or a potted plant — whatever suits your fancy.

After you have your inanimate object at the ready, give it a name and a personality that fits your target audience.

According to the example above, let’s say our duck’s name is Josh. He is 29 years old and works as an accountant at a non-profit. After a long day at work, he enjoys watching sports. And he has a problem: he recently bought a smart watch so he can get a better control over his fitness, but the device isn’t synchronizing to his smart phone. He can’t afford to buy an expensive new smart watch — so he gets online to do some research about which product gives him the most bang for his buck.

Talk to your rubber ducky — now Josh — about the different kinds of wearable technology options that are on the market. And when you write your article, write it for Josh.

Wrapping up

Every text should be a bridge between yourself and the readers. A bridge needs to have a clear beginning and a clear end — which means you need to know exactly where you land and where your readers find yourself.

For more resources for entrepreneurs and start-ups, check out our blog!

How to Make Writing About Technology Less Painful? was originally published in The Writing Cooperative on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In 2009, a group of people tried an experiment.

They bought a few hundred miscellaneous items from flea markets across the United States for an average price of $1.25 per object. Then, this group of people hired writers to craft stories about these objects and resell them on eBay.

A “Russian Figure”, originally bought for $3 at a thrift store, resold for $193.50 after author Doug Dorst brought the figure to life with his gripping tale of Saint Vralkomir of Dnobst, the patron saint of extremely fast dancing.

Altogether, the objects resold for a total price of $8000.

That’s the value of a good story.

Humans have been telling stories for hundreds of thousands of years. Storytelling is the way we share information, learn from collective experiences, and teach moral values to the younger generation.

Take “The Three Little Pigs” for example. The original creator of the story takes us through an exciting journey of three brothers who go off to make their fortune. The two lazier brothers — those that made their houses of straw and sticks — are eaten by a ravenous wolf due to their haphazard constructions, while the most industrious brother is able to live out his days in peace and prosperity thanks to his superior brick construction.

This story teaches children the value of hard work and the danger of laziness.

Now imagine if instead of using storytelling to teach these values, we just listed them out in bullet form

Benefits of being hard-working:

• Lower risk of being eaten by a predatory mammal
• Higher probably of living out one’s life in peace and prosperity
• More likely to live in a strong house not prone to being blown in

If that was what our parents read to us before we went to sleep every night, I would be willing to bet my life savings that no children would be begging their parents to read them the “bullet point list detailing the benefits of being hard-working” before bed.

And, more likely than not, nobody would remember what was said. Because that’s the key of a good story: it makes a lasting impression.

Using stories to increase engagement

Storytelling is a powerful tool to show potential clients what your product could do for them — and many organizations are starting to catch on

Google Adwords

Google Adwords is an online advertising platform that businesses can use to display advertisements, service offerings, product listings, video content and generate mobile application installs within the Google ad network to web users.

But instead of saying *that*, Google created a two-minute video that told a story about how Zingermann’s, a small-town deli and specialty food store from Ann Arbor, transformed into a $14 million business by using Adwords. Google does a beautiful job of keeping the focus on Zingermans and giving them a chance to tell their story — while subtly hinting at the role Google Adwords played in their growth.

HP

I don’t know about you, but if someone wanted to engage me in a conversation about printer security software, I would more likely than not run quickly in the opposite direction.

Despite that, I watched all 6 minutes of this excellently produced video talking about just that.

The reason is that HP turned an ostensibly boring topic — printer security software — into a story with plot development, interesting characters, and tension that I couldn’t stand to look away from.

PayPal

The people who benefit most from PayPal’s services are small businesses, in addition to the growing number of people participating in the gig economy.

To tell you about PayPal’s services and what they can mean for mom and pop stores, PayPal asked its customers to share their stories — who they are and what made them want to start their business. These stories add a bit of humanity into the otherwise faceless money transfer software by showing us what PayPal can mean for *real* people.

Radical Ocean Futures

Scientific papers are notoriously abstruse. Most are written using high-level scientific terms, and can only be understood by like-minded scientists.

Rather than publish yet another scientific paper that remains hidden from the public eye, sustainability scientist Andrew Merrie at Stockholm University decided to postulate potential ocean futures using current scientific knowledge — through the lens of science fiction.

Along with the team at Stockholm Resilience Centre, he published four highly engaging and beautifully illustrated stories that outline four potential scenarios for the future of the ocean, that range from hopeful to downright terrifying.

Plain Jane

Plain Jane is a cannabis company that relies nearly completely on influencer marketing to promote their product.

Rather than marketing through traditional channels, they give out free samples of their product and ask people to post about them on social media. While they’re taking a risk because they can’t control any of the messaging — they don’t even take most of their own photos — they are able to showcase a lot of authentic stories and content.

The important lesson to learn from this is that keeping the focus on the customers is the key to building an authentic brand that resonates with exactly the people you’re trying to reach. Because, in the end, the customers are what any business is all about.

How to implement storytelling into your start-up?

Too many entrepreneurs think that “telling our story” means “telling the story of them”, as Cheryl Corner so eloquently phrased in her article “Selling by Story Telling”.

Maybe you have a great company culture, or maybe your company’s “coming to be” story is really interesting, but the fact of the matter is… most people don’t like listening to other people going on and on about themselves. They want a chance to talk about themselves as well.

As Corner noted, “if you talk primarily about yourself, you are missing the chance to share the most compelling story of all: the ones your customers would like you to tell.”

While most start-ups don’t have the budget to direct and produce high-quality videos with award-winning actors, it doesn’t mean they don’t have the capacity to incorporate storytelling into their business.

Start by telling your customers’ stories. Gather testimonials from customers you’ve worked with. Compile case studies that put your customers’ in the spotlight. And, when you’re done, put them somewhere where everyone can see.

Adding real, human experiences to your story will breathe life into your company — and, of course, carries the added bonus of helping you sell more products.

Check out the Intellicore Press Blog for more articles about business, entrepreneurship, and start-ups!

Have a great story tell, but not sure where to start? Get in touch!

This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by +411,714 people.

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Want to Make More Sales? Tell a Good Story. was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This post was translated and adapted from “Weniger schlecht über IT schreiben” by Christina Czeschik and Matthias Lindhorst

Of course, most good writers are smart and knowledgeable people.

But not all knowledgeable people are good writers.

In fact, so many knowledgeable people write in such a confusing way that only people who are able to extract any meaning from their texts are equally knowledgeable people.

This, in a nutshell, is the curse of knowledge: the subconscious belief that others have the same understanding as we do — and are able to keep up when we launch on long-winded explanations using a plethora of industry terms and acronyms.

Sadly, we often are mistaken in this assumption.

As technology penetrates modern society ever more deeply, the ability to clearly communicate complicated, technical ideas is becoming more and more important. However, the technically gifted among us still struggle to clearly communicate their ideas to the general public.

Luckily, combatting the curse of knowledge isn’t impossible.

Many intelligent people are also excellent writers. Many techies can break down very complicated ideas and write about them in a clear, straightforward fashion.

So what’s their secret?

They started by understanding themselves. And, more importantly, defining the barrier between things they know and the things most people know.

If you suspect you possess knowledge that others don’t — and statistically speaking you probably do — ask yourself the following questions to figure out where on the knowledge spectrum you land.

After defining your knowledge level, you’ll be better prepared to connect with your readers in a way they can understand.

Questions

Sample Answers

What technology or specialized fields are you familiar with?

Python, functional programming, network protocol, content management systems, 3-D graphics, etc.

What is your level of understanding on the subject(s)?

Give yourself a grade from A to F. It may be useful to ask colleagues within your field for help.

Are you more comfortable communicating directly or indirectly?

Would you be more likely to say sentence A or B?
A) Take a piece of paper and write your answers to the questions
B) When you get a chance, could you perhaps follow up on the questions listed?

As a reader, what kinds of things do you like or dislike?

Are there emails form certain senders you feel are too over the top? What about them makes you feel like they’re too much?

What do you enjoy reading? What exactly do you like about them (i.e. lots of bullet points, detailed explanations, lots of images, etc.)

What reading habits do you have?

Do you skim before diving in, or do you always study texts very carefully from beginning to end? Do you prefer big blocks of text, or texts broken up by images and tables?

What form does your opinion take in writing? (Or what form do you hope it will take?)

Blogs, conference speeches, books, magazines, etc.

From these answers you can better understand your knowledge and preferences.

Indeed, erasing your memory to forget all of your knowledge and experiences is not the cure to the curse of knowledge — it’s just figuring out what kind of language your readers are able to understand.

While it’s very possible that your readers are speaking in the same language as you, it may be wise to take a critical look at yourself before you make that potentially dire assumption.

Because it’s also very possible that professional-level speech has infiltrated your conversations to the point it becomes part of your daily vocabulary.

Understanding where you stand on the knowledge spectrum is a critical component to clearly communicating your ideas to the people you’re trying to reach.

The next critical component? Figuring out who your readers are.

For more resources for entrepreneurs and start-ups, check out our blog!

Are You a Knowledgeable Person? If So, You Might Not Be a Good Writer. was originally published in The Writing Cooperative on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This article was translated and adapted from “Weniger schlecht über IT schreiben” by Christina Czeschik and Matthias Lindhorst

We’ve all been there.

Trying to explain something we feel is mind-numbingly simple to someone who’s just not getting it.

“Okay, grandpa, first open the camera app… click on the button with the picture of the camera on it… that button… no, that one… yes, there you go”.

This problem is only amplified when we’re talking about our profession or area of expertise — or even worse, when writing about it.

Too often we find ourselves trying to explain a certain technology or a specialized skill, only to be met with vacant expressions. The result? We just stop trying to explain — “They’re not going to understand anyways, so what’s the point?”

Is it everyone just really stupid? Are you just really smart?

Probably neither (at no insult to your intelligence). Instead, it’s possible (read: highly likely) that you’re suffering from a widespread affliction known as the curse of knowledge.

Nobody is immune to the curse of knowledge

Psychologist Elizabeth Newton’s 1990 study demonstrates it best. Study participants were split into two groups: tappers and listeners. The tappers would tap out the rhythm of well-known songs (think “Happy Birthday” and “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”), while the listeners would try to guess the songs.

The tappers were a very optimistic bunch — they guessed that listeners would guess the song correctly 50% of the time. Much to their chagrin, listeners only guessed the song correctly 2.5% of the time.

This is the curse of knowledge at its finest. The tappers possessed knowledge that the listeners did not — the melody of the song — and could not fathom that, without this knowledge, the listeners wouldn’t be able to guess the song.

How do I know if I’m cursed?

We all suffer from the curse of knowledge. Most of us are very knowledgeable about our professions. Indeed, we may spend all day talking to other professionals about it, slinging around jargon like it’s nobody’s business — to the point that we can’t even identify which words are considered ‘jargon’ because they’ve become part of our daily vocabulary.

Consider the first sentence on the Wikipedia page for “Server (Computing)”.

In computing, a server is a computer program or a device that provides functionality for other programs or devices, called “clients“. This architecture is called the client–server model, and a single overall computation is distributed across multiple processes or devices.

A non-expert’s impression of this sentence can be summed up in a single word: “Wut.”

Bradley Mitchell, on the other hand, a former writer for Lifewire, does a much better job at explaining what a computer server is for the laypeople in his article “Servers are the heart of the internet”:

A server is a computer designed to process requests and deliver data to another computer over the internet or a local network.

Much better.

Thus, the question arises: how can the very knowledgeable among us better transmit our knowledge to non-professionals?

How to speak ‘normal-people’

How do you explain technical or highly advanced topics to people who don’t have the same knowledge or background as you do?

You have to strike a delicate balance between treating your audience as if they’re five, and treating them as if they also spend the better part of their day absolutely engrossed in your industry.

This is no easy task. But, there are measures you can take:

Always explain in full

Many of us are afraid that we’ll accidentally insult our readers’ intelligence by explaining things too simply. However, it is far better to make your readers feel smart by telling them things they already know — than to make them feel dumb by explaining in a way that goes over their heads.

Make sure it passes the “mom test”

Can your mom understand what you wrote? Great, passed the mom test.

Say no to acronyms and jargon

That means SaaS, MarTech, DevOps, and GHGs. It may seem like common knowledge, but probably only common knowledge to people who live in the same world as you. Does DevOps pass the mom test? Probably not.

That doesn’t mean you absolutely can’t write acronyms — you just need to define them first, as in Software as a Service (SaaS).

The same is true for jargon. Again, when it doubt, the mom test is a great metric to fall back on.

Write for a real person

Pretend as if you are writing for an actual person. Imagine your intelligent younger sibling sitting in front of you who has little background in your area of expertise — but is by no means stupid. How would you explain this topic to them?

Ask for help

When in doubt, ask for help. Sometimes we are so absorbed in our business or our specialty, that we can’t figure out how to write about it for an audience of “normal people”.

Usually, anyone who is a student of your area of expertise is going to do a much better job of explaining it to other non-experts. Because they haven’t forgotten what it feels like to be ignorant.

This describes our staff at Intellicore Press. We specialize in helping the technologically gifted translate their really cool ideas and business plans into a language that non-tech people can understand — in a way that they can appreciate how cool the technology is too.

For more free resources for start-ups or technology professionals, check out our blog.

Or — do you already know you need some help communicating? Take a look at our services and see if we can help!

Are You Really Smart, or Is Everyone Else Just Dumb? was originally published in DataDrivenInvestor on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I sat down with Christina Czeschik to discuss her recently published book, Write About IT, Less Badly. As technology becomes more relevant to our daily lives, it’s becoming equally more important to bridge the gap between those who understand technology, and those who don’t. Czeschik and her co-author, Matthias Lindhorst, lay out a set of guidelines for how to write about technology in a way that is both understandable and engaging.

This interview kicks off a four-part series that will address different strategies both writers and techies can use to write about technology (less badly).

Congratulations on finishing your book, Write About IT, Less Badly. What made you want to write this book?

My co-author Matthias and I started writing our first technology book in 2014, which was then published in 2015 at Wiley VCH. It focused on encryption, information security on the web and digital privacy, and was explicitly written for a non-technical audience.

Since then, we — and more recently my team at Intellicore Press — have been continuing to think about how to convey technological ideas to a non-tech audience… writing, reading, accepting criticism, writing again… And then we started thinking… is it possible to lay down rules for writing about technology? This is the new challenge we’re tackling. I think the answer is yes — this book is only the first try.

How would you define “bad writing about technology”? Can you give any examples?

Personally, I think Wikipedia is full of them. You’ll see articles in which extraneous details appear in the first sentence or two, or you’ll find acronyms and technical terms that appear without any explanation, or appear alongside other technical terms equally confusing to your average reader.

If you look up a topic like Server (Computing) on Wikipedia, you’ll see exactly what I mean. I think this is due to the collaborative nature of Wikipedia, in which he (and it usually is a he) always wants to add in superfluous details — which are usually correct, but just not necessary.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, what would “less bad” writing about technology look like?

Generally, the more a writer thinks about their audience — their knowledge, ideas and goals– the less awful the writing becomes. There are plenty of positive examples in O’Reilly’s “Head First” books, but also on Medium. This is because many startups have recognized the importance of well-written content as part of their marketing and PR plans.

Incidentally, and contrary to the cliché of the geek who can’t express himself, many hackers are also excellent writers. Paul Graham, the founder of Y Combinator, is a good example. He even wrote an essay addressing the issue of how to write more naturally.

Why do you think it’s important to be able to write about technology in a way that’s clear and easy to understand?

Because otherwise there will be an even more pronounced gap between people who understand technology and those who don’t. We don’t want non-technical people to become second-class citizens who have to rely on the mercy of developers to tell them what they can and cannot do, and be forced to accept any technological development — for example, with regards to privacy.

Better communication between tech and non-tech people may even save lives. I began my career as a physician and have seen enough badly designed IT interfaces for a lifetime, and then some. Studies have shown that people actually die because of bad usability — and bad usability happens because tech and non-tech professionals don’t talk to each other enough.

In your book, you say that before you can write clearly, you need to understand yourself. What are some steps a writer can take to better understand themselves?

Ask yourself: what topic do I know more about than most people around me? Most likely, if you write about that topic, you will subconsciously assume that everyone knows what you know. In other words, you’ll suffer from the curse of knowledge.

So your explanations will be too high-level for your readers to understand. The curse of knowledge is hard to beat on one’s own because our knowledge feels so natural that we hardly even stop to ask ourselves, does everyone know that? It really helps to have a few honest people who are non-experts in the field giving feedback.

You also mentioned that it’s important to understand your readers — what should a writer do to better understand their readers?

If at all possible, try to get your hands on a living specimen. For example, if you are writing about a cryptocurrency application, discuss the topic with people of appropriate, but different, backgrounds: someone who is computer-savvy, someone who knows about encryption, someone with a banking background, and someone who has no background at all. If that’s not possible, try to find what your audience is reading online. For example, check Amazon book reviews that have an audience similar to that of your article or book.

If I’m someone who is really excited about technology, but struggles to communicate my ideas without boring people, what tips can you give me?

Everyone who writes about technology for diverse audiences needs to find a balance between taking knowledge and familiarity with the subject for granted — so that the text becomes too high-level and leaves the reader confused — and between assuming the reader is completely ignorant, starting with the absolute basics and thus boring the reader. This is really a matter of judgment in which all of us can sometimes err on one side or the other. But to decrease your failure rate, you really need to understand your readers.

Apart from that, there are certain ingredients that make a text less boring, but they should be used with good judgment.

1. Humor, of course — but be aware that some kinds of humor are difficult or even impossible to understand in written form, as readers can’t see your facial expression. You may end up confusing readers, or even offending them.
2. Analogies and metaphors are great ways to make a text come alive. In fact, they have been a staple of tech communication since the dawn of personal computing (for example “mouse”, “trash”, “desktop”). We have some good examples of these in the book (and some that should be avoided too).
3. If the purpose of the text allows it, don’t be too technically precise. If, for example, you discuss a certain principle in a programming language for an introductory article, don’t bore the readers with all the possible exceptions. If the audience of the text are beginners, don’t show off knowledge that will impress your peers, but confuse your actual audience.

What about for professional writers who don’t have a technological background — can they make the leap into technical writing?

Yes, absolutely — if they are willing to put the time in to learn. It helps to have a basic understanding, but even that can be learned. At Intellicore Press, we have written about the most cutting-edge technologies without being involved in actual research ourselves.

Our clients or their technical team members will give us all the technical information we need — they have to because we are not involved in any technical development. We then take this information and use it to write about the technology in a way that’s attractive and understandable for non-technical users or investors, or for technical people that don’t have a background in this specific technology.

Often, it is even advantageous not to be an expert because you don’t fall prey to the curse of knowledge as easily, and you immediately see which parts of a concept need more explanation to appeal to a non-expert audience.

Who else might be able to benefit from being able to write about technology?

Anyone who works with technology — especially in a business context. If you can clearly explain your work to a non-tech businessperson, your work will be more valued (all other factors being equal).

If you’re able to explain your technology to them in a way that they can easily understand — maybe even understand the first time they hear it — you’ll make a long-lasting positive impression. Nowadays, so many people feel insecure when faced with technology, and if you can help them easily understand what you’re doing, you can help them relieve this inner tension.

If a reader remembers only one thing from your book, what is the most important thing to remember?

Audience first.

Thank you so much, Christina, for taking the time to sit down and talk with me! I’m certainly looking forward to seeing much more less-bad writing about technology begin to appear…. Or should I say, I look forward to seeing much less bad writing about technology?

Hopefully it’s a combination of both! Here’s hoping for a general positive trend towards writing that is on the whole less bad.

Find more free resources for technology writers, techies, and entrepreneurs at intellicore.press/blog.

Originally published at www.intellicore.press.

Write About IT, Less Badly was originally published in The Writing Cooperative on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you have a compelling pitch deck that clearly shows you are worth the investment, you will be able to spend less time chasing down investors and more time actually work on building your business.

Here are a couple of tips to speed up the pitching process and show investors that you have what it takes to build a successful business.

1. Remember your audience

Investors and venture capitalists want to invest in projects that are going to make them money, so keep your focus on how our business is going to grow — and why investors should fork over their hard-earned cash to help you build it.

If your business uses a proprietary technology, introduce it from an investor’s perspective — how is the technology going to grow the business (and guarantee a return on investment)?

If you have identified a pain point in society that other businesses aren’t addressing, that’s excellent — now calculate the potential revenue solving that pain point could earn.

If you speak in language they can understand, it will be that much easier to convince them to fund your project.

2. Keep it short and sweet

Remember that investors receive thousands of requests per week. They are almost certainly not going to take the time to sift through a dense stack of information to pull out the key points.

On the contrary, investors studied the average pitch deck for an average of just 3 minutes and 44 seconds.

When you’re working with less time than it takes to order a drink at Starbucks, you need to make sure your key points are front and center.

The 10/20/30 rule — developed in the 1970s by marketing guru Guy Kawasaki — is a good place to start:

• Keep your deck no longer than 10 slides
• Talk for less than 20 minutes
• Use no smaller than 30-point font

If you can’t even hold investors’ attention, you’re definitely not going to be holding a check when you walk out of that room.

3. Prove that you’re worth it

Use graphics and large font so investors can effortlessly understand your potential — you can never go wrong with easy-to-digest facts and figures, especially when you’re working on a tight timeframe.

Social proof also works great. If people are raving about you on social media, be sure to include it in your pitch. Investors want to fund winning projects. And if you have a large following people excited to see you launch, that’s often proof enough.

4. Show how you’re better than the competition

Who are the other players in the field, and what makes you different? What’s your competitive advantage?

If you have proprietary technology or killer experience, here is your chance to show it off.

Tell investors about the things that only you can bring to the table — because that is what will make you stand out from the crowd.

5. Make your financials shine

Investors spend 23% of their time on the financial slide, longer than any other slide. If you have been in business for a few years and have accumulated a good amount of financial evidence, you absolutely need to include it — and be sure to take extra care to make sure investors can quickly and easily absorb key information.

6. Flaunt your team

Investors know that successful companies start with high caliber teams of ambitious individuals — which is why they spend almost as long looking at the “Team” slide as they do look at “Financials”.

Demonstrate the unique skill that each team member will bring to the table and how your team will be able to work together to push your company to success.

7. Prove there’s a market

If you have been in business for a few years, take the opportunity to calculate customer growth. A large uptick in customers in a short period of time proves that there is a largely untapped market just waiting to be reached — which is music to investors’ ears.

If you don’t have any solid numbers to back you up (i.e. you are just getting started), make sure you include some simple graphics depicting the results of a TAM SAM SOM analysis:

TAM — Total Available Market (all the people in the world)

SAM — Served Available Market (the people your business could realistically reach)

SOM — Serviceable Obtainable Market (the portion of your SAM that could realistically become customers)

If you can demonstrate that there is a reasonably sized market and proven demand for your solution, investors will be lining up to give you money.

8. Clearly outline your business plan

Having a great idea is one thing, but having a clear plan for getting your business off the ground is something totally different. When you’re presenting your business plan, make sure you include a timeline with each milestone clearly depicted.

Nobody is going to invest in some vague semblance of a plan. They’ll want to know exactly how you’re planning to get your business off the ground (read: how you’re going to spend their money and how fast they’ll be getting their money back).

9. Work with an agency

The benefit of working with an agency is that they have been through the motions before — they have worked with dozens of other start-ups and they know exactly how to make investors straighten up and pay attention.

At Intellicore we offer service packages to help start-ups fine-tune their pitch in a way that resonates with potential investors — so you don’t walk out of that meeting room empty handed.

You only have one shot to show investors that you have what it takes — make it a hit!

Check back next week for our article on how to structure a pitch deck for maximum impact, here or at www.intellicore.press/blog!

Originally published at www.intellicore.press.

This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by +391,714 people.

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9 Tips for Creating a Pitch Deck that Blows Investors Away was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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Originally published at www.intellicore.press.

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Answer: None.

The iPhone was not introduced until 2007.

This question illustrates how quickly new technologies become part of our lives, and part of the new normal.

It’s no different with blockchain and ICOs: For those of us who work with blockchain startups in a professional capacity, token offerings have become so much the norm that it seems funny that they weren’t even part of the tech and finance landscape until 2013 — and didn’t really take off until last year, 2017.

Let’s take a minute to remember that there was life before ICOs.

Will there also be life after ICOs?

If, for a moment, we try to forget the hype surrounding everything blockchain and focus on the core of the matter, ICOs started out as just another way of crowdfunding, and evolved (or some would say, degenerated?) into just another form of institutional VC fundraising. So, nothing we haven’t seen before — just a bit less regulated, although that seems to be changing as well.

As regulators are wisening up to the ways of blockchain entrepreneurs and investors, ICOs are starting to look like just another financial instrument to get funding for your business idea, or to invest your money into something with growth potential.

And just like with any other financial instrument, there are some who understand it, some who don’t understand it and thus stay away from it — #CRAEFULGANG, anyone? — and those who don’t understand it but want a piece of the action anyway. Regulation is merely a way to make matters safer for the last group, and as such neither good nor bad — but probably inevitable.

Fact is: ICOs have been proclaimed dead again and again all through the recent crypto boom. Most notably, the ICO platform Cofound.it announced just two days ago that it’s going to close up shop because of the untimely demise of ICOs (read about their rationale in the words of CEO Daniel Zakrisson here).

Whether or not they are in fact dead depends a lot on what you think is the defining feature of an ICO:

• Is an ICO just a token sale? Then ICOs won’t be dead until blockchain technology is dead.
• Are ICOs an opportunity to increase (or gamble away) your fortune, which may or may not come from legal origins, in a blissfully unregulated environment? Then ICOs are not quite dead, but there’s not much life left in them either. (Think twitching roadkill.)
• Are ICOs only real ICOs if small private investors, the often invoked “community”, make up the majority of investors? Then ICOs are not completely dead either — but pretty comatose.
• Finally, could ICOs be just another regulated financial instrument in the tool belt of banks and financial institutions? Then ICOs are alive and kicking — they’ve just been adopted into a new family. This new family may be a bit more uptight about some things, but does its best to keep the new kid out of trouble (including the careful screening of dubious old friends).

So, our verdict: No, ICOs are not dead — they’re just sleeping off their hangover after too many months of excess. (Look there! It seems like they’re already stirring a bit to find a bottle of water and yesterday’s pizza for the old electrolytes…)

Originally published at www.intellicore.press.

This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by +369,262 people.

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Are ICOs Dead (Again)? was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.