We've actually found that the ability to provide clear and concise answers strongly correlates with success, so this is a major factor when evaluating founders.
I'm also reminded of my favorite C. A. R. Hoare quote: "There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult."
The same thing applies to business. Long, complex pitches are a sign of muddy thinking and hidden icebergs.
A one page, fully specified, document would be preferable.
Paul Tudor (I don't know why anybody calls him Mr Jones. Anybody who has ever dealt with his firm calls him Paul Tudor) knows what everybody else in finance knows: you're dealing with people who have money, and when you have money, there are many, many, people trying to solicit your interest. This is not about the blog writing style, your deep intellect, your pitch. It's about "I get 10 really smart people 10x per hour trying to communicate with me (including my own employees). My bandwith is limited. You have 10 seconds. Get my attention".
This issue is less about tech, than about the basics of trying to get through to the wealthy/privileged in what is the biggest, most brutally competitive communication arena. Literally everybody wants Paul Tudor's attention. He's a financial genius, but he's just a man with a limited attention span and dozens of solicitations per hour. Make sure your 10 seconds count.
I was a fixed income strategist for many years. Realizing that there were 30 PDFs from my competitors hitting the target's inbox every hour, my successful strategy was to do what none of them were doing: sit back, really think about what was the essence of my piece that was different from the first principal component of everybody's obvious chatter, summarize that in a single line, and put that into the subject.
Any chance you remember exemplar subject lines? This technique also applies to blog post titles which eventually appear in micro-blog tweets, HN story headlines, and presentation titles.
The only common denominator, in my experience, is not to try your best to be the first. The first is usually a computer, and that trend is only growing.
What you want to do, and this is a time honored principle, is to really think about what you want to say, before you say it, and make sure you know the unique aspects of what you're saying. Paul Tudor, like most AAA people, is hammered every second with the main-line thinking. His attention is only piqued with things that are oblique to the mainstream view. (notice that I use the word "oblique", not necessarily "orthogonal", because there are many unsubtle people who take the idea too far ie: "I want attention so will go wild with my thinking". You must never underestimate the extent to which high end people have seen it all before and have defences against charlatans). Your best bet is to be really honest with yourself, about what you're saying that's different but not crazy, make sure you can back up your claims, at least intellectually (the market often does not have time for proof), and make that the key point of your piece, upfront in the subject line/headline.
Then, be prepared to defend your standpoint, with credible arguments. No sloppiness allowed. Your 10 seconds turned into 5 minutes! Don't screw them up by not knowing your facts.
Approximately 80% of the pitches I get are between garbled and incoherent. Even higher in the unsolicited ones.
Consider that your recipient is reading on a small screen and utilize pyramid structure. And don't bury the lede. Many pitches ask for money without saying anything at all about what they are about.
I feel like there's no magic in a pitch. That you just have to tell the VC what problem you're solving. And just expect your VC to get it. Maybe the same pitch can have 2 totally different reactions in different people, because one of them have felt that pain or is identified with it.
Bottom line, my take is: make it simple, be clear and open. There's no need to "sell" or "charm" with it.
Persuasion tactics have almost no place, except at the end when you say, "So, are you in?"
Before that, the hurdle that (as @joshu says) 80% of pitches fail to clear is explaining clearly what the company will do.
If they're writing about a topic that's more complex, sure, the writing will need to be more complex. But there's nothing wrong with communicating simply if the subject allows it.
Say you're writing a memo to your boss explaining why you need to double the size of your engineering team. That point has to come first. Now, maybe the reason you need to double the size of your engineering team is that management wants to add new product lines, and customers are demanding more customized solutions. Okay, so each of those points are the leads in their own paragraphs.
Where a lot of people have problems is that their writing is a chronological recounting of their thinking about the issue. So it starts somewhere in the middle where they encountered some part of the overall issue, then backs up to where they recognize the larger issue, and then buries the solution at the end.
The structure you were taught in high-school: topic sentence, supporting sentences, conclusion, is simple and appropriate for business communications. There are some writers who can clearly convey complicated thoughts using a more narrative structure, but you'll rarely go astray sticking to that basic style.
Even worse is wading through one of these tomes, only to read two or three possible courses of action with none recommended above the other(s).
Complex or simple, lead with point. Because reasons.
Intro, support, conclusion -- do it.
The other issue is that for folks low on the food chain, they often don't feel comfortable requesting face-to-face meetings with execs, and "manage up" by providing absolutely as much detail as possible to their direct management in hopes he/she will do it on their behalf. Again, an organizational deficiency, but a common one, and one that's easy to understand.
Concision & clarity of communication are critical tools in any employee's toolbox. As an aside, this is one reason it's pretty easy to find articles and blog posts endorsing the success many liberal arts majors have in the tech world.
But if its an article meant for the general public, it's your job as a writer to make it more palatable.
If you are a great writer your prose might be better than speech, but I think for most of us, writing for non-literary goals, writing should approach common but correct speech. Good writing has the illusion (but not the reality) of being conversational.
My better professors had, rather than just minimums, either ranges or maximums.
I quickly learned to be concise.
If you have an office rubber duck, reading your report to the duck is a really good way to get feedback.
Looks like I did it twice just now.
You won't become Hemingway. But you will seem quite odd to nearby work mates.
This book was recommended by a fellow HN'er a few years back in a different thread. I bought a copy and read it and was suitably impressed. I'm still working on integrating the ideas from the book, but I think it's worth reading.
Basically, the book teaches you to organize your thoughts (and writing) in a hierarchical, logical structure, and to present the most important idea first, and then branch out below that with sub-points and supporting material.
If you're interested in clear writing, I think this book is worth the money and time.
Reducing amount of written text is not something reporters/writers do easily, because to them every word is sacred, because they wrote it and removing words would always amount to loss of detail. Good editors manage to reduce that text and still sharpen the message. Thus, being your own editor can be tough.
In the news world, writing is done lightning fast by reporters who are good at hunting information down but not assembling it into a narrative. The process therefore includes a layer of editing done by someone else who can focus on it. This is why journalism has a bad name with viral articles written by general assignment reporters who have no expertise in the field (an emerging PR, for example) that they're writing about. They're expending minimum effort for the greatest return, and that's their job. Compare those to print articles that have had attention, and you'll see stark differences.
My advice is: I suggest you follow copy-editors to see how they do things; many of them have blogs, some offer courses, but more than anything they give you impression that language changes and you shouldn't be frozen when writing. In fact, what they believe in is that grammar is a living, changing thing. When you see how copy editors transform text, it becomes eye opening.
John McIntyre writes a blog titled "You don't Say" about copy editing for the Baltimore Sun (which he's done for 29 years now). Most of his evening shifts start with him grumbling about snipping text (ex: from 28 column inches to 20), which means he has to reduce some articles by 30%. His reductions are somehow always gains to the reader, but he sure can reduce a reporter to tears.
Some simple examples of his editing: "In a prone position" changed to "prone". Or, "... to anticipate the problem in advance" replaced with "anticipated." ; "End result" replaced with "result." ; "Added bonus" changed to "bonus". "New initiative" reduced to "initiative". And these are just small snippets having to do with filler - larger fact-checking and narrative edits are a much longer story.
There's few things I hate more than 'news' articles not being written properly, something that's incredibly common these days on the Internet. I especially hate articles that start out with a couple of paragraphs of some stupid, boring, anecdotal story before even hinting at what they're about. Such things are evidence of terrible writing. I don't expect blog posts to adhere to this, but I see it so often on 'news' sites, it's horribly disgusting. Yes, there is a place for magazine stories but the news is hardly ever it. And certainly, business correspondence is the last place for that kind of literal gibberish.
Get to the point in the first paragraph or I'll make you take an online newspaper writing course.
That aside, sucking up to journalists is a really good way to get their attention. PR win!
Instead, if you can communicate well, you turn a WordPress theme into millions.
Also, some things just have to be shown visually to be trusted. A paragraph explaining an anti-gravity device isn't going to cut it. You need to show it working in person where there can be no doubt it's doing what you say it does.
This is literally the point of an abstract in any and every respected scientific journal I've ever read.
I can tell you very quickly about Virtual Reality and why you should care, but you won't understand it till you put a HMD on.
So they either communicate on paper, which would be stpid, or he misuses "literally", which would be ironic.
Although, to be fair, it's considered an "informal" usage. But still...
[1]: http://www.salon.com/2013/08/22/according_to_the_dictionary_...
Being "efficient" at what you do at the cost of seeing the full picture, attention-deficit decision making, etc, is not a good thing.
A lot of people with positions of power think they are snap decision makers. They are snap decision makers because there's nobody to challenge those decisions, and often thinking a bit more and listening more, is a good thing.
As Herbert put it in Dune, "a mentat needs data".
I liked Bezos's requirement for a 6 page memo, and time to read it, before meetings. So many times meetings start and everyone wants to share an opinion, and people don't take time to listen.
Sure, inverted pyramid is nice. But so is understanding.
I really appreciate a good long-form article -- NYT and Salon or whatever - if it's somewhat focused. So much that passes for 'journalism' these days is reformatting quick summary feeds, and it loses meaning.
He's saying give me a memo like The Economist writes its articles. Clear. Precise. No fluff. Lots of facts pertinent to the topic at hand.
He's saying don't write like the New Yorker. Lots of backstory, lots of trivia, the overall point - if there even is one - is usually quite subtle and takes a while to pinpoint.
I'm subscribed to and read both. There was a NY article on Varoufakis ('The Greek Warrior'), easily a 45 minute read, and at some point the writer talked about how the girl in the song 'Common People' by Pulp is rumored to be Varoufakis' wife. I found that fascinating and am happy the author included that part. Sometimes though I'm not interested in a story, and I only want information relevant to what I'm looking into at this very moment.
Perhaps there are different models for different schedules?
Are you familiar with Paul Tudor?
Something is definitely true
The thing that non-one thought was true is now definitely true. Or that's what researchers at somewhere say in a new report.
The report by the It's True Foundation ....
