So I have this talk that I've been actually working on for a while. Normally with these conference things, you just sort of, like, whip together slides the last ten minutes. I've actually been working on this talk for a while, but I don't want to start with this because, you know, you can come to an event like this. You can sit down. You can listen, and maybe you'll get, let's say, 10% of the possible value that you could get out of a session like this. But because this is a small room, I thought it'd be more fun for me to actually do something a little more interactive at the beginning. At least we'll get to the slides. But I thought, let's start with something that's just immediately interesting, adds value.
So interesting for me is to figure out who you are. Interesting for you is for me to actually help you with something that's going on in your world right now. So I actually want to volunteer. So first raise my hands. Who here is a founder of a company? They tell me most. Okay. That's pretty much. All right. So who wants to actually just tell me about their company? So give me a raise. Your hand. Okay. He's quick on the trigger. So, mister, with the hat, what was your name? Aaron. All right, so, Aaron, please, take the mic. Stand up a little bit. Let's give Aaron a little clap.
All right. So, Aaron, very specific instructions here, right? Tell me the name of your company. And what does the company do? That's it. It's called Closing WTF. And it helps people get good deals on their mortgages. Okay. Wonderful. That was actually really, really good. Okay, perfect. I'm gonna hold you for a second. Stay there. So, Closing. You help people get good deals on their mortgage. All right. Great. Who else wants to try? Right here in the back. What's your name? Hey. I'm Rick. I run the crew, and we build social and spiritual connection beyond the synagogue by hosting dinners in Los Angeles. Okay, great. So I want you to stay on this other one. You stay here. I need another volunteer. Do you have your hand up? Okay. Right here. Yes.
I, and I'm building a product called Value. We help people make sense of economic news and what it means for them. Okay, great. You're going to stay on this side of the room. I need another volunteer over here with great hair. He's got a great wave in this area. Yeah. You know, that's you. There's only one man that could be. Hi, everyone. My name is Wil, and I'm building software for commercial pollination. Okay. And you're going to stay on this side? Great. Stay there for a second. Will, you build software? For what? Pollination. Commercial pollination. Great. Did you want to go? Let's go for it.
Hi. My name is Nam, building Gentine. We help women reach the top 1% through content and capital. Okay. You're going to come to this side of the room. Can anyone tell me why? What's the difference between the two sides of the room so far? Anybody picking up on it? Anybody got a clue? If not, we're going to continue. You have an idea? Yeah. We want to hear, like, customer focus. Very good. How do you know what's customer focus? Most product focus. Not like who's my customer and solving problems. Somebody, like, if a paradigm is a fancy word, make it simple for me. I just, if I listen to it, how do I know? Like someone like, I'm building, hey, look at my cool gadget. And then the other person is like, hey, I'm going to solve this person's problem. Yes. Exact framing. Yeah. All of them used one word in their thing, which was? We help blank do blank.
We help people get cheaper mortgages. We help people make sense of right now. Let's make sense of economic outlook for themselves. So we help women reach the top 1%. Whereas he said, we build software for something. And you said we build software for pollination, commercial pollination or something like that. And so easiest like immediate value you can get as a founder. And I listen to a lot of founders, right. I've invested in probably 120 startups now. Invested means I wrote the check into 120, which means I probably listened to 1,200, 1,500, 2,000 startups at this point. And it's so obvious the like initial trip up that a lot of people get, they can't even explain what they do. And the reason why is because they focus on what they do. They focus on what their tool does, what industry they're in. Right? We are an AI tool for the customer support industry. Okay. That doesn't tell me what you do.
And so one of the easiest things that anybody can do is they can flip their message into a we help message. So try again. What's your we help message? Do what? What do they need help with? Establish contracts for pollination. Okay. Established contracts. Why do I want to establish a contract? What do I actually want? I don't sit there and say, God, I want to establish a contract today. You want to be protected in the event something bad happens. Like a bee sting? Yeah, maybe. Or something worse. Like millions of your bees die because the farmer didn't tell you we use pesticides. Okay. So you help beekeepers avoid disastrous outcomes, or you help beekeepers protect their core business from disasters like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and blah, blah, blah. I don't know what the possible disasters are. Can you redo yours to be a we help?
Yeah, we help find, so we help Jewish and Jewish-curious people find their tribe in Los Angeles. Find the temple. Okay, give me a show of hands. Who here thinks the first one was better? His first pitch. Who thinks the second pitch was better? So, like, it took five seconds for you. And you think about your company. How many hours of your waking day? I mean, quite a few. Yeah. Like. And so it's weird that, like, this happens to all of us. We think about our company all the time. We want it to succeed, but then we can't do the basic thing, the first step of getting the next person to understand what you're all about, who you help, and what you actually are. You for me or oh, you know, I happen to be Jewish. Like curious. Great. You know, maybe I'm the guy for you. And so that's the very first thing I really should do is learn how to tell their story a little bit better.
All right, you guys sit down for a second. Next thing. All right. So you learned how to tell your story. Now I want to talk a little bit about growth. Who here has a product that's killer? Raise your hand high if your product's really killer. Why didn't you give it 100% the first time? What? Define killer. If you have to ask, your product's not killer. And killer. As you wake up every day and you're like, I cannot believe this thing's not growing faster, this is amazing. If people just knew how amazing this was, if they knew how helpful this was, if they knew they're still using that piece of crap. This is so much better. This is the founder's delusion. We all think this, by the way. Like, not everybody actually has this. But let's say if you don't even have that delusion, well, step one, make a killer product, right? Find a way to have a killer product where you can point to and say, all right, who said they had a killer product? I want to hear some. You have a killer product. You're telling me. Actually, I already talked a little earlier. Right here in the back. Yeah, yeah. Yep.
So give me what, your company. And then, tell me about your killer product for a second. First what? Your company? Yeah. So, our company is, it's a passport company. We call it Passport, the Possible Company. Possible. Yeah. Okay. We help storytellers go from a story to a narrative short in a matter of minutes. Storytellers go from a story to a narrative short in a couple of minutes. Okay. Can you say that, like, just more like I was gonna tell my friend about that? I wouldn't be like, hey, storyteller, would you like to go from a story to a narrative shortener? Like, yeah, what's the more human version of that? If you have a piece of writing, you want to turn it into a movie that you could upload to TikTok or YouTube? Yeah. Okay. And who's got this piece of writing? A blogger, an author. Who are you thinking about? Yes. So we've got bloggers, we got Substack. Who's the core? Who's like the person? We're pivoting, but we're pivoting to... Catch you at a complicated time. It is complicated. Yeah. We're going to work it out together right now. Yeah, yeah, it's folks who are creative and they want to get their jokes out really fast on TikTok. Okay. And produce an animated short. Okay. So we help comics turn their jokes into TikToks fast without having to know anything about animation or video editing. Yeah. All right. Was my pitch better than yours? Yes.
All right. Isn't that weird? There's also a thing you can do with each other. So, like, anytime you have a friend who's a founder, don't let friends walk around with shitty pitches for their company, right? Like you are drastically lowering your odds of success if you cannot explain to somebody else what your product is and who it's for and how you're going to help them. Okay, so that's the first thing. Did anybody else say they have a killer product? I want to hear some here. Come on. All right. In the back. Right here by the camera. All right. We are called Plural, and we help nonprofits achieve financial sustainability so that they can focus on what really matters. Their mission, not their survival. Okay. So I hear that, but, you know, we help you achieve financial stability. Like how that sounds pretty, sounds like a promise maybe a lot of people can make. Can you make your promise one that only you can make? We help you turn donations into a legacy. Into a legacy? Yes. Make it less intellectual. What do you actually do? Okay, I give a nonprofit $10. What actually happens? I got a legacy. Now, what does that mean? How do you get checks without you having to work for it? Okay, how? We take a portion of every donation that comes in and push that into your endowment account. Which goes in perpetuity. Oh, okay. Gotcha. So you basically give charities the same advantage that Harvard has? Yes. Somebody gives Harvard tuition. They don't just spend it right away. Yes, they put it in endowment and it grows forever. Now their endowment's bigger than, maybe they make more money off the endowment than they do on tuition. Yes. Wouldn't it be great if charities worked that way? Yeah. Who thinks my pitch is better than hers?
Okay, so what's the trick there? Right? What do we do? This is a technique anybody can use. What did I do? Guy in the hat. Yeah. Draw an analogy to an analogy. Exactly. I use something familiar to tell you about something unfamiliar. I use something not just familiar. Which did I say? Like it's Mississippi State. Nice. And Harvard, right? It's the same reason why, if you go to YC right now, like everybody's building Cursor for X. And when I first moved to San Francisco, everybody was building Uber for X, right? Because, hey, you know, the hottest company ever that you missed out on, investor, we're building that. But in this other space, wouldn't you want to be a part of that? And of course investors will be like, oh, we hate that. No, no, no, they love that. It actually works very well because you're an anchor to something familiar and something ideally prestigious or aspirational. Yeah. This is a great TikToker right here. Ashwin, does anybody know this guy's TikTok? You stand up for a second, let people see and raise their hands. You guys follow this guy on TikTok. Wow. Oh my God. All of you should take out your phones right now. You should subscribe to this guy. What do you do? I help launch and grow brands. He caught himself, so he was like, I am a brand developer. No, no. We help. What? We help launch and grow brands. Launch any kind of brand? Consumer brands. Consumer brands. Make it an analogy. So, make it more compelling to me through an analogy. Think about what I want. So don't make an analogy for your service. Like don't be like we're a launch pad, right? Like a SpaceX rocket or whatever. What do I want if I'm a brand? We help you save time and money and not make most mistakes. Okay? Saves time and money. But let's use the aspiration because you said you help launch it. When I come to a launch, I'm really not worried about saving time. Maybe money, but really, I just want a hugely successful launch, right? I want a kick-ass launch. So how could you frame what you do in a way that helps me think that I'm going to get a kick-ass launch? Like, who else has a kick-ass launch? Yeah. Like what other brands have had a kick-ass launch that you could say we do for you? We get you a launch as good as X, or the way what they had that they paid millions of dollars for. We do it on a fraction of the price. We help you launch like Liquid Death. Okay. So we help brands that want to be the next Liquid Death dominate their category with a kick-ass launch. Okay, right. That's a little bit better. Could you workshop that even more? Could you get even better in here like 30 seconds? Or if anybody has an idea, how would you make that better? But what's great about that? They got about 80,000 people to follow their page for like a $5,000 budget and some really smart, creative guys. Okay. If you help them do it. Yes. That's great. That's one way, right? Like, who's your star client? Candle brand. What's a candle brand? Okay, so we help brands dominate their category from day one with their launch. For example, we work with this candle brand and what's your proof point? So like a proof point would be we worked with this candle brand and in 30 days they did what? Like $2 million. $2 million in 30 days. Like, how much do you want to work with him after that pitch versus before? And so you want to do this because this is not just like for investors or for a room full of founders. This is going to be with every single customer, every single client. And you're a super skilled marketer. So like, you know, you're starting at a pretty high level. But I think really anybody should take the attitude of my pitch is never good enough. I always felt this way. I always felt that every single time I described what I did to somebody, it was me getting another chance to roll the dice and see if I can hit, you know, like that winning number. Right? And now every single time I was trying to think, okay, could I shave off three of those words? Oh, would I pause? Or if I switch the example out or I rephrased it instead of saying, we help a candle brand, blah blah, like, maybe I would say we can go into the most boring industries and help you dominate. We went into the sleepy candle niche and did $2 million in 30 days. When's the last time you got excited about a candle? So now I'm like, oh, I'm workshopping. I'm playing with that. Right. So these are some of the tools and techniques that I think are very underrated because you go to most startup events and they're going to tell you about like hiring and firing and company building. But most of the reality is I've seen batches of founders. Most founders die before you ever get there. Like your company is likely to die before you ever get to do any of the cool advice that the billion-dollar founders are going to tell you about that they're doing in their companies now, seven years in, right? The failure rate, you know, startups are like infant mortality, right? It's like you die early because you just never even got that initial traction. Who else wants out? Anybody else want to workshop something? Yeah. Let's get the mic here. I'm Emmanuel, I make CardPointers. I've helped over a million people earn more points from their credit cards so they can fly business class for free every time. Okay. That's pretty good. Pretty good? Yeah. I'm just curious, is that how you usually say it or what? Did you learn anything in this that you added to your pitch there? Yeah. No, I just modified the hell out of it. So let's just contrast real quick. What would it have been typically, CardPointers? We... Yeah. With our CardPointers website, I help people maximize their credit card points. I wouldn't throw in the part about flying business class for free every time, but since it's more aspirational, I can just point it out. I think it sounds better. Yeah, and that's the dream outcome, right? So one, you just want to... Was that the pre-free version? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So you know one of the things, there's a storytelling framework I think called the StoryBrand framework. And basically what he talks about is you first figure out the happy ending. So like you're the happy ending for your customer. What is the happy ending? So it might be, in your case, flying business class international just on the points you accumulated while running your business. Right? You're slaving away at your business, but you use your credit card smartly, and therefore you could take your whole family to Tahiti business class. Right? So what you do, the StoryBrand formula is you basically take the happy ending and that's going to be the end of your pitch, just like you did. And then you go to the exact opposite, like, you know, the pain point basically. And so like, what is people's current situation? Most people are, you know, most people don't know what card to use. They just pick the one that's in the commercial, or most people are still paying out of pocket for all their flights. But what we help you do is we help you use the points you already have to fly international business class for free, right? Or just on points. And so you want to find those two bookends of a story, right? Start with the happy ending that should show you the problematic beginning. Okay. If you look at any movie, it works this way. Whatever is happening at the beginning of the movie, you already know the ending. It's the exact opposite for that character. Otherwise it's not going to be a movie. So you look at, you know, for example, the movie Die Hard. When I think about it, I'm like, oh, it's about, you know, Bruce Willis being a badass and like defusing a bomb or whatever, right? It's like, that's Die Hard. No, actually Die Hard, if you look at the beginning, is he's going back home to see his family, but they don't really want to see him for the holiday. And so it's about a dad who's disconnected from his family. And at the end, after he defuses the bomb, he's reconnected with his family. Same thing with Jurassic Park. Yes, it has a bunch of dinosaurs, but at the beginning it's about a guy who doesn't know if he wants to commit and have kids. Then during the dinosaur stuff, he's protecting the little kids, and by the end he tells the girl that he was worth it, like, I'm sorry for being such an idiot. I'm ready. Right. It's like, that's always the change in a movie, right? Any movie, any rom-com. She's single but powerful and successful but unhappy and alone. Just wanted to end. She's going to be madly in love. But running a bakery. She's not a lawyer anymore, right? Like that's like every rom-com kind of has a story arc. And so in Silicon Valley, we don't really learn as much from Hollywood as we should. Like, there's an art to storytelling that actually hooks people. We want to use this as founders. And so you want to think about like, oh, even in my pitch to customers or to partners or to investors, I want to think about the happy ending that they care about. Then I want to be able to describe the current pain, which is the opposite of a happy ending, and I'm just positioning myself as a bridge between the two. Right. So that the bridge is the how. You don't talk about the how until you've built the bridge. So I still don't know how you helped me fly international business, but I now actually want to know because you've described the ending I want with the problem, my current situation I have. And so like what would be your bridge? What's your special sauce? What's your how? So the bridge is actually what you mentioned. Just by choosing the right credit card to maximize your points. And then also saving like through an extension and through the app integrations. That's less sexy. So we help you pick the right card. Yeah. What percentage of people do you think have the right card, business owners today? In your experience? You've probably talked to hundreds, let's say. Yeah, thousands. People seek us out because they already have a bunch of cards. I don't know percentage-wise how many people have... Make it up. We're talking marketing here. Make it up. I'd say, oh, my users probably 30%. 30% had the wrong card at the beginning. Have the right card. Have at least one good. Oh, so 70% have the wrong. Yeah. So you might be able to say that 70% of business owners... I've talked to a thousand business owners about their credit card points. That's what I do. I'm a nerd. And then say 70% of them have the wrong card and they're leaving, you know, business class tickets on the table if they just change nothing else besides push a different button and pick a different card. Right? So it's like you want to describe that pain. And then I used to feel the fear of, oh fuck, that might be me. I might be in that situation. Ashwin, what's your secret sauce? What's your how? You said you help brands have these kick-ass launches. We said that you can go into the most boring, sleepy industries and you can help them dominate with a killer launch. And we asked the question, you know, what's the last time you got excited about a candle? We had 100,000 people on a waitlist to buy a candle. That's what we do. I'm intrigued. What's your how? What's your convincing secret sauce? Differentiated way of getting me there. We get really interested about boring categories and study it relentlessly and then come up with crazy ideas. Okay. Hard work. What else? Give me something else. Do you, for example, take the stuff that works in really sexy industries and transplant it into boring industries that have never seen it? Blows their mind like a Vegas stripper showing up in the middle of church town, Midwest, Texas or whatever. And everyone's looking at it like, holy shit, they've never seen something like that. Is it kind of like that? Yeah, they're like, maybe that's it. I don't know, maybe you do that. Maybe you have a different playbook. Maybe you're like, oh, I understand TikTok better than... maybe there's only five other people on earth that know TikTok better than me. And it's just we just dominate TikTok. That's our secret sauce. I don't know which one it is, but you want to have your version of that. Who here can think of a secret sauce for themselves? What's your how? You got one? Hey. Hey, Will. Dublin. We build models for private equity. Our secret sauce is everything's bespoke, unique to the situation. Will, have you been paying attention? Come on. Well, you said we build models. That's what you do. But what we learned earlier is what? What should you do differently now? We help blank do blank. And the do blank isn't just that you do the task like build a model. What do they want the model for, right? So let's try it again. So give me a we help. We help private equity firms do what? We help private equity firms make hundreds more millions. Or we help private equity firms make 100 more million dollars this year. Oh, okay. I'm intrigued. How? By making better decisions. Okay. But how? Everybody wants to make better decisions. What do you know about decisions that I don't that make me believe you might actually have something interesting to say? We'll teach them how to make decisions like BlackRock. Okay, okay. How? By building bespoke models at scale. What is it about a bespoke model that gets a better decision? Is it that they're using off-the-shelf versus more nuanced? Yeah, exactly. Okay, so we go to hedge funds who are playing the game of betting, investing tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars, maybe. And today they're using off-the-shelf models. But the big powerhouses like BlackRock and Citadel and whoever, they have custom bespoke models for every single thing. We give them the power that the BlackRocks of the world have without having to invest $50 million in a data team or, I don't know, some version like that. Exactly. Would that be like... yeah, not forget the numbers because I'm making things up. But like does that feel right? Like as a pitch for you? Yeah, okay, I like it. Who else has got a half a bridge? Yeah. Right here. You want to start with... Yeah. So first, who are you? What do you do? Hey, my name is John, and I'm a founder of Unified Data Intelligence Company. We do... we don't do, we have... Just remember, they don't care what you do, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's true. We have product teams to get the customer insights in a matter of minutes instead of weeks. Okay. Sounds generic. Make it specific. Specific, like product teams. Which product teams? Insights. Which insights? I don't know, what do you mean? Let's make it more specific. We help our customers understand what their customers need in a matter of minutes instead of weeks. Okay, okay. My gut tells me that could be stronger. Does anyone have an idea of how that can be made stronger? What you got? What kind of customer? We are industry agnostic. Literally. We have healthcare, we have e-com, we have marketplaces. Oh, you help anyone? Okay, cool. That's not for me then. Okay. Okay. So remember when you say what you're doing or you're, you know, let's say you start with an articulation of like a specific type of customer, right? What you tend to do, like the fear is that, oh, I've eliminated everybody else. What actually happens is everybody else has already eliminated you by default. And the only time they're going to pay attention is if you say, oh, wait, I'm a YouTuber. What did you say you do for YouTubers? Right. Like so I think most founders have it inverted. They think everybody's paying attention and they don't want to disqualify anybody, when in actuality the customer has already disqualified you. They don't care by default, and you need to get them to opt in to hearing a little bit more. So try it. Like who would be like, we help companies like blank. What's blank? We help companies like Sonos. Oh, you have an impressive customer. Not a customer, but I know him. Okay. All right, fair enough. Continue on. Okay. We help companies like Sonos save $42,000 a week by automating the entire synthesis of their data end to end. Okay, more interesting. You did get more interesting. I don't know exactly what your product does. I don't want to go into so much detail necessarily, but you get what I'm saying. Which is like, yeah, maybe the main principle or takeaway for this session here is, remember, by default they've already disqualified you. You try to get them to lean in and be interesting. You have to say something interesting that's relevant to them. Maybe it's we help brands just like you, or we help brands that you aspire to be, or maybe it's not even on the category of customer, but you know, you said like product and insights. It's, you know, for example, let's say today, the way they do that is focus groups. Let's just pretend, yeah, we help companies that have spent 30 years running focus groups to get product ideas never have to use a focus group again. If I'm a company that runs focus groups, I'm like, what? I don't have to do that anymore, right? Okay, you bought the next sentence. Okay? Right. That's a bit of a tricky... like the goal of the first sentence is to get them interested in the second sentence. The goal of the second sentence is to get the interest of the third. And so if you told me that I'll never have to do something again that I currently pay to do or spend time doing, right, I'm very intrigued. Yeah, okay. That's good. Okay. Thank you. All right. What else? So who else has a company that they want to break down in the back? Yeah. You could just shout it out. Okay. Sorry. Canvas Us is built for students. Better Canvas helps students customize and enable users to enhance their digital experience. Okay, okay. Raise of hands if you thought that was very strong. Raise your hands if you thought that was just okay. Raise your hands if you think that was bad. Okay. Guy in the hat. Tell me why it was bad. And we're all friends. This is constructive. And, you know, we're all here to learn. Okay. Go ahead. Okay, that might be specific to like, we're not your audience for that, but what is... Yeah. You started saying a bunch of things at the end that I didn't understand. Maybe it's because I'm not in that world, but like, can you plain English that for me for a second before you do your pitch. Students could add themes. And like, I'm sorry, students use something called Canvas for what? For school. That's their digital classroom. Okay, so I'm a student. I take classes online. That means I'm using something called Canvas. Yep. Like Blackboard. Okay. It's like Blackboard. Okay, cool. So today every student and every college student uses something called Canvas or Blackboard, the equivalent of Canvas. Great. The problem with Canvas is... It is not appealing to the eye and missing productivity features. Okay. It's ugly. It's ugly. You made a pretty Canvas. It's boring. Yeah. It's boring. You made an entertaining Canvas. Students can add themes and make it pretty. It's like furnishing their home. Like furnishing their digital... Okay. Good analogy, I like that. What's the big happy ending? If I'm a student, why do I care to like furnish my digital classroom or my digital learning Canvas or whatever? Then they have a tab that they want to keep open and they're excited. They're not dreading completing their courses anymore. Okay. Do you have proof where you could replace a claim? So, you know, proof might be students spend twice as... you know, they want to keep their tab up. Maybe. Do they spend like twice as long, twice as much time in your product as they do on Canvas? Anecdotally they do. We don't have that data yet for like another two months. I do, yeah. But okay, so that's fine. So one thing I do is I work backwards from the killer claim. So I'll first think about like what's a sentence that if it was true would open up the floodgates on the next batch of customers. Right. Like, and then you just say, all right, that's not true today. Can I make it true? And actually, what happens as a founder is you can actually like kind of brute force towards an outcome if you know that that would be the unlock. Right. This happens all the time in like CPG type of brands. If you have a supplement or like a health and wellness thing, like there's these little gummies that are like, you know, for like Sugar Bear Hair, it's like for like hair growth or whatever. And for them, the entire pitch is a visual. It's a before and after. And it's like, if this before and after is true, everybody will want to buy my product. Can we make it true and can we make this before and after like really believable? Like the marketing game? It's super simple when you do something like that. And so one tactic I use as a founder is to say how can I figure out first the killer claim and then work backwards from making it true? Right? Or maybe the killer claim, like maybe in your case it's Sonos, but you say, okay, it doesn't have to be exactly Sonos, but it's got to be a recognizable brand. There's ten of those. Can I go get one of those guys on board? I'll make it free for them. I'll go buddy them up. I'll like put all of my effort into that, you know what I mean? You did exactly that. Right? And so I think that's a pretty underutilized thing in Silicon Valley. What Silicon Valley likes to do is spend all your time on idea and product, and at the end, before it gets out the door, it's like, oh, honey, you forgot your lunch. And that's marketing. Right at the end, it's like, don't tell people to use it. And then when they're not using it, it's like, marketing sucks. Our marketing department really, we got to start doing content. All right? We got to start doing social. Or we got to start doing... And they're blaming the wrong thing. It's like you never had the compelling idea, that compelling story that was going to really turn customers' heads. Or you tried it. You tried to just like hope it happens at the end, whereas you can actually start with that in mind. So I think that's a tactic that I would encourage everybody to try. Can anybody think of an example of how you would do that in your business? Like what would be a killer claim that, if true, would open up the floodgates on the next batch of customers? Well, first give us what you do real quick. Just one. Like the CEO and founder of Alma, we help immigrant founders get their visas faster, better, cheaper, 100% approval rate, best in the market. Work with us. Okay. Great. With your... thanks. That was strong. All right. That's a good example. Might be... may try reset faster. Can you? I think it'd be stronger if you just said it. Like in under X days. Less than two weeks. Like if she had said less than two weeks it would have been stronger. Like. Right. So like, we can just always, even when you start strong, you should always be thinking how to make my pitch better, right? Because that might have been the difference between a prospect being like, oh, I'm going to go use that service. Or they said they can get it done faster, but maybe a lot of people will claim something similar. Okay, so what would be the killer claim? I guess we're kind of already on that thread. What would be the killer claim for you? That if true, if you could just get this sentence in front of people, it would unlock the floodgates on the next batch of growth for you. It's already true. So two weeks, 100% approval rate, best-in-class immigration attorneys. Okay, but, you know, that sounds like it might be hand-wavy maybe, meaning like, I don't know who you're helping. I don't know, like, is that two people, is that 200 people, is it... You've helped 50% of this batch get it done. I'm like, oh, shit, that's way more impressive. Like, can you add to that killer claim to make it stronger? Yes, definitely. Hundreds of approved clients, hundreds of happy clients. Okay, so hundreds of clients. How do you make it even stronger? What's something that if you were saying... and I had a founder that was an immigrant, I'm like, you've got to work with them. You would stick in my mind. I'm thinking of one, for example, that let's just say for a second that Patrick Collison said, just like said, if you're an immigrant who needs a visa, you need to be like, just use Alma. I think that would go a long way. If the founder of Stripe said that or Sam Altman or whoever, right? Yeah. And then you can kind of brute force get to that. Right. Because let's say maybe Garry Tan already likes you, the president of YC. And if he already likes you, do you think you have a great service? You can actually like ask him like, hey Garry, can I... like I think if I had this testimonial from you, it would really resonate with founders. They really look up to you. They really respect you. And I know you might be, you know, hesitant to use your name on it, but I will show you all the data that shows you that we actually do deliver the goods. And I'll do the next 20 founders for free. And I'm going to tell you each time if they succeeded in getting their visa and then how long. And I'll tell you it'll be under 21 days. If that happens, would you be willing to give me this testimonial that I can use in my marketing? Yeah. And you can actually like get that claim on the record and then you don't even need stats, because if it's good enough for the president of YC, then it's good enough for all the startups who aspire to be in YC or respect YC. Why say you borrow their credibility in that way? Yeah. I mean, we work with a lot of accelerators, so we can say confidently that we're the go-to firm for founders right now. We're getting them approved when no one else can. Okay. Yeah. Okay. By the way, how did you guys like my slides? I'm just curious, by the way, you can be honest here or I don't know if I can actually get an honest answer, but like just show of hands. Who would have preferred that I did the talk, the slides versus what we did here today? That's like, no matter if you didn't feel like, oh wow, that was an awesome session. Maybe you just like, I don't know, I'll take door number two. I'll take the second Showcase Showdown. What's that? Who is right? Okay, there we go. We'll talk later. All right. Go ahead. My name is Amy Chang, and my company is called Yuzu Labs. We help high-growth businesses turn their existing content into videos that drive growth without having to do any extra work. Okay, first of all, you're a good student. You tried to use the format that we talked about. I would say I think that was like the right idea, but I think each sentence there felt generic to me. Okay. So I would just... Yeah. Do another one. Yeah. Close your deals 50% faster by just using YouTube videos. Using what? Using our videos. Using your videos. Okay. Here's another tool, another tip we haven't talked about. Give me a fun fact. Give me a... Did you know... So, for example, you might say like, hey, I've been doing, you know, hey. I'm sorry, what is your name? I mean, hey, I'm Amy, and I've spent most of my life trying to figure out how to close deals. I've done it for big customers, big enterprises, small enterprises, etc. Did you know, like, this is the craziest thing, this is the one thing that has just like, I wish I had learned this sooner in my career, and that is that an email with a video will convert 50% more customers than an email without a video attached. And now I'm like, oh, like you're not even pitching your startup directly, but you gave me your initial credibility. You got my curiosity by saying, this is the one thing I wish I knew ten years earlier, I would have made a lot more money and had a lot less gray hairs. Right. And it's this. And then you give me the fun fact or the stat that should blow my mind, right? If you do something like that, I think that makes your whole pitch feel very different and feel very intriguing to the person. Almost like you're giving them a gift, like insider information, rather than, you know, please use my service. Is there a version of that that you can think of that would work? I spent my life building 65 YouTube channels with 300 million monthly views, and now I take that intelligence to help your business make videos without you having to do any work. Okay. Stronger. Yeah. All right. So you found something. Now I think you could even make it even stronger. Here's how I'd make it stronger. Add a joke, add some humor. So what you could do is you could say, I, Amy, I spent most of my life sitting at my desk or sitting at my kitchen in front of a webcam making YouTube videos. And I had 65 channels, 300 million views, and, you know, but then at a certain point, I decided I like money more than I like... same. So now I use all those things I learned on YouTube to help companies sell, right? Or like, you know, at some point I got tired of entertaining, you know, 13-year-olds. And I decided to entertain 38-year-olds. Right. So true story. This is exactly true. Yeah. Thank you. I'm also a mind reader. So basically you add that little bit of levity, kind of like a little bit of self-deprecating, like, yeah, I got tired of basically entertaining 13-year-olds in order to set me up to actually believe and be interested in what you have to say. Again, it's a sell without feeling like a sell because you're giving massive credibility that, oh shit, you know a lot about YouTube and video, but then you're being self-deprecating, which sets me up to actually like you and want to do business with you versus you just like hammering me over the head with it, right? Most people were the best, were the fastest, were the strongest with it. We know everything about everything. It's like, that is a message that falls on deaf ears a lot. Whereas you get my curiosity or you start with credibility, but then you lighten the load with humor. Those are techniques that I think would serve you well. This is stuff that works on your landing page. It's stuff that works in your ads. It's stuff that works in your emails. It works at, you know, networking events, works with investors. Like these things that I'm telling you today are things that will work across the board in how you message your company. And again, like, I came to Silicon Valley and all I heard was product advice. All I heard was fundraising advice, and I just felt like the things that I really needed, which was getting customers on board, I was kind of standing in my own way a little bit by not knowing how to describe what I do, not knowing how to get other people interested instantaneously in what I have to offer. And that's such a superpower. If one person, if there's two founders, one is good at describing what they do and gets every potential prospect instantly curious about what they do, and the other doesn't, but has a strong team and has good funding. Like which one's going to win? The one that's able to open the floodgates. Customers will win in the end. And so I think it's a pretty underrated skill. How am I doing on time, by the way? This thing stopped. Am I over? I'm over. All right. Thank you everybody. I'm Shaan. Hope you enjoyed.
