
If you can’t explain what you do in one paragraph, you’ve got a problem - lusob
http://venturebeat.com/2012/10/06/youve-got-a-problem/
======
jonnathanson
In fairness, I think there's a difference between being too wordy in a
description, and not even bothering to try ("My startup is too complex to be
described in a paragraph"). The former indicates a lack of discipline, but the
latter hints at a sort of naive arrogance.

Both, however, indicate that the founder doesn't fully grasp his own project.
That's the bigger issue. If you can't describe an idea clearly and succinctly,
you probably haven't mastered the idea in the first place. The selling
proposition of an idea shouldn't be an afterthought; it should be baked into
the idea itself. After all, great ideas are usually solutions to great
problems.

The author makes a good point about not wasting the short time you're given to
present something to people who can help you. It's an important point. But to
me, it's almost a side issue. It's a symptom of something deeper. If you can't
get your head around your own idea, then your idea -- or at least your
conception of it -- may have some fundamental problems.

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btilly
Short and sweet is necessary to grab someone's attention. Their time is worth
more to them than you are, so boil what you have to say down to essentials.
And then figure out what essentials you can leave out to make it even shorter.

Of course this is a horrible way to understand a complex topic. When I was
preparing [http://bentilly.blogspot.com/2012/09/ab-testing-vs-mab-
algor...](http://bentilly.blogspot.com/2012/09/ab-testing-vs-mab-algorithms-
its.html) I was concerned about its length. Patio11 told me, _If that's too
much for people they shouldn't be making decisions on this topic anyhow._ He
was right.

You MUST be able to boil your pitch down to a tiny seed. But that's just for
grabbing people's attention - don't make the mistake of substituting bullet
points for thinking when you need to think.

------
lutusp
A quote: "Entrepreneur: I just wanted to touch base with you and see if you
are taking on new startups right now."

"Me: Can you send me a paragraph and I’ll tell you if it’s something we’d be
interested in."

"Entrepreneur: It’s difficult to accurately describe the company, myself, and
everything else in a single paragraph. To write something so small but somehow
include every important aspect is near impossible, if not impossible. My
company is too complex to be described in a single paragraph."

A recipe for failure. This touches on multiple issues, the most important of
which is an economy of expression.

Anyone can say his project is too complex for mere mortals to grasp, including
people who don't have anything worth describing. But as Einstein said, “If you
can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.”

Yesterday I saw an article entitled something like "90 things I learned while
launching startups." After I got done laughing, I replied that if the author
wanted people to read what he had to say, that was about 80 things too many,
that he needed to prioritize, but to put it mildly, this wasn't welcome
advice.

~~~
ehosca
I think the point that Einstein was making that you should be able to explain
it to a 6 year old but not necessarily expect him to understand your
explanation. I would love to hear him explain why e=mc^2 to a 6 year old and
then quiz the 6 year old.

~~~
lutusp
> I think the point that Einstein was making that you should be able to
> explain it to a 6 year old but not necessarily expect him to understand your
> explanation.

Perhaps, but (a) I don't think so and (b) we'll never know for sure. :)

I'm pretty sure the point he was making is that most scientific ideas are
accessible to concise explanation with no loss of comprehension. Of course, he
said this before the time of quantum theories, to which he strenuously
objected for the remainder of his life.

> I would love to hear him explain why e=mc^2 to a 6 year old and then quiz
> the 6 year old.

e = mc^2 is actually pretty easy to explain, if one accepts the premise of
energy conservation. But I agree that the read-back from the average six-year-
old would at best be mildly entertaining. From a truly bright six-year-old, I
would hope to hear something like, "Because all energy has to be somewhere,
potential energy makes things heavier."

------
Flip-per
Wasn't there a news entry some weeks ago where a startup investor made quite
contradictory points? That you should keep your eyes open for startups which
don't have a clear "message" / punch line? Because these are the ones with the
possibly most innovative (but yet not fixed) ideas that are often overlooked
by other investors?

------
josso
Mike Lee of Appsterdam, had a talk at at AppsWorld, where he said pretty much
the same:

Working at Apple, he had heard the rumors that if you went into an elevator
with Steve Jobs, you had to explain what you did and why you were doing it
before he left and as such – even though he didn't believe in the rumor – he
tried to explain all he did in only 60 seconds.

This is what he answered, when asked for his currently 60-second-speech: "I'm
making educational games for kids. […] It's just enough to make you curious
and want to have a conversation. […] If your 60 seconds-talk is an attempt to
try to cramp as much shit into 60 seconds as you can, you're doing it wrong."

I can only recommend listening to the whole 30-minutes: [http://www.apps-
world.net/europe/images/stories/audio/dev-d1...](http://www.apps-
world.net/europe/images/stories/audio/dev-d1-1400.mp3)

~~~
ville
"Because telling you about Appsterdam, it's real simple. If you wanna make
apps, come to Appsterdam, it's awesome. You wanna know more about it? Google
it. You wanna know why Appsterdam is a thing, what Appsterdam is all about and
what kind of insanity leads a person build their own ecosystem before building
a company? That's what I'm going to talk about. And I'm going to talk about it
honestly. That means there is going to be some swearing. So if that is going
to offend you I suggest you just go ahead and ... leave. For the rest of you:
It's real simple. -- Do something that actually fucking matters."

The arrogance and self-importance of the speaker made me quit after 60
seconds.

~~~
rhizome
_WHAT KIND OF INSANITY?_

------
bengoodger
I also think this applies more broadly.

When I was in university, one of the mandatory classes in engineering was
Professional Development, and one of the threads in that was writing. They
stressed "Soon enough you'll be communicating with people with not enough time
to hear what you have to say. Get to the point." Sage advice.

I have to encourage those I work with not to do it, sometimes by ignoring the
long-form or just stating that I don't have time to review something so
lengthy. For design docs, sometimes a few well considered diagrams really are
worth a thousand words.

~~~
tomjen3
Honestly that is a stupid argument -- if you don't have time to understand it
the first time, you don't have time to come back when everything is falling
apart.

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keithpeter
"...I like three sentences: (1) what we do, (2) who we do it to, and (3) why
you should care."

Should (2) be "who we do it for"? Mine goes something like...

1: I teach mathematics 2: I encourage adults who always had problems with
school Maths to learn and achieve a qualification 3: Mathematical reasoning is
important for sensible decision making both in everyday life and in science
and in making political choices

------
Zenst
Very true, if you cant explian your idea in one paragraph then in many ways
you don't understand it yourself.

Like first impressions, the first paragraph in anything counts. With that any
article that can't be summed up in a headline is more than one article. This
one is spot on, even if it is more than one paragraph and laid out so is
easier to digest.

------
ehosca
i find this attitude troubling on a couple of levels...

so we should not pursue to solve inherently complex problems for fear that we
won't be able to explain them within the time frame for an elevator pitch? is
ADD really that prevalent?

~~~
Alex3917
"So we should not pursue to solve inherently complex problems for fear that we
won't be able to explain them within the time frame for an elevator pitch? is
ADD really that prevalent?"

Unfortunately yes. There aren't many hard and fast rules in the startup world,
but I think the closest we've got is that it's always better to sacrifice
value for better explainability.

If people can't understand it in a sentence then they aren't going to use it.
And if you can get them using it then you can always add more functionality
later.

Problems that are inherently too complicated to explain in a sentence or two
aren't worth solving, at least not for startups. That's why we have government
and non-profits.

That's not to say everyone needs to able to grok every implication right off
the bat. For my own startup everyone can understand what I'm working on after
a sentence, but no one can understand why it's a good idea without reading
another three or four paragraphs. That's fine though, because it will be
obvious once it's launched without having to read anything.

~~~
skb_
_Problems that are inherently too complicated to explain in a sentence or two
aren't worth solving, at least not for startups._

I think the problem comes in trying to explain something to someone (an
investor) without domain knowledge. In order to be succinct, you have to make
some assumptions. It's sort of like a mathematical proof. Given a sufficiently
complex problem, a shorter proof generally makes more assumptions about the
reader's knowledge than a longer one.

Customers will generally understand the problem better, since you are
presumably working on one of their pain points. So it's easier to explain a
solution to them than to investors who probably don't have those same pain
points. It's in an investor's best interest to be more open to longer pitches
unless they already understand the domain.

~~~
Alex3917
Yeah I think this is the best approach. For my one-pager I have a one
paragraph explanation, followed by a FAQ. Virtually everyone has the same
questions in the same order after hearing the pitch, so it makes it super easy
to explain both in person and in writing. I could always rewrite it in a more
traditional way, but I think it's actually easiest to read as is.

------
d--b
I bet someone will post an article called "If you can't read more than one
paragraph to be interested in a project, you've got a problem"

------
wilfra
"I try to answer all of my emails and be responsive to any inquiry. This was a
random one (of which I get between 25 and 100 each day)."

Now I feel so much less special that he responded to my email :(

