Swords and teacups
If you walk into our family home, you’ll see a set of shelves that hold swords and teacups. It’s a bit hard to take a good picture for you, because the shelves are backed by mirrors, so the lighting gets funky or I feel like I’m taking a mirror selfie like some early 2000s teenager, before the duck face downward angle became the standard selfie.
The swords come from various locations across the world, many that I haven’t seen myself, some courtesy of my more well-traveled sister. The teacups come from my wife’s great grandmother.
As a kid I imagined (vividly) that life would hold more sword-wielding adventures. At 3 years old, I would fight for time standing on a big rock with a stick (the stick was my sword, of course), divvying up rock time with my sister, who wanted the same rock to sit and pretend to be Ariel the Little Mermaid.
Swords were synonymous with adventures. I would choose a character, probably named Peter (Peter Pan and King Peter were both high on my list of adventurers), and slash at imaginary foes of darkness. Ah, childhood before tablets.
I haven’t so many sword-wielding adventures in real life, it turns out. Though, I did first work in Ad technology and then started working on Ventures, so if we just stick those two words together then 3-year old Timmy might be proud of me?
The greater weapon as an adult has turned out to be the teacup. Well, coffee cup.
Coffee meetings
People with business ideas often take a ton of coffee meetings with one another.
These meetings typically don’t have as formal an agenda as a direct sales or fundraising pitch. They focus on “feedback” for one or both entrepreneurs’ product and plans, can often lead to better ideas, resources to check out, a stronger network, and key introductions to investors or teammates, sooner or later. I often come away from founder-to-founder conversations energized by new paths to explore. It’s like helping each other see tiny glimpses into the future.
Coffee meetings with potential customers or investors can feel a bit different. A meet and greet with someone you think could (or should, a dangerous thinking word) be working with you has a different tenor. Instead of purely thinking out loud together to trade ideas and feedback, there’s a pull to enter persuasion mode.
At some point, persuasion is a necessary skill to exercise for a founder (or a salesperson, or a broker, and many others). There is lots to say on how to approach persuasion in an effective (and ethical) manner, yet some people are naturally persuasive. I’m not one of them. Well, not under normal circumstances. I’m sure I’ll unpack that in another post down the line.
Regardless of a particular founder’s natural level of persuasion, there’s a vibe shift when you have a truly differentiated product. You don’t need to wield persuasion to bend someone’s will. You simply offer the truth with conviction: you’re offering something they can’t get elsewhere.
Differentiation is GREAT for pitching, and a natural antidote to imposter syndrome.
Differentiation is a double edged sword
Differentiation is great because it cuts through the noise of competitors.
BUT.
There’s a less talked about impact of differentiation, too. I find it becomes more prevalent the further a founder walks away from Silicon Valley culture, where the future is nearly worshipped.
Differentiation can break the mold from old, familiar categories in a customer’s mind. “Great!”, you think, and so do I, but recognize the trade-off. If you have something new, it becomes your burden to achieve both awareness and understading with each potential customer. This customer education is required to score each paying customer. You’re essentially planting and watering seeds more often, rather than just reaping a harvest.
Does the customer realize they have the problem in the way you see from the outside? Do they believe, or at least suspect that your solution can address their problem? Do they have a trusted voice in their own world that can verify that nascent belief?
This education effort is added to the same burdens of customer research, discovery, relationship development, and timing that any business development team needs to run.
So if we’re going to use a double-edged sword, we at least need to work on being really sharp and precise.
Clear messaging is worth its weight in gold. Clarity = sharpened blade.
Finding the right growth levers helps tremendously.
Finding, or developing, a community of people headed in the same direction can warm up those relationships that can become customers and partners later.
But none of those efforts is instant, and many would-be customers will simply seek out an old, familiar solution to a problem they face in the meantime, simply because they know it’s available.
A founder needs to learn to be ok with this! If creating a differentiated offering is the way of the founder, then customer education is the first act of service. Instead of seeing it as a barrier to a sale or a “necessary evil” (as I might have once perceived it), recognize it as a way of loving your neighbor through clarity. You are helping them navigate a noisy world by giving them a new category for their problem, and hopefully, a way out of it.