E557: LAUNCH Incubator 2: Pinterest product Jason Shellen (formerly Google, AOL & founder of Boxer) on why people love stories not decks

watch

listen

comment

sponsored by

Scott Walker at Walker Corporate Law. Scott loves startups and shows it, with fixed-fee pricing. Have a question? Email him directly, scott@walkercorporatelaw.com, and tell him Jason sent you.

HostGator.com, your one stop shop to getting your business online. Your domain name, your website, your website design, and even your marketing, they’ve got you covered. Have questions? Their team is there 24/7 via chat, phone, and email to help you. Start today for 30% off hosting with coupon code “twist.”

about this episode

LAUNCH Incubator 2: Pinterest product Jason Shellen (formerly Google, AOL & founder of Boxer, Hike Labs) talks to the class about decks done right and why effective storytelling about your product and company is critically important to getting the right attention and excitement from investors. (Hint: people love stories, not decks.) From his successes in raising money for his companies, Jason shares essential deck do’s and dont’s, candid advice from investors on what they want to see in presentations, using your struggles, pain, and adversity to make your story better, what to do in the face of inevitable conflicting VC advice, when to send a deck (don’t), and much more. FOR MORE INFO/RESOURCES: check out Jason Shellen’s blog post about speaking to the Incubator class: https://medium.com/@shellen/7ba0f87429f8

Never miss an episode! Subscribe in iTunes: Audio (http://bit.ly/TwiStA) || Video (http://bit.ly/TwiStV)

Thanks to our sponsors. Click here to tweet your support (can edit before sending): http://ctt.ec/N1etG

==============

Follow on Twitter:

@shellen
@Pinterest
@jason
@twiStartups

Launch Ticker: http://launch.co

Launch Festival: http://festival.launch.co

Special thanks to the members of the TWiST Backchannel Program!

Show notes powered by The Podcast Wire. Subscribe here: www.thepodcastwire.com

more episodes

Paul Towers

Another great episode. I could never quite understand why some Startups lead with the pitch “If we just capture 1% of X market”. To me that statement means absolutely nothing and is largely irrelevant. If your product, marketing or user engagement sucks then it doesn’t matter how big the market is because you will never secure a meaningful share/user base.

In addition to this I believe it is Peter Thiel who said you can only go from 0 to 1 if you create something new. Taking that point a step further, I’m sure Apple never said “if we can only capture x% of the mp3 market”. Instead they went with the idea of revolutionizing how people accessed and listened to music and essentially created a new market of their own (one much, much bigger than the original mp3 market).

Here Jason Shellen tells you what is important…. Creating a story, because a story is what captures the attention of those in the room with you, whether they be investors, employees or customers.