Cyrillic Partners

I’m teaching a class on how to write an effective executive summary Saturday at Monte Vista High School, in Danville, Calif., and felt totally unprepared until I turned to the Internet for help. Guy Kawasaki has republished some interesting advice from Bill Reichert. I’ll summarize: The job of the executive summary is to sell, not to describe.

So here’s my sales pitch: I’ve talked to hundreds of entrepreneurs, executives and venture capitalists through my years as a journalist and have specialized in conveying their big ideas in a concise, compelling manner.

Write Your Pony Statement

I’ve always felt the same way about news stories and blog posts. If you don’t get a person’s attention, he or she will never make it to the end of your story and won’t ever appreciate your brilliance. You’ve got to go with the good stuff and give it to people fast.

That may be the hardest thing entrepreneurs have to do. Figure out what they have that’s really impressive. As one repeat entrepreneur told me: “You’ve got to find the pony.” A lot of schools teach students how to write a thesis statement and finding the pony can be a little like that, but it comes in a slightly different flavor. It tells people what to expect from the rest of the executive summary. Think of it as movie trailer. It doesn’t tell everything, it teases you, makes you want to find out more.

Here’s an example. Suppose you were pitching Google to a Kleiner Perkins back in 1999. Here’s what you might have said: “We’ve come up with an algorithm to find online information more effectively than Yahoo, a multi-billion dollar company.” It’s not perfect, but it says two things: (1) We have a technical innovation that beats Yahoo and (2) That could make us a multi-billion dollar company. It’s nice because it tells what it is that you have that’s special and hints at what that could be worth.

But you don’t have to necessarily tell what it is that your company does. Consider this Pony-statement: “We have three nobel-prize winning physicists on staff.” Well, you might say, that’s pretty interesting. Tell me more.

That’s the goal: get someone interested enough to keep reading.

That’s when you hit them with…

Define the Bone Crushing Problem

“Burning gasoline is expensive and may be causing catastrophic damage to the environment.” That’s good, but we can improve it by adding facts. You don’t want to beat people over the head with numbers, but picking out one or two can be a real plus.

“Buning gasoline is more expensive now than ever before. Consumers pay an average of $3.11 cents per gallon at the pump, up 40% from the same time last year. And it’s not just pump prices. Burning gasoline may be causing catastrophic damage to the environment.”

When you write an executive summary, you don’t have to give all the details, like the fact that you got those (very real) numbers from the U.S. Department of Energy. You should know the material and be ready to tell whoever asks, but you don’t have to give all the details all at once. You have to be the arbiter of what’s important.

Not everyone will be familiar with the problem you’re dealing with, so you may have to dumb it down to make it relevant.

I remember writing about a company called Chelsio that was designing a TCP-IP/Offload ASIC when I first started writing for Red Herring Magazine. The Bone Crushing Problem was pretty straight forward: “People are sharing bigger files on the Internet. Downloading a movie will take hours.”

It was the perfect explanation for me. Would it have been a good one for the venture capitalists that invested? Probably not. They would have wanted to know exactly how many processor cycles 10-gigabit ethernet would suck out of a computer’s main circuit.

It’s important to tailor your presentation to your audience. You may need several executive summaries, one for each different type of person you have to present to.

And of course, the Chelsio was the only company that could offer a solution…

Be the Messiah and Explain How You’re Going to Walk on Water

Tell your reader how you will be the one to lead them to the Promised Land, a place that lies beyond the Bone Crushing Problem. Be sure to mention your unique qualifications, important innovations or history of success in this section.

Sometimes this section can be used to talk about just how you will overcome the problem. You can talk about the technology you’ve developed or the business model you’ve cooked up. Got a lemonade stand business? Tell how you’ve genetically engineered the sweetest, biggest lemons.

It’s also good to remind your readers why you’re the only one in the universe that can beat the Bone Crushing Problem. Maybe it’s because you spent 10 years developing the genetically engineered lemons or just because you’re the only one in your neighborhood with a lemonade-making license. Give your reader an impression of scarcity. It’s either work with you, or deal with the Bone Crushing Problem.

Let people know that you could overcome the Bone Crushing Problem, if you only had The Resources.

Ask Nicely for What You Need

What do you need to get from the Bone Crushing Problem to the Promised Land? Maybe you need an engineer to make the website, or a new lemon-crusher. Lay out what you need clearly and concisely and explain how your reader can help. If your reader is a potential investor, say how much money you’ll need. If your reader is a potential co-founder, tell him or her exactly what work you’ll need done. Maybe you’re writing to a potential customer. Well, you need them to buy what you’re selling!

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