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. Continue Reading »