Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup

Chapter 61. Turn the Knife after You Stick It in

David Cohen

David is a co-founder and the CEO of TechStars.

At TechStars, we've worked hard to teach entrepreneurs how to "turn the knife." Whether you're presenting your company to investors, partners, or customers you should focus on the pain you address before you discuss the tremendous solution you're bringing to the market.

Describing the pain is usually quite natural, but many people forget to finish the job. Think of describing the pain as sticking the knife in. Your job is not done. You have to really make me feel it. You do this by twisting the knife slowly, deliberately, and repeatedly.

SendGrid, one of the TechStars Boulder 2009 companies, does an excellent job of turning the knife. Their product improves the deliverability, scalability, accountability, and reliability of software-generated e-mail. Sounds like a real problem, right? The following is how they turn the knife.

"Twenty percent of legitimate e-mails sent by software companies to their customers will end up in spam folders."

Ouch.

"A large e-commerce company determined that if just 1 percent of their annual e-mail notifications aren't delivered, it costs them fourteen million dollars in lost sales."

Stop it!

"This same company figured out that at least 7 percent of their e-mail is ending up being marked as spam. This problem is literally costing them a hundred million dollars ...