131 - New Strategy

When strategy and psychology are combined, interesting things happen. I recently realized that I've been using a sub-optimal strategy for communication with investors, which can be illustrated in metaphor as a game:

Investor: Has a collection of cards, of several types. The cards they hold may be hinted at, but are generally unknown. These cards include the investor's interests*, attacks, and other biases, such as past mistakes.

Startup: Has a collection of cards, of several types. These are played as a rotating sequence of variable length, often from a "deck", where the objective is to trigger the investor's interests, while preemptively negating their attacks, and dodging their other biases.

This game is played in a massive tournament, and the elements of it that aren't left to random chance often tend to favor bad actors using tactics such as "Cold Reading", as well as those with direct prior connections to the investor, who have a clearer picture of the cards they hold. This is also a Zero-Feedback game, where you either win or lose, but if you lose you can only guess as to why or how.

*Note: Interests are not the things investors claim to want, as these are often false when put to the test. Instead, they are the reason for wanting those things or claiming to.

Considering all of this, I saw the problem we've encountered in a new light. Since the scope of my team's technology is broader than the scope of human capacities, our deck includes all possible cards the investor has ever seen, and many they haven't.

While that may sound like a great advantage, an unbounded state trying to match a well-bounded state is at a strong disadvantage, since it is still a guessing game, but the number of potential wrong guesses that can be made explodes. To play this game effectively with an unbounded state, the process must be reversed.

Reversing the process also turns it from a guessing game into a conversation, where interests and concerns are discussed. In a conversation, an unbounded state for use cases allows for each interest and concern to be addressed and untangled, like speaking with someone who's very well-read on a subject and has put that knowledge into practice.

So, to people claiming the title of investor, I say this: "Investor, invest in thyself."