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Startup people love to trot out the original Airbnb pitch deck (easy to Google) but my new favorite is from Mistral.ai, sort of like Europe’s answer to OpenAI.

Aside from data sovereignty for EU firms, they want to innovate on the LaaM,  language model as a service. For example, AI sustainability innovation could come through small lean models that run on your normal laptop and have utility as assistants.

There are more interesting details, too.

But why am I telling you all this?

Because this “deck” is an impressive example of strategic messaging. It’s really just a word doc, too, and it has no graphics, design, infographics, or charts.

If it “cheats” (ie. uses something other than rhetorical skill to persuade) in any way, it’s by mentioning the list of wealthy and successful co-founders, such a ex-Meta/Llama types.

But you sort of have to do that to make an investment pitch deck work.

It’s also got a:

• good story
• villain
• big idea that’s inspiring
• set of entangled supporting ideas
• long-term plan for a position of advantage

In other words, it’s pure strategy. And without a single hero image.

In fact, nor is there a prototype behind it or even a line of code.

Yet just yesterday Mistral raised over 100 million, based on that text.

They really do need that money to lock in AI compute infrastructure too.

Will it work? No idea.

But here’s the takeaway: if the strategy and messaging is on point, sometimes it’s better to skip the decoration.

It’s not just personalization. That’s the #1 rule is that IS observed.

And it’s not just keeping it short; that’s #2.

And it’s not just communicating something worthwhile.

Those are the more commonly observed rules of outbound marketing. Observing them elevates you above the fray, to the upper 5%.

But how do you elevate above the upper 5%?

It’s very simple – the first time you contact someone, observe the rules above, but with a  twist: never mention or refer to yourself or your product or services in any way.

Keep it about them. If that gets a response, the proceed. Otherwise move on.

Just like at a social event.

Pricing messages focus on the money you pay and don’t mention time.

Perhaps this comes from our simplistic view of transactions, where we pay for a ready-made product or service in the time it takes to pull out our purse. In this simple world, price is virtually equal to the total cost.

Perhaps it also comes from not wanting to scare away potential buyers by presenting the true cost of what’s for sale.

Which can be considerable.

Take a professional conference, for example. You elect to pay the conference fee, plus the premium add-ons, then the conference website tells you: “Total price: $999“.

But isn’t this “total” price misleading?

Attending a conference might cost you time spent:

• researching speakers and attendees, accommodations
• travelling in cars, taxis, planes, and by foot
• finding restaurants and cafes, gyms
• looking at weather
• chatting with a chatbot on the conference website
• scheduling
• making online payments
• and more

Excluding any time at the actual conference itself, you might need 12 hours of time to make it work. Let’s say your hourly rate is $xxx/hr – now what’s the “price you pay“?

When you hire a professional service, it’s a similar story: there’s research, communication, planning, preparation, vetting, payment-making, meetings, meetings, meetings. The hidden price of time is even true of software.

Notion.so, for example – I don’t care what your use case is (except perhaps note-taking), if you don’t spend at least 4 hours in research, practice, and study, Notion won’t work.

Like when you pay for a conference online but then spend 0 time doing 0 other things.

As sellers, there’s an opportunity to (a) gain trust and (b) filter out bad-fit customers by being clearer on pricing.

I like ‘Marketing Against the Grain’, co-hosted by Kieran and Kipp. They’re CMOs and content marketing experts but in recent months, their takes on generative AI have been particularly on point.

A few weeks ago, Kieran made a point about the increasing value of human connection, clipped here.

You might catch Kipp’s rejoinder:

• Human connection
• Point of view
• Opinion

The context here – where this increase in the value of humanness is playing out – is online properties and to an extent, SEO.

The idea is that sites whose value is based in transactional information will be eventually consumed by ChatGPT and other generative AI-enhanced apps.

Stackoverflow, for example, has apparently already lost 20% of its considerable traffic this year; a causal relationship is unproven but a strong possibility. It makes sense – who wants to suffer abuse from an acerbic nerd on Stackoverflow when you could get the same information from a cheerfuly if overly-talkative robot on ChatGPT?

Meanwhile destinations featuring human connection, point of view, and opinion are better positioned.  They cite Reddit, for example.

The same trend will play out on video – and as they point out elsewhere in the video, the value of video in marketing is set to spike in the coming years, because of its potential to deliver a lot of humanity.

Highly robotic LinkedIn Learning Videos about JS frameworks, databases, and AI will cede ground to idiosyncratic channels like Fireship.

Not because LinkedIn doesn’t have the right information but because Fireship has the human point of view that now feels warmer than ever.

The other day, A Smart Bear wrote about leverage thru embracing differentiated, long-term strengths; “do you” was the idea.

What that really means, though, is embracing your business model – including in your messaging. Imagine that your business falls somewhere on this matrix.

Wherever it falls, strengths and weaknesses come with it.

Types of B2B Solutions

             slow     decision-speed    fast

 deep        |    Type A    |    Type B    |
insight      ---------------+---------------

shallow      |    Type X    |    Type Y    |

Well, who wouldn’t want to be Type B: fast decisions plus deep insight?

And who in their right mind would choose Type X, shallow on insight and slow-moving?

A lot of businesses actually; let’s take a quick tour of the matrix.

Type A (examples: R&D teams, strategy consulting) has a lot going for it:

• Develops tailored and innovative solutions
• Long-term profitability based on deep relationships

But… slow decisions can mean missed opportunities, misunderstanding of new trends – plus high cost research and analysis work.

Type B (examples: agile software shop, real-time market analytics product) can respond more quickly to opportunities and stack profits quickly – but they also incur the most risks, for their clients and their own firms.

Type X (examples: a standardized CRM, a bookkeeping package) might not be such a bad deal if you like predictable revenue, an easier selling cycle and lower overall risk, in exchange for lower growth potential.

And Type Y (examples: a rapid prototyping service, datasets-for-sale)  has revenue flexibility and solution agility – the only issue is the solution might fall flat and do little for customers.

I’m guessing you know which quadrant you fall in – if so, you have some clues on what to focus on in your messaging.

“We could have called it ‘strawberry intelligence.’”
– Gong CEO Amit Bendov

What Amit meant by that statement, per Andy Raskin, is that rather than “invent” the category of “revenue intelligence“, as Gong did, they might just as well have invented the category of “strawberry intelligence“.

The idea being that Gong’s enormous success didn’t have to do with making up a “____ intelligence” category. So it didn’t matter.

And why not? Maybe because people aren’t logically convinced by an association with a category that a company makes up. I’ll buy that.

According to Raskin and Bendov, what people cared about was the Gong company/product story – not their cool “revenue intelligence” category.

Story strategy, you might call it. Like with Storybrand.

I don’t know if I’ll but that one; there are better stories.

Here’s what I think happened – in the first place, someone in marketing at IBM came up with “business intelligence” back in the 1980’s. And tech companies have been running with it ever since, including Gong. End of story.

Why? Because business intelligence or revenue intelligence, or whatever, is an easy to grasp idea that has a nice ring to it – and can be easily riffed on in your sales an marketing materials. It doesn’t have to be logical, it just has to be non-illogical – and catchy.

For 20 years, conventional wisdom on the web has been: more words, longer posts.

In the late 2010’s, Brian Dean explored this through large-scale SEO research. In analyzing blog content and search engine results Brian formalized what SEO experts had long guessed: Google rewards content for length – 1500 to 2000 words, to be specific.

For now, this is still the case. The net effect is agonizing wordy-ness. Just like in school: if you force people to write X number of words, you bore and annoy readers. ChatGPT has mastered the art; people hate it. It’s industrial-age behavior.

To clarify the obvious: just because an article is long doesn’t mean it’s bad. What’s more, long articles can add value in a way short ones can’t.

The average essay in The New Yorker is 3,000 words; many are 6,000

And long blog post essays about a business, tech, or societal trend can be more, not less, useful for their length, when there’s space to weave together multiple ideas, and provide examples or discuss data.

For example, this article by Andreeson, Why AI Will Save the World: https://a16z.com/2023/06/06/ai-will-save-the-world/.

It’s long enough that it even has a chapter structure that serves as a table of contents and internal navigation.

The presence of a ‘chapter’ approach was another Brian Dean SEO finding actually.

But neither Google nor anyone else requires or incentives Marc Andreeson, a billionaire venture capitalist, to write such a long post. He did it to make the make the central point stronger and more memorable.

And he can also keep it short, just check his Twitter. He does so 999 times of out a 1000.

Here’s the thing: keep it short almost all the time, unless you have an extraordinary reason not to.

“Ever since I was a child, I’ve dreamed of understanding what animals are saying. How wonderful that is now a real possibility.”
― Dr. Jane Goodall

Quick question – but first some context; bear with me.

Animal research org Earth Species Project is using neural network AI, of the same sort that I use here to create personalized, conversational discovery interviews.

What is ‘ESP’ they up to? They’re learning how to document, decode, and ultimately understand animal language, or communication, let’s call it.

This means we can speak with them.

Maybe this means I can conduct use Message Maps to conduct a discovery interview with a Baleen whale. Maybe it means we can provide animals with their own AI tools, so they can leverage their intelligence and finally overcome the problem of not having opposable thumbs.

That’s interesting sci-fi but back to the question: if we can level the species playing field, or at least talk to more of them, can we also use generative AI to level the playing field for other people?

We wanted that same outcome out of social media and mobile apps, but the results have been mixed at best. Maybe we can do better this time?

*    *    *

PS. Yesterday I announced a “pre-release” of Message Maps, in which you can use one part of the tool in exchange for feedback – there’s the official release notes https://github.com/roprice/messagemaps-community/releases/tag/v0.1.0-pre-alpha-Ausangate

PPS. Speaking of AI and animals, there are more camelids on the mountain of Ausangate than there are open source LLMs bearing their homonyms

Lately on this list and elsewhere I’ve been speaking of:

• the value of personalized follow up questions
• garbage-in/garbage-out in generative AI
• trying to “see” the buyer more deeply
• chatgpt in our apps, not the other way around

And generative AI as the user interface for … pretty much everything.

It’s all connected to message maps, much of it directly.

Which I’m pre-releasing part of today!

I’m not releasing the full tool today but I am sharing its AI-assisted discovery interview – the part that mines your mind for overlooked diamonds in the rough. When burnished and set on the right showcase, such diamonds capture attention.

If you’d like to try to uncover one, reply and let me know – I’ll send an invite code to let you try it out FREE and set you loose to ‘mine your mind’ (: