Harlow Grace

A user asked me to build a feature last month. Not huge. Maybe a week of work. My instinct was to say yes like I always do.

But I looked at my roadmap, looked at what I was already behind on, and just said no. I explained why it didn't fit right now. I braced for them to leave.

They replied "totally understand, thanks for being honest."

Then they renewed the next week.

I think a pitch deck is almost like a passport for a startup =)

It needs to contain all the important information about the business, but at the same time, it has to be presented in the right, clear, and aesthetic way.

I m realizing how difficult that balance actually is...

Too much information - nobody wants to read it.
Too little - the business isn't clear.
Too much design - the message gets lost.
Too little - it becomes just another boring document.
So, I have a lot of questions =D

At what point does a product become ready to talk to investors?

When you have users?
Revenue?
A clear business model?
A certain number of people using it?

Especially for solo or small-team makers, it feels twice as hard to reach all of these points alone - while continuing to build the product without income and bootstrapping everything.

At some point, it starts to feel like an infinite loop: