Who’s Your Audience?
I remember when I took my first critical writing course I thought I was a hot shot because I used advanced vocabulary and super-formal language. My logic was that if I attempted to go over the professor’s head, or at least beyond the tone that the assignment asked for, that I was going to produce a better paper. It was naive to think that an over-written paper with my handy thesaurus would appear as “better.”
I still remember the arguments I had with my professor. She would question my word choice, and I would accuse her of not understanding my context. She would question “who I was writing to,” especially if the prompt called to write about something frivolous like the flaw in fraternity system at my university, and I acted like I was devising tort agreement. She would question why my paper was 7 pages long, when I could have said the same thing in 3.
She was right. I was wrong. I had no clue who my audience was, which is the first step in crafting any piece of writing, including your business plan and slide decks. It doesn’t matter if you go over or under someone’s head, the point is that you need to consider who you are talking to before you write.
Venture capitalists care less about your vocabulary and more about how you can express yourself efficiently. Slide decks over 10 slides have the potential to be ignored, so tone it down if you want to get attention. As always, less is more. If you don’t figure out who you are talking to, you’re just writing for an empty audience.
