What are you trying to do? Articulate your objectives using absolutely no jargon.
How is it done today, and what are the limits of current practice?
What is new in your approach and why do you think it will be successful?
Who cares? If you are successful, what difference will it make?
What are the risks?
How much will it cost?
How long will it take?
What are the mid-term and final “exams” to check for success?
Background on The Heilmeier Catechism
DARPA operates on the principle that generating big rewards requires taking big risks. But how does the Agency determine what risks are worth taking?
George H. Heilmeier, a former DARPA director (1975-1977), crafted a set of questions known as the “Heilmeier Catechism” to help Agency officials think through and evaluate proposed research programs. DARPA Detail Page
The Echo Mesa Ventures Ultimate Investor Intro provides a framework for efficiently and effectively encapsulating the core values of a company. This allows founds to succinctly communicate value both in writing and verbally. This should be thought of as an exercise, with the output generally committed to memory or used as a writing template, and dynamically adjusted depending on the audience. Think of it as a good baseline pitch to keep in your head, and be ready to riff on it on the spot.
Value Prop:
For (the target customer)
Who (specific needs, demands, buying criteria, etc)
We provide (solution name / brand description)
That (specifies benefits and business values to clients).
Unlike (the competition)
Who (provide solutions, features, functions, benefits).
Our company (better approach, solution, functions, benefits)
That (offers a better customer experience).
Fundraising Prop:
We are raising a $500k (How Much)
SAFE round (How)
before the end of the year (When)
from local angel groups (Who)
to get to profitability and setup the company for scale (Why).
Example
For the corn farmer who needs to monitor multiple fields simultaneously, we provide LauraGrow, an agricultural sensor network that uses a self-healing LoRa mesh network, solar power, and industry leading sensors to provide real time, high accuracy and high reliability crop data to farmers. Unlike traditional crop sensors who have unreliable and high maintenance wired sensors or require expensive aircraft flights, our combination of low cost, high accuracy sensors with field-hardened power and networking technology gives farmers better more reliable data at a lower cost.
We are raising $3M convertible debt round in the next 18 months from Series A agricultural investors to scale our team and invest in technology R&D and market launch of our product.
