The Demand From Intrigue

I had a crush on a girl for years in elementary and junior high. Every six months, I asked her to "go steady." Every time, her sister said she couldn't talk on the phone because she was "washing her hair." What are the odds? It took me until 8th grade to catch on.

I was persistent. I was also completely wrong about what persistence does. Pushing harder didn't make her want me more. If anything, it made her want to duck my calls.

I didn't understand intrigue vs. persistence until years later, learning to raise money at ThirdAge.com. Mike Edelhart, one of my first bosses there and later an investor in Mass Relevance and a mentor ever since, put it simply: the real trick to raising money is to not need it. Or at least, not seem like you do.

VCs don't fund your current numbers. They fund the size of the future they can imagine, and that imagination doesn't grow because you push harder on it. It grows because you create intrigue around what the company could become. Call it the demand from intrigue. Desperation kills a crush, and desperation kills a pitch.

There's a restaurant in Port Aransas where the chef left a five-star kitchen in Austin to slow down and cook whatever he wanted. No advertising, ever. There's still always a wait, because the story reached people from a friend, not a flyer. Hearing it from a local made me want to go more than any ad could. Hearing the same story from a mailer would have made me want it less.

Same idea applies to raising money, building word of mouth, even a first date. Be persistent, but don't be pushy. Build enough intrigue that people lean in. And whenever you can... get your story to come from someone other than you.

What's the story about your company that you should stop telling yourself, and start letting someone else tell?