An inexperienced tech founder from traditional business just emailed me the following about their tech startup:

"We are looking to finalise a raise of up to $2M at the moment to allow us to complete the IT build for the solutions and consider opening discussions with potential partners in the USA."

In addition to a number of other niceties and details, I included the following excerpt in my response...

"Just some constructive feedback to help with your messaging - there are a lot of yellow flags in your framing that will immediately turn off investors. I'll highlight them below to try to be as helpful as possible.

- 'up to $2M' - Pick a number, not a max. How much do you need to win over the next 18 months?

- 'Complete' - Software and products are never complete. You only get to various stages. Also, investors don't invest in building software; they invest in growing companies and hitting growth milestones

- 'IT Build' - IT is printers and monitors and networks. It is not software/products/tech.

- 'Solutions' - They are products/services. The term 'solutions' is IT/old school speak as well

- 'Partners' - You're not looking for partners; you're looking for investors."

Using the right vocabulary in communication can be the difference between implicit credibility or instant dismissal on style alone.

It may not be fair, it may not be popular to talk about, but it's real and important.

Do you have any other examples of yellow flags in vocabulary you've seen?

#startups #scaleups #startupsnippets #advisory #consultingconvos