At the summit I came across what seems to be another venture capitalist mantra... the "60 second pitch"! VCs seem to love these pithy reductions. The first one I kept being told about was to narrow my ideas down to a single slice of functionality. Just one slice. If you can't do this apparently VCs get antsy. The second one is reduce everything down to a one minute overview. If your idea is more complex, forget about it.
All sounds to me like major ADD. I'm sure it's a function of too many people with rambling undefined theses with no real ideas hidden underneath it all, but sometimes to simplify to this degree can be to lose the idea altogether; or worse - pitch something conceptually different simply because you had to reduce the number of words.
In the case of the Urban Survival Project, I'm not talking about simple mind-catching, one-stop solutions. It's about laying foundations and building something big. Creating the pieces of a big jigsaw that fit together beautifully; that will be enduring and make the change I want to effect. I'm not really interested in compromising this for lowest cost, single-path, financially stable solutions that are successful through repeatability.
Anyway I guess those are the rules, so while I've already determined that the single slice thing is not realistic for USP, I'm currently working on creating some kind of 60 second pitch. Watch this space, because I'll be hoping for feedback :)
