People pitch me all the time. But hopefully, you'll just go ahead and do it. We are trying to eliminate the need for pitches. I'd rather sit there and applaud. Customers buy products, not Powerpoint presentations.
Interpretation
Focus on creating value rather than preparing endless presentations.
Scott Cook's quote emphasizes the importance of genuine action over superficial presentations. He suggests that customers are more interested in the tangible benefits of a product rather than how it's presented, advocating for a shift towards action and results in business interactions.
In practice
In a startup pitch meeting, I would use this quote to encourage participants to focus on product development.
In my view, product/market fit is the most important thing to get right as a startup entrepreneur. There's a variety of ways to do it, but without solving some pain point that the customer gets so excited about they tell their friends, it's really hard in the modern age to get any liftoff.
When you start a company, it's a singular focus. You have the wind at your back.
In a world where companies increasingly know about their business in real time, it makes no sense that public reporting mostly follows the old quarterly schedule. Companies sit on vital information until reporting day, at which point the market goes crazy.
The market and the consumer and idea trump the system.
If you go to a venture firm, what you're doing is you're buying money from them in exchange for equity. They have a commodity that they're selling and they have to differentiate themselves.
Kickstarter isn't a profit center, it's an organizer and an instigator.
Intrinsic value can be defined simply: It is the discounted value of the cash that can be taken out of a business during its remaining life.
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