I love going to the movies and I love science fiction. This summer is bringing a bumper crop of scifi movies (broadly defined). One of the fun aspects for me of going to see a movie is that I will get to see trailers for upcoming movies. Some people seem to dread this part as they just want to get on with the movie they have come to see, but I love trailers. Except when they wind up being spoilers and that’s increasingly a problem. Too many trailers seem to feel the need to reveal pivotal scenes from a movie instead of just teasing the characters and the overall setting.

If you are sending a summary of your startup to a VC you want it to be like a great trailer: just enough of a tease so you can get the meeting but not so much to steal your own thunder. That’s why I don’t like the “one sheet” format that tries to put all of the salient information on a single page. It has a way of making every startup seem roughly the same and by cramming in a lot of detail takes away the imagination and excitement. The best approach is one intriguing paragraph directly in the body of an email. VCs have a tendency to ask for a full deck – don’t send it. When you get that request send a few slides that act like a good trailer!