Pivotal Labs, in collaboration with VentureArchetypes (www.venturearchetypes.com), hosted an entrepreneur panel discussion on March 20, 2008.

(Details on the panel can be found at "Monetization Strategies for Startups: Great idea, but how will it make money?")

We had a great turnout and a fantastic panel. Enjoy the podcast.

Thank you again to our panelists:

• Katherine Barr of Mohr Davidow Ventures
• Ken Gullicksen of Morgenthaler Ventures
• Alex Le of Serious Business
• Nate Pagel of podaddies
• Peter Rip of Crosslink Capital

And our course, thanks to our attendees.

Podcast and Photos

• Panel Discussion
  Note: We've tried to clean up the audio as best we could. We are sorry if there levels aren't balanced.
• Photos on SmugMug
  (If there is a password required, it is 'va')

Chris Risley, of Bessemer Venture Partners (bvp.com), first introduced me to the idea of high concept. It is a term borrowed from the film and television industry that summarizes a proposed idea and usually leads a pitch. It is intended to evoke immediate interest and possibly understanding of the idea. For example, YouTube could have been described as "user posted video on the web".

All too often, an entrepreneur over complicates the communication of her endeavor. Besides her passion, she has been spending an enormous amount of time contemplating, refining and planning her new business. So, she rushes to explain all the richness and subtleties of the idea and how its innovation will change the market. She may even assume that you can't fully appreciate the value of the idea without being told all its nuance.

It is true that complete understanding will take some time and exploration. But this isn't a prerequisite of interest and when pitching the idea to a VC, friend and the target market, capturing interest quickly is critical. The audience's attention has to be earned and most will not have the patience of suspending interest while lots of background and tangential information is provided.

Herein lies the power of the high concept; it facilitates immediate interest and understanding. The high concept doesn't have to (and rarely will) capture the breadth and richness of the idea, but some essence that makes a connection with the audience. 

But is can also focus the entrepreneur and this focus is probably more valuable than the mechanism of communicating the idea to others. Entrepreneurs get easily distracted and assume, just as when communicating, their idea needs full implementation before releasing into the market. What they presume is the minimal feature set for a release tends to have fluff that could be removed.

The high concept is a simple litmus test; how does feature X support the high concept? This should not be a slavish rule but a sanity check. As Einstein said, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." This focus can save an entrepreneur time and money, particularly at early stages where time-to-market is paramount and final value propositions are still emerging.

I have two favorite examples of high concept. In television, an NBC executive asked Michael Mann to come up with a show based on the idea "MTV cops". The result was Miami Vice and I think it is clear how the show tied to the high concept. In the Web 2.0 space, Meebo is "IM through a web page". Simple and concise, just like the actual product. I think many would envy Meebo's success and attention.