What a venture owes its first reader

The first person who reads an offer is not a customer. They are a measurement, and the measurement is usually thrown away, because it arrives before anyone has decided what it would mean.

Decide what the reader is being asked

A reader can be asked for attention, for an opinion, or for money. These are different tests with different failure modes, and running them together produces a result that cannot be interpreted. Pick one, and write down which.

The temptation is to ask for all three at once: a page that explains, persuades, and sells. That is usually justified on the grounds that a visitor is expensive and should be fully used. That reasoning is sound for a business with a known offer. For a venture still establishing whether the offer exists, it destroys the only information the visit could have produced.

Field note

• Write the claim the page is testing, in one sentence.
• Name the number that would falsify it.
• Set the date you will look at that number.

Interest is not evidence

Encouragement is the cheapest thing a reader can give, and the most likely thing to be offered. Evidence costs the reader something: a reply, a schedule, a payment, a name they have to defend later.

Evidence beats enthusiasm, and a written date beats both.

This is why a small, specific response is worth more than a large, vague one. Ten people who each did something inconvenient tell you more than a thousand who nodded.

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What the first reader is owed

Clarity, mostly. What this is, who it is for, what it costs, and what it does not do. Stating the limits is not modesty; it is the fastest way to find the reader who wants exactly this, and to stop wasting the ones who do not.

The venture that writes its exclusions down finds its audience sooner, because the audience can recognise itself.