Show, Don't Sell

How to turn a product that's hard to explain into one picture people remember. A step-by-step guide you run with your own AI and Trove.

You have a product that works. The people who use it love it. But when you explain it to someone new, their eyes glaze over.

Maybe nobody wants your category (insurance, compliance, security). Maybe it's new and there's nothing to compare it to (most AI products today). Maybe the value only shows up later, after the person already decided not to try.

This guide is a procedure, not inspiration. Fifteen steps. Each step tells you what to do, gives you a prompt for your AI, and tells you when you're done. Plan for two or three focused sessions.

Most guides like this assume you have hundreds of customer interviews. Most founders don't. Maybe you have a few users, a handful of calls you remember, and a lot of opinions.

That's fine. Every step in this guide has two paths: - If you have it: use your real material. - If you don't: a way to get enough of it this week, or to work from what's in your head.

Your memory counts as data, as long as you write it down honestly and mark what you heard versus what you assume.

People don't buy what you describe. They buy what they can see.

"37 grams of saturated fat" means nothing. A table with bacon and eggs, a burger and fries, and a steak dinner, next to one bag of popcorn that has more fat than all of it, means everything. Same truth. One picture. (That story opens Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. It's told in full in the case studies.)

Your job is to find your bag of popcorn.