There are 3-5 core things that prospects assume about your product or company that actually are NOT true.

These 3-5 core things act as poison for customer prospects. Poison that inhibits them from making a move towards you and your solution. 

I call these the Major Misconceptions. In this article, I will go into detail on how pervasive these can be, and how to correct them. Let me explain. 

There is an important difference between your customers and your prospects. It has to do with belief and with knowing.

What your prospects believe to be true vs. what your customers know to be true. 

Your customers have “seen the light.” They have experienced your value proposition. They have total clarity on what you are doing and more importantly, not doing, and how that relates to what else is out there. 

For your prospects, over time, they pick up inputs - observations, anecdotes, writings from you and from the people in their network - which frames what you are doing into a category. 

Over time, dangerously, these categories define reality. Your prospects lose sight of what is assumed versus what is actually fact. They categorize the company, the opportunity, etc. into a set of facts. Facts, that may actually be misconceptions. 

Or, even deeper, they don’t even know what you are doing at all. Even when you assume they do.

But I made recent discovery. I’ve seen that these misconceptions cluster into three to five core pieces of incorrect information that is common across a broad swath of your customer prospects. 

✅ That is what I call the Major Misconceptions - the 3-5 core things that prospects assume about your product or startup that actually are not true. ✅

I discovered this by accident. 

Recently, I reflected on the customer journey of an individual that decides to become an investor in Tundra Angels. I specifically considered one step in my process - the step when I meet the potential investor for coffee, hear about their story, and share Tundra Angels to them. 

I asked myself if any patterns emerged from the aggregated coffee conversations over the years. 

I specifically honed in on the moments in the coffee conversations that I noticed the energy had shifted and crossed a threshhold. The moments when there appeared to be an “a ha” moment for the individual, where their eyes would widen, their body language would loosen up and indicate a positive and upbeat tone about joining Tundra Angels.

I considered the specific information I was sharing when those moments occurred.

All of those moments seemed to follow a common pattern - they were moments of enlightenment. Moments of clarity. Often, the individual would say something like, “Oh that’s interesting. I thought it was like [example].” 

Moments of enlightenment. That was interesting.

But I observed something further. These moments of enlightenment tended to happen when I would share the same three to five core pieces of information that the individual had misjudged or wrongly assumed going into the conversation. 

Once I broke that way of thinking and corrected it, enlightenment happened. “Oh, that’s what you are doing. I definitely could be into that!” 

Wth the three to five pieces, I noticed - I wasn't as much selling as I was speaking to the major misconceptions.

Perhaps sometimes speaking can be more powerful than selling?

The Major Misconceptions can be fatal for investors too if they remain unchecked. 

After making this discovery, I reflected on the conversations that I have had with investors when I pitch our portfolio companies to them for consideration. 

Interestingly enough, for a given company, I tend to find that the pattern of 3-5 Major Misconceptions that investors assume or ask questions about seem to hold true. 

But here is the most perilous part - the investors often don’t even know that their misconceptions were not true. 

The deadly poison of the Major Misconceptions is that they are not misconceptions to the prospect or the investor. To them, it is fact. It is reality. 

✅ An investor’s misconceptions is the #1 factor that can kill an startup opportunity before it’s even begun. ✅

With one of our companies, EVEN, I held a Major Misconceptions that nearly tricked me into missing the opportunity to invest in this company.

Years ago, I had heard about EVEN after their pre-seed round was announced in April 2023 in this article. 

At the time of the announcement, I skimmed the article. I concluded that EVEN was in the same category as Spotify, Apple Music, taking the content of the artists and monetizing it via a subscription model.

Here is what I thought - “The world doesn’t need another Spotify.”

I had this Major Misconception for two years! Yet, I was never confronted with a context to check my assumptions about EVEN. 

In late Summer 2024, I saw from a deal flow channel that EVEN was raising funds. 

Keep in mind, I saw EVEN and seeing the company name, I consciously ran through the assumption that I had - “This is probably just another Spotify competitor,” not realizing that it was actually a Major Misconception. 

But despite my assumptions, I still decided to reach out, just in case my assumptions were incorrect. In my head, it is better to give ourselves the opportunity to invest rather than to decline the opportunity without true knowledge of what it entails. 

I’m so glad I did. Over the first and second conversation, my Major Misconceptions broke down. 

Here they were: 

If my Major Misconceptions remained unchecked and I didn’t choose to reach out to Mag, how Tundra Angels would have missed an amazing opportunity. 

To me, the Major Misconceptions holds way more weight for customers than it does for investors. 

The fundraising journey is a unique process. Everyone is asking questions from their context. In investor-land, context all over the board. 

If the startup does their product and marketing job right, the context that your customers are facing is largely the same - which increases the likelihood of them to hold the same three-five Major Misconceptions. 

But for investors, founders are pitching to investors in so many different headspaces, industry expertises, fund life cycles, generalists investors vs. subject matter experts, that I would encourage extreme caution when thinking about what the Major Misconceptions that your potential investors have because the ICP is so all over the board. Thus, I really think the Major Misconceptions applies much more directly in a customer and prospect context. 

✅ Maybe we are not as much selling to the customer prospect as we are speaking to the Major Misconceptions. ✅

The most important work that a startup can do here is to identify the Major Misconceptions that your prospects have. 

Reflect on your conversations with your prospects. In those conversations, what are the moments of enlightenment in those conversations? 

Do those moments of enlightenment follow a pattern of 3-5 core pieces of information?

You may have found your Major Misconceptions.

Once you identify your Major Misconceptions, it is your job to wage an marketing air attack, putting content, messages, and speaking one singular Major Misconception over the marketing airwaves. Correct the thinking in unique and creative ways. 

Also, your prospects will not come to you to check their assumptions. You need to go to them and correct what you assume are their 3-5 Major Misconceptions.

With all of this, let me leave you with a question: 

✅ Are you certain that you know what your prospects are saying, “No,” to? ✅

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