Why deep tech should be understood in twenty seconds
Twenty seconds is not how long the science takes. It is how long a reader gives your homepage before deciding whether the depth is worth their time.
- Twenty seconds is not how long the science takes. It is how long the reader gives you before deciding whether to keep reading.
- Understood in twenty seconds is not explained in twenty seconds. The first read names the category, the reader and the reason it matters. The mechanism comes next, at full depth.
- Nobody is asking you to flatten the technology. Depth only gets read once the first read has earned it.
- A page that only experts can enter loses the experts too, because the person who forwards it to them never got past the opening.
Twenty seconds is not how long the science takes. It is how long the reader gives you. A deep tech homepage has to make the right person decide, inside that first read, that the depth behind it is worth their time.
What does "understood in twenty seconds" actually mean?
It means the right reader knows three things before they decide whether to keep going: what you have built, who it is for, and why it matters now.
That is the whole claim. It is not a promise that the mechanism fits in a sentence, or that the science gets smaller. The twenty seconds buy the next twenty minutes.
Why twenty seconds?
Because that is roughly the length of the first pass, and the first pass is where most readers leave.
An associate opens your homepage between two other decks. A procurement lead skims it before a call. A senior engineer checks it after a recruiter's message. None of them has decided to study you yet. They are deciding whether to.
Twenty seconds is not a measured constant. It is the length of that decision. If the category is not named and the advantage is not visible in it, the tab closes, and nobody writes back to say why.
Isn't this just simplifying the science?
No. Simplifying removes the depth. Clarity puts it in the right order.
The common objection is that deep tech should not be understood quickly, because the technicality is the value. We agree the technicality is the value. That is exactly why it cannot sit behind a wall nobody gets past.
A page can do both jobs. The first read carries the category, the problem and the one fact that makes the work hard. Everything underneath carries the mechanism, the data, the commercial case and the evidence, at whatever depth the subject needs. Nothing is removed. It is sequenced.
Who is the first read for?
Usually not the expert. Usually the person who decides whether the expert sees it.
A partner at a fund does not find you first. An associate does, and forwards you. An enterprise buyer's technical lead does not find you first. Someone in strategy or procurement does, and shortlists you. The first reader is often bright, busy and outside your field.
A page that only an expert can enter loses the expert too, because the person who would have forwarded it never got past the opening.
Is this any different from introducing yourself?
No. It is the same skill at company scale.
Harry Stebbings, the podcaster and investor, tells founders on Instagram that the one thing worth learning is how to introduce themselves, in "3 chapters: I did this, this, and this." The introduction he remembered from his inbox was four short lines: who they are, where they worked, what they are building, and an invitation to talk.
A homepage is how a company introduces itself when nobody from it is in the room. The first twenty seconds are the three chapters, and everything below them is the conversation that follows.
What should the first twenty seconds carry?
Four things, in this order:
- The category, named. The words a reader would use to file you, not a coined phrase they have to decode.
- The problem, stated in their terms. What breaks, costs or stalls without you.
- The hard part, visible. One specific fact that shows why this was difficult to build, so an expert can see the depth is real.
- The next step for each reader. Where the investor, the buyer and the engineer each go to read more.
What comes after the twenty seconds?
The depth, and all of it.
The mechanism explained rather than gestured at. Claims specific enough to be checked. Evidence where a specialist will look for it. Diagrams, 3D or film where structure or sequence has to be seen. This is the part a technical reader will spend an hour on, and it should reward that hour.
The twenty seconds and the hour are not in tension. The first decides whether the second happens.
How do you test whether a page passes?
Show it to someone outside your field for twenty seconds, close it, and ask three questions: what is it, who is it for, and why does it matter.
If they cannot answer, the depth underneath is not being read by the people who decide whether it gets read. Then show the same page to an engineer in your field and ask what is hard about it. If they cannot answer either, the page is shallow, not clear. A page that passes both tests is the one worth publishing.
Written by Mejo Kuriachan. More in the blog, the glossary and the FAQ.