Grail Lore
Our idea sits snug inside a flawless Powerpoint. Every word, every icon, ever color is calibrated for logic, tone and flow. Each sentence tucked in like a mother putting her kids to bed, safe and still.
The result is tight. Polished. Immaculate.
The deck is a weapon, powerful, convincing and essential to our quest for viability.
But it’s only half the story.
Half the grail tablet.
Half the treasure map.
The half in our hands is enough to spark conversation, maybe even excitement. It can stir curiosity, but it can’t sell belief.
A deck can tell a story.
But it can’t make anyone buy it.
At the end of the day, it’s just ink and pixels.
It takes people…imperfect, nervous, passionate, enthusiastic people to breathe life into the words on the page.
It takes heart.
On the sleeve, in the voice, across the conference room table.
My heart.
Because at this stage, what people are buying is one part company vision and one part us.
Seasoned operators. Seasoned investors. Polished executives looking to execute ideas without the halo of Fortune 100 logos printed on thick, high-end stock.
Ricky “Wild Thing” Vaughn
For twenty-five years, I sat on the other side of the table. The one being presented to.
I was the evaluator. The buyer. The judge.
I dissected decks, poked holes in logic, questioned assumptions.
I was paid to be skeptical.
I was the scout.
Now I’m on the field. Now I’m the one pitching.
And for the first time in my career, the product is me. My voice, my conviction, my ability to make someone else see what I see.
My first real pitch?
It came in like a junk ball thrown in the dirt.
Scar Tissue
For the past ten months, my partner and I have been refining TCH, a new kind of investment platform operating at the intersection of institutional capital, profit-focused company building and corporate strategy.
We’ve lived the pain of trying to build inside large corporations. We managed through the politics, the bureaucracy, the suffocating inertia. Those years left marks.
Scar tissue.
A reminder of what to avoid. A map of old wounds. A signal to think differently or bleed again.
That scar tissue shaped how we built TCH: intentional alignment, clean incentives, shared upside. A structure designed to mitigate the corporate antibodies that kill new company development before it breathes.
Between us, fifty years of experience in company building, investing and technology. Fifty years of experience, just not much in sales.
Everyone sells something, sure: yourself for a job, your idea for a budget and resources. But that’s safe selling. Familiar faces. Known terrain.
Selling to outsiders? That’s different.
No loyalty. No safety net. No soft landing.
They can smile and nod and still laugh you out of the room.
And some have.
Nineteen Minutes
A few weeks before the aforementioned junk ball pitch, I tested our concept on a mentor, a man whose feedback I’ve continually sought out for fifteen years. A captain of industry. A master of the universe. A man who’s conquered finance, tech, business services, and media.
His Midtown office is a marble mausoleum of success: lucite deal toys stacked like headstones. Not an inch of shelf space to spare. The cream furniture, the quiet hum of monitors, it’s a juxtaposition of serenity and power.
He’s calm, even-keeled, relaxed. But I’m not.
I’m at attention. I sit straighter, breathe slower, hang on every word.
I walk him through the story. Articulate but not yet crisp, I deliver the salient points. TCH is not a venture fund or venture studio.
We are something entirely new.
And with new comes confusion. Skepticism. Resistance. There are no simple categories, neat little boxes or convenient descriptors to compare us to. No shorthand.
He listens.
Then delivers his ruling, flat and final: terrible idea.
No emotion. No cushioning. No arm around the shoulder.
Just the truth, as he sees it.
Nineteen minutes.
That’s all it took to go from conviction to collapse.
Had I wasted months?
My partner’s time?
Did everyone else secretly feel this way and were just too polite to say it?
The self-doubt had now arrived at my front door. And this time, I opened it. I opened the door and invited in the enemy.
As I exit the office, I struggle with what to do.
Should I heed his advice and start blasting resumes out or put my head down and forge ahead?
A Butcher’s Ass
Ten days later, we walked into our first real test: a potential client.
A serious firm. Real pain points. Real budget.
My partner, poised and polished, led off. She knew them well. Old colleagues, soldiers from past campaigns fought under a different banner.
I was the new face. The stranger in the room.
The environment was friendly enough, but the stakes were real: seven figures on the line.
And then the mishaps began. Small-time chaos.
The AV failed.
The deck didn’t load.
The client hadn’t read the materials.
Our rhythm unraveled. We stumbled. Rephrased. Backtracked.
My personal Tommy Boy moment.
Then we took a beat. We stopped overthinking it.
We cut the fluff and spoke plainly. Explaining just the facts:
What we do.
What we don’t.
Why it works.
Why it’s different.
Why it’s worth betting on.
No flash. No bravado. Just truth.
It wasn’t smooth. It wasn’t eloquent. But it was direct. And it was real.
And somewhere in the mess, something shifted.
They leaned in. Asked questions. Became engaged.
By the end, they wanted a follow-up.
A second date.
At this stage of the game, that’s oxygen.
Data Points
My mentor’s verdict wasn’t necessarily wrong, it was just his truth. A truth filtered through a personal set of experiences, playbooks and scar tissue.
We all come at this through the filter of our own past experiences
~ Zero Dark Thirty
Biased by the good and the bad, we all see the world through the lens of our own bruises.
But what his verdict taught me was different. It taught me to not let a single verdict define you. Not even when it comes from someone you respect.
It taught me to collect more data points. You test. You learn. You iterate . Iterate on the story, the materials and yourself.
Because decks don’t sell. People do.
So after twenty-five years of judging from the stands, I finally know what it feels like to take the mound.
No brand. No safety net. Just conviction and the next pitch to throw.
Our first pitch was messy, awkward, human. It landed wide of the plate. But it looked good enough to swing at.