Spent 9 years fixing marketing for AI/web3 startups. heres the one mistake i see literally every single time

gonna keep this simple bc i think its useful for anyone building or marketing a technical product rn.

every AI or web3 startup i've worked with in the last 5 years (and its been a lot at this point) has the exact same problem when i walk in. the product is genuinely good. the team is smart. and almost nobody outside the company actually understands what it does.

not bc the tech is bad. bc everyone on the inside is too close to it. they explain the HOW (the model, the chain, the architecture) when the market just wants to know the WHAT and the WHY SHOULD I CARE.

heres a pattern i see over and over. founder pitches me the product and it takes them 4 minutes and 3 technical terms to explain it. i ask "ok if ur mom asked what this does, what do you say" and they go silent for a sec. that silence is the whole marketing problem right there.

the fix isnt complicated but its uncomfortable. you have to kill 80% of the technical language in your own head first before you can write a single word of copy. most founders dont want to do that bc it feels like theyre dumbing down something they spent years building. but the market doesnt reward complexity, it rewards clarity.

one thing that helped consistently: i make founders explain their product to me in one sentence, no jargon allowed, and if they cant do it, THAT sentence becomes the whole positioning exercise. we build the entire go to market around answering that one question simply.

anyway just something ive noticed doing this across a bunch of different AI and web3 products. curious if other marketers here see the same pattern or if its specific to this space.