Introducing Deep Cuts

Preaching to the needles, not the haystack.

Venture capital is fundamentally a communications business.

Your ability to attract the right founders, co-investors, and LPs depends on how well you express the way you think, and why it’s different.

Yet all too often, VC firms take a spray-and-pray approach to venture content, with generic startup advice and recycled market takes that fade into the noise.

After three years of building Overlap and studying how our most impactful communications reach decision-makers, we’ve codified what we call “Irene’s Law” (named for our own comms chief Irene Edwards, a former journalist):

There is an ideal, specific audience for any piece of content; however, that audience is never “everyone.”

This insight becomes even more acute as traditional media structures are besieged by ever-tightening budgets, desperately chasing “the algorithm” with content designed to appeal to everyone and inspire no one. Breadth has vanquished depth; virality has defeated substance.

This creates a kind of prisoner’s dilemma: everyone knows spray-and-pray distribution is suboptimal, but they’re terrified to be the first to stop doing it. It takes nerves of steel to intentionally limit your reach while your competitors rack up followers and likes.

However, while this fractured landscape has caused tumult, it also creates opportunity for those willing to think differently. Like never before, the ability to pinpoint your target audience and deliver content that truly moves them becomes the primary competitive advantage.

Of Haystacks and Needles

The logic behind this approach makes sense when you consider the specific crowd we’re all preaching to. VCs (at least the reputable ones 🤣) aren’t trying to drive ticket sales or ad revenue; rather, we’re trying to win the mindshare and respect of people we want to do business with.

At Overlap specifically, there are several discrete audience cohorts crucial to our growth as a business. In no particular order, these are as follows:

• VCs who invest in Frontier Tech sectors

• Founders and engineers who are leading (or considering leading) Frontier Tech startups

• Asset Allocators, Family Offices, and High Net Worth Individuals with, at the minimum, a passing interest in Frontier Tech

• Lenders to capital-intensive businesses

• Procurers of new innovative technologies from the government and foundation ecosystems

In total, these groups probably add up to fewer than 1 million people in the US, or less than 0.3% of the population (obviously, there are people internationally we’d like to reach as well, but this is all just illustrative). As a result, we have the curious challenge of preaching to the needles, not the haystack.

With that in mind, here’s the crucial counterintuitive part: If Overlap somehow amassed 100,000 random LinkedIn followers tomorrow, we would have failed. Because 95,000+ of them would be the wrong people—diluting our signal, and generating noise that kills time. Worst of all, the demands of the masses (and the desire to maintain a threshold level of “likes”) would obscure whether we’re actually reaching people that matter to the growth of our business. The cost of the wrong audience is not zero—it’s negative.

This is why we don’t start content planning by asking “What is everyone writing about?” We write what we think is important, and then ask ourselves: Who needs to see this? Who shouldn’t we waste effort chasing with it? Who would this actually confuse or turn off?

The Six-Person Focus Group

Let’s take a concrete example of Irene’s Law in action.

Recently, Justin wrote ~3,000 words on the critical developments occurring at the intersection of biotech and AI, primarily to organize his thoughts before several important upcoming discussions.

At that point, we had a choice. We could:

1. Post it publicly on LinkedIn and Substack

2. Include it in our next quarterly investor update; or,

3. Share it strategically with a small coterie of specific individuals

We chose option 3 first. We sent it to six people—a tiny but mighty distribution list that included a former Cabinet member, a leading academic in the field, a centi-millionaire, and one of our LPs (an old high school buddy of Justin’s whose opinion we hold in very high regard).

If we’d posted it publicly, we could have reached 10,000+ people. But:

• The wrong 9,994 people might have skimmed it and moved on (or never have seen it at all)

• The right 6 might have missed it in the algorithmic swirl

• We’d have no real feedback loop to know if it landed

• The piece would have disappeared into the content void within 48 hours

Instead, with our approach:

• Six people, 100% open rate

• Four substantive conversations that led to concrete outcomes

• Each of those six people now knows we have a thoughtful viewpoint about the intersection of AI and biotech

• When any of them encounters someone with a related question or opportunity, we’re the people they mention

Based on their strong feedback (and in-the-field editorial guidance), we then decided to include it in our quarterly investor update, where it generated a host of additional meaningful conversations with LPs.

That essay will never go viral. It will never rack up thousands of impressions. But the right handful of folks know we wrote it, and that knowledge creates value that multiplies over time through their networks.

This is how recognition compounds.

Overlap Presents: Deep Cuts

Which brings us to what we’re launching today.

Deep Cuts is our new essay series offering uncommon insights on the way things work. We typically focus on frontier tech and capital markets, though our thinking often extends beyond both. We’re interested in exploring how power accumulates in different settings; how favors translate to currency; how time is the ultimate scarce resource; how the mechanics of building a company reveal something about building a life. Justin excels at finding the analogy that makes a complex idea suddenly obvious, and these pieces make that accessible (courtesy of Irene’s thoughtful editing).

How the Content Gets Made

Most of our essays start out as an offhand comment Justin shares in routine conversation, either with the Overlap team, or prospective investors, or a startup founder, etc. When Irene notes an interested reaction from the listener, she flags it for us to flush out and develop the idea into a deeper treatise. We’ll brainstorm for 5–10 minutes, and then leave it be. At some point in the not too distant future after that, Justin wakes up around 4:30 am, seized with a fever dream–like inspiration, and pens the first draft. He then hands it off to Irene, who chisels it into its final form.

Then comes the crucial part: deciding who gets to see it. Sometimes that’s six people via email. Sometimes it’s our LP base in a quarterly update. Sometimes it’s here on Substack.

The distribution strategy changes depending on who the piece is for—and that can mean fewer eyes, not more. This is Irene’s Law in action.

What to Expect

We’re using Substack as our primary channel because it gives us the space to go deep without character limits or algorithmic constraints. We’ll also share excerpts and highlights on LinkedIn to give you a preview of what’s inside.

Some of these essays will be directly useful to your work. Others won’t—and that’s OK. To paraphrase Irene’s Law, not every piece is for everyone.

Our publishing philosophy is simple: We say something when we have something to say. You can expect roughly one essay every month or two, but we’re optimizing for impact, not calendar consistency.

Join Us

If the ideas in this essay resonate, then Deep Cuts is for you. We’re building this for a specific audience—the needles, not the haystacks. If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’re part of it.

Thank you.

— Justin and Irene