Guy Reams (00:01.004)
This is day 226, the right amount of mystery. Yesterday, I reviewed a pitch deck for a company that had raised over $100 million. No customers, no patents, no revenue. Just a concept and a story. I've spent months trying to raise just a million dollars, and every investor wants proof. They want evidence that the idea could convert into profit. So I sat there staring at this presentation trying to figure out what I was missing.
How did this team raise 100 times what I'm having a hard time with with less to show for it? I think the answer is mystery. Mystery increases perceived value because people fill in what they do not know with imagination. When something is partially hidden, it creates intrigue. The unknown gives people room to project possibility, status, depth, or even magic into it. That is why luxury brands do not over explain.
Great films do not reveal the monster too early. A compelling product demo does not show every wire behind the wall. A confident person does not explain every detail of their competence. But mystery only works when there is enough visible evidence of value to make the mystery credible. Too little information creates intrigue. No information creates confusion. Contradictory information creates distrust. Overexplanation
destroys the wonder. The better principle might be this, reveal enough to create belief, hide enough to preserve imagination. In business this matters, you want people to understand the outcome, the transformation, the credibility, and the reason to care. But you do not always need to expose every mechanism, every feature, every technical detail, or every internal process. The value is often higher when people feel something specific. They think
This is impressive. I understand why it matters. I do not fully know how they do it, but I believe they can. That space between belief and full understanding is where mystery becomes magic. So we should reveal enough to create the belief, but hide enough to preserve their imagination. I went back to my own pitches that I've written in the past after that. I looked at how much I was explaining.
Guy Reams (02:21.856)
And in my case, I'm a technical person, so was showing every wire, every process, every technical detail. I was trying to prove competence by exposing everything, but I was also removing the room for imagination. I was removing the space where someone could project possibility into what I was building. So I started cutting. kept the outcome. I kept the transformation. I kept the reason to care, but I stopped explaining every step of how it worked.
I stopped trying to prove that I had thought of everything. I let the mystery do some of the work. So the next time you are trying to explain what you are building, take a pause. Ask yourself whether you were revealing enough to create belief or whether you were explaining so much that you were destroying wonder. Then cut what does not need to be there and let mystery work for you.