Venture Overview Page
The arrival page of a venture proposal. Its only job is to route a cold visitor to the right downstream page for their role within 30 seconds. Everything else — narrative, evidence, decision — lives on a downstream page that the overview must successfully route to.
Primary audience: First-time arrival from a shared link. Role unspecified at landing; resolves itself by which downstream page the reader clicks.
Job
The overview page causes a first-time visitor to choose and open the one downstream page that matches their role and intent — within 30 seconds, without scrolling past the first fold.
Reader Profile
Role. Unknown at arrival. The reader is one of: cohort candidate, venue or partner counterpart, collaborator, decision-maker, peer founder. The page exists to make the reader self-identify.
Moment. Just clicked a link from a message, social post, or referral. Has not yet decided whether the venture is real, relevant, or worth more attention.
Tension. Wants to know if this is worth more time, fears wasting it on another vague pitch.
Direct Action Contract
The page must answer each of the seven on-surface in two sentences or fewer. Any unanswerable diagnostic blocks ship.
- What problem matters now? — Named in the hero in one sentence with a concrete, present-tense pain.
- What happens if nothing changes? — Named alongside the problem; the cost of doing nothing is the gravity that holds attention.
- What better future is available? — Named as the venture's thesis line, not a feature list.
- Why trust this route? — One ethos anchor: founder pattern, prior result, or named comparable.
- What is the first action? — A role-router with four named doors (one per downstream page) and a one-line description of each.
- What outcome makes the journey worth joining? — A single-line "if this works" statement that names the changed state.
- What kill signal keeps the bet honest? — One falsifiable line stating when the venture stops; cross-linked to the proof page where the signal is detailed.
Output — the artifact shape
| Slot | Section | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Eyebrow + venture name | Identity, no ambiguity |
| 2 | One-sentence thesis | The bet, stated plainly |
| 3 | Problem + cost-of-nothing-changes pair | Stakes set before any route invitation |
| 4 | Role router — four named doors | The action this page exists to cause |
| 5 | Ethos anchor — one line | Founder pattern or named comparable |
| 6 | Kill signal line + link | Honest stop condition, falsifiable |
| 7 | Close — copyable prompt for the role-undecided reader | Pit of success for the off-pattern reader |
Constraint: all seven slots fit above the first scroll on a 360-pixel viewport. If they do not, the overview is too long and is failing its routing job.
Action
Primary action. Click one of the four named role-doors on the role router.
Wrong action. Close the tab without clicking, or click randomly into a page that does not match the role.
Source affordance. The role-router itself is the affordance: four named doors, each labelled with the reader-role it serves and the artifact behind it. Door labels name the reader first, the artifact second. "For a collaborator: see what is built and what is next" — not "Intentions page".
Outcome Cascade
Right action (the bet pays out)
| Order | Effect |
|---|---|
| 1° Direct | Reader clicks a door; downstream page receives an arrival with role context preserved |
| 2° Downstream | Reader spends three minutes or more on the role-matched downstream page; commits to its primary action |
| 3° System | The venture sees which doors get clicked at what ratio — calibration data for the role-segmentation thesis |
| 4° Cultural | Readers learn that this venture's pages route honestly to the right depth; they send the overview link to peers in the same role |
| 5° Structural | Distribution compounds because the overview self-segments the audience; founder attention concentrates on serving the highest-yield door |
Wrong action (the page fails its job)
| Order | Effect |
|---|---|
| 1° Direct | Tab closes or random click; no downstream arrival with intent |
| 2° Downstream | Downstream pages receive low-intent traffic that does not convert |
| 3° System | The venture cannot tell whether the problem is the overview, the downstream page, or the role-segmentation thesis itself |
| 4° Cultural | Readers learn the page is decorative; share rate decays; the link becomes another expired pitch |
| 5° Structural | Iteration loop breaks because failure was silent; founder cannot improve the routing without the signal |
Kill Signal
time-on-overview > 90s AND downstream entry < 30% over 30 days → the overview is not routing heuristic
Owner: the venture lead. Measurement: site analytics. Consequence when the signal fires: rebuild the role router or kill the page.
Instrument Flow
Upstream
These instruments feed the overview.
Adjacent
These instruments strengthen or qualify the overview.
Downstream
These pages consume the overview's routing.
Source Map
| Overview section | Primary source instrument | Supporting instrument | Downstream consumer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thesis line | Idea Capture | Positioning Statement | All downstream pages |
| Problem + cost | Idea Capture | ICP | Pitch page |
| Role router | Reader-role map | ICP segmentation | All downstream pages |
| Ethos anchor | Idea Capture team section | Positioning Statement | Pitch page |
| Kill signal line | Operations Scorecard | One-Page Plan §14 | Proof page |
Procedure
- Name the four reader roles the venture serves. If you cannot name four distinct roles, the venture is not yet ready for a public overview.
- Match each role to one downstream page. One door per role. No role unrouted; no door unowned.
- Write the thesis in one sentence. Read it aloud. If you need to pause for breath, it is two sentences pretending to be one.
- State the problem and the cost-of-nothing-changes as a pair. Either alone is half the gravity.
- Pick one ethos anchor. Founder pattern, prior result, named comparable. Not three; one. The reader has 30 seconds.
- Write the kill signal line in one sentence that points to where the signal is detailed.
- Test the page at a 360-pixel viewport. If any slot falls below the first scroll, cut copy.
- Test the page in 30 seconds: can a stranger pick the right door for their role?
Do Not Include
- Three or more calls to action above the fold. The router IS the call to action; another competes with it.
- A scroll-deep narrative. That belongs on the pitch page; the overview routes to it.
- Numeric claims without source. The overview is too short to defend any number; defer numbers to downstream pages.
- A countdown timer, scarcity badge, or pop-up. Routing is built on trust, not pressure.
- An "about us" section. Ethos belongs in one line, downstream of the problem.
- A feature list. The thesis line is the only feature claim the overview is allowed to make.
Scoring Rubric
Score each dimension from 1 to 5.
| Dimension | 1 | 3 | 5 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Routing clarity | No doors named | Doors named generically (page titles) | Doors named by reader-role + artifact promise |
| Thesis compression | Two paragraphs | Two sentences | One sentence read aloud in one breath |
| Stakes visible | Problem only | Problem + cost in separate slots | Problem and cost paired in one slot |
| Ethos earned | Unsupported claim | One named comparable | One pattern proven at adjacent scale, source linked |
| Mobile fold | Multiple folds | First fold loses one slot | All seven slots above first fold at 360px |
| Honesty | No kill signal | Kill signal stated but vague | Kill signal falsifiable, with link to detail |
Investor or board standard: no dimension below 4.
CopyablePrompt
For the page builder, before writing the overview:
I am designing the overview page for a venture proposal. Before I write any
content, I want to run the Job + Direct Action Contract framework so the page
routes the cold visitor to the right downstream page within 30 seconds.
My venture context:
- Venture name and one-sentence thesis: [...]
- Four reader roles the venture serves: [...]
- For each role, the one downstream page that serves them: [...]
- The problem, in one present-tense sentence: [...]
- The cost of nothing changing, in one sentence: [...]
- One ethos anchor (founder pattern, prior result, or named comparable): [...]
- The kill signal that proves the venture is not real: [...]
For the four-door role router, write a one-line label for each door that names
the reader-role first and the artifact promise second. The door labels are the
load-bearing copy. Test the labels by reading each aloud and asking: would a
reader in this role recognise themselves and know what they would receive on
the other side?
Then test the full page at a 360-pixel viewport. If any required slot falls
below the first scroll, cut copy until all seven slots fit. The overview is a
router, not a narrative.
Questions
- Which of the four doors gets the most clicks — and is the answer the same as the door the founder most wanted to be clicked?
- If a reader could only see the first slot before bouncing, would they still leave knowing what the venture is for?
- What is the cost-of-nothing-changes line — and is it the same problem the downstream pages are actually solving?
- If the kill signal fired tomorrow, would the overview line be honest enough to update — or would it sound the same regardless of reality?