Why that viral prompt didn't work for you

This week over Christmas (still apologizing to my girlfriend) I worked with a business development lead at a VC fund.

Smart guy. Hustling hard. Doing "all the right things."

His boss saw the effort but nothing was closing.

He came to me thinking he needed better outreach templates. A sharper LinkedIn strategy. More volume.

Instead, we pulled the data on what was actually working. The deals that closed. The intros that converted.

What we discovered was that they all came from the same place:

Smaller investors who had early access to companies and needed a capital partner for follow-on rounds.

(Trust me, this read like Mandarin to me too.)

But after we mapped it, the pattern was sitting right there. Had been for months.

He'd been emailing founders because that's what "business development" means.

Industry standard...Best practice...The thing everyone told him to do.

But the deals were coming from somewhere else entirely.

He couldn't see it because he was inside it. The default was so obvious it had become invisible.

After we mapped the pattern, he said something I keep thinking about:

"You pointed out the obvious I didn't know was obvious."

He was running someone else's playbook. Industry default. Never questioned.

That viral mega-prompt you saved? Someone else's playbook too.

Built for their situation. Filed down to fit everyone.

When you paste it in, it assumes you're a generic "marketer" or "founder" or "content creator."

My clients templates targeted founders. His wins came from capital partners.

Your prompts target everyone. Your best output comes from context only you can provide.

Here's the layer I add before any saved prompt now:

PROMPT:

Before I give you a task, here's the context you need:

WHO I AM: [Your role, your company type, your experience level with this task]

WHAT I'M WORKING ON: [The specific project. "Q1 product launch for our API documentation tool" not "marketing campaign"]

WHO WILL SEE THIS: [The actual humans. "My VP who cares about pipeline impact and hates fluff" not "stakeholders"]

WHAT I'VE TRIED: [What didn't work and why, so you don't repeat it]

CONSTRAINTS: [Time, format, length, tone, things you can't change]

WHAT GOOD LOOKS LIKE: [A specific example of output you'd use, or what success means here]

Now, with this context, here's the task: [Paste the original prompt]

(MAJOR TIME SAVER: Use any text expander. Fill it out once. Takes 2.6 seconds to paste in moving forward.)

Fill it out once. Paste it in two seconds.

The prompt you saved was a starting point. The context layer makes it actually yours.

Tomorrow: Why I stopped "prompting" and started talking.

Stay Curious,

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