pitch unfairly

Arcade · Legends and history

The Trojan Horse, c. 1184 BC. Pitched unfairly, 2026.

A gift they can't refuse. Same story, same numbers. Rebuilt the way we'd pitch it today.

  • 1 horse
  • 30 soldiers
  • 10-year siege
Play the 2026 deck Steal the structure
c. 1184 BC Trojan Horse launch

The Trojan Horse

A gift they can't refuse.

Legend
Original craft
Unfair

The story→11 slides

It's a live deck. Press start, then scroll or use the arrow keys, or play it full screen.

Play the 2026 deck

Then · c. 1184 BC

How it really went

  1. Ten years of siege; Troy's walls never fall
  2. Odysseus proposes a hollow wooden horse
  3. Epeius builds it, with Athena's help
  4. The best heroes climb inside
  5. The Greeks burn their camp and hide the fleet behind Tenedos
  6. Sinon, "captured", sells the horse as an offering to Athena
  7. Laocoön warns Troy and strikes it with a spear
  8. Sea serpents kill Laocoön; Troy takes it as a sign
  9. Troy breaches its own wall to bring the horse in
  10. Cassandra predicts the fall; nobody believes her
  11. At night the heroes climb out and open the gates

Original: the story, via Wikipedia (Aeneid 2, Odyssey 4 and 8)

Now · 2026 · 11 slides

What we changed

  • The capacity fills upA black-figure cross-section of the horse boards thirty soldiers, seat by seat, as the count climbs to "At capacity".
  • Trust is a live metricClick through the gift, the retreat, Sinon, Laocoön and the serpents and watch Troy's trust climb, dip, and max out.
  • Launch night counts downA clock runs to nightfall, the sky goes from ochre to moonlight, and the gates swing open from the inside.
  • The risk register is realLaocoön, Cassandra, and Helen doing your wives' voices: every risk happened, every mitigation worked, all straight from Virgil and Homer.

Steal the structure

Pitch your company like The Trojan Horse did.

  1. 01One-line promiseName the product and the outcome in five words.
  2. 02ProblemOne brutal scoreboard: how long you have tried, and the zero.
  3. 03InsightThe reframe: what the buyer refuses, next to what they welcome.
  4. 04ProductSpecs and capacity, shown filling up.
  5. 05Go to marketThe route, drawn on a map, including the part nobody sees.
  6. 06PRThe story the market will repeat, written as the release.
  7. 07PositioningWhat the buyer reads on the label versus what it is.
  8. 08Leading indicatorOne metric across the story beats, dips included.
  9. 09RisksA register with an owner and a mitigation for each.
  10. 10Launch timelineA countdown to the moment it goes live.
  11. 11The askThree line items and the return.

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