0-to-1 Storytelling for Founders

In September I shared that I was winding my startup down and looking for what's next. Near the end, I had an open offer for founders

The last 3 words in this post were responsible for a lot of DMs (about 10 calls over 2.5 weeks).

TLDR: I was suprised at the number of (great) projects who wanted to connect about storytelling for customers and VC.

I appreciate the time folks spent sharing what they were building and the opportunity to contribute where I could!

I wrote up a summary of those conversations, focusing on the 4 points that resonated the most with folks at the Pre-Seed => Series A.

How to tell your product’s story for investors and customers

1. Know the audience (and what do they want)

2. Pre-PMF? Talk to potential customers

3. Iterate, iterate, iterate

4. Start with joy

If this is helpful let me know! And feel free to DM me on Warpcast or Twitter if you have questions.

————————

You’re already telling your product’s story. It’s the first prototype you build in your head. It’s a story you tell yourself, then your co-founder, your customers, your investors, etc. The first time anyone interacts with your product is when you tell them about it. It’s important, and spending time polishing it is the difference between success and failure.

And if you are a founder, you have to shape your company’s story at literally every stage. You never outgrow this. So you might as well get good at it now.

Customers and investors are very different audiences and respond to different messages. You should know who you’re speaking to and write with that audience in mind.

… maybe that sounds obvious, but there’s what we know academically and what we do.

A story that wins over your audience must be focused on the audience you’re addressing. It’s like any MVP you’ve built - tightly scoped around outcomes.

Too many words? Not enough clarity. Audience stops caring.

SO, first off, write with your audience’s priorities in mind.

What’s the biggest difference in customer & investor priorities?

VC want a big, exciting vision (they’re looking for the 10-100X).

Customers expect simplicity. They don’t care about your vision. Or even your product. They are focused on their problems.

So where do you start?

Put simply: Investors want to invest in a business. Businesses require customers. Therefore, start with customers, let that inform your vision.

Which is why bullet #2 is…

The fastest way to make customers care is to know what they want and how you can help them solve it. Solve a problem well enough, and you get customers who are obsessed with your product.

The fastest way to make an investor care, is to demonstrate that you have customers who are obsessed with your product.

Pay them for their time, if you have to. Every minute you spend talking to a customer well is 100+ minutes saved in product, biz dev, marketing, and even fundraising.

The people who win categories are obsessed with their customers. Knowing who your customers are, and having evidence that you solve their problem better than anyone else? The most compelling slide in your pitch deck.

Your TAM/SAM/SOM means nothing if you can’t delight your SOM.

It’s a cliche to say “build in public” but people don’t really follow it, so it’s worth saying again: BUILD IN PUBLIC. Find where your audience lives, and post there.

The biggest mistake we made at NiftyApes was think about marketing after the project was built. We were comfortable being heads down and just building. And we were worried others would copy us. Both dumb reasons because:

• Writing about what you’re building clarifies what you’re building, which saves you time.

• It’s unlikely anyone will be able to “steal” your idea. Most copycats are lazy.They only copy/paste after something is successful.

How you build in public is also important.

Don’t limit your posting to status updates (nobody cares about this).

If you’re building a business, you are thinking deeply about the market you’re building in. Think about this market out loud, and in front of potential customers. Ask questions! Get feedback!

The sharper your thinking is from customers, I swear to god, the better you’ll pitch to investors.

The perception of marketing is that it’s spell-crafting. The right words in the correct order are irresistible.

It’s not true. Nobody cares until you give them a reason to care. And the fastest way to make someone else care is to post from joy.

Excitement is memetic. The market trades on stories. Take some time to figure out why you care. Write it down in the shortest sentence possible. See what people say. Iterate, iterate, iterate.

Every interaction with your product starts with a story. It's the prototype before the prototype, the pitch before the deck, the user experience before the UI.

Sharpen that narrative, and you’re laying the groundwork for something genuinely valuable. So, what's the story?

A few loose follow-ups

1. ’ve been thinking a lot about the tension in sales, according to Thiel: “People want to believe you’re just like them, but ALSO that you also posses secret knowledge that will transform their life.” People want to buy from insiders, not outsiders. Talking to customers deep in their own problem space is a fast way to become an insider.

2. I think the best thing I’ve watched on the subject was a video @aseo shared from @a16z about branding and positioning. Positioning and Branding in web3 with Steven Ebert I’ve watched it twice already, I should probably watch it again over the weekend.

3. Posting should be lightweight. Play with ideas, contribute to discussions, sharpen points, and iterate. Pick 3-5 people who do this well, some founders, some not. Look at how someone like @owocki, or @noahpinion goes from throw-away Tweet => Thread => Post => Book or Feature

4. What I’m describing is a lot of time with customers. That can be hard. I’ve come to realize that if I can’t bring myself to obsess about my customers, I might be building the wrong thing.

5. If you’ve ever spoken to me, you’ll know that I am terrible at brevity and being concise. A lot of the conversations were when I chased threads with a founder to arrive at the same place over many conversations. I wrote this as an exercise to practice shaving everything down to its simplest and axing the rest (the best orphans I appended here). Hopefully it was useful without being too glib (let me know if it was!).