Capability 16 · Lead the Game
Be Storyteller in Chief
A founder who'd gone quiet because no single story felt big enough committed to one story at every all-hands — within a quarter, candidates were quoting it back in interviews.
Founders say
“When I pitch, I walk them through what we've built and I can feel the room staying cold. I don't know what story I'm supposed to tell — there's nothing that exciting yet.”
Where you are today
- You present facts and features, and watch investors stay polite and unmoved.
- Your best candidate nodded along, then took the corporate offer — nothing you said beat the pay cut.
- All-hands is a status update: the team leaves informed, not inspired.
Where you’re headed
- You raise on the future you paint, not just the traction you have.
- Great people take pay cuts to join, because they want to be part of the story.
- The team retells your story to each other — alignment without you in the room.
My friend Dave calls the founder the Storyteller-in-Chief, and he's right. When you raise your first money, angels aren't investing in what you have today — they're investing in the story: the future you're painting and you as the protagonist in it. That's not a trick; it's the nature of the business. There is always a delta between what you have and the story you tell, and closing that delta is literally how a startup creates value. You'll tell the story everywhere — to your team to keep them focused, to investors when you raise, to hires who need a reason to walk away from a bigger salary — and every all-hands, pitch, interview and update is a rep.
"I don't know which story to tell." Bullshit. There's always a customer from this week, a teammate who delivered, the mission itself — the repertoire is never actually empty. Going quiet is the only wrong choice. The template that always works has three ingredients:
The three-ingredient story
Philosophy
Start with the big picture: the mission and why it matters. "Our goal is to democratise wealth growth for the whole world" — then a few lines on why that's worth someone's career.
A customer
Connect it to a real interaction. The friend at a party who said "before you, I didn't even think about investing — now it feels natural and I'm in control of my money." Impact in the customer's own words.
The team
Close with a person. Shout out the teammate who pushed back when we were heading the wrong way, kept everyone on the same page and still delivered on time — and tie it to a company value by name.
Two techniques that carry any story
Sandwich it
"Today I'm going to tell you about A, B and C." Tell them. "Today I've told you about A, B and C." It feels repetitive from the stage; from the audience, it's the version they remember.
Ask, then answer
"So what's the most important thing for us to focus on next quarter?" A rhetorical question tells the room a section just ended — and pulls their attention into the next one.
The failure mode is reporting instead of storytelling: the all-hands as a metrics readout that informs everyone and moves no one. Numbers belong in the story, not instead of it. The two highest-rep written venues: the monthly investor update and the board pack — both open with narrative before numbers. And inside the company, this is Lencioni's over-communication discipline: people need to hear things more than once, so repeat the story until you're bored of telling it — that's roughly when it starts to land.
What you can do right now
- Tell your origin story out loud tonight. To a mirror, or record 90 seconds on your phone and watch it back once. You'll hear exactly where the story goes flat.
- Draft one three-ingredient story. Fifteen minutes: the mission, one customer moment from this month, one teammate worth naming. That's your next all-hands opener.
- Put a story slot on the all-hands agenda. A standing five minutes, at least one story every two weeks — and rotate the teller so it isn't always you.
- Rewrite the first paragraph of your next investor update as a story. Future first, metrics second. The update is a monthly rep for the investor version of your story. Investor Update →
The toolkit
Work with Ben
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