Stop Selling the Product. Start Selling the Story.

Lately, my Twitter feed has been filled with posts from a16z and countless others talking about the importance of storytelling. The funny thing is, none of this is new. I’ve worked with dozens of founders on their fundraising narratives, and when I check in months later, I see the same thing: the narrative we built didn’t stay confined to the pitch deck. It became the internal north star. It shaped how the team spoke, how they prioritized, how they saw themselves. It created a movement stronger than any snazzy Linear product roadmap.

A startup is a drama. A founder is a dramatist. The company is the stage. The audience - employees, investors, customers - walks in skeptical, arms crossed, waiting to be moved. And the founder? Their job is to persuade them to believe in something that does not yet exist. That’s the job. Not the product. Not the roadmap. The belief.

“Facts inform, stories persuade.” An old line. True because it has to be.

In the best companies I’ve worked with, the narrative becomes scripture. Not because it was pretty, or clever, or polished, but because it gave the team something to march behind. A banner, not a blueprint. A movement.

Here’s the thing about movements: they begin with emotion.

And looking back at the teams that got this right, the narratives that stuck all followed the same three principles:

1. The product is irrelevant. The movement is everything.

No one buys a feature. No one joins a company for a widget. They join for the story they tell themselves about who they will become.

Your invoicing software doesn’t matter.

Your clever Figma prototype with the micro-animations doesn’t matter.

Emotion. Only emotion.

Say “Save ten minutes,” and you speak to the head.
Say “Don’t spend another Sunday night crushed by expense reports,” and you speak to the wound.

2. Make it clear, not complete.

A narrative is not an audit. It is not a PhD thesis. It is theater.

The audience does not reward detail. The audience rewards feeling.

No investor has ever leaned in because you showed them a TAM slide with five nested circles.

A child must be able to repeat your story. If not, you have failed.

The founder who speaks for five minutes straight is stalling.
The founder who speaks for thirty seconds is telling the truth.

3. The vision is the end. The product is the prop.

Every founder is tempted to close with the demo.

Resist it.

The demo is the prop.
The vision is the punchline.

The point of the story is not to convince anyone that the product works; it’s to make them feel that the future you describe is inevitable - and that your company is the doorway to it.

No one remembers the feature walkthrough, but everyone remembers the moment the room goes silent because the future suddenly feels obvious.

The challenge, of course, is that emotion slips through the fingers when you try to pin it to the page. But when a team hits the right narrative, everyone can feel it. A shared shift. A sense that the path forward is lit, even if the terrain is steep. That the vision is no longer aspirational - it’s within reach.

Every great startup movement begins the same way: with a story that pulls people in, sharpens their resolve, and points them toward a future worth chasing.

I hope every founder finds their story - and that it does what great stories have always done: turn doubt into devotion.