Narrative Command: The Startup Success Factor No One Talks About.

When I was Chairman of The Moth , we had a saying: everyone’s got a story. That was a lie told to encourage shy storytellers to step forward. Few stories are unique, and even when they are, they’re badly told, or worse, could put a crying baby to sleep. Great storytelling isn’t art, it’s math. It’s the sum of hook, anticipation, and resolution, multiplied by the skill of the storyteller.

But even great storytelling is worthless without story-audience fit, which requires the right story, at the right time, heard by the right audience.

Startups have few tools for differentiation other than narrative. Most are content to just get their story out, which may be as fleeting as a magazine cover. What a profound failure of imagination.

When a startup finds story-audience fit, enormous potential is unlocked. If a startup’s story becomes the story of the entire vertical, that potential isn’t merely realized — it becomes a transcendent, nearly unstoppable force of its own.

Every new vertical has one company that dominates the discourse. These companies shape the language and understanding of their verticals to their exclusive benefit. I call this domination “Narrative Command.”

Narrative Command makes it easier to raise capital, acquire customers, attract the strongest team, and suppress competition. Narrative Command does not necessarily equate to technical strength or market share, but it bestows the perception of it, buying time to convert perception to reality. Because Narrative Command allows a startup to leapfrog competition of any size, its seizure is essential.

Winning a new vertical isn’t necessarily determined by having the best team or technology; it’s often won by the first company to seize and hold Narrative Command.

Without Narrative Command, otherwise great startups are doomed. For every Uber, there’s a Sidecar . For every Turo, a Getaround .?

Investors have too long excluded Narrative Command potential from investment criteria. Why? Because Narrative Command is confused with brand awareness, something everyone assumes can be bought at a later date. This is a misunderstanding of the difference between marketing and communication tools versus goals. Press releases, events, and interviews are tools in the marcom arsenal; Narrative Command is a goal.

Narrative Command is not the inevitable result of marcom. Narrative Command must be the explicit goal of marcom or it is unlikely to be achieved. Most founders and investors think marcom is a box of tactics rather than what it is: a strategic weapon to be deployed. This is why marcom budgets are often seen as a nuisance rather than a high ROI investment. In most startups, marcom is deployed too late, with modest goals like new hire or product announcements, or—aimlessly—raising brand awareness. The strategic goal of every startup must further the perception of strength and inevitability. That is the baseline effort needed to seize Narrative Command.

Storytelling vs. Narrative Command

One of the most pernicious and wasteful ideas in marcom is the lionization of storytelling, as if repeating milquetoast anecdotes will elevate a company’s destiny. Most corporate storytelling is garbage anyway, no better than hipster poets droning to an empty room Sunday nights at your local off-brand coffee bar, and generally much worse. If you see “storyteller” in a LinkedIn profile, run. Marcom is full of “experts” on story structure, but few on Narrative Command, which is the difference between draftsmen and Frank Lloyd Wright.

The ability to draw does not make one an artist, nor an architect. Storytelling is a tool, not a goal.

Without the strategic goal of Narrative Command, corporate storytelling can never be more than tactical. Against unimaginative peers, this means perennial marcom budget attrition, and stalemate. Against a competitor seeking Narrative Command, it’s pissing in the wind. Investors beware.

No investment in storytelling leads to Narrative Command unless a startup’s story has the potential to transcend the company to encompass the entire vertical. Once a startup’s story becomes the context for all discourse, current and future competitors must spend additional capital simply to tread water in its shadow.

Examples of Narrative Command

The last decade’s predominant example of Narrative Command is Tesla, whose almost rote inclusion in automotive, electric vehicle and autonomous driving market narratives is orders of magnitude greater than that of any other modern company. This domination has persisted — if not grown — despite relentless media coverage of shortcomings that would likely have crippled a company lacking Narrative Command.

Other companies with Narrative Command include:

• Open AI — Artificial Intelligence
• Space X — Rockets/Space
• Uber — Ridehail
• AirBnb — Short Term Rentals
• Turo — Peer-To-Peer Car Sharing
• Redwood Materials — Battery Recycling
• Anduril — Defense
• Figure — Humanoid Robots
• Icon 3D — Automated Construction
• Fervo Energy — Geothermal Energy

Some of these have entered the public consciousness, others are known only in their verticals, but all share one quality: their brands aren’t merely strong; they are perceived as the default winner in their category.

Components of Narrative Command

There is no shortcut to seizing Narrative Command, but it is typically constructed from one or more components. The components may vary company to company, and vertical to vertical. Tesla provides the clearest and most comprehensive example of how to construct it from multiple, mutually supporting components. The components of Tesla’s Narrative Command are so strong, Elon Musk deemed their PR department superfluous and shuttered it in 2020, with no apparent negative impact.

There are more components to Narrative Command than are listed here, but these are the primary components implemented by Tesla:

1. Seizure of discourse via forward-leaning vision - Automotive companies don’t publish grand, far-reaching manifestos, but Tesla has published three (2006 , 2016 , 2023 ). These Master Plans accomplished far more than laying out Elon Musk’s goals and Tesla’s product roadmap; they gave customers and investors a vision that continues to inspire. Musk’s ever-unfolding, aspirational, forward-leaning narrative is his moat. When critics point out Tesla’s near-decade failure to make Full Self-Driving actually driverless, fans cite Tesla having met 100% of the 1st Plan’s goals, and 50% of the 2nd Plan’s. Elon may be late, they claim, but he eventually delivers. When all discourse in a vertical occurs inside one company’s narrative, they control perception in that vertical because there is literally no alternative.
2. Definition of seminal product(s) or methods(s) in that market - Before Tesla, EVs were slow, unattractive, and inconvenient to own. The 2008 Roadster and 2012 Model S redefined EVs as fast and attractive, unlocking the premium narrative. The 2012 opening of the Supercharger network unlocked the convenience narrative . Tesla was first to add a massive touchscreen and Over-The-Air (OTA) updates to cars, unlocking the “iPhone-of-cars” narrative. These three narratives converged to define the seminal UX for all future EVs, and set the stage for consumer disappointment in competitors when they discovered that non-Tesla EVs fell short in 2 out of 3. When one company’s product redefines customer expectations in a segment, the product forms the baseline understanding of the segment. Until a competitor resets expectations again, the narrative stands.
3. Definition of default market language - Tesla has executed a semantic Hail Mary by deliberately ignoring and/or superceding industry naming conventions. Other than Tesla, car makers define their automated driving products according to the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Levels of Driving Automation , which were never intended for consumer messaging. Car buyers have no idea what “L2++” or “Level 3” mean. Tesla brands its products using the simplest possible language by adding superlative, aspirational prefixes to generic suffixes: Supercharger, Autopilot, Full Self-Driving. Other EVs require 3rd party chargers; Tesla offers Superchargers. Competitors offer Active Cruise Control (ACC) and Lane-Keeping Assistance Systems (LKAS); Tesla bundles them under Autopilot. Competitors offer DrivePilot, Driver+, SuperVision, Pilot Assist, Teammate, ProPilot, CoPilot 360, InnoDrive, BlueCruise and SuperCruise; Tesla offers Full Self-Driving. Everyone knows — or thinks they know — what a Supercharger, Autopilot and Full Self-Driving can do. Super = better, Auto = automatic/autonomous, and Full = total/complete/better. It doesn’t matter if these inferences are accurate, only that they are perceived to be. Debate over meaning and/or capabilities only keeps Tesla centered in the discourse.
4. Genericization of company and/or product brand(s) - Although brand genericization is generally a Narrative Command output (e.g., Kleenex, Xerox), it can be an input as well. Tesla’s aggressive co-opting of generic terms like “autopilot” and “self-driving” redefined them under the Tesla brand, then re-genericized them, placing competitors on the semantic defensive. “Autopilot” was a generic aviation and maritime term prior to Tesla’s adoption for its driver assistance system in 2014, after which it entered automotive discourse as Tesla Autopilot. This gave the impression Tesla was first to bring the feature to ground vehicles, and led car shoppers to ask who else offered it. The answer remains everyone — some better, most worse — but no alternative is sufficiently branded to pierce the Autopilot narrative. “Self-driving” was a generic term for a vehicle that could drive itself without a human operator, until car makers’ marcom teams — desperate not to miss the hype cycle Tesla kicked off — began applying it to their (largely) inferior driver assistance systems (ADAS ). Tesla then added the Full prefix to market Full Self-Driving (FSD), which, although it still required a human operator/supervisor, was immediately perceived as more complete than mere Self-Driving. Competitors failed to recognize — let alone oppose — Tesla’s co-opting of these terms, with two exceptions: Argo AI and Waymo, who attempted to fight back by launching third-party content platforms. Argo AI launched GroundTruth.com and the No Parking Podcast in 2020, but the company has since shut down. Waymo launched LetsTalkSelfDriving.com, but as “self-driving” became increasingly associated with ADAS, Waymo changed it to LetsTalkAutonomousDriving.com in 2021.(To little avail, as it now lives under its corporate parent as the Waymo Community ). The rest of the industry outsourced its response by backing an organization called Partners for Automated Vehicle Education (PAVE ), which has had no apparent effect on public perception. Although Waymo has beaten Tesla to deployment of driverless ridehail, Tesla retains Narrative Command of the self-driving/autonomous driving market. Why? Because Waymo, despite spearheading deployment of robotaxis, decided not to make “robotaxi” their own, nor to introduce alternative language, whereas Tesla, with zero robotaxis deployed, continues to use the term in official announcements. When one company co-opts generic language with broadly understood meaning as a branded term, they reinforce the narrative of their own superiority and inevitability.
5. Activation of customers/community - No car company engenders the loyalty of fans like Tesla. When journalists bemoan Tesla’s dissolution of its PR team, they are exposing how little they understand about Narrative Command. Tesla fans are Elon Musk’s PR team…broadly distributed, faster, and more aggressive than any in-house marcom team. Tesla fans organically review and promote their products, suppress competitors and their products, rationalize and diminish safety concerns, and drive all discourse back to the brand. Tesla’s Narrative Command has even survived major schisms inside the fan community; when a known fan with a large audience turns against the brand, they are quickly and easily replaced . When a community outside the company becomes invested in maintaining its Narrative Command, it becomes extraordinarily difficult to dislodge.
6. Charismatic Figurehead - Someone has to tell their company’s story, and yet many promising startups delegate this to a spokesperson, or multiple people, or no one at all. “Letting the product speak for itself” only works in the absence of a rival with a charismatic leader. In a sector with multiple charismatic leaders, Elon Musk is light years ahead in eliminating barriers between himself and his stakeholders: the investors and customers who crave authenticity and a 1:1 relationship. The closer the founder/leader to their audience(s), the greater the loyalty.

The Narrative Command Pyramid and its Dynamics

Narrative Command is zero-sum, but there is value in defining lesser narrative states. A visual framework makes it possible to strategize ascent, mitigate decline, and understand competing narrative dynamics.

In the absence of competitors, ascent to Narrative Command is low-friction. Ascent friction increases in proportion to the number of competitors seeking it, and the longer they have done so.

Narrative Command, once attained, is self-sustaining, and its possessor virtually impossible to displace. Narrative Command also bestows extraordinary brand resilience, with near immunity to damage during crises.

Narrative Superiority offers none of those benefits, nor does Narrative Equilibrium, which is the natural state of mature markets.

If a company falls into Narrative Decline, it can be reversed by either 1) a spectacular, immediate, and public demonstration of organizational and/or operational change, or 2) a long and expensive commitment to that same change. The first is far preferable, because it denies competitors the time and opportunity to seize Narrative Command.

Once a company enters Narrative Irrelevance, its independence and survival are unlikely.

The Extraordinary Value of Narrative Command

Narrative Command can be valued in different ways, depending on a company’s stage and short-term goals. It might be the quality/quantity of key hires, or CAC reduction, or preferential terms in fundraising, but the most dramatic proof is valuation.

Consider Tesla’s extraordinarily high valuation, the subject of vociferous public? debate for years. As of September 2024, its market capitalization is ~$729 billion, with a P/E ratio of 67. Toyota, whose sales volume is ~5.8x Tesla’s, has a market capitalization of only ~$230 billion, with a P/E ratio of 8.6.

In July 2024 Morgan Stanley assigned 20% of Tesla’s valuation to its robotaxi business, which does not currently exist. Although Tesla isn’t the only car manufacturer with robotaxi plans, it’s the only one enjoying a valuation premium for it. As of this paper’s publication, that premium is ~$144 billion.

That’s Narrative Command.

Narrative Command is the Highest ROI Investment A Startup Can Make

Given the extraordinary value of Narrative Command at every stage in a company’s lifecycle, it is incomprehensible — if not negligent — for a startup to postpone its seizure. Even a modest investment on marcom at seed, with Narrative Command as its explicit goal, is the highest ROI investment a startup can make. The longer a startup postpones seeking Narrative Command, the greater the difficulty and cost of achieving it. Early seizure of Narrative Command is the widest moat a startup can possess.

Let Us Help You With Narrative Command

NIVC is looking for startups with Narrative Command, or its potential. Are you building a Deep Tech hardware startup based on a novel idea of where the world is going? One that you think will become the dominant narrative? We want to hear your story: [email protected] .

(If you’re only seeking Narrative Command for your company, click here for my advisory firm, Johnson & Roy .)

———————————

Further reading:

• In Search Of Narrative Violations (Bedrock Capital )
• Narratives & PseudoSecrets by Michael Dempsey (Compound VC )
• Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors by Ed Niedermeyer

———————————