The Simple Secret of Narrative

I see a lot of decks where the problem the company aims to solve is introduced as “Problem.”

That’s a problem.

To understand the larger issue at play here, let’s look at the fundamentals of narrative development.

I broke my arm mountain biking here in Montana earlier this summer. Walking around in a sling is a good conversation starter, and I was surprised how frequently people wanted to see some kind of lesson in my accident. Some drew conclusions about my underdeveloped skills as a mountain biker, as my wife did, or said it was a sign that I should slow down, or perhaps saw a silver lining like finally having time to read more books.

The fact is that in life, things can happen just because. In a movie, no one breaks their arm for no reason. From all the stories we’ve absorbed—in fact, from our continuous attempts to find order and meaning in our lives—we immediately and instinctively seek to pair any What with a Meaning: a Why, a Therefore, or a Because.

So let’s eliminate the conclusion-free statement of facts from how you talk about your startup—which of course includes a statement of fact as banal as the headline “Problem.”

Here’s how it breaks down:

Facts: A king dies. A queen dies. Facts are pieces of unconnected information that tell you nothing beyond the immediate information presented.

Narrative: The queen died of grief because the king died. Here, one fact motivates the next fact. Suddenly, there are directions, purposes, and implications. In this case, you instinctively make further assumptions about the queen, the king, and/or their relationship. A narrative radiates information beyond the words on the page.

Plot: A king dies and then at first people thought the queen died of grief. A plot introduces external motivations and perhaps mystery into the narrative.

For your startup, all you need is narrative. Leave plots to the movies (and perhaps the About description on your website).

A fintech deck I’m currently working on—hardly unique in this regard—includes slide after slide of information. One of them is titled “Mobile App,” and the slide has facts about the MAU, DAU, app store ratings etc. The facts are all impressive. But there’s no editorialization. I’m not being told how to think about them, or why they’re important. Is the point that things are growing quickly? That they have the best developers in the business? That it is the highest-rated or fastest-growing in the industry? In its current state, it’s like saying “Meet Otto. He broke his arm.”

And it’s not just this deck. Right now I’m also working with a Singaporean agtech startup, a Silicon Valley AI chatbot, and a semiconductor startup from New York. They all have versions of the same problem.

When Microsoft introduced PowerPoint, it was both a disservice and a blessing. It infantilizes argument, insisting by the slide format that each thought be atomized into a separate slides, each ideally with few than about 20 words. Amazon famously refuses to use them for internal debate.

But at the same time, the structure of the slides is inviting you to make a simple, clean narrative connection: The headline states what you want to prove, and the body of the slide proves it.

That’s why I have such a visceral reaction when I see the headline say: Problem or Solution. It reminds me of the Animal House initiation scene where all the pledges solemnly repeat “I, State Your Name, do hereby…” (Which I've linked to in the comments for the pleasure of distraction)

Your slide page headline (and your website headlines, your thought leadership article title, and your LinkedIn profile summary) is your opportunity to editorialize. Make a statement. Take a stand. It’s opinion masquerading as fact—well, an opinion that becomes transformed into fact by the evidence you marshal.

This, because of that.

The benefits of this approach compound like interest in your bank account. Each page justifies the headline. The headlines, in sum, prove the key aspects of your pitch. Those sections, in turn, roll up to prove the whole pitch.

So look at the documents you show to the world. What matters, and why is it true?

Here’s why this narrative approach is important: The world is a giant status quo machine. Today takes all the pressures placed upon it and creates tomorrow. But with the choices we make today, each of us have the opportunity to bend tomorrow to our will.

So don’t just tell me what. Give me meaning.