In light of our recent Storytelling for Business course announcement, this Founder Friday, I wanted to talk about storytelling for startups and how you can improve your ability to pitch your startup.
I have four basic pieces of advice:
- Set up a problem. Do this before you talk about your startup or what you do. Convince the listener that the problem your product is trying to solve is real and significant.
- Stop with the Jargon. Don’t talk about about “leveraging big data analytics and optimizing the social graph” because no one knows what that means. Really dumb down what you’re talking about to the level that a five year old could understand.
- Make it personal. Tap into people’s emotions by using language that relates to the five senses — show rather than tell. You ideally want to make it concrete and somehow relate to your listener. At the very least, you should be engaging your listener in a dialogue instead of just talking at them.
- Use common storytelling beats. Such as the 3 act structure (Exposition, Rising Action, Climax), the 5 story beats (Introduction, Incident, Stakes, Event, Resolution), or Dan Harmon’s Story Circle
