Why storytellers move the world

In recent posts, we’ve explored the power of movements and why founders need to rethink traditional marketing. There's a related idea that in my years of investing I have noticed the best founders almost always leverage: the art of storytelling.

In this post, we’ll dive into how you can use storytelling to stand out and ignite change. Here’s what we’ll cover:

• What storytelling really means

• Why storytelling is a vital skill for startup founders

• How to craft a story that moves people

• The power of “languaging” in shaping your story

Storytelling is as old as humanity

Starting a movement requires more than clever wordsmithing. You need a story that reaches the right people and makes them feel a powerful urge to move in your direction. 

We’ve been stirred by stories since the beginning of our existence. Stories have shaped us, held us together, and moved us forward even before the invention of the written word. A powerful story can make your heartbeat quicken and your body temperature change. It's a physical, involuntary reaction. Our brains are wired to respond to them. And when they are told well, stories can spread rapidly.

Storytelling: Your key to leading change

Storytelling is a crucial part of a founder's role, especially for those seeking to radically change the future. A strong story inspires employees, fueling motivation and a sense of purpose within the team. By simplifying complex technologies or business models, storytelling helps customers, partners, investors, and influencers grasp a startup’s core value and why they should support it. In tough times, a compelling narrative helps keep everyone focused on the bigger vision.

As discussed in our last post, RIP Old School Marketing, founders can’t just build and hope people notice. You need to actively share your vision and turn people into believers. Niels Hoven did this with Mentava—he didn’t just launch a product, he sparked debates and built a movement around his point of view. As a pioneering founder, you don’t simply find an audience—you create one. You challenge the status quo and lead others toward change. To achieve this, mastering storytelling is essential.

So, how do you do this?

Stories are developed – not wordsmithed

Some founders have a natural gift for storytelling, but it’s not magic. There are concrete steps you can take to build your own. 

The secret isn’t in fancy words or clever phrasing - it’s to focus first and foremost on the substance of what you want to say. Here’s how you can do it:

Step 1: Appeal to a Higher Purpose

Political movements tell a story that rallies people to a cause larger than themselves. Start-up movements do the same. Tesla is now the most valuable car company in the world. Have you seen their Super Bowl ads? Nope. They almost never spend on advertising—at the Super Bowl or anywhere else. When you visit the Fremont Tesla factory to pick up a car, you see the mission statement written in letters so big they take up an entire wall of the waiting room. It bears repeating:

“Accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.” It’s not a statement about selling cars, at least not directly. They’re appealing to the desire to achieve a higher purpose—a change from the world that is to a world that could be, one powered by sustainable energy.

Appealing to a higher cause also helps you get marketing for free. Traditional marketing buys people’s attention. Movements grounded in a powerful story get it for free as a by-product of people spreading your message for you. A story that succeeds in communicating a higher purpose motivates people to spread your ideas as an expression of their own commitment to that purpose.

Step 2: Attack the Status Quo

Movements need to critique the status quo, not the competition. Tesla, for example, attacks the use of unsustainable energy rather than specific car companies. 

The Weakness in their Strength

Turning the strengths of the status quo into weaknesses is the strongest strategy. It removes the strengths of the status quo as factors of comparison. Look at Airbnb. They didn’t say hotel service was bad. They avoided the comparison trap by offering a choice: Stay in a hotel with the same experience in every city or live like a local. By doing this, Airbnb sidestepped comparing the specific attributes of their service to hotels.

Everybody already knows that the Four Seasons does a good job at lots of things. Why not give them credit? It’s more credible to acknowledge they have mastered the old pattern. But you offer a new pattern that can’t be compared to the old way.

Step 3: Create a Hero’s Narrative for Each Type of Early Believer

Your story should inspire listeners to move from their current world to a better one they co-create with you, positioning them within the hero’s journey. In this narrative, you are the mentor, offering tools and wisdom to help them transform and succeed.

The hero’s journey involves a mentor calling the hero to adventure due to mutual dissatisfaction with the current world. The mentor provides a tool and some wisdom, which the hero initially resists. A setback changes the hero’s mind, leading them to accept the call, use the tool, face trials, and emerge victorious and transformed.Once you understand the hero's journey, you'll be surprised how often you notice it in popular culture.

For example, in "Star Wars," Luke Skywalker initially resists Obi-Wan Kenobi’s call to adventure until a tragedy compels him to join the fight and transform from a farm boy to a Jedi warrior.

To recruit people to your movement, highlight the gap between the current status quo and the better future they can achieve with you. Present yourself as a mentor offering new tools and wisdom. Tailor your story to different audiences—employees, customers, investors—each having their unique hero’s journey. The story must be about their transformation and success, not about you.

Lyft’s founders, Logan and John, positioned riders, drivers, and investors as heroes. They addressed riders' frustration with unreliable taxis, offered drivers flexible earning opportunities, and emphasized the potential for massive category creation to investors. They also anticipated resistance, like concerns about getting into strangers' cars, and addressed it creatively with pink mustaches on cars, making the service more approachable and talked about.

To inspire a movement, ensure your story makes your audience the hero, with you as the mentor guiding them toward a higher purpose and a better future.

Step 4: Force a Choice… by Creating a Category

Competing on price or feature sets traps startups in comparison games, limiting their potential to redefine the market. Price cuts and feature checklists play right to the strengths of well-capitalized competitors and incumbents.Pattern breaking founders offer a radically different future, not just a better present. They force a choice, emphasizing their unique vision.

Steve Jobs did this with the iPhone, presenting it as a unique product combining a phone, iPod, and internet communicator. Tesla did similarly by creating a new category of luxury electric cars, avoiding comparisons with traditional vehicles. Uber and Lyft introduced the novel concept of ridesharing, distinct from taxis.

Don’t Fit in Someone Else’s Container

We live in a noisy, complex world, constantly bombarded by marketing messages. To simplify this, we put things into containers in our minds to make sense of them, fitting them into our existing understanding of the world. Coca-Cola? That goes in the soft drink container in my mind right alongside Pepsi. Mercedes? Park over there in the luxury car container next to the Lexus. These containers reduce the cognitive load of getting through each day, and they shape how all of us live our lives.

If I’m the CFO of a company with a line-item budget and someone proposes a budget for a new thing, the first thing I am likely to ask is “What part of my budget (i.e., category) does that come out of?”

If a startup fits into an existing container, it faces tough competition and follows rules set by others. It will be compared to established players, making it hard to stand out. Comparison is a trap since the terms are set by the incumbents. Living in their container means playing by their rules. "Better" fades into the noise of what is. To cut through the noise, a startup must be different enough to create its own container.

When a product or service creates a new container in someone’s mind, it escapes the comparison trap and lets the innovator define the rules. Steve Jobs excelled at defining new containers during his later years at Apple. He showed how this approach can also be used by bigger companies seeking to break patterns of existing capabilities and competitive rules. Instead of simply improving on existing MP3 players, he reimagined them with the iPod, promoting the groundbreaking idea of “1,000 songs in your pocket” and introducing the intuitive click wheel and the transformative iTunes platform with its new way to buy songs a-la-carte. Similarly, the iPhone wasn’t just another phone and the iPad wasn’t just another laptop or tablet; both established distinct categories in the minds of customers. In each of these cases, competitors soon found themselves aligning with Apple’s vision, effectively operating by Apple’s rules within the containers Apple had created.

Step 5: Find Your Breakthrough Language

When you coin new terms the right way, you own the problem and the solution, shaping how people talk about it. Christopher Lochhead, who we mentioned earlier in reference to category design, calls crafting the right words "languaging." Languaging shapes how people see your product and what it stands for against the old way of doing things. It’s not just naming things; it’s steering the whole conversation. It's a verb because the right words make people think, feel, and act differently.

Companies like Salesforce did it with “No Software.” Slack used “channels” and “workspaces” instead of positioning themselves as just a better email. Twitter introduced “tweets,” offering a new way for people to communicate online. Uber and Lyft did it with “ridesharing,” while Spotify reshaped the music industry with “music streaming.” Each of these companies created new language to define their offerings and set themselves apart. In each case, they weren’t just selling a product. They were selling a new way to think, a new way to see the world. 

If people respond to your startup idea by asking how it compares to existing products, your languaging isn’t clear enough. Your story needs to use language that clearly sets you apart and resonates deeply with the right early supporters. They shouldn’t see you as a version of something else that fits in a container they already know about; they should recognize you as something entirely new, creating a fresh container for you in their minds.

So What Does This Mean For You?

If you were to develop a story to describe your startup and the movement it wants to create, how would you answer these questions:

• What is Your Higher Purpose? What cause bigger than you can you rally people around?  How is the cause not just about you and what’s in your interest?

• What is the Status Quo And What’s Wrong With It? What’s the different future we are proposing? How is it different? How does it align directly with our higher purpose?

• How Can You Position the people you want to persuade as heroes in their own journey? What specific tool and magic do you provide as the mentor?

• Are you Forcing a Choice? How are you different, not just better? Have you managed to avoid comparisons with other companies or startups? If not, why not?

• What is your New Language? How does it tie back to your higher purpose, different choice, and the world that could be rather than the world that is? How will your different language inspire different thoughts, feelings, and actions in your early believers?

And, if you want some help thinking through these questions or any of the concepts from Pattern Breakers, you might want to give ChatPB a try–the new Pattern Breakers AI Ideation and Stress Testing Tool by Xpertloop. We are only sharing this with folks on the Pattern Breakers substack because we are hoping to get feedback before we release it into the wild.