Tell a four-word story.

Forget the elevator pitch. You only get four words.

If you want to start a business or launch a new project, you need to be able to describe your effort in four words.

Why four?

If you write a longer story, the door cracks open to ambiguity; you can start to hedge your bets, get vague or abstract. Stick with four. It means you must identify a subject, an object, a verb, and maybe one descriptor or refining notion.

If this sounds impossibly hard, then keep at it. What can you strip away from your self-description to get down to four words? Yes, it’s arbitrarily too hard to be reasonable, but try it!

Here’s my take on a few well-known companies:

Pinterest: Organize everything you love.
Facebook: Connect the entire world.
Google: Easily find useful information.
Twitter: Discover what’s happening.

“There’s no better way to force a conversation about what your team values than to write a four-word story.”

Step-by-Step

Step 1:

Start by brainstorming all the words you can think of that relate to your company. Put them in a big pile. Keep going. Get dozens. Lump them all together. Don’t say no to any of them yet. Brainstorm.

Step 2:

Eliminate some that are a little off the mark. Then organize the rest into groups. You might have one group of words that talks about people or users or customers. You might have another that talks about your advantages, such as real-time, reliable or proprietary. Keep going until you have all the words in groups.

Step 3:

Consolidate the groups of words until you only have four. Pick the “essential” word that best encapsulates the meaning of each group.

Step 4:

Write down your four words and rearrange until they start to form a phrase. Start with this proto-sentence. Now re-write until you have your golden four.

Step 5:

Test the sentence. Does it hold up to what you actually value? Can you substitute out any of the words for better ones? Try it out on one of your toughest business questions: Does it help you decide which way forward? Not happy with the results? Iterate. When you get it, you’ll know.

Go Further

Some founders start to crave more than one four-word story. They want one to use as a description of what-it-is, another to describe their problem technically, one to describe their business model, and the most important — one to describe the customer value.

Here are examples from five different companies where there are four-word stories for each need: a what-is-it story we call Nouns & Verbs; a Technical Approach story to explain how you do it to other engineers; a Business Value story to sell to investors; and a Customer Value story to use as a headline, tagline, calling-card or simply to align your team around the people whose lives you hope to transform. The story that matters is the last one. The other three simply set the stage.

Facebook (2010)
Nouns & Verbs: Social media network
Technical Approach: Reverse chron mutual friending
Business Value: Performance-based targeted ads
Customer Value: Connect the entire world

Google (2000)
Nouns & Verbs: web page ranking engine
Technical Approach: Backlinks determine hierarchy
Business Value: “Pay if people click”
Customer Value: Don’t know? Google it.

Twitter (2010)
Nouns & Verbs: Social media platform
Technical Approach: Asynchronous, asymmetrical follow-graph microblogging
Business Value: Conversational customer connection
Customer Value: Discover what’s happening.

Pinterest
Nouns & Verbs: Searchable image collections
Technical Approach: Taggable image skimmer
Business Value: Performance-based targeted ads
Customer Value: Visually Organize Your Life.

Zappos
Nouns & Verbs: Online shoe store
Technical Approach: Selection through operational efficiency
Business Value: LTV through customer loyalty
Customer Value: Delivering happiness

More…

We build better when we work together. Here’s how

1. Draw the human need your product solves. You’ll build better products and form stronger partnerships across teams when you learn to draw together… Read more to learn how.
2. Four types of business stories. Your business needs four different types of stories, each with a very different function. Learn how to write all four.
3. Is it #shareworthy? Niche bloggers, big brands, start-ups, and thought-leaders listen up: Every time you put anything into the world, ask yourself if your audience will want to pass it along…Learn how to get repeated.

Read more #designstory posts.