Use “Once Upon a Time” to tell a better startup story.

Pitching your startup (or any business, really) is all about telling a great story. Though yours may not have the princes, princesses, wizards and dragons you remember from childhood bedtimes, that doesn’t mean you can’t learn a few lessons from the books that began with “Once upon a time” and ended with “They lived happily ever after.”

Here’s a framework we use at Filament to help clients abandon their “slideument” pitch decks and focus on how they help their customers instead:

1. Once upon a time there was a _______________ (describe your target customer)
2. who was suffering from _______________ (their problem)
3. because _______________ (why the problem exists).
4. They’d been trying to solve it by _______________ , but it wasn’t working because _______________.
5. So we created _______________ (your solution)
6. to help them _______________ (what you’re specifically solving for them)
7. because _______________ (your “why”).
8. We do it by _______________ (how you’re solving it)
9. and we’re different from other companies because we _______________.
10. Our customers love us because _______________.
11. so they live happily ever after.