The Anatomy of a Founder Story

In an earlier post, we saw that storytelling was essential to showing people your character as an entrepreneur — the formidable kind who is worth investing in.

But what would such a story look like? And how do you build yours?

When we first began coaching founders, we thought most of them knew how stories worked and could put a good one together. But our experience proved the opposite: Most people didn’t understand the basic components of a story, and struggled to tell stories that hooked (and kept) people’s attention.

So let’s first look at the basic anatomy of a story.

The Anatomy of Story

Think about your favorite movie. Its plot could be simple (like Jurassic Park) or complex (like Tenet), but at a basic level, most of them follow a simple structure:

1. First we meet the hero, who’s going about their lives
2. But then the hero encounters a challenge
3. Hero goes on a journey to tackle the challenge
4. Hero wins (or loses) and ends up better than where she began

You can picture the whole thing as an “arc” — with the invisible vertical axis representing failure(low) or success(high), and the horizontal axis representing time.

Stories do get much more complex*, but this is the basic “arc”.

Now, it may look simple, but it’s in fact very powerful, and lends itself to some pretty cool variations.

One of these variations: the “character” story.

*If at this point you feel the urge to throw Joseph Campbell or other complex story structures at me, do me a favor and keep it to yourself. Business storytelling is supposed to be simple and straightforward. Nobody has time for a hero with a thousand faces.

The Anatomy of “Character” Stories

How would you use storytelling to show your “formidable” character? Let’s first recall that Paul Graham defined “formidable” as “[getting] what you want regardless of what obstacles are in the way.”

So obviously, your story should include tough obstacles you’ve encountered, and show how far you went to overcome them.

Like this:

1. You (the hero) strive for a goal
2. But a tough obstacle gets in your way
3. Your struggle against it
4. It’s not quite enough…
5. You don’t quit. Instead you go that extra distance
6. You finally succeed

In arc form:

Let’s apply it to the story example we saw last time — SpotOn — a “Uber for Pets” service that Aparna Srinivasan was building.

Here’s the story’s anatomy:

1. Meet hero, striving: Aparna was building a business — Uber for pets.
2. Obstacle: She had no idea if people needed this, and it was hard to know, because nothing like this existed.
3. Struggle 1: So what does she do? She created a pilot by printing out fliers and handing them out at dog parks. And when people called for rides, she became the driver, and personally gave over 500 rides.
4. Not quite enough: She felt she needed more market info…
5. Going further: So she went a step beyond: She went to LAX (the main airport in Los Angeles), stood outside, and whenever people arrived with their pets, she ran up to ask them how they arranged their transport, whether it was a hassle, etc.
6. Success: All of this confirmed to her that there was indeed a need for such a service, so she confidently launched her company.

Here it is in “arc” form:

To make the story work better:

1. Use more daunting obstacles: If the obstacles seem impossible, the kind that would get most people to quit, you begin to seem all the more formidable.
2. Use more obstacles: If you overcome a series of obstacles, you also seem even more formidable. But don’t overdo it. No one wants a 30 min story!

Start Recording Stories TODAY

Founders we coach sometimes say to us: “Argh… I’m having a hard time recalling major obstacles… nothing good comes to mind…”

And we don’t blame them.

Because great founders are great precisely because they simply roll over obstacles. They encounter problems all day everyday, solve them, and just move on to the next problem without dwelling on them.

No wonder they have a hard time recalling events at a moment’s notice.

But here’s the solution: You don’t remember stories. You record them.

If you’re working on something that’s both worthwhile and difficult to do, you’ve definitely gone up against problems and challenges that looked impossible to beat. People told you to forget it, to just give up, and you didn’t. That’s why you’re here today.

Record these moments. Capture every one of them.

Because when the moment comes for you to show your character, retrieving these obstacles and weaving them into compelling stories just might make the difference for you and your company.

As simple as the story arc is, there’s still some common ways founders misuse it and end up with mediocre stories (with funky anatomies).

So in the next post, we’ll look at the most common mistakes, and how to avoid them.