Many startups often fail when focusing only on explaining their startup idea, because they're pitching, but not telling a compelling story. Steve Barsh offers an effective way to get your idea across to investors by building a pitch as storytelling. A strong storyline with a captivating, well connected, and convincing beginning, middle and end, making your pitch into a compelling story is easy.
Early-stage startups are a lot like fairy tales, so make sure to think about your deck and pitch as telling a story “and they lived happily ever after dominating the IPO market or being acquired now”. Make your slides flow in your presentation like book’s chapters. Convinced that the flow of the story is logical and that the main components are closed. Otherwise, investors may start thinking that you are really telling a fairy. Get an exciting start by using the “Flashback” technique we mentioned earlier.
Bring the problem alive and make it more credible by lightly dripping in these points. Going over to the solution, tell about some key customers, who've adopted it covering your go-to-market strategy. You can drip information that provides evidence that your go-to-market strategy will or is working lightly. Drop a few points here and there throughout to make your story believable. Note, dripping traction does not necessarily mean the points are directly written on the slides.
Add attraction and evidence throughout the story to keep it compelling. Bring the story to life with a demo that tells a day in the life of a user or customer. And finally, tell about your vision of the grand ending of this story.
Explaining your startup isn't always straightforward or easily understood, and this is where telling your idea as a story can help.