Building A Narrative
In this chapter, the professor has basically explained to us how you as an investor or a founder or a manager pitch your company’s story to the community.
Whether you are a founder, a manager or an investor in a company, you ultimately have to play the role of a story teller. A good story as per the author is one in which the interests of listeners and storyteller converge.
As discussed in earlier chapter the elements of a good narrative are:
- It has to be simple.
- It has to be credible.
- It has to inspire.
- It should lead to action, which means for the employees to come and work for you or for the investors to invest money in the company.
Step 1: A corporate story begins with telling something about the company. If the company has a long history, start by explaining the same, along with some numbers like past sales and/or profit growth, etc. For young companies, the professor advises to narrate the history of owners/founders instead of the company.
Step 2: Now tell the audience about the market in which your company is operating. Professor has provided us with a list of questions as per the company types that you need to answer in order to judge/tell the audience about the market.
Step 3: Now, finally tell something about the competitors. Here as well, we have a list of questions to be answered in order to make a fine narrative about the competitor analysis.
Competative analysis:
The key to creating a successful story about the company is to constantly revisit it as the market situation changes.