You’ve been called for a zoom meeting with the Partner of a VC fund you’re pitching to. You and your co-founder crack open your laptops, beam up your slide deck and nervously wait for the Partner to join the call. The Partner does, and says, “I’ve seen the deck. Let’s start from the top. What’s your story?”

Do you think she’s asking for a story about your childhood, education background, or previous work experience? Almost certainly not. She’s asking about the logical set of events, arguments, and facts that led to you and her connecting over a zoom meeting in the middle of a Tuesday. “Everything is already laid out in the deck” you tell yourself. But you try your best to whip a story, starting with your vision, GTM, fund raise plans and so on.

If you think that’s a story, let me tell you its not. Like words strung together don’t make poetry, random business words used together don’t make a story. Your story has to be special. How?

A story has 6 critical elements:

- Time

- Place

- Main character

- Challenge

- Objective

- Events

Let’s dive deeper.

Time

A time indicator like ‘Back when I was a recruiter’ or ‘In 2010…’ indicate when something is about to happen or a story is about to start. This is a introductory hook.

Place

If we try to tell a story about something important that happened to us, it will be very difficult to do so without mentioning a place where it happened. “All of us used to group at the college cafeteria…” or “During my college days in Delhi..”: these are important placeholders for us to start relating.

Main character

In order for a narrative to become a story, there has to be a central character. The character may be accompanied by supporting actors. It can be a person, an animal, a company, or an object.

Challenge

You are looking to introduce a villain here. Something or someone that stands in front of your main character.

Objective

A notable or worthy goals that the audience relates to.

Events

A story isn’t a story if nothing happens. Events are what make it happen. But they are not product capabilities, customer feedback, use cases, or someone’s opinions. Events are turning points, aha! moments, and come in series.

Lets bring it all together.

“In early 2010s, I came back to India after a long career in IT sales and was bit by the entrepreneurial bug. I started a recruitment startup with B2B clients. Business was good, staff was happy, investors were interested, until we found ourselves against an obstacle - our recruiters were spending hundreds of hours a day doing unproductive, manual tasks like calling candidates, seeking information, and following up for interview slots. I thought if my small team is spending so much time being unproductive and burnt out, what would large organizations that hire thousands every month be dealing with a huge block of unproductive and burnt out recruiters? “Your repetition is my opportunity” I’d read somewhere, and we started building Callify.ai - a smart, and automated outbound calling software that helps recruiters save thousands of hours spent previously on manual tasks. Today we are proud to serve many of the world’s top companies for their outbound calling automation.”

Breaking it down:

Time- In early 2010s

Place- Came back to India

Main character- recruiters

Challenge- recruiters were spending hundreds of hours a day doing unproductive, manual tasks like calling candidates, seeking information, and following up for interview slots

Objective- help(s) recruiters save thousands of hours spent previously on manual tasks

Events- started building Callify.ai - a smart, and automated outbound calling software

This was the exact conversation we had with Chetan in July 2020. We closed the seed round in December 2020. The company has grown over 5x in revenues since, added fantastic customers, and we are stoked to be a partner in his journey.

Additional reading

Sharing some book recommendations, in case you want to know more about storytelling:

- The Anatomy of a Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller by John Truby

- Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences by Nancy Duarte

- Long Story Short: The Only Storytelling Guide You’ll Ever Need by Margot Leitman

- Story Genius by Lisa Cron

- Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller 

Can you tell your story the same way? Why don’t you try and share it with us on pitch@malpaniventures.com?