In this Revenue Today episode, host Jared Robin introduces Andrew Gazdecki, a serial entrepreneur and founder of Business Apps, Altcoin, and MicroAcquirer. Andrew explains why storytelling is essential for early‑stage startups, distinguishing between using a story to close a single deal and using it to dominate a market. He presents a brand‑storytelling framework that starts with identifying a market shift, creating a compelling narrative that pits a relatable side against a larger opponent, and building a movement that rallies a community around the brand. He illustrates the framework with case studies: Business Apps’ David‑vs‑Goliath story of small businesses competing with mega‑brands via a DIY mobile app builder; Altcoin’s decentralized‑vs‑centralized narrative protecting users from hacks; and Salesforce’s early SaaS story that shifted software from on‑premise to the cloud. Andrew discusses how to spot shifts, the strategic choice between competing on price or brand, and practical tips for weaving stories into sales calls. He also highlights the power of community as a self‑sustaining sales force. The episode includes audience questions about determining shifts and the role of community, and ends with closing remarks and sponsor acknowledgments.
Chapters
1, 2, 3, 4.
Sales, marketing, and RevOps. It's sink or swim out there, and yesterday's strategies and tactics won't help you today. This is Revenue Today, and I'm your host, Jared Robin. Join me as we interview revenue leaders in our community to learn what steps we could take right now to help you scale yourself and your company. Revenue Today is sponsored by Rev Genius, and we're on a mission to bring inspiration and creativity to all revenue professionals in the world. Want to shout out our sponsor Demandbase. Demandbase is smarter GTM for B2B brands. They help marketing and sales teams spot the juiciest opportunities earlier and progress them faster by injecting account intelligence into every step of the buyer journey and orchestrating every action. For more information about Demandbase, visit demandbase.com.
First, everybody, thanks for having me. I'm super excited to talk about storytelling. I know that's a big topic in sales and a very important one. So I put together some slides. This is a deck that I made about 2 years ago, but it's, it's still relevant today. And I hope there's some good takeaways. And as I'm talking to Please ask questions. I'd love for this to be conversational. I don't even know who's watching right now, so please say hi or just anything. But yeah, brand and storytelling for early-stage startups. So a little bit about me. I am the former founder and CEO of Business Apps and a company called Altcoin, both acquired. Business Apps was an Inc. 500 fastest-growing company 2 years in a row. I'm now the founder of MicroAcquirer, so you can kind of see I haven't updated this. But the result of a good story spreads like wildfire. And so I've used kind of this sort of framework through all of my companies and my current company, including MicroAcquirer, which is a marketplace that helps small profitable software companies get acquired. So what do we do? We told a unique story that was easily understood and we created movements around these stories. And you can implement a lot of this in your broader marketing strategy, in your sales pitch. All of this kind of applies. But, you know, you can say all the stats in the world, but it's really stories that draw people into your company and allow you to create movements that can really differentiate your entire company. So You know, when I think of storytelling, you know, there's, there's 2 ways. There's one is you can tell a story to, to close a deal, or you can tell a story to dominate an entire market, differentiate your business, and really get people rooting for you. So they've already heard about you, they've already heard, heard about your story. Um, and I'll give some tips on how to, you know, incorporate storytelling, uh, during sales calls and all that fun stuff. But, um, so what was the story behind, uh, my last 2 companies? Zoom out a little bit. Um, at Business Apps, we told a David versus Goliath story where we were helping small businesses compete against large mega brands that sold or were able to build mobile applications, uh, at very high costs. It was a Do-it-yourself mobile app builder. And so our pitch was, you know, hey, Starbucks down the street can— like, they have this amazing mobile application. Wouldn't you like to compete in the same way and have that same sort of, you know, connection with your customer, um, but at the fraction of the cost? And so we have this, you know, little guy versus big guy, um, story that really resonated with our customers, especially small businesses, because they, they felt that. They felt Yeah, Starbucks can afford a multimillion-dollar application, but I can't. And so we enabled them to build that at a fraction of the cost. Altcoin, this was a company during 2018 where you have centralized services and you have decentralized services, and decentralized services allow you to essentially trade cryptocurrencies without ever losing your funds to hackers. And so we had that as kind of like our story of like, who is, what are we trying to protect you against? And we kind of create sides when we tell these stories. And there's a framework that I've just lightly put together that's always been helpful for me. And so this brand and storytelling framework is really looking for a shift. What's changed in the market? What's new? Maybe you're selling against legacy software. Maybe there's an opportunity to create a category. There's an opportunity to reinforce a theme. And then that all combines into a movement where people are really rooting for your company to succeed because they believe in the story that you're telling so much. And some Examples, going back to my first company, Business Apps, we helped small businesses compete against mega brands. So we identified a shift, which was desktop to mobile, and we told that story. We said, you know, all your customers, you know, they used to go to just your desktop website, but now, you know, the best way to connect with your customers is where they are, and that's on their mobile devices. And so we created a category, and that was a do-it-yourself mobile app builder. And we really enforced this theme of mobile marketing being super important for small businesses. And that movement was big business versus small business. So I want to pause and see if I can get just any questions out of anybody. I have a couple other examples that I can share as well. If there's no questions, I'll just keep going. Is a movement about community today? Absolutely. Um, community is— can be one of the most powerful ways to grow, uh, your company because what you're really doing is you're getting a group of people that share the same beliefs. Like, you're standing up for something, like you're standing up for a cause, and Some people will agree with that and some people won't. That's how I view community. Other ways to think of community can be just, you know, you have all of your customers in one area and you're helping them connect with like-minded individuals, which also can create a movement because they're all in one centralized place and you're able to, you know, essentially have a sales force of people that are rooting for your brand and telling your story for you. Moving on to just why this is so important. Okay, we got some more questions. Here we go. How do we determine a shift that is most likely to become a powerful movement? So that's the hard one. So the one thing that I've— well, number one test with business apps, we went through multiple narratives. The first was just making mobile application. We pointed out just how expensive mobile app, custom mobile app development was. This was back in like 2010. So mobile apps are really easy to create now. Back then it was not. And so we pointed out a way that, you know, we can build it for the same price of a newspaper ad. And we said newspaper ad instead of $50 because That resonated a little bit more because you can compare, oh, a newspaper ad or a mobile app. But yeah, to determine a shift, I always say you want to make a bet that is obvious to you, that is not obvious to everyone today, that will become obvious over time. And I'll talk about a few companies that have done that and it actually did become a powerful movement. These slides, market leadership, more important than ever because really this is how things go. Barriers to entry lower, competition increases, your market becomes commoditized, supply goes up, demand goes down, and then you have 2 choices. You can compete on price or you compete on brand. And one of the best ways to build brand is through storytelling. And then these slides are just funny. First place, new car. Second place, steak knives. Third place, you're fired. Um, but also Salesforce. So everyone's familiar with Salesforce, but does anyone know like the story behind Salesforce? Like what their story was to really get, you know, people really behind this company? Can anyone guess? No. Okay, so I'll say— I'll tell you for you. So when Salesforce first came out, They really made a big bet on on-premise software moving to the cloud. They essentially invented SaaS, and so they created a category, SaaS, and they kept reinforcing this theme of you don't need to install software on-premise. You can just log into a web interface and have all of your data, information, everything available to you immediately. And their movement and their quote was the end of software. Now that's, you know, can be interpreted a little differently today because, you know, all software is essentially SaaS in some way. But when they were first telling this story, people were so used to on-premise software that they really started this movement of, no, we don't need to just install this on every single computer, we can log into a web interface. And that was the birth of really cloud applications, which was genius.
Whoa, another great episode of Revenue Today. For show notes, links, and mentions, visit revenuetoday.live. For all my friends in the Rev Genius community, thank you. It's been awesome to spend this time with you. Please DM me any feedback and ideas in our Slack channel or on LinkedIn. If you're not in RevGenius, join us at revgenius.com. It's free and it only takes like 2 seconds and you'll be joining a group of 27,000 revenue professionals strong. We've got it all. Looking forward to seeing you there. Catch you on the flip side. Thank
