Allen Martinez: The Art of Storytelling for Early Stage Founders

Hi, good evening or good morning depending on where in the world you are. Thank you for joining our webinar today on the art of storytelling with our expert guest speaker Alan Martinez. My name is Emilia and I'm a content manager at Foundry Institute. And Foundry Institute is the world's largest pre-seed accelerator operating globally. In over 200 cities in the world. So this is the reason why our audience is also very international. Please post in the chat where you're joining from. I see people from Canada, from Germany, Nigeria, Paris. I'm joining from Alicante, Spain today, and we are very glad to have you all here. London, Romania, it's endless. Okay, so besides the chat that you're already using, there is a Q&A feature and I'm inviting you to use it to ask your questions to our keynote today. It will be very convenient for us to find your question later and to bring them to your attention. Our keynote for today is Alan Martinez, who is the Chief Growth Strategist at Noble Digital. He's going to tell us more about himself and what he does, but before that, for those who are here with us for the first time, a few words about the agenda for those who are joining often and regularly, it's just a reminder. First, we will have 30 minutes Alan presenting, then a few questions, maybe 15 minutes Q&A session, and at the end, you're all welcome to join our virtual networking lounge. And you can do that by jumping on our Airmeet table. You will see after the event ends. These tables and you can, you're free to join and connect with other founders like yourself. Alan, welcome.

Hey, thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

I'm handing it over to you. Yes, please feel free to use them.

Perfect. Thank you. Let me get started here. All right. Storytelling for early-stage startups, and this actually applies to all sizes. Good day, and I'm so glad you could join me today. Before I forget, you'll see these scan codes throughout this presentation. Just point your camera and shoot so you don't miss out on these bonuses because we just don't have time to get into all these details. I'm gonna start with a story because we're talking about storytelling. This is Plated, a food delivery Shark Tank that had hit a wall. When I first met them. Despite having a dedicated marketing team and substantial funding, they were struggling to launch their brand. And that's when I stepped in, crafting a campaign that led them to $100 million in sales. And then they exited for $300 million when Albertsons bought them. So you understand that they had $50 million in funding, a CMO, 15 marketers on their team, and a beautiful website and brand. The product was great. So what was the problem? Well, the problem honestly was nothing more than story. They didn't have the right story. And again, feel free to scan this code. There's a case study, a case study on this video you might like, but I'm going to back up a little bit. Earlier in my career, I was a commercial film director designing and executing TV spots for some of the biggest brands. And that's me with some braces on. And, but that's more what you kind of expect. That's the surface level, like, oh, He makes videos. Okay, got it. But on a deeper level, on the back end, what I was really doing was using storytelling to boost Orbitz stock for market capitalization. Okay. This campaign resulted in about $100 million of market capitalization. So this, these experiences gave me an understanding on a deep level of what growth at scale is about. And I've been applying this with startups for about 10 years now. So what you saw with the food delivery example was me applying this to a funded startup. but on a much smaller scale. And I'm just here to say that it works. And for those of you thinking, Alan, I don't care about story, all I care about is traction, all I care about is sales, I'm here to tell you is that you cannot scale traction or sales without a great story. So if you are in that mindset, then this webinar is exactly for you. Okay. And I just want to give you some context. Here are some critical growth points of where I tend to help companies with. So before you're milking a cash cow at Mr. Dashboards in the top right, your marketing is not going to really be a math problem, okay? It's going to be a story problem. And that's exactly why evangelist in the bottom left corner, um, is, is there, because that's really the focal point to give customers a personality and a story to latch on to about a brand they may not know much about, right? At least at the start. And, and don't feel bad because I'm gonna also show a case study today about a brand that was making millions and did not have their story right, and it was costing them tens of millions of dollars a year. So I have something for everybody attending here. So in order to dig into what storytelling can solve for you, let's look at the leading causes of why startups fail. The number one, one— the number one reason is they ran out of money, okay? And this just means that they did not monetize fast enough, which is typically a function of marketing or even product fit. So No interest in the product is another one. It just means they had no customers. And lost focus means they didn't have a marketing strategy or strategy in general to focus them. Not the right team is another one. And, and understand, when you have the right brand story externally and internally, it will help you attract the right team. It will also guide what they're supposed to be doing day to day. And then poor UX means nothing was designed properly nor around the brand experience, plain and simple. And we'll get into all these kind of things today. So one more thing is that Google and Facebook have both confirmed that your story is much more important than all other supporting elements like tech and media. And these guys sell media, so they know what they're talking about. And for those of you saying, that's great for marketing, but what about sales, Alan? Well, Gong has a ton of data. They said what you say early in the sales cycle is far more influential than what you say late in the sales cycle. Say, what are they saying? They mean storytelling, right? They're not talking about tech or tools, it's about storytelling. Competitive deals are won early when the battleground is still fertile. Competitive deals are won with discovery techniques, not closing techniques. This is just the modern day, you know, the buyer has all the information now, not the salesperson, right? So they're already ahead of you. So you need to feed them with content that feeds them in the right direction. So let's dive into an example of how story makes a difference. Biome is an e-commerce startup that I launched from scratch with the help of my agency. And this startup was an unknown brand launching into a crowded market of probiotics. So how did they get traction? Well, you might think it was my— the Shopify website my agency built for them with seamless user experience, or the high-quality videos we produced to launch the brand, which also included the world-renowned scientist behind the formulation. This guy's curing Crohn's disease and he named the microbiome. And of course, it could be the product itself. It is a great product. Or the beautiful brand imagery that fueled all their assets, right? All these things. Or even maybe the paid, owned, and earned media campaign we launched and ran for them. While these elements certainly contributed, they all stem from a foundational element: brand experience. Storytelling. Besides having a great product, story is the reason why we can scale this brand. And we're going to talk about this today. So when I stepped into this project, they were using terms like microbiome and fungus to describe the product, which confused and alienated the non-scientific consumers we were targeting. And of course, we confirmed this through surveys, but I didn't really need the surveys to know that we really needed to fix their messaging fast. So we created an active, friendly, modern tone of voice which spoke to the customers about energy and power. And again, remember, your customers are selfish. They don't care about you or your product. They care about themselves. What does it do for me? And you have to get underneath the skin of that because that's really what user-centric messaging is about. And so hopefully you can see the stark contrast between this and this, right? So imagine if they'd hired a service agency that merely executed orders without pushing back. They could have launched with confusing messaging, creating friction for customers, and losing out on sales. And by the way, that's how fast a brand can fall apart from just a few bad decisions up front. So getting the mess— the brand strategy and messaging out right first before anything is built is absolutely critical. And that, my friends, is miracle number 1: planning. It's a miracle because it almost never happens, or it never gets done right, or it gets done years after it should have been done, or months, or whatever, right? So, I mean, if you've ever seen a startup in their early years, you've seen them, like, change their brand several times, change their logo several times. It's a huge setback. So getting that right the first time is what sets everything in motion, and often not a moment sooner than that. So why not do it right the first time and build your brand correctly up front? So once that was set up for success, we could now design and scale out all the messaging, right? And all the visuals, and we know who we're speaking to. The point here is that visuals shouldn't be designed around, you know, you shouldn't, shouldn't be designed before you know what you're trying to say and who you're speaking to. This makes all the difference in performance. So once you understand the psychographics of the customers, you can be ultra-specific and create very targeted campaigns. And these are 4 different audiences we designed for. They have 4 different motivations behind why they want the product. And this just didn't happen. It's a lot of work to get to this point. It seems so obvious once you see it after the fact, but it wasn't obvious getting to this point. And so what are the results of all this? Gwyneth Paltrow ended up featuring my client in her publication Goop, and that didn't happen just because a PR agency knocked on their door. That was merely the trigger. What happened was she clicked through to the website, she reacted to the entire brand presence, and her reaction was triggered by a brand strategy well executed. In a matter of seconds to minutes, she made an executive decision to meet with the founders and feature them in and Goop. Great branding works like that. It can move like lightning, and when everything's in its proper place, it just, it's inevitable, like people just get it, right? And yet, it's not that simple, right? It's quite involved, actually. People talk about user experience or customer experience, and yet they don't always realize that brand experience encompasses all these elements together. So by the end of this presentation, I aim to show you the countless ways your brand is your roadmap to success. Including sales. And I want to credit the founder for this rapid success because I asked him from the start, do you want an MVP brand that we build over time to conserve money, be conservative, right? Or do you want to go out in the world looking like a million bucks right when we launch? Because I can do either direction, it's just a matter of budget and deadlines. Well, he chose the latter. He wanted to look legit and compete directly with Procter Gamble's probiotic Align. So that's what I did. And looking back, can you imagine if we'd done an MVP launch instead? That means instead of creating a realized brand, we'd have to tell Miss Paltrow, I know the photography isn't there yet and the website needs work, and I know the logo isn't great. You think she would have been as excited to get behind the brand the way she did? I highly doubt it. Okay, so sometimes founders are conservative with their execution. Because it can be scary to launch all these things at once. But if you have the right partners, you don't need to worry about any of that. Afif has great leadership skills. He made some key decisions and he made them fast. And I love that in a founder. So the other part of this is getting the proper budget approval so I could coordinate and so I could launch and coordinate 5 different teams to create this entire brand presence at a high quality and a high speed because we had a deadline. I've seen startups take a year or so to do this, what we did in a couple weeks. You can imagine from that earlier TV commercial slide, I'm used to managing a team of 50 to 100 creatively talented people. That's like what I was used to. And so this was not even that big. This was about a team of 30 to 50 people, depending what phase we're talking about. And this is not even a big project for me. This is pretty straightforward. But luckily the founder approved, and that was miracle number 2. And it's a miracle because all— not all founders grasp the magnitude of execution, the execution of looking like a million bucks, right? So the execution phase, or rather approving a multitude of purchases all at once, can be overwhelming. So be cognizant of that. These, these builds paved the way for other miracles to happen. Miracles 3, 4, 5, and 6, right? So once all that machinery was set in motion, they sold out of inventory thrice, 3 times upon launch, presenting them with new and delightful challenges to tackle. Can you imagine telling investors you sold out of inventory 3 times in a row? I think that alone— forget about an investor deck, just tell them that and they'll probably be chasing you down. That's just how this world works. And realize that a typical CMO's skill with data and numbers doesn't always translate into the ability to craft flexible narratives that can grow your business. Execution is just as critical as a plan, and my production background empowers me to build and optimize strategies that transcend the confines of traditional textbook strategies. Okay, so I'm here to share my knowledge in the hopes that it will help you reach the next level. I'm also a big follower of Stanford professor Steve Blank, a revered figure in the startup space. If you've heard of The Lean Startup from Eric on the right, well, Eric was a student of Steve's. So Eric, Eric's book is basically most of Steve's teachings as far as I'm concerned. So Steve actually endorses my agency on his website because I practice his methodologies. And his methodologies are powerful. They work. So anyways, let's look at the framework of the investor deck for a moment. A compelling narrative must reflect your audience's needs. This involves intimate customer discovery, placing their pain points, priorities, and personalities at the heart of your story. This is called user-centric messaging. At least that's what I call it. However, in today's startup landscape, Many fall into the trap of innovation theater, focusing on flashy prototypes and hype rather than understanding the user's needs and building impactful solutions. Innovation theater is fluff. And by the way, Steve Blank coined that phrase, I think. So we need to move into a no-fluff zone, and we need to do that by embracing a story that will contain all the ideas in the slide, OK? So the way to avoid fluff is to use frameworks like the Business Model Canvas. It will keep you honest. And a quick poll right now, who has heard of or used the Business Model Canvas? Please answer quickly. I don't know, Daniel, if you can put the question up on screen. There's thumbs up, but I wanna know more qualitatively, which one is it? Is it like you live and die by it? You kind of play with it? Or some of you may have never heard of it. It helps me kind of understand ongoing. Let's all vote. Let me see if I can see the answers down here. Am I supposed to— I see. I've never heard of it. Reviewed but not used. Okay. That's kind of what I thought. It's a blend of a little of everything. Perfect. So let's move forward. So notice how the value proposition is dead center. That's by design. Your entire business lives or dies by your value proposition. The Business Model Canvas keeps your efforts focused. Okay. So in this relationship, we're looking at how your product and brand is healing a market pain point and your solution is the relief. Now, let's examine a value statement from a clean energy company and why clean energy? Well, due to this super hot summer, And the fact that I love planet Earth, I thought it was kind of appropriate. So, and another reason is it's actually on the complex side, which gives us an opportunity to dig into this a lot deeper. So Amogene, they went from raising a $3 million seed round to $46 million to $139 million, and they now have a total of $219 million in funding according to Crunchbase. So they're doing something right. And P.S., I would love to get involved with a company that is doing something to literally change the world. Helping founders get rich and famous is fun, But if I could use my skills to make a global impact as well, that'd be very exciting. So that's something I'm very interested in. And Amogy is looking to tap into a trillion-dollar market and make impact. So let's look at their value proposition. Ammonia, a renewable fuel for zero-emission mobility. Since climate change is such a huge existential crisis, we're solving a massive problem. So we actually need to pull back beyond just the business model canvas and look at the macro forces at play here, because with a product like this, all these things are interconnected. Societal trends. There's a global push towards sustainable and renewable energy sources. Amogy's carbon-free energy system aligns with this trend. Technology trends. Amogy is leveraging technology to create a novel energy system using ammonia. Renewable fuel. Regulatory trends: policies worldwide are starting to favor green energy solutions, and Amogy's solution could benefit from such policies. Market forces: the market for renewable energy is growing, and Amogy's innovative solution could capture a significant market share. There's no fluff here, okay? We're digging in and we're getting into the bottom of these, these issues, right? So now digging deeper into Amogy's business model innovation, it seems to be primarily offer-driven. Resource-driven, and customer-driven. So looking at this slide, this is offer-driven. The technology is unique as they are one of the few companies in the world that have successfully demonstrated the use of ammonia in powering vehicles like drones and tractors. It also has elements of being resource-driven. Amogy has a unique technology and expertise in this field of ammonia fuel, which gives them a competitive advantage. For key partners like fuel companies looking to expand beyond just fossil fuels, which is going to start happening. And the model is also customer-driven. The demand for their solution exists, but they're not tailoring their offer to specific customer needs or preferences, at least not yet. Instead, they're creating a solution, ammonia fuel, that they believe will meet a general market demand for renewable energy. This means you could have 3 initiatives for this multi-sided market, targeting different segments of the market. And by addressing multiple segments, Amagi can maximize their reach and impact, making them— this multifaceted model— a strategic advantage. What I'm driving at here is that you cannot even begin to tell your story until the business model plan is an approach is crystal clear. First, you can see there's layers and layers. And also understand you can talk about this on paper and reiterate on as a team and start to figure out what you're trying to say, because I'm sure there's a lot of other things they could be saying, but they ended up on these three areas, it seems like. So also understand when you create your marketing later on, all these objectives are going to help inform your marketing. Okay. So the next step is competitive analysis. It's not— it's important not just for the investor deck, but to understand and fuel your marketing plan. So why not do both in one shot? And so it's important to show investors real actual figures. So your financial ask is backed by data, like in the bottom right corner, budgeting. Don't pull that number out of thin air. What you want is an actual plan of attack, which will help investors understand not just how much budget you need to allocate towards certain goals, but why you need it. So if this is an area you need help with, then scan the code, the code to learn more details about our data matrix appraisal, or you can find on our website. Even if you don't have your own first-party data yet, or especially since you don't have your own data yet, this engagement will give you context of what's possible, and you'll end up with a massive source of actual tactics to execute, including low-hanging fruit like earned and owned media opportunities that can be done with sweat equity instead of your precious capital. Now let's get into the second half of the structure to think about the overall marketing opportunity. At the bottom of the canvas is the cost and value areas. Use this later to— investment— to show investment opportunity. You can use this critical ROI angle to get into the investor's heart and mind And by mine, I mean the investors' pocketbooks, right? What kind of value innovation are we creating by switching to ammonia? And on the side, how are you weaving this into your presenter deck? Let me give you some ideas. First, environmental impact. Amogy's carbon-neutral fuel solutions can significantly reduce environmental impact of energy consumption, which is a major value proposition for businesses aiming to achieve sustainability goals. All right. So you're waving something that that other companies want. There's— that's a bonus. Regulatory compliance. As governments worldwide impose stricter regulations on carbon emissions, Amogy solutions can help businesses comply with these regulations, avoiding potential fines and reputational damage. Brand image. Companies using Amogy solutions can enhance their brand image by demonstrating a commitment to sustainability, which can attract environmentally conscious customers, investors. See, that just all ladders down perfectly. Future-proofing with the, with the global shift towards renewable energy, businesses are using Amogy solutions are better for the future and potentially gaining a competitive advantage. So appreciate the fact that I'm setting up the benefits here in order, in order to justify the money I'm going to ask from investors in just a moment. And notice how that value prop again still sits in the middle of all this chaos, right? It's the glue between your entire operation. That's why it's so important to get it right because it's going to feed all these different initiatives. It has a lot of responsibility. And rather than being pushed by mandates like, we need sales, let your value prop pull your company. Let it defend sales objections. Let it, you know, justify when you need more funding and all those kind of things, right? You need to explore your value proposition to the nth degree in order to get full impact. Now, I graduated from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. And if you're on the East Coast, think of it like Rhode Island School of Design on the West Coast. They have car designers and filmmakers like Zack Snyder, just to give you an idea. And when I studied art, we went deeper than just looking at the face value of colors, shapes, and subjects like we're looking at here. Look at the focal point of this image and look at the grid underlying it. Much of what I've been showing you, it's similar to that, right? We're looking at engineering and the design of a work of art. Design is how I think about everything. So your business should be designed as well. And of course, beyond engineering, what is the deeper meaning there too? So if you're wondering, what should come first, Alan? Building the tech or developing the brand story? I really hope it's becoming clear that engineering your story is incredibly important and it's going to be helpful towards everything that will be built. And if you don't agree, Here are some thoughts to consider on whether to choose to design first before building, you know, like architects have been doing for hundreds and hundreds of years, maybe longer. Design before building. Prioritize your— prioritize your brand before developing technology to prevent misalignment and confusion. Stand out. A unique brand story differentiates you in the market, preventing you from being just another tech provider. Resource efficiency. Aligning tech with your brand story ensures wise resource investment and avoids, avoids wastage. Connect with customers. A compelling brand story resonates with customers more than tech features and spec— tech features and specifications. And I'm talking to you, SaaS platforms. This is a problem I see with a lot of B2B companies. And avoid startup pitfalls. Building a brand without a story can lead to startup failure. Design and iterate first. It's one of the biggest problems I see actually out there. Is to not figure out what you're trying to say and just start spending money building, or worse, started hiring employees. Employees for what? You haven't even figured out what you're trying to do yet, and employees are there to kind of manage something, and most of the time not to build something. So use the Business Model Canvas as your grid, or seek help to use it effectively for better, faster iteration before your capital runs out, because isn't that the goal here, the real goal? So You should be able to answer your investor questions in depth to the point that they have to stop you because you're saying too much, right? This demonstrates your knowledge, builds trust and authority, and makes them go, okay, okay, she knows what she's talking about. Got it. You know, they're going to trust you. You want to be able to articulate your thoughts. Ultimately, you don't want the investor saying, what if you did it this way and not instead? You want to be able to say, oh, I already explored that. I explored 20 different versions of this, and this is the right one. This is why they're going to go, oh, got it. You're gonna know all the pitfalls before they do. That's when you start getting a check written to you. So take notes and pivot as you go. Meet with the biggest sharks last so your presentation is bulletproof while you practice your way towards them. As a startup CEO, you need to act more like a designer than a traditional CEO managing a predictable company. Okay, startups are a different game altogether, and you love it. Your goal is to create a presentation that leaves no questions in the investor's mind. Like on Shark Tank, where the investors don't ask any questions. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen, and they just start fighting over who's gonna get to invest in them. Well, that's because the founder did their homework. They did this kind of level of depth in their work. So understand, the value proposition lets us engineer the entire brand on a molecular level, right? Consider the granite molecule. It's as robust and unyielding at the atomic level as when it forms the colossal cliffs of Yosemite. Okay, so here are some scaled-out granite molecules, rock solid. So just as the strength of a nuclear bond holds the granite molecule together, the strength of your positioning statement binds your brand as you scale. It's the core, so invest in it. It will pay out in dividends. Do it sooner than later. The nucleus of your brand identity needs to pull from your value proposition and scale out in a way that is as rock solid and unwavering as the laws of physics themselves. I'm not kidding, okay? And I know I've been kind of intense, so let's lighten the mood here. Push button, get marijuana. If you're outside of America, this may mean nothing to you. America's crazy, I know. But this is a real slide from Get Meadow, which is a point-of-sale system for cannabis stores. Whether your solution is complex like Amagi or simple like Meadow, Your entire message should be simple and memorable for investors and everybody and customers, of course. So realize that this foundational work will perform beyond just the investor deck. And just to kind of take us out of this, this whole presentation, I want to give you an example of a client of ours, Telesign, a leading CPaaS communication platform as a service company with about 300 employees at the time and clients like Microsoft. They had clear, technical messaging, but they lacked the emotional resonance at the time, making all their brand off target. They initially saw themselves as competing with products like Twilio and targeting developers. However, our analysis positioned Telesign as a service-oriented solution for CTOs with big budgets, completely different customer. So this realization shifted their user profile we were targeting and led to a revamp of their brand pillars and messaging. And the result? A sales cycle reduced from 1 year to about 90 days in a company of where only like 1% of their customers actually understood what they did. So this was a massive win. It meant the difference between making tens of millions of dollars more annually or not. And we didn't stop there. We ensured consistency across all touch points, from the tone of voice on social media to the website UX flow and even the handoff to sales. And understand, this is like fixing a 747 while it's in mid-flight. This is not a startup. This is like They had $75 million in capital. I think they had already been purchased by BICS in England. So they're huge, right? And so the goal was to take that message and use it to create a smoother customer journey from first contact to sales handoff. Again, scaling out that message across all touchpoints. Before this presentation, how many of you thought that branding and messaging could solve a problem? Anyone? Let's— Daniel, let's do the poll. I'm curious. And because I'm so focused on my screen, maybe Daniel, you can tell me in my ear what the top answer was. I was not able to see the poll the first time. I didn't see the end result. I don't see an end result anywhere. The chat is kind of like lighting up and it's scrolling down, down, down. I can't keep up with the speed of everybody. All right, let's end the poll shortly. Now, a couple guys, of course, of course I knew all this stuff, great. But I'm sure not everybody. Many jump to tech to solve sales issues, but the real issue lies upstream. We designed an educational funnel for higher quality leads. And Telesign's case study is a win, but it's also a warning Correct internal direction but misaligned external messaging can be costly. So getting it right from the start saves future costs because it is a complex process. It's not an overnight task, even with the help of AI, for example. It actually demands a professional to, you know, some expertise and a touch of style, believe it or not, to create these transformative results, but it's worth it. So architecting effective communication has ROI benefits but not always apparent, even to the long-term employees. Like Telesign, there's people that were there for years that did not know that this was the problem. And that's because there's a vast difference between designing a brand and managing a brand. It's like night and day different. So this is another pitfall I see with startups. And to clarify my point, Reed Hastings' culture deck for Netflix put an emphasis on creative people over task-driven talent. His brand deck said, why are we so insistent on high performance. In procedural work, the best are only 2 times better than average. However, in creative and inventive work like designing and branding, the best are 10 times better than average. So there's a huge premium on creating effective teams of the best. He's basically talking about growth levers. A strong value prop will act as your guiding star to inform a powerful brand narrative which will resonate for your audience for years. So as a fractional CMO myself, I aim to eliminate these pitfalls and all the chaos that comes with this. My customer-focused innovation merges strategic thought with careful execution for initiatives that resonate with growth audiences and fosters growth. Leveraging experience across sectors, I aim to build and maximize your brand's potential. So as part of your team, I can manage or establish a marketing team, handle everything from branding to media to analytics, But my role is often architecting your brand if you're starting from scratch. So you can scan this code for a 25-step checklist to understand my approach and how deep this goes. My agency, Noble Digital, offers a holistic solution blending creativity with data-driven insights for sales performance. And for CMOs watching, I also provide a streamlined approach with a single point of contact serving as your marketing wing and ensuring seamless communication. Because I've seen a lot of startups try to coordinate what I'm showing you guys with 3 to 5 agencies, sometimes even more, it's complete chaos, it's complete madness, and nobody has ownership of anything. The left hand's not talking to the right hand. The SEO guys have no idea what branding is talking about. Branding doesn't care about media, and the data guys don't care about what branding's doing, or the video guys, right? So it's chaos. This is incredibly complex to try to do yourself, and it's just something you should think about. So in this webinar, we've explored numerous elements to enrich your investor deck presentation. Just think about your business in general, to make it more captivating and more sought after. We've delved into the power of storytelling, and I hope you apply or adapt this model to your startup's needs. So this is just the start of an exciting journey for your venture. Thank you for joining me on this deep dive into strategic storytelling. I appreciate your participation, and I guess we can now proceed to the Q&A. I see cheering. I don't hear anything from anybody yet. Are you there, Emilia?

I'm here. All right, you see a lot of—

oh, I see, I see a lot of love and heart and thumbs up and clapping. Wow, good.

Yeah, a little bit of everything. This was a really insightful presentation. Thank you so much for it and all the illustrations. It was very accurate, very interesting, and colorful. People, I'm sure that they got many ideas from what they saw, but they also have many questions. And so we go through most of them. Okay, so I'm gonna put it on the screen. Sure. Nitin is asking, is the founder's origin story the source of the company story? Is there a story?

Um, it depends on the product. It depends, uh, with the, with the case, the situation of Biome, that scientist was the father of the CEO, and so that's the family that produce that amazing product. So that makes sense. So it really just depends on circumstances. There's other situations where, like I said earlier, customers are selfish. They don't care. They don't care about your mission statements. They really don't. I'll be really honest. They don't. That's great for internal communication. But if you have something compelling where, you know, you went through a struggle— there was a startup where the woman was homeless and then she did some initiative around that. And now, you know, she's a multi— she's not homeless anymore. Right, that's, that's a great time to use that kind of founder story and embed that with your actual, um, what you're actually creating.

Okay, um, next question. I think it's also related. How do I communicate my story to new customers if I don't have any customers currently? A dedicated page or section on the website, and how long?

Yeah, so just to be clear, you know, I'm not talking about having a story in a separate compartment of your brand or your website or whatever. What I'm saying is your story should be embedded in every aspect of every bit, every page. And so it's not something that's tucked away, it's something that's outwardly facing. You know, a lot of this is like the Business Model Canvas is like an internal, like, view, and it goes really deep, but You need to make that and craft that. So like with the biome example, you know, they were talking internally, they were talking about, you know, good fungus and how that mixes together and it helps you achieve homeostasis. And if you don't know what homeostasis is, that's okay. I had to look it up when I worked with them too, right? It's like, who cares? What does it mean? What it meant was, oh, if I take this, I'm gonna feel better inside because I, you know, I'm— it's kind of clearing me of all the bad fungus, technically, what's happening. But that's what people want to hear is the end result. And so, uh, all that should— it's a whole process to get that so that your webs— when your website is out there, it actually contains all that information and it's layered in, right?

So it's bigger than just a section on the website.

Correct.

Which brings us to this question from Franita: what standard budget should one consider for marketing in the early states?

Yeah, $1 million. I'm kidding, uh, as much as you can afford. And that's why I'm talking about building this on the atomic level, okay? Meaning like, when you're— when it's this big, well, you, you can, you can build it, you could put up a page, or for example, and test it out or whatever you're doing, uh, and see how it works and see the reactions you get. And if it doesn't work, you can keep reiterating, but you can do a lot of homework on a small scale before you start to scale everything out. So it's going to be important. I mean, again, marketing on the early stage, what I really hope you do, and this is the words of Steve Blank I'm echoing, is get out of the building. Which he means that go out, talk to customers, and let— look at the reaction on their face. Like, let them tell you if they'd buy you. Like, you know, there's one thing to say, would you buy this? Like, yeah. And then you say, okay, would you pay me right now and I'll give you this product right now and I'll hand it over to you. And they pull out their wallet and give you money. That's gonna completely change the relationship. And if you can get to that point, then you're winning. If they're walking away, then they're just being nice. So you have to be really clear about the reactions you're getting. And so that your marketing budget should be in direct correlation from what demand, even if it's on a little, a small scale, what demand that you're actually getting.

OK, hope that helps. And I think we have time for one more. Sure. What are the relevant points that an early-stage Portuguese startup needs to include in its documentation study?

And just so I'm clear, Emily, this will be on YouTube, right, afterwards?

Yes.

This video? So watch this video again. I did have a slide that I— it was a list from Y Combinator. Uh, look at that list again. I think that's a perfect outline. Obviously you can expand or, you know, go into that deeper, but I think that's a good starting point, uh, to have all those relevant points. So it's got to, you know, speak to hearts and minds, right? Money and vision, right? A lot of these things when you're a startup, it's about vision, right? What are you— what, what are you doing that no one else is doing? Like, what, what makes you unique? And I think that's going to be really important to capture, but you also need to figure out how that's going to be monetized. And so that, that those two need to be working together, right? I'll take another one if there's one more question. I don't know if there's any more.

Yes, actually they just posted like 10 more questions, so let's do one more. Um, there was something interesting here about the— yes, uh, age of the demographics. I —put it on the speech.

Can you tell us how the— okay, go ahead. I was reading to myself, sorry.

How the language of the messaging is changing depending on the age of the demographic.

Yeah, I mean, that's getting under the skin of things. The very first case study I shared you, when Plated, the food delivery company, did not have their story right, when they came to me, it all started with them saying, we just want a video. That's all they wanted from me. And I said, can I see your data? And they said, why? What do you want to look at my data for? They didn't really want to share me— they shared the data at first. I said, please let me look at your data. And we looked at it, analyzed it. I said, okay, we got double income, no kids, uh, these people will never see each other because they're so busy working, right? And so that's— it's less about age and more about psychographics, the circumstances that they're actually in. And so I'm like, what— they came to me and said, look, can you make a video of slow motion food shots of food. And I was like, everybody does that, why? So what it turned into is the story of the double income, no kids meeting together to make a meal. And that's why, you have to understand, this video went out, it was a TV commercial, because, you know, it wasn't quite social media, wasn't quite, you know, they weren't using social media yet for whatever reason as much. But this video was performing immediately. Immediately, like right away. We didn't wait or it didn't fail or we didn't change the creative. It was one creative that performed for 18 months straight and made them $100 million. So, in order to get to that level, I mean, obviously it was my experience with storytelling, obviously that was like a big part of it, but it's also understanding like the market and the people. So I don't think age is as important as much as the psychographics of what these people are into. Label readers, you know, or not, you know, these kind of things became important. But we did interviews for that particular product. I, I spoke to some people that I knew were the per— the people for this product, and that was their first question, like, is this wrapped in plastics? I'm not going to like that, you know. Like, okay, that becomes important. So it has to be thoughtfully sourced. Like, sourced from another country and flying in, they don't want that either. So that— these are the things that had to come up in our messaging. I'm sorry, I went very long on that answer, but Hopefully that helps. As long as you like.

So it's more about that, uh, just more and more questions are coming in.

Sure, let's do a couple more.

You have a few minutes. This one is very interesting.

There's a different customer-centric— okay, sorry, go ahead, go ahead. There's a difference between customer-centric and investor-centric. You are saying that the customer-centric Scroll down, down solid, and embed it in the investor-centric. I think that's the whole thing.

Yes, that's important.

Continue. Yeah, you need both. You need both. I would say focus on the customer-centric, yes, and, and then from there, uh, expand on that for the investors, right? So get the customers first and expand on the investor, because if you understand the customers It's important to show that you understand the customers. So when you speak about the investment, that you're speaking from the point of view of the user and the pain points, so the investor understands, okay, you did your homework, you actually are trying to solve a problem, you're not pulling innovation theater on me, right? And so it just makes it less fluffy, right, and more real and actionable.

Okay. Should we have one last? Sure. Short one, I promise this is the last.

You read it this time, I'm sorry.

Biggest mistakes in storytelling.

There are countless. One of them is that thinking that you have, you created a story and you haven't. It's creating that arc, you know, that beginning, middle, and end. And it's really finessing that. And that's also not doing it like on the nose, but doing it in a creative way that hasn't been done before and that is also unique to your brand. I would say that, you know, storytelling is an art in itself. And I would not expect a founder of any startup to be able to be great at storytelling. It literally, you should bring some, unless that's your skillset already, I would bring somebody in who's an expert at storytelling to help you figure that out because it is a completely different process. And I don't know if you guys know, but in America right now, the writers are striking for, you know, for their union. And so what's happening in America right now is that all our favorite TV shows, our night shows that we love, all the writers are not there. So none of those shows are on now. So we can't watch our favorite show because there's no storytellers there to create that content. Right, and so, you know, I think the biggest mistake in storytelling is believing that you can do it yourself and not hiring professionals that help you do it. 'Cause I'll make it really clear, billion-dollar brands do not do this themselves. They hire massive ad agencies that do this for them because it is a unique skill set. And so I would not expect any startup to be able to do that. Secondly, I created Noble Digital because I saw that the smallest brands need exactly what AT&T and Coca-Cola needs, right? They need the same thing. So how do you do that at a smaller scale? And so that's what I kind of cracked the code on, is how to do that on a smaller scale so that we can build on an atomic level if need be for an MVP or scale it out to whatever level you want. So when you say, well, how much does it cost, Alan? That's not the right question. It's like, what is your budget? And from there, we will build and fit to your budget.

And that was our last question. Thanks again. There are many more questions, but feel free to find Alan on LinkedIn. We're gonna send you the presentation, all his contacts and information. Also, uh, follow our next event, sign up for our newsletter to learn about many other topics for founders.

And I think we're going to go into a room. We're going to go into a—

Yes, there is a presentation now and you will see the air meet tables. So feel free to jump on the networking tables. Also, Alan, if you have time, please join. Feel free to join. Yeah, I'll be there.

I'll see you guys there. I'll come meet you at the tables.

Thanks a lot for joining us, and see you next time. Thanks, guys. Thanks a lot.