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[BLANK_AUDIO]
Hello, this is Jennifer Aaker and David Hornik.
I'm so happy to be with you.
I thought we'd start off our webinar by saying,
first of all, thank you David for being here.
David and I are not only close friends but we both had share a love of story.
David, because he's actually good at it, me,
because I actually study why it works so to speak.
So just to start it off, six-word story about yourself, David.
>> Six words about me.
Okay. When my voice changed, no Broadway.
[LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] All right, and mine would be,
California girl in New York shoes.
So, I will dive into that but it's-
>> Yeah. >> It's a good like little opener for
those of you guys who are interested in starting your next
meeting with a six-word story to prime people to start thinking about story.
Ernest Hemingway was once known to have written the first six-word story that at
least got notoriety.
Baby shoes, never for sale, never worn.
Baby shoes for sale, never worn.
>> Mm, that tells a lot actually.
>> I know.
So you know, this idea of-
>> Guess that's why he did that for a living.
[LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] That's why
he's better than California girl in New York shoes.
So what I wanted to do is give you a little bit of, of a clip.
And David, you haven't seen this either.
Some of my research around happiness and meaning and how,
how it unfolds in terms of almost a story.
It's a very large data set.
And it's based on the we feel fine data comb where Sep Kamvar and
Jonathan Harris combed the blogosphere of all mentions of I feel and I am feeling.
So 12 million data points collapsed into this one slide because blog-based data
has a lot of demographics, you can extract from it.
You can, you know, interpret what people are feeling, when they're feeling it.
And so this is over the course of three years.
We start out simple.
So this is your 11-to-14 year old who doesn't really have anything to
say about, I feel.
Like I feel, fine.
I feel, nothing.
I feel, what?
But we soon fill up with angst so
this is your 15-to-18 year old who feels really angsty.
So I feel angst, you know, alone and anxious and angry.
When they do feel happy it's excitement so
it literally happiness means excitement at that age.
I and then we move to feelings of confinement so
this is the 19-22 year-olds who often feel alone or not understood and so
we leave those behind to go conquer the world at age 25.
We feel powerful when we feel happier.
The opportunity to get money status or destiny.
Before gradually trading ambition for
balance this is the 30-year-old who's now searching for balance.
Developing an appreciation for bodies at 35 we start talking about how we feel
fat or whatever because our bodies are now going down hill in a systematic way.
And our children and then involving sense of connectedness.
So I feel connected, grateful, happy, calm, and blessed.
And the 50 to 60-year-olds who are blogging, you know,
equate happiness with feeling contentment.
And then the reason I share this slide just to kinda jump start our
conversations is because it's not just the story of our customers.
You know, so you think you have a value proposition that's really hitting
it for millennials.
But the reality is is that they fundamentally will change in every five or
so years, their meaning of happiness and
what's driving their decisions is going to change.
It's the story of our employees.
And so you're building a team and you're trying to grow that team and
you're trying to scale the business and, and,
and what our employees need in life is gonna change.
And then certainly the story of us as individuals.
The other reason this insight is interesting is that as you start to think
about building new products or
building businesses, I think we've moved away from just designing with features in
mind to a life where really we're thinking much more about that emotional experience.
Certainly, with Apple you know, companies that started to really understand, well,
it's not just the features, but the emotional experience, and
I think you're seeing more and more successful companies design not
just based on people's emotional experience, but really, stories.
What is the story?
And David and I are gonna talk about that.
But before we do so, let me just mention a few tips about, I think, what I see at
least most companies doing wrong is they design a story and how you can design for
a better story to, to give you a framework before we jump into examples.
The first thing you see is that a lot of companies don't design for
authenticity well or empathy, or purpose.
The few designed for authenticity, when, such that, when you share the story,
you feel authentic, and lots of research shows that people can tell when you
aren't, in fact within milliseconds of engaging with someone and
they're sharing a story implicit judgments are being made on that person,
you know, whether you're truthful, whether I'm gonna respect you,
whether I'm gonna like you, this is where fighting all in that embody.
That was summarized in Blink and other books.
brands, and here's the problem, brands or
companies often feel manufactured and overly marketed.
But people do not, and that's why you're seeing I think a role of story being
greater and greater, especially within startups who have no budget to, you know,
even look manufactured.
And, and the role of story within leaders like CEO's becoming more and
more important because people, you know, don't feel manufactured.
A second thing I think you see a lot is that most companies aren't doing a good
enough job of designing for empathy.
So they got their product, they're so excited about it and they're ready
to roll, and they often implicitly are making a mistake of trying to be the hero.
So, you know, we've got this great product, we've got all these features.
We're gonna go take on the world and be the hero but if instead,
you really anchor on this idea that the user is the hero the customer's the hero.
He or she has these, you know, big desires in life, they have these challenges,
they're trying to unlock those challenges and your only role is to help them unlock
their own challenges to live so that they can be the hero of their own story.
And that, there's a couple things that relegates your product and
your company to the rightful purpose of, of being servants to, you know,
kind of your user, you're just trying to help them become the hero of that story.
It doesn't matter if you're enterprise, or, or customer, that's the right role.
And the second thing it does is it really does allow you to feel much
more empathic to your customer and your user, and
that deep empathy will serve you well as you innovate and move on.
And the third thing I think companies maybe don't spend as much
attention on as they should is, is what really is the purpose?
What's the why behind what they're doing?
A really simple phrase to underscore the importance of this is that, by and
large, employees wanna be valued members of a winning team on an inspired mission.
And so when you get productivity that decreases or
creativity that decreases, the team's just not performing,
usually go back to this sentence and you say, what word is missing?
You know, and, and, they need to feel valued, they need to feel
like they're members, and they need to feel like the team's winning, or
if it's not winning now, why is it gonna be winning in the future?
And it has to have this inspired mission that is deeper and
broader and more inspirational than just maximizing profit ability.
So as you start to think a little bit about, you know, what this means,
you're gonna think about, you know, what's the purpose, what's that inspired mission?
What's, you know, what's the autonomy on affording to employees so
that they can really feel valued?
How stong is a team you know?
So how, how, how well are you collaborating?
And, and to what degree is your goal excellent so
that you can feel you're, you're on this path?
And what's interesting, and what David, I think, is been exposed over the course of
his career are these CEOs that explicitly taken on often one of these elements.
So if you look at John Mackey, doubling down on purpose or Larry,
Larry really believing in autonomy, hire super smart people, not necessarily those.
But the purpose of just super-smart people that,
and this would allow them to be autonomous, to some degree.
Tony Hsieh, who really believes in creating a family and so
he's gonna, you know, hire people that are kinda a little weird and
quirky and then get them to act in very familial ways.
And then Steve Jobs, obviously, who hired much more for
excellence and designed for excellence.
And and so, what happens is that these leaders and
these CEOs, the story of what's important to them gets played out and
that inculcates the whole, whole culture.
But in a lot of research, if you really nail purpose, and all of these
companies do have purpose then you usually get people to work harder, faster.
So that's just a brief summary of what at least you can start to
think about in terms of a designing for but getting into the nitty gritty,
how do you actually design these stories?
Which stories are most important?
What are the signature stories that you wanna develop?
and, and David and I have talked about this in the past and
David really thinks there, there's four at least in his mind, in his context,
from a venture perspective, and maybe you could talk a little about,
you know, your background and how you see story.
But four that are particularly important are, contributing to a successful pitch,
so a, a story that seals the deal, organizing your team, so David calls this
sort of the Wiki of your organization, connecting to your customers,
sort of that user story, closing the sale, and then a story to spur growth,
which you know, you know, what's your story of why this is gonna be huge.
So David, thanks for being here and
maybe you could tell us a little, little bit about your own self and
then we can dive into any and all of these that you think are still important.
>> Sure. Although you know the most important part,
which is I was destined for broadway and then my voice changed.
>> Yeah. >> It was gonna be so good.
>> Yeah. >> And then,
next thing you know I went to law school so.
[LAUGH] No I've been, I've been in the venture capital world for
almost 15 years now.
And what, you know, I was just talking with a group of students and
frankly my entire, my entire talk this was a group
of college students who were trying to figure out oh, so what do we do next?
Where do we go next?
How do we think about our, our world?
And, so I told the tale of how I went from,
you know, from a kid in New Hampshire to a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley,
someone who got to college and studied computer music to, you know, to,
to a business person and the reality of that.
It was this windy path that was driven and if you were to tell the story of
me in the end, one could only point to passion, to engagement, right?
Because the, the subject matter changed so quickly.
It was computer, music and then criminology, it was law school and
then litigation, et cetera, but
ultimately, ended up in building, helping to build these amazing companies.
And, and, and to my mind the, the,
the, these amazing stories that everyone of these companies tells.
Even the companies that fail, it turns out, it's an epic tale all right.
It just turns out badly.
[LAUGH] You know, it's not like all of our movies are fantastically joyous in
the end and that's true, no matter, even in the very best venture
capitalists there are companies that, with the very best venture companies,
companies where the end of the tale is and it's failed, right?
But in the same respect, you know, even i,
in those instances, I worked with a very young, very smart, energetic entrepreneur
who had his first company was encumbered by, by lawsuits.
They were doing this peer-to-peer distribution of content that was,
that was copyright-protected, and they got sued into submission.
And his second company, he said, oh, that was a hard product project, but
it was really valuable to use everybody's computers to deliver content, and
he created a content distribution network that allowed,
you know, big, ESPN and the likes to move their content.
That content, that story ended in a sale to a company.
That was a fine outcome, but it was, but it, but it wasn't what we'd all hoped for.
And now he runs Uber.
>> [LAUGH]. >> And so
far it's looking like that's quite a story.
Right?
>> Yeah. >> That that's quite a battle between,
you know, technology and, and and, and
the entrenched nature of an industry, and all off these things.
So, I really do think of the, of, of the companies that I look at, and
I look at my engagement, and my role with these companies is how can I help bring to
life you know, this, this this epic tale that if all goes well,
ends in something that changes the world, right?
>> Mm-hm.
>> And my job is to make money for my investors so it, the good news is
that money actually is a by-product of really great stories, you know.
>> Yeah. >> In the venture world.
So I've invested in, in some wonderful companies that have change the way people.
You know, engage with the world like an eWrite or a stumble upon, I've engaged in
companies that are really technical and people haven't heard, but have been wild
successes like a Splunk and then I've engaged with some amazing entrepreneurs
whose businesses have not succeeded but, but I, but I view those as a gift too.
So, that gives,
gives you a sense of you know, kinda my my approach to the Venture World.
>> And so the other thing you guys, and the audience should know is that one of
the things that I admire the most about David is that, within the Venture World,
he's he's I don't know, I think the best storyteller.
He lives, he lives in a way that's very story-inspired.
So the narratives that come out of not just his entrepreneurs and
not just of his capital, but also his family are are funny,
engaging, inspirational, and then in the case of business,
you know, actually matter in, in terms of the bottom line.
so, so let's talk a little bit about each of these four stories.
So the first one that I think you talk a lot about is,
you know, that story that seals the deal, and your pre,
premise is that you know, basically you're not gonna invest in technology.
You're investing in people who exude creative potential,
combined with that urgency to solve a daunting problem with a new approach.
And so, your pitch needs to demonstrate both.
So tell us a little bit about sort of the things you see in general for that
pitch that go wrong and or like when they do it right what, what's the magic stock?
>> Well the one, one thing that I would say is a bit important.
You know, tip, is that, people think that they need to come in and close you, right?
That, oh, okay.
I'm gonna tell you this thing, and you're gonna buy.
Right? When it all is done,
you know, I'm in, right?
>> Yeah.
>> And the reality is that, like, like a lot of stories.
Like, you know?
The things that we find most, most epic and engaging.
It's just the, the, that first conversation.
Our, our relationships with our spouses, whatever.
That first conversation, you leave, and think, I, I need to learn more about that.
Like, I need, [LAUGH] I need some more of that.
>> Yeah.
>> And truthfully, the most successful pitches, in any instance, are that.
They are, wow.
Like, oh my God, that was so great.
I, A, I really wanna spend more time with that person, or that group of people.
'Cuz I find them engaging, and they know things about the world that I wanna know.
They're thinking about things that I wanna think about.
And then, secondly, that's a really interesting business.
Like, I hadn't thought about, you know, pick your random thing I've invested in.
I haven't thought about, you know, cash payments for, you know, you know,
in the digital world or whatever.
>> Yeah. >> And so,.
So, the really great story-tellers engage you.
They get you, you know, they, they start out and they get you thinking about oh,
here's, here, you know, this is a team of people who care and
are, are thinking on a deeper level about something that matters.
And then, they get you with the, it matters.
What is this thing?
And look, I've funded payroll companies, I've funded.
No, things where you would say how you, you know,
how do you go to bed and, and lie awake at night thinking about these things?
But, I do because the teams that are building on
have engaged you in a way where you say, oh my goodness.
If you were to change the way payroll's done today,
millions of small business owners can, you know, can have a better life,
can better, you know, can manage their businesses better, et cetera.
Well, you don't go into the meetings thinking that.
You go into the meetings thinking, I wonder what's for
lunch, and, oh, I've probably had enough Diet Cokes for the day.
And then, you leave the meeting thinking, oh my God.
I have to work with these people.
>> Yeah.
And neurologically, what's happening when these people pitch David, and
then they do engage, is that, the story relative to just saying this is our
technology, this is what we're able to do.
Neurologically, more parts of his brain are activated.
When someone pitches him just with features or
technology, literally falls asleep because only one part of
the brain is active when you're cognitively processing those features.
When you share a story, and then David gets to know that,
that, you know, that pitch person, that protagonist, if you will,
broader parts of the brain and more parts of the brain are actually activated.
And, that's why you go to sleep and start, you know, ruminating.
And then, the story becomes bigger and becomes part of you.
great. So, let's jump into the second one,
which is the Wiki of your organization, a story that can work as
an internal fulcrum and which your team can stress test business decisions.
So, it informs your, your role, the team's role, and the company's role.
So, a lot of times this is kind of the team story, but
then it can be a little bit richer.
>> Yeah, it's interesting.
And, you know, sometimes these, these stories are kinda
chunked into here are the, here are the goals of the company.
Or, these are the, the, the, the moral patch points of the company, and
then those become stories in and of themselves.
And so, they're, they're like everything.
There are good stories and there are bad stories.
So, I had one business I'd invested in.
When they had their 10 tenets of the, of the business.
And, one of them, which I 100% believed in as a young entra,
as a young venture capitalist with a young family, it was work-life balance.
We're gonna focus on work-life balance.
It was part of the story of this business.
Well, it turns out that the story of work-life balance is
actually not about work.
It's about life and balance.
And so, when the story of your company is about work life balance then the,
the cadence of your company actually is, can be slower, can be, you know, i-,
it's o, it's okay to take your business and
make it second fiddle to the, the obligations you have at home, et cetera.
And, and while I understand that, it had a real and
material impact in the, at the, in the velocity of this business.
So sometimes, the stories you tell have unintended consequences, which as
in that instance, the story is that this is a family friendly business and
we want people who have families and who care about them to be part of it.
And, I think that's a fantastic message.
The by-product was, and
as a result, it's okay that we're going at this business slowly.
>> Yeah. >> And, you know,
interestingly, I talked with that entrepreneur in the second instance when
he was starting his next business, and, and he said.
And again, has small children as.
This is as good a family man as you will ever meet.
>> Yeah. >> And, says
under no circumstances work life balance.
Under no circumstances work life balance.
The message of my next company.
>> Yes. >> It's not, you know.
And, and, and that's just a little thing.
Then, there's this, then-
You know, you talk about company culture.
And,company culture as this,-
You know, you, you, it's sort of in the ether, oh,
how do you describe culture, how do you create it?
But, the reality is you create it by having these, the, the ethos,
the epic tale of this company.
What are we here to do?
What are we, you know, what is it we're trying to solve?
>> Yeah. >> And, I
have a company called Fastly that I've invested in.
Fastly is a new content distribution network.
It's, you know, it's a competitor to the likes of Akamai.
Very technical.
You know, the mission is to deliver content quickly or whatever you can.
You can look and say okay well, what's the-
How can you create the ethos.
It is such a technical team.
It is so- They are so
deeply committed to the idea of moving the technology forward making
of everything being this technically beautiful.
Right, you don't think of technology of beautiful,
but this crew is about this thing is beautiful.
Like, the way you think about is, is incredible right, and.
And so, that drives them forward is that this understanding that
we are solving a really hard problem in an elegant and beautiful way.
And, and this is what we care about.
>> Yeah. >> That drives it drives recruiting.
It drives, you know, teams of deployments and developments and
scale and all of those things.
>> Yeah. Talk about also like, so
that you got this team.
And so, how they came together or
how they're gonna, you know, demonstrate like you want to bet on this team.
It's not just, you know, sort of-
>> Yeah, for sure.
Well, I'll just talk about Fasley some more because I think it's a,
it's a great example of this.
>> Yeah. >> Which is.
Here is a technical team, a management team that existed in another company.
There's a company called Wikia.
And, Wikia's a massive company.
There's immense amount of traffic that goes to Wiki to Wikia.
And, they had a problem, and
their problem was that Wikis are always changing and always changing.
And, they wanted to use a content distribution that worked,
something where they could push their content closer to their end user so
that it was accessed more quickly.
And, everybody they talked to about this problem couldn't solve it.
Their, their technical solution could not allow you to push stuff to the edge and
keep updating it as quickly as they needed to.
>> Right. >> And, as a result, they, it, it,
it, out of necessity, they built their own.
They said, okay.
Well, we're gonna have to figure out how would one would solve this.
And again, to this like,
technical excellence, it was, this incredibly beautiful problem.
Which is oh, we have rapidly updating content.
We have new ways of thinking about hardware and software and whatever.
And, they created a really fantastic solution for themselves.
>> Mm-hm.
And, they were so excited about it.
So, proud of what they built that they talked about it.
>> Yeah. >> To their friends.
All of their technical friends, like, we nailed it.
Here's the thing.
>> Yeah. >> And then, a beautiful thing happened.
Their friends all said, can we use it?
>> Yeah. [LAUGH]
>> Right.
We wanna use that.
How can we use this thing?
We have exactly the same problem.
>> Yeah. >> And,
the byproduct of that was a team that said, we need to create a company.
>> Yes. >> That will solve this problem and
they emerge with a solution that they had
built out of necessity that elegantly solves their existing problem and
that they, that pulled them out >> Yeah.
>> Because their customers were saying we need to use this.
>> Right.
>> Why do you get to keep it to yourself and we, yeah we need to use this thing.
>> Yeah.
>> That was the, you know,
the epic birth story that then has resulted in what is now.
You know, content distribution network that serves massive companies.
Big traffic, really exciting stuff.
So, I think when you hear that kind of story it answers lots of questions.
It talked about team and cohesion and motivation.
It talks about market and, and differentiation.
All of these things that, you know, if you were,
if someone was creating a a power point.
Oh, I'm gonna cover market scale,
I'm gonna cover you know, differentiation, etc.
And, they don't have to do that.
All they have to do is say, here's what happened.
>> Right. >> And, it's so much more effective.
>> And then, you're making them put the judgements on, do I bail on these guys.
And, the simple story of their team, how they act together, their history.
Solves that problem too.
You don't have to sit there and, and question that as much.
It's a tricky thing to have to say.
I mean, this was important, right?
Which is that story of the team coming together
is a really important one and sometimes it's this.
We work together and we whatever, and so we, you know, and we say oh, right.
>> Yeah.
>> Sometimes, it's, the story is I knew this person and he, we were
best friends since, you know, computer science class, you know, in high school.
And so, we've always talked about doing something, that, and you go oh and
that's great.
>> Yeah.
>> We were pitched yesterday on a business where the founders met on LinkedIn.
>> Yeah. >> Now, you know, on the one hand, look.
You should be allowed to meet great people on LinkedIn.
>> Yeah. >> But, it's a bad story, right?
>> RIght >> Oh, you met on LinkedIn.
>> Yeah. >> That's the end of, like, end of story.
That's not very exciting.
>> So, mental note for all of you in the audience using LinkedIn.
Go get a cup of coffee.
Go to a bar. [LAUGH] Go to a dance club,
take a walk [CROSSTALK].
So, the third one that we've talked about in the past and
we both share a real passion for is-
And, the story of the user or the customer, how does your product or
brand get used by the user, the customer to attain a goal, their goal and
transform their life.
And so, you're really anchoring so it's not really about you,
it's not about the team but it's really about this one person.
Any other sort of tips on really developing that user story so
that it persuades you like, yep this is gonna be big.
>> Yeah, I mean I think there's always, you know, look, in the end there's no
single great business that's been built on a single customer.
>> Yeah. >> Right.
So, there's always a starting point,
which is I have, I have a customer who is using this and
that is sufficiently gauging to get you the next customer, et cetera.
I always think of this.
Particularly, in the start up world, I talk about this.
The fact that start ups have any customers is miraculous.
You should never work with a start up.
Start ups are, you know, they likely will fail and go out of business.
They have technical solutions that are unproven.
There are all sorts of reasons why if you are a big company-
But, in the enterprise space, you wouldn't use a, a,
a start-up's product, which is crazy.
>> Yeah. >> If you're a consumer and
you're all ready on Facebook.
No, or better yet, you're all ready on MySpace, why do you go to Facebook?
Why do you start using Twitter if you all ready have a thing.
Why are you using WhatsApp instead of, you know, Messenger or whatever.
So, the momentum is a 100% against start-ups.
And so, the story, this, this capacity to tell the tale of
here's how we got someone who should not have used our product to use our product.
It's always powerful.
And the, and the more that customer is known to be terrible-
>> Yeah. >> The better.
I won't use any names necessarily, but there are certain businesses in
Silicon Valley that are known to be impossible customers.
>> Yeah.
And so, when you come to me and picture business or
better yet, you go to a smaller company and say oh, who are your customers.
Oh, I have this particular customer.
They say, how did that happen?
>> Yeah. >> Like why-
>> Yeah. >> You know, why are they using you?
So, so, it is a snowball effect that it, that is, is incredibly powerful.
And, you should understand that.
>> Yeah. >> You should understand that,
that the message of each customer is a message of
solving problems in the real world.
And, the story isn't, oh, I have a, a, I'm embedded in blah.
>> Right. >> It's, so-and-so had a problem that
they couldn't solve with the obvious, you know,
I couldn't go to Oracle and solve this problem.
I couldn't use Facebook and solve this problem.
And so, when they looked for the solution, the solution came clear despite
the fact that it was little and unproven and all this stuff.
It was, oh, my god, this is so much better.
>> Yeah. >> I have to try it.
>> Yeah.
It's a fantastic point, just this notion of who, in fact, even is the user.
And then, the leverage, I mean, certainly from a marketing perspective you see more
and more companies not just, you know, be inspired by and reach out and
empower to tell the user's story as a part of, you know,
basically marketing start up with the company innovation.
Right? You're also seeing a closer and
closer relationship between the user and customer and
the actual company because co-development becomes important.
Because some of these users are so influential that they can become much
more, you know, not only authentic and believable than the company can, but
actually are more connected to the network.
That the company wants to reach.
>> Well, to, to this point, I mean this is, and I, I,
I have stolen this playbook repeatedly.
And obviously, I don't think that,
so I have a company I invested in called Splunk.
And, Splunk is this very nerdy tool that allows, that takes machine data,
all sorts of data, and allows you to make sense of it.
And, their original customers were,
you know, IT people are trying to keep the computers up.
And then, their next set of customers were security people trying to keep
the networks secure, and then compliance people trying, very nerdy, very technical.
Blank very quickly discovered oh this is a tool that solves all sorts of problems.
And, our customers are figuring out what those problems are.
And, there's no better way to get the next customer then to say,
oh, this customer did this, and this, and this, but it turns out there's
a thing that's better than me saying, oh, you know, this customer did x, y, and z.
It's getting them to tell the story.
And so, Splunk has deployed their own customers to
tell these triumphant stories, and you talked about this.
This is.
Make your customer the hero.
>> Mm-hm. >> This is in every instance how does
someone in a big enterprise, it how were, how were they empowered to
solve some big problem and save their company a bunch of time or money or
mecha, you know, mechanize things that seemed impossible whatever.
So in every instance we, as one get the users on the stage,
they tell their story and we say, oh, my God!
You are so smart!
Right?
But yeah, you're smart for using our product, right?
[CROSSTALK]. >> Yeah.
>> That's amazing.
So now, in every instance, that I can make this work I
say get potential customers in the room, whether it's a dinner [CROSSTALK].
>> Yeah.
>> Or an auditorium and get your existing customers to tell the story of how they,
how it is making them heroic.
>> Yeah. >> And
that, there, that is the best sales technique I've ever seen.
It, it will win everyday [CROSSTALK].
>> It have. >> If you have customers who will do it.
>> Yeah, which also reminds you, pick the right customer.
[LAUGH] >> Yeah, well that's helpful.
Yeah. >> [LAUGH] And then the fourth and
sort of last sort of story that is certainly important from David's,
perspective in, in his world is, you know, the reason why this is huge, you know?
So you're using in this one, you know, both data, to trend data, you know,
data from, you know, how a companies doing and then where you're architecting
a narrative and organizing framework so that the venture capitalist is
making the inference in his or her own head this is gonna be huge.
Any comments on this story?
>> Yeah, I mean it, you need it.
[CROSSTALK].
>> Yeah. >> In the venture business.
I mean, it's funny.
I say to people look, in the end, venture capital is not for everyone.
Venture capital comes with it, a price which is that if I'm
gonna invest $10 million in your business, your business actually has to be very big.
To make it, my piece worth more than 10 million dollars.
>> Right.
>> So when you come to me,
to tell me about your exciting technology, that's store.
You, you know, first of all, it has to be, I'm solving a very acute problem, and
I can get those first set of customers.
>> RIght. >> But, then simultaneously,
the world is our oyster, right?
There's some huge opportunity here that is transformative.
And, and you have to believe both stories, and that's a very tricky thing.
And great entrepreneurs are very good at that, about this like,
here's what we're doing.
That's the boring stuff.
The really exciting stuff is that when I have a 100 million users,
you know, then it's, then think about this, right?
I mean we funded a company called Wattpad.
Wattpad is this consumer experience where you, where people are uploading stories
and reading stories on their, la, largely on their mobile devices.
The founders thought this was important, they care about stories,
they care about the, the, the written word, you know, but in the beginning when
it's just you know, hundreds of people doing that, they say, oh, that's great!
You, you, know? [CROSSTALK]. >> Yeah.
>> Some people reading some stories or whatever.
But now when it's tens of millions of people and
there are hundreds of thousands of stories being uploaded on a daily basis and
billions of minutes a month being spent consuming content, being reading.
We're talking about people reading.
It's pretty easy to sell that big story, right?
You have folks like Margaret Atwood saying like, this is important.
Wattpad is important for the transformation of, of the reading world,
that kids still read, that people still care about the written word, right?
[CROSSTALK]. >> Yeah.
>> So the story starts with,
I have a technical solution that makes it easy to upload stories and consume them,
on a mobile device, but the big picture is, you know, and, and, and as far as
this team is concerned, having tens of millions of users is the beginning, right?
[CROSSTALK]. >> Mm-hm. >> And we,
and, and, so, so being able to tell that and it doesn't matter what it is, right?
My, my, my buddy [UNKNOWN] when he was teaching [UNKNOWN] was,
I have seen that, how hard payroll is, I've seen what a waste of time it is,
for people, we can make it better, we can make it an asset.
It will transform the ability of millions of small business owners to recon,
to regain control of their lives.
And he's taken that one step further with bill.com, his next company.
He's he's into the exciting stuff.
>> Yeah. >> Start with payroll,
move on to bills, same thing, how do I manage accounts payable and receivable?
Is that a big story?
Well, yeah!
It's a huge story, if you think that this is how the entirety of small business is
gonna manage their business in a way that allows them the free time with their
family, the ability to leverage their economics to,
to grow their business, all these things, right?
[CROSSTALK]. >> Yeah.
So everyone who, who comes in and pitches successfully to, to my firm does so
by saying here's what we're doing now and it's really interesting and
valuable and here's [LAUGH] what it becomes if we're right?
>> Yeah >> And the if we're right part is
what we invest in.
>> Right.
So yeah, just, just helping create that, that structure so
that the investors want to invest.
And so this idea of making it human centered but also inspired is key.
So what I think we should do now is it's 10:40.
We have Dave and I've put together a few questions that we could connect to but
we have been flooded with [CROSSTALK].
>> Right.
>> Other questions
>> [LAUGH] >> That maybe we'll,
we'll, we'll use instead.
So let me just [NOISE] pick one of them David.
Quite a few questions, we're not gonna be able to get to all of
them if anyone has remaining questions after Dave and I finish Q & A.
Please feel free to email at jayaaker@standford.edu or just Google,
Power of Story and my name and you'll come to a website where a lot of the answers to
these questions at least are indirectly answered through readings somewhat not.
David, through this set is there any question or
two that you think are particularly intriguing?
>> I think there are one, there is one question that talks about to what
degree this sort of storytelling applies to non-profits, in fundraising in the same
way that it applies to pro, to pro, to, for profit companies in fundraising.
And its, and it triggered something in my mind.
You know, one of these things that interesting and tricky about na,
non-profits that I've seen, is that they're very personality driven and
oftentimes there is particular dynamic individual, who who is telling that story
and is so engaging and so spectacular that you oh, write a check, I mean [CROSSTALK].
>> Yeah. >> Oh, here's a check.
And of course the tricky part is that is that there, that there's ongoing process
for these non-profits the reality is that start ups are the same way, right?
That in the end there is, there is interesting back and
forth between the you know, the CEO the founders,
the team's story and the aggregate story of this business.
And, and I would say it's extraordinarily hard to
raise money with an amazing story for your company.
And a lackluster story for your team, [CROSSTALK].
>> Yeah, right. >> Right?
We are looking for leaders we're looking leaders who
themselves have a powerful story and the interesting thing and
the best thing is when it that story is how have I come to be who I am?
>> Yeah. >> And as,
as an inspirational leader for, for this business.
And how did I come to this business?
Like, why do I care about this business?
And our best entrepreneurs, there's a very clear story about.
There's an amazing, you know, kind of mythology of the individuals.
And then there's this amazing mythology of,
that leads to them coming to their particular business.
>> Mm-hm.
>> And, and so in that respect for profit and non profit are really the same
business, which is why is it, why are you this spectacular person you are and
why have you come to this hard problem you're solving?
The more authentic that connection is this is why businesses where the answer to that
is, I did a lot of research and
I decided that this was a tough problem to solve, is not very compelling, right?
You look at that story and you go, huh, so you could have done a bunch of things.
>> Then I went to LinkedIn then I found, like [CROSSTALK].
>> Yeah found my,.
>> [LAUGH] >> I found some people to
help kill him, right?
You know? [LAUGH]
>> Oh my God!
There's so many questions.
Okay, another question that relates to the non-profit one is
stories proven to spur action.
So if you guys Google, ,.
>> [LAUGH]. >> [LAUGH].
>> You [UNKNOWN] just like [CROSSTALK].
>> Yeah. Go check it out.
>> Future of Storytelling and Aaker, my last name again, A, A, K, E, R.
Up comes a little five minute video that actually summarizes some
of the research that is done by Deb Small and
others that show why and when, stories actually can fuel action.
Now remember it's not stories or data.
So, this guy or this person, I'm not sure if it's a guy or a gal.
Who's about to go off and do this pitch and
is, is thinking about, harnessing story to a greater degree and their pitch.
If you're out there in the audience still,
remember that if the integration of data and story together.
Sometimes you're going to lean into the story.
Sometimes you're going to lean into the data.
But even your, your, your pitch is 90% trend and product features etc.
Even that 10% of the narrative structure that you put around it so that, you know,
the investor can indeed think it's gonna be huge hopefully is is, is powerful.
So another question I thought was really interesting is this notion of,
motivating employees through ongoing storytelling to improve focus and
then align the global objectives as a company.
And, you know, there is actually a little bit of work in social psychology around
global alignment and, and this notion of how do you, how do you motivate?
And a some of that work is summarized in the Dragonfly Effect, which is a book
I wrote with Andy and one of David's friends too, my husband, Andy Smith.
And one of the things that's most important in the model in that book is,
it's focus.
What is the single focus goal of this story?
And if you can get it reduced down to this is the goal, so David shares me,
shares with me a story about one of his company's or his son or whatever and
I know the goal of that story, and he knows where it's supposed to land with me.
That, but, but these are not process of knowing the goal, and knowing the aha,
and indeed, landing well.
Research shows that when that happens, goal, team, teams are lined across silos.
The clarity of what the new product launch is, increases, not only do,
do goals align, but people can work more in sync.
So you got a new product.
It has a really clear story.
You know the goal of that story.
It lands well.
Research shows that [UNKNOWN] a big proponent of
this that everything else is executional.
Cuz now everyone's aligned, and so
advertising which is executional can align with the story you know, the CFO is
aligned with a story, operations is aligned with a story, everyone's aligned.
And so there is some empirical evidence to suggest that at least if your story can be
anchored on a goal, you're gonna get that goal alignment and increased productivity.
>> So one you know,
one of my favorite things in the kind of storytelling universe, is the T-shirt.
I talk about T-shirts all the time and
in the start up world, T-shirts really matter, and it's because of this.
It turns out, so how do you reinforce the message of the company?
How do you create goa-mission driven businesses, or whatever?
There are these interim goals,
they're big-picture goals, like organizing the world's information, right?
>> Yeah. >> If you have that on a T-shirt,
you're a young organization and
you have that on a T-shirt, it's like well, that's what we're here for, right?
And you walk around and you feel good about those T-shirts.
Then you have these like point driven focus, what do we have to achieve?
So it's that t-shirts are always made in startups,
in well run startups when you have the first thousand customers.
When you launch some new product, when you do these things because people are so
focused on this opportunity, this goal.
And then when it's done, you celebrate it.
And you don't just celebrate it for that moment.
You celebrate going forward, cuz it inspires that next thing and
inspires you to oh, I, you have the Android T-shirt.
I wish I had that one.
Oh, you had the millionth customer T-shirt, amazing, you know?
So, I think that, you know, good story tellers, good companies that understand
the power of that, understand that T-shirts are just another piece of it.
So there's a great guy named Adam Nash, who now, who,
who was at LinkedIn, now runs Wealth Front.
And he wro, wrote a great, blogpost about this deal when you go to
Google that one
>> [LAUGH] >> Adam Nash and T-shirts and
you'll find his blogpost that, that he wrote out after he and I had this
long conversation about how much we love T-shirts and the importance of T-shirts.
>> Yeah and more general is this props, yeah,
this thinking about what props should support this story?
Another person asked can you talk more about the idea of authenticity more.
And I don't know about you, but I think about it in two ways.
One is authen, authenticity is when the story and the data resonate.
So that the story, it echoes back, what you're seeing in the data?
And you can take data from lots of different angles and, and vice versa.
The second is a little bit more sort of, I don't know, softer, if you will.
It's that when,
when you share a story that comes across authentic, it feels very personal.
And sometimes the more manufactured stories that feel less authentic.
You basically are just losing that personal connection.
Any thoughts on authenticity?
>> Well, it, it reminds me, I used to be a litigator.
And I remember talking with my, my boss, who was a very impressive litigator, had
been very successful, and he said to me at the time as we were preparing witnesses,
now he said, David there's nothing more powerful than the truth.
And he said in particular, because your witness can always remember it.
[LAUGH] Right? And it's like you know that's the,
the reality, and that's a little bit about this authent, authenticity question.
You don't need to figure out how to string these things together to make them work?
You don't have to remember-
>> Yeah. >> What the miss is that led to things,
when that's the truth.
>> Yeah.
>> So look it's, in reality we're always kinda morphing and
pitching and, and molding this, that, that our own image, the image of our company.
But if it's not based in fact, if it's not based in reality, it will blow up.
Eventually it will be completely clear that it's just not the reality of
the company and so don't try and be what you're not.
>> Right. >> Right.
You're, if you're not a dy, if you're not a dynamic storytelling,
you know inspiring blah, blah, blah, don't be that.
>> Right.
>> Be someone who, who, you know, inspires through numbers and
product and whatever else.
So, but I think authen, authenticity is very clear.
And, and, and, and, you know, like the Supreme Court said, of ***,
you'll know it when you see it.
>> Yeah. [LAUGH]. >> Yeah.
>> I kinda wanna end on ***.
But,. [LAUGH]
>> [LAUGH]
>> But there's so
many questions, a little intimidating.
so, what I'm gonna do, is,
because we are, only two minutes, shy away from the end of this.
is, again, invite you if you didn't get your answer, question answered,
to go ahead and email me at jayaaker@standford.edu, or
just go online to Power Story and [CROSSTALK].
>> And I'm hornick@augustcap, august c, a, p.com.
>> Yep. Best storyteller ever.
I highly recommend. [CROSSTALK]. >> That's a lot of pressure.
[LAUGH] >> Yeah, all right.
Not the best. >> [LAUGH].
>> Maybe as investor.
>> Oh that's, oh, that's a low [CROSSTALK] thank you.
>> Can we say that and your family and [CROSSTALK] All right, so
anyway it's been great to spend time with you, yeah, so
again, I'd like to thank you both for spending this hour with us.
It's been extremely interesting and
I think from the number of questions we've had we obviously have not been able to
get to all of them but it definitely shows that these.
Stories generated a lot of thinking and, and, and curiosity with our audience.
So I think that's, that's wonderful and
thank you again, everyone who attended as well as our speakers of course.
again, I would like to invite you to find out more about
our courses at create.stanford.edu.
Thank you again and I hope you have a wonderful day.
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