How to craft a story that investors buy

3 tactics to craft stories that investors buy

✈️ Structure the pitch as an emotional journey

• Investors make decisions based on emotions, not facts. Take them through these stages:

  • Amusement - Start with humor or wit (“Hailing a cab can feel like waiting for a unicorn.”)

  • Curiosity - Intrigue with an unusual take (“What if you could get a ride with just a tap?”)

  • Surprise - Reveal an unexpected insight (“Uber turns anyone with a car into a driver, and is already working in 100+ cities.”) 

  • Awe - Show the massive potential (“Uber’s tech is reshaping transportation across industries from food delivery to freight”) 

  • Greed - Incite FOMO to make them want in (“Uber is set for explosive growth. This is your chance to be the first investor in a global transportation revolution.”)

• Only include what drives emotions in your deck—move everything else to the appendix

🎯 Position as the underdog

• Frame a dominant worldview as the antagonist—show what most people believe and why it's extremely reasonable

• Contrast with an underdog worldview as the protagonist—highlight unique beliefs or hidden flaws that lead to a better outcome

• Include 3 layers of narratives:

  • Action (What the events or facts are)

  • Emotion (How people feel about it)

  • View (The deeper belief system)

🔮 Sell the future, not just today

• Investors aren’t buying today—they’re buying the future 

• Organize into 3 sections: 

  • Origin (Why this problem matters personally)

  • Now (What has been built and achieved)

  • Future (How will today lead to a massive outcome tomorrow)

• Sell the size of outcome if you win, not just likelihood of success

• Great stories drive higher valuations

2 traps to avoid

🚨Thinking story is something to ‘add later’

• Story isn’t an afterthought for marketing, fundraising, or recruiting—it’s the foundation  

• Fragmented story = Disconnected brand = Missed opportunities (investors, customers, hires, etc)

• Define the core purpose of the company, then align team culture, product priorities, hiring, and customer experience around it

🚨Blindly using the 10-slide template VCs recommend

• Problem/solution/market slides ≠ storytelling

• Great for VCs to screen fast, but not for winning a “yes” after

• A story that sparks belief and emotion is what gets the check

1 tool to leverage

📖 Best practice on pitching investors

• First question asked = reason for not investing—even if the pitch goes well

• Proactively address questions asked and highlight why it still makes sense despite objections

• Pitch decks are tools to tell stories—leverage Beautiful.ai or Visme to craft the decks

Bonus: 1 trend to spark startup ideas

💵 Open-source software (OSS) powers 96% of code and drives $8.8T in value

• Two of the fastest-growing startups today, Cursor and Lovable, started as open-source.

• OSS is structurally advantaged: lower costs from coding automation, increased transparency, and massive developer-driven network effects for distribution

• Defensibility used to be hard—free, swappable code meant OSS has to convert usage → reliance → revenue

• New models are emerging:

  • OSS core + AI upgrades: Paid tiers shift to high-value automation

  • Network management: OSS defines standards AI agents use to navigate third-party services—revenue comes from managing the network

  • Data engines: OSS tools collect unique, feedback-rich datasets that fuel AI models customers pay to improve