How to Improve Your Origin Story
People tend to use the same template to tell their origin story and it has the same effect: crickets.
- Reading Off Your Resume
- Showing How Smart You Are and How Accomplished You Are
- Telling a Hero's Quest Story or other trope
These ways of articulating who you are ineffective today. Back in the day, when people started giving me startup advice about how to pitch a business, they all would say "tell me a story".
But what the hell does that even mean?
I have gone through more of these iterations than I'd care to admit, but just telling a story isn't enough anymore.
What Works
The most effective stories are:
- ridiculous
- dimensional
- true
- with no agenda
- and a matter of fact tone
If we go back to our pattern interrupt theory: all pitches must be comprised of pattern interrupts as building blocks.
So the best stories have to be multi-dimensional pattern interrupts that are neutral and true.
In my experience, it's tempting to tell a story of overcoming adversity or an intellectual process, but there's an unspoken rule in business that the people who are more trustworthy are hypersane in the midst of craziness.
Everyone knows that stories create influence, so listeners naturally turn off when you start telling a story with a blatant agenda. It just feels weird too like you're trying to get into character or a certain mood. It's just cringe to be honest.
The solution: tell a story that has no agenda, just a crazy one that engages.
In the opening move, all you have to do is get someone interested in what you say. That's it. Don't expect a yes, anything at all. The bare minimum goal is just to get someone interested and entertained in things you say.
Pitch Pitching
A: "You teach?"
B: "Ya, I teach pitching"
A: "Pitching? Like sales?"
B: "Ya"
A: "Never heard of anyone teaching pitching at school before. How...wait, what happened?"
B: "Well I went to the best business schools in the world.
And they'll teach you everything about business,
except for literally the one skill you need to make money: which is sales.
And pitching is sales on steroids..."
That's usually how the conversation goes and I learned a lot from it because it was way cleaner than my usual intro. There was an instant hook, and every statement had a pattern interrupt that kept the person engaged. Total intrigue in everything else I had to say after.
It was actually an accident, but it was such a smooth interaction, I had to ask myself, why is this so much better than my story when I talk about my main job as an entrepreneur?
Because everything I was taught was DEAD WRONG. The playbook for telling your story is based on corporate communications, a lot of times from people who weren't even pitching, they were presenting. And those people didn't have to ask for tons of money to a stranger in a short amount of time.
In other words, I realized the whole foundation of how to LITERALLY INTRODUCE YOURSELF was built on a sham.
The "Typical" Founder Story
The Shark Tank Story
"Hi, my name is so and so and I'm the founder of X. After experiencing a problem, I became obsessed with finding a solution. After tons of hours of perseverance I eventually found the solution and that's the solution I have today."
The Startup Story
"After graduating from Stanford and working at McKinsey, I gained a lot of familiarity with software in this industry. This led to my company that I founded Blank AI, where we..."
Everyone does the same thing: they copy what they hear from friends or watch on YouTube. No one wants to break the mold.
But to people who hear these over and over, these intros can be so boring, it's in one ear out the other.
The Story of The Day
A: So what's your background?
B: I used to work at a startup...until Silicon Valley Bank crashed...
A: Wait what?
B: Yeah, we just raised a $50M Series B and...
A: Oh no...oh god
B: Oh yeah, we had it ALL in the bank.
A: Were you able to pull any of it out?
B: Not a dime...the CEO trusted the banker...
A: Holy crap...
B: Yeah...but a few of us were total All Stars and we built the same product with AI features when ChatGPT came out...plus Cursor made it wayyy easier to build this one from scratch...
A: Oh!...Niceeeee.
These stories have less to do with resume, experience, or tales of working super hard. They just have to be colorful and different. By using pattern interrupts in the story structure and events, it's easy to get someone to listen in while not trying to push an agenda on them which raises their guard.
Stories can really be pretty loose in this regard just because the status quo is usually smart professionals talking about their resumes or trying to prove something. It's a relief to just hear something entertaining and organic.
Plus, it's way more fun.
Where to Go From Here
Rethink your story from first principles. What parts were super ironic and crazy to think back on?
The more it breaks free from the mold, the better. Feel free to try it out when you meet people or casual conversation. It might feel weird at first, but over time, you'll look back at how awkward you used to feel trying to fit into a template that you realized never worked anyways.