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Turn Bystanders Into Believers, Driving Growth After Your First Product - Tactician #0067
"I was singing a song to turn bystanders into believers. Halfway through, I realized, they're not buying it. So, I switched to interpretive dance. Now, they believe... they believe I should never sing or dance in public again."
28/02/2024
Turn Bystanders Into Believers
Why Read (3-5 minutes):
Discover the essential role of storytelling in securing belief and investment for startups, the mechanics of the ABT storytelling formula, and the impact of visual language. This article offers practical insights into crafting stories that not only engage but also inspire action and belief in your vision.
Author:
Henrik Angelstig, Business Analyst at Corsmed
Link:
Key Concepts and Tactics:
The Importance of Storytelling in Building Belief
"Learning to tell a story is critically important because that's how the money works. The money flows as a function of the story.” – Don Valentine
"Belief is the true lifeblood of startups. If you can get enough people to believe in you – you can shape anything into existence."
The ABT (And-But-Therefore) Formula
"That formula is ABT: And-But-Therefore... ‘And’ creates a status quo that can be disrupted. ‘But’ is the conflict that disrupts the status quo. ‘Therefore’ resolves the conflict."
Examples of the ABT formula in action:
Sara Blakely’s Spanx story: “I was going to party… AND: “I wanted to wear my cream pants.” BUT: “I had no undergarment to wear under them that wouldn’t show.” THEREFORE: “So I took a pair of scissors and cut the feet out of my own pantyhose.”
David Ogilvy’s pudding story: “When I was a boy, we sometimes got pudding.” AND: “I always saved the cherry on my pudding for last.” BUT: “Then, one day, my sister stole it.” THEREFORE: “From then on, I always ate the cherry first.”
Why Stories Fail
Not using any “But”: “When your story doesn’t include a ‘But’, you end up regurgitating a list of events. And lists aren’t compelling.”
Using more than one “But”: “The other mistake is to introduce more than one conflict... This confuses your audience because they can’t figure out what the main conflict is.”
Turning Ideas into Visual Scenes
"Apart from using the ABT formula – did you notice what all the three stories above have in common? They include lots of nouns and verbs you can visualize."
The meat industry CO2 emissions example: "Picture a big Panamax container ship... You would need about 100,000 such ships – so many that, if you placed the ships in one long row, they would wrap three quarters of the way around the earth."
The Power of Visual Words Beyond Storytelling
"Visual words are not only for storytelling... Any idea becomes 10X more believable when communicated as a visual scene."
David Ogilvy’s examples: “Pay peanuts and you get monkeys.” “You are not advertising to a standing army. You are advertising to a moving parade.” “If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarves."
Closing Thoughts on Storytelling for Startups
"Belief defines startups. Storytelling enables belief."
"To tell a good story, I give you two simple tools: The ABT formula: “And-But-Therefore” and Visual words: turn your ideas into colorful scenes."
Driving Growth After Your First Product
Why Read (2-4 minutes):
Understand why "exponential growth" is a misleading term for startups, even for giants like Facebook and Slack, and discover the realistic pattern of growth that most successful startups follow. Learn why strategic innovations are crucial for sustained growth in a competitive market.
Author:
Jason Cohen, Founder at WP Engine
Link:
Key Concepts and Tactics:
Misconception of Exponential Growth:
"Fast-growing startups are frequently described as 'exponential,' especially when the product is 'viral.' But 'exponential' is an incorrect characterization, even for hyper-growth, 'viral' companies like Facebook and Slack."
Cohen emphasizes the importance of correct growth characterization: "If your model is incorrect, you don’t understand growth, which means you can’t control it, nor predict it."
Quadratic Growth (initial acceleration, steady growth then decline):
"In my experience, marketing campaigns follow this pattern: At the foot of the curve, we’ve launched a new campaign, but it’s ineffective...But in the case that we unlock the secret of efficacy, the campaign rapidly reaches a natural level of contribution...Next we enter the optimization phase...Finally we enter a phase of decline."
This pattern illustrates why growth tends to be quadratic: initial acceleration, followed by steady growth, and eventually a decline.
Strategic Implications for Sustained Growth:
"So, companies that want to continue growing quickly after their first product reaches scale, must launch new products into new markets."
Advice for Founders and Entrepreneurs:
"It’s great to add a feature to an existing product, but significant additional growth comes from increasing carrying capacity or creating a new avenue of growth. Early on you should focus on winning market share in one space, creating the first Elephant Curve, but after the product matures, something more drastic is required: Wholly new products, or updates significant enough to address new markets."
"The second product is highly unlikely to achieve the same market share and monetary scale as the first, so there needs to be multiple, not just one. This requires serious investment, parallel efforts, and the chutzpah to kill off the ideas that aren’t working."
"Because word-of-mouth-driven growth is so much more effective than marketing-driven growth (both in cost-per-customer and in that unlike direct advertising it grows automatically as the company grows), it is worth a great deal of time trying to figure out how to build that into the product, rather than relying only on the marketing team."
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