Storytelling for Startups
4.8 (9)
10 Days
·Cohort-based Course
Learn how to improve your fundraising, sales, and hiring through better communication.
Storytelling for Startups
4.8 (9)
10 Days
·Cohort-based Course
Learn how to improve your fundraising, sales, and hiring through better communication.
Course overview
Learn Effective Storytelling for Startups
Storytelling is about building narratives around your ideas to make them more engaging and memorable and help you stand out in a crowded market.
In this one-week class you will master storytelling and gain a key competitive advantage.
Who is this course for
01
CEOs and Founders of early stage startups who need to raise venture funding.
02
Executives at growth stage startups who need to improve sales and hiring.
03
Team leads at all companies, who want to learn how to see their ideas succeed.
Key outcomes
Improve your fundraising skills
If you want to raise Venture funding, you need to stand out from the thousands of other people pitching VCs. Storytelling is the key to getting their attention and closing your round.
Close more customers
Customers are busy, and you need to convey your story quickly and clearly. It's not enough to have a great product, you need to tell them why it matters to them. Storytelling helps you craft a better pitch to get attention from customers.
Hire a better team
The best people have a wealth of job opportunities. If you want them to join your team, you need to tell a compelling story about your opportunity and how it stands apart.
Improve your marketing
People are overwhelmed by marketing messages everyday, why will they notice yours? Storytelling is the key to crafting an effective marketing message, and having it stick.
Storytelling for Startups
What to Expect from the Class
See what people are saying
Brandon Minor
Jonny Simkin
Ashita Achuthan
Amit Bhatia
Mona Akmal
Carlos Vega
Questions? Email us for answers and more information on the class. We'd love to hear from you.
Meet your instructor
Sean Byrnes
Sean has been the CEO & co-founder of many category-defining companies (including Flurry and Outlier.ai), raised over $100M in financing from leading venture firms, built teams of hundreds of people, and both bought and sold companies in his career.
Over the past decade, Sean has also mentored and coached over 100 CEOs in building and scaling their software businesses. He has been a force for diversity and inclusion in the technology industry, focusing on supporting both founders and investors from under-represented groups.
Course syllabus
01
Chapter 1: Why storytelling?
Learn how storytelling is a unique skill, and how it underlies everything you do as a leader. We'll cover examples of how stories take the facts and messages about your business, and package them up so other people will pay attention. You will start crafting your own stories right away!
02
Chapter 2: Crafting a Hook
Your audience is bombarded with messages everyday. In order to stand out and be remembered, your story needs a hook. Great hooks will stick with the audience long term and bring them back to your story again and again. You'll learn how to evaluate hooks and build your own!
03
Chapter 3: Building Foundations
Great stories are built on solid foundations. You need to link your story to something familiar, while also introducing them to something new. Learn how to structure your story for maximum impact. You will learn how to tell stories through data, not just words and pictures!
04
Chapter 4: Knitting Narratives
Your narrative is what ties together everything else that you say and do about your business. It weaves through your pitch, your marketing and even your job descriptions making them all stronger and more memorable. You'll learn to use the 3 different kinds of narrative and the advantages to each!
05
Chapter 5: Cliffhangers
It's not enough to have a great story, you need your audience to come back for more. Whether it's a potential customer, job candidate or investor you need them to want to learn more about you and your story is why they will. You will learn where your story should end, to leave them wanting more!
Course schedule
5-8 hours per week
Class Sessions
9:00pm - 10:00am PST
We'll have a live discussion every other day (Monday, Wednesday and Fridays) to cover the Chapter concepts and answer questions.
Class projects
5 hours per week
There will be projects associated with each class session that will follow up on and reinforce the concepts we review. These are optional.
Learning is better with cohorts
Active learning, not passive watching
This course builds on live workshops and hands-on projects
Interactive and project-based
You’ll be interacting with other learners through breakout rooms and project teams
Learn with a cohort of peers
Join a community of like-minded people who want to learn and grow alongside you