Storytelling is your most underrated founder superpower
I came across Katie Deighton's piece in the Wall Street Journal last week. The headline caught me: "Companies are desperately seeking storytellers."
Google building a storytelling team for Cloud. Microsoft hiring a senior director of narrative. Vanta posting a "Head of Storytelling" role at $274,000.
Reading it, I felt a mix of validation and frustration. Validation because this is something I've been pushing founders on for years. Frustration because so few of them listen until it's too late.
Why this matters for founders
As someone who's spent a decade helping early-stage founders with marketing, storytelling is one of the first things I try to get them to work on.
And it's one of the first things they deprioritize.
I get it. When you're caught up in fundraising, product development, and figuring out sales, sitting down to craft your narrative feels like a luxury with uncertain results. Some even cringe at the thought of sounding immodest and unbelieving in their personal stories being so pivotal. Eventually it's something founders decide to get to later. After the next funding round is closed.
But here's what I've noticed across hundreds of founders I've worked with: the successful ones almost always have a strong story. Not necessarily a polished one. But a clear one. A story they can tell in 60 seconds that makes you lean in.
What is this "new storytelling" everyone's talking about?
LinkedIn job postings mentioning "storyteller" doubled in the past 12 months. On earnings calls, executives mentioned "storytelling" 469 times this year. Up from 359 last year.
The reason is simple. Traditional media is shrinking. Newspaper circulation is down 70% since 2005. There are fewer journalists to pitch. The free publicity channel that companies relied on for decades has narrowed.
So companies are becoming their own publishers. And publishers need storytellers.
And with AI making content creation easier than ever, the bottleneck has shifted. Anyone can generate words now. What they can't generate is a story worth telling. The founders who win will be the ones with a compelling narrative that their team can bring to life across every channel, with AI as an accelerant.
But here's what most get wrong. They think storytelling means better marketing copy. It doesn't.
What are the elements of good storytelling?
The companies winning at this understand something fundamental. Good storytelling isn't about your product. It's about transformation.
For founders, the core elements:
- A hero (the founder or the people you serve)
- A struggle (the problem that made you start this)
- A guide (the insight or experience that qualifies you)
- A transformation (the change you're creating in the world)
"We increased efficiency by 40%" is not a story. But "I watched three sales teams I worked with struggle with the same problem. I knew there had to be a better way." That's a story. It has stakes. It has a reason to exist.
When Chime posted their storytelling job, they got 500 applications. Most were former journalists. People who understand narrative structure instinctively. But founders can learn it too.
Why storytelling is directly connected to founder-led sales
Here's the pattern I keep seeing.
The founders who can tell a compelling story close deals faster. Not because they're better salespeople. But because storytelling and selling are the same skill.
When you pitch an investor, you're telling a story. When you demo your product, you're telling a story. When you recruit your first engineer, you're telling a story.
Founder-led sales is the biggest lever most early-stage companies have. And storytelling is what makes that lever work.
The gift keeps giving too. Even if your current startup doesn't work out, the storytelling muscle you build stays with you. I've watched founders fail at one company and succeed at the next, largely because they learned how to communicate their vision clearly the first time around.
How can founders become better storytellers?
You don't need to hire a $274K storytelling executive. But you do need to shift how you communicate.
Start with your origin story. Not "we founded the company in 2019." But "I was sitting in a meeting watching our sales team struggle with the same problem for the third time that month. I thought: there has to be a better way."
Collect customer stories obsessively. The best content you'll ever create comes from your customers' words, not yours. Ask them: "What was the moment you knew this was working?"
Stop leading with what you do. Start with why it matters. "We help companies automate invoicing" is forgettable. "Finance teams waste 11 hours a week on tasks a machine could do in minutes" is interesting.
What is one benefit of internal storytelling?
The job postings focus on external storytelling. But the biggest benefit might be internal.
When your product team understands the customer story, they build better features. When your sales team can tell transformation stories, they close faster. When new hires understand the founding narrative, they make better decisions.
Notion just merged their internal comms, external comms, social, and influencer teams into one storytelling function. The story needs to be consistent everywhere.
At Altorise, we've seen this play out repeatedly. The clients who nail their internal narrative first. Who can explain "why we exist" in one sentence. They're the ones whose external content actually resonates.
The bottom line
We're in a noisy world. Every platform is saturated. Every inbox is full.
The companies breaking through aren't the ones with bigger ad budgets. They're the ones with clearer, more authentic stories.
I'm grateful Katie Deighton wrote that piece. It puts a spotlight on something I've believed for a long time: storytelling isn't a nice-to-have. It's a founder's most underrated superpower.
And unlike product-market fit, it's something you can start working on today.
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