How the founders tell you about your entrepreneurial story

Compiled from medium, the author is an Elisa Schreiber from the Silicon Valley venture Greylock. My job at Greylock Parners gives me the opportunity to work closely with entrepreneurs to help them plan their marketing strategies. I've found that in any industry, the best storytelling companies can recruit the best people, get long-term customers, and build lasting brands. What's your story? Your story cannot be told in chronological order of company development. The mistake most companies make is to start with the founder's sweet story. For example, "I and my co-founder are working together in XX company, we met, we successfully developed 3 products." The whole process was enjoyable, so we decided to work together to develop the new product because we found the market in this area very promising. "It's definitely a wrong way. A good story should include the following: 1 What you offer, 2 who you serve, and 3 why you are different.　　　In fact, considering a problem in this way can be helpful in making other decisions in the future. What you offer: This section gives a brief description of the needs of your market. Who to serve: Consumers should be at the heart of your story. With them your company can exist, your purpose is to serve consumers, they are your story the real protagonist. Why you are different: You can't just list your features. "Why you are different" should indicate which members are on the team, what the company's values are and what principles you believe in. The company's differences will affect the entire company's culture, recruitment and retention of talent, the team launched product services and the team's long-term development. These factors, in turn, affect the people who have judged you: journalists, consumers, partners and investors. Who will tell you the story first to make clear who needs to hear your story. Most businesses will make sound through the media, but you can't just tell stories to the media. You need people who are available or likely to be recruited by the company, and are telling your stories to consumers, partners, and even competitors, that is, everyone in your circle needs to know your story. Each member of the team should be the narrator of the company story. This article, recently published by Chris Kang of LinkedIn, is a classic example. Chris, a strategic advisor, wrote a detailed blog about the challenges they faced at LinkedIn, describing what it was like to work with LinkedIn and explaining why she loved her job. She's not a PR person, she's a member of the LinkedIn team and is willing to tell the story of the company and share it with her social circle. This is the most powerful way to tell a company story. The key to storytelling in this way is that the internal situation of the company should be consistent with that of the outside. Company employeesStories to tell friends after work should be told to the media by the company's PR department. About people: A case study I was responsible for the publicity work in Hulu before I joined Greylock. One of the reasons I joined Hulu at the time was an article written by the founder of the company called "Hulu is" (What defines Hulu). This article was born before the founders started writing code. What Hulu is is an extremely challenging article, not a list of "corporate values" or a bunch of "mission statements" by many companies. Instead, it includes the following: our expectations are very high and we are responsible for ourselves. We do all the dirty work dirty, and no one in the company is above the task. We've all dealt with countless video thumbnails, including the annoying 1992 season of Tequila & Bonetti. When I read this original version of what Hulu is, I feel crazy, dizzy, like a free fall, I found my place, this is my home. Isn't that the kind of state that every brand marketer wants to make their customers feel? This article is concise and the founding team is writing carefully. Those who joined Hulu later adhered to the guidelines. We often mention it at a company meeting or team lunch, which is our code of conduct. But the most important part of this article is that it warns people who disagree with their values to walk away and not join Hulu. There are some things that are not important to Hulu, including: the title of the scenery, the exquisite office furniture, the hierarchical system and the fine lunch (Quizno's and local Mexican tacos are our standard lunches). Although many people apparently don't care about these things, we find that many people actually care. But it's okay to say Hulu is not the right person. It is because of this article that Hulu attracts a lot of talented people and builds a first-class development team, which has maintained a strong corporate culture in the process of growing up. This article profoundly influenced my opinion on propaganda. When I was working at Hulu, we almost never had a press release. All external announcements are posted through our blogs and are communicated directly to the user. We do not communicate with our customers as companies, but as ordinary people and others to talk about things that are important to both of us. Now, I also encourage greylock investment companies to write such articles. In my case, I wrote a similar article when I joined Greylock, which has become a guide to guide us in media, design and activities. Here, for you to do marketing colleagues a piece of advice: don't try to beautify everything. Find your True "Polaris" and write it down, and let it guide you in your direction. Note: "What is Hulu" has recently changed dramatically, and the above refers to the mostInitial version, rather than the recently released new edition of the Hulu.com site. This article was originally published in "Fortune" [this article compiled from: Medium.com, Fortune.com]