True storytelling: When stories are invisible
Some weeks ago I had someone in the audience asking me the following question: “Isn’t there too many people trying to pitch their product with a story that it’s better that you differentiate yourself by not using stories at all?”. I had to agree with him. The problem is, once
Are startup pitches really THAT important?
The plague of start-up accelerators has brought one clear thing, pitching fatigue. People are sick to their heart of pitch practice sessions, how to do the ultimate investor deck and similar topics. Every time someone mentions the word demo-day you can see the eye rolling conga. It’s not that most
Heading to TNW Conference
For all the traveling I did this year, 2013 has been pretty quite for me. I needed my rest and I’ve enjoyed staying home for more than one week straight. Like many of my colleagues all over the world, conference fatigue symptoms have been appearing left and right. Now, I’ve decided to
The future of books: Crowdfunding
I’m a huge book fan. Not only do I have a massive library at home, but I’ve embraced all the new e-book technologies and I’ve been the proud owner of at least five different e-book readers so far. Having used them extensively, both as a reader and a writer, I’ve
Connecting a story with content
One of the most common questions I get when I give a talk on storytelling for start-ups is how to expand the story all the way to the financial slides or business model slides. It seems unavoidable to be boring and dull while walking over those concepts. It is indeed,
Tech Cofounders: Lack of developers or lack of imagination?
“Hello, my name is X and I’m looking for a tech cofounder“. This is the natural state of my inbox as of lately. That there is a scarcity of developers is not news. You can read it everywhere. What is rare though, are people trying to fix this. As always,
Organizational storytelling, what is it?
Storytelling is one of those abilities that are really hard to sell, specially in a corporate setting. There are two main reasons. The first one is what I call, the “Once upon a time” issue. Most people, when exposed to the concept of storytelling can only think about fairy tales.
Are you a good storyteller?
I believe few people truly understand the role of the storyteller. There is much written about the art of storytelling, but few people devote a single line to the person behind the curtain. Telling stories is becoming more and more important in any organization, but we still don’t understand what
Storytelling is about simplicity
I recently was going through a company’s product, trying to understand how it worked and how could we tell a good story about it. The product was deeply technical. For those of you that have ever talked with an engineer, you probably know how the conversation looked like. While I’m
The Thank You therapy
Some weeks ago there was a heated argument over an article on why the Spanish aren’t entrepreneurs. Despite the attention screaming title, the article hit on some good points and, in my opinion, plenty of cliches. We had a rather large thread in Tetuan Valley about the article and what
