“You can have the best product in the world, but if nobody knows about it, what good is it?”

Phil Knight, founder of Nike

Introduction

As a growing startup, you’re embarking on an exciting journey—one that involves not only building a product that will change the world, but you need to make sure the world knows about your vision and is interested in your mission.

Crafting a compelling startup narrative is crucial for attracting investors, customers, and partners. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the essential steps to create your first PR material and set the stage for success.

At Influence Matters Startups, we’ve worked with tens of startups, and over 100 clients since 2015, helping them shape their narratives and getting them noticed in ways that got them into every Apple store in China, be compared to Pied Piper from the show Silicon Valley by the leading tech news website in Asia, and helped them be noticed by investors and raise millions of dollars.

1. Define Your Purpose Clearly

Start with a Workshop

Before penning down your narrative, gather your core team—founders, employees, and key stakeholders. Conduct a workshop to dive deep into your startup’s essence:

• Mission and Vision: Define your purpose. Why does your startup exist? What change do you want to bring to the world? Your mission and vision statements should resonate with everyone involved. What is the best way to write your mission and vision, so it is understood by all external stakeholders?
• Product story: Discuss how you want your stakeholders to think about your products and solutions. How does it solve real problems? What pain points does it address? This understanding will fuel your storytelling.

At Influence Matters Startups, we built a methodology to run such a workshop and extract the most important points out of founders who sometimes think about their story in too technical or abstract terms.

Case Study:

KAITERRA

Launching a Groundbreaking new Air Quality Monitor in Style

Influence Matters designed a launch event that would build the reputation of Kaiterra and make headlines for their first product in China and beyond, from the Embassy of Switzerland in Beijing.

2. Crafting Your Story

Shape Your Narrative. The Overarching theme and Story House

Now that you have insights, shape your startup story. You will have 3 sets of documents that need to be written in a way that provides clear and concise information:

• Company Story: Write down in short paragraphs the vision for the business and purpose of your startup into clear, impactful statements. These will guide your communication efforts.
• Product Introductions: Describe your product succinctly. Highlight its uniqueness and value proposition. Make it compelling for different target customer groups (no more than 3 if they are very distinct from each other).
• Team Stories: People connect with people. The most important value of the startup is the founder and the initial team. Write down a few paragraphs about the founders, the team, their vision and the strengths they bring to the mission.

Listen and Adapt

Your narrative isn’t static. Seek feedback from stakeholders, journalists, and early users. Adapt based on their responses. Refine your messaging as you learn and grow. Your stakeholders will appreciate that you want their feedback and take into account their comments. Consider having an external conduct the feedback survey. It is part of Influence Matters Startups’ methodology to survey our client’s stakeholders to ensure an impartial eye on the story.

3. The First Press Kit

Essential Components

Your press kit is your startup’s introduction to the world, the first material you will send to journalists and make available on your website for an introduction to your business and products. start with the following documents:

1. Mission and Vision: Clearly articulate your startup’s mission and vision. Make it easy for journalists and potential partners to understand. These should both fit on one page.

The mission is the core purpose of an organization. It answers the question: “Why does this organization exist?” It succinctly describes what the organization aims to achieve, the problems it seeks to solve, and the impact it wants to make. A well-crafted mission statement provides clarity to employees, stakeholders, and customers about the fundamental reason for the organization’s existence.

The vision is a forward-looking statement that outlines the desired future state of the organization. It answers the question: “Where do we want to be in the long term?” A compelling vision inspires and motivates. It sets ambitious goals, defines success, and serves as a guiding light for strategic decisions. Unlike the mission, which focuses on the present, the vision looks ahead and paints a picture of what the organization aspires to become.

2. Product Overview: Provide a concise yet powerful description of your product. What problem does it solve? How does it make lives better? If you have several products, consider having one document per product

3. Founder Profiles: Showcase the faces behind the startup. Share their backgrounds, motivations, and the spark that ignited your venture. Each profile reads like an introduction to the founder, not a resume. Write in paragraphs rather than bullet points. There should be no more than two or three profiles in your press kit at first, each on separate documents, include a professional profile picture.

4. Using your press kit: introduce your startup to the press

Now that you have a well-rounded story to clearly explain why your startup exists, and why stakeholders should care, you are ready to connect with the press. Read our next blog in the series to learn more about how.

In the meantime, get in touch with Influence Matters so they can guide you through this process. We’ve worked with founders in fintech, semiconductor, blockchain, web3, gaming, smart city, logistics, clean tech… and many other industries to shape their stories.