TBC: Finding the Perfect Blend of Data and Narrative

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Hey there, welcome to another episode of the Back Channel. In today's episode, I wanted to recount a question that I got from a founder, which is about this idea of how to balance how much data to put into a story and how much non data to put into a story. What is the optimal mix when it comes to Effective, impactful, and convincing storytelling.

I actually think this is a bit of a false dichotomy, or rather, a false separation of things within a story. Your goal as a founder, whether it's to convince an investor to invest in you, or an employee, a potential employee to join you, or maybe a customer to sign up with you, is to tell the most impactful story that you can.

And sometimes the most impactful story Sometimes the most impactful story has no data. It has a lot to do with what stage of company you're at and what data you do have access to. [00:01:00] I tend to believe if you have great data, then yes, you're going to use that data within your story to make the points that you're trying to make.

Hit harder, have more credibility to them. But you shouldn't feel like the whole point of telling a story or adding data is just to add data because you've heard you need to have data. Sometimes I see founders who have this anxiety about not having any traction, and they still add little bits of data.

around where they are and they share things like, Oh, we have, you know, 50 new users when that's a very accurate piece of data, but it doesn't tell an amazing story. It says you're kind of nowhere. So what I would say is figure out what the most impactful story you have access to is. And if that story is supported by data and is added to by incorporating data, then add the data, but don't add bad data just because it's data.

So, when I think about this, um, go figure out what your [00:02:00] best story is. One last bit of encouragement or advice is the reality is if you find out your story isn't good and you're trying to figure it out, should I add data? Should I not add data? The right answer might be to keep working on your company so that you can build a great story

that will then convince investors to come along for the ride. Okay, I hope that clears up a little bit about this random question around data versus no data, how to tell the best story, and I'll see you next time on the Back Channel.

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