Creating a pitch deck and meeting with investors are both elemental aspects of the fundraising process—but there is something critical that needs to happen before this in order to have a successful fundraise. Once you’ve decided you are ready to fundraise, the first thing to do is to put together a compelling narrative.

I firmly believe that investors invest in (and employees join, and journalists write about) compelling stories.

I specifically start with a narrative and not a pitch deck when getting ready to fundraise. Your pitch deck is really just a vehicle for telling your story. So first, nail your narrative and only then should you build a pitch deck.

While building a successful business is 99% of a founder’s job, perfecting and pitching the company’s narrative is a critical 1%—but this 1% can make all the difference to your success.

Crafting a compelling narrative
The best advice I ever got on narratives was from Slava Akhmechet (Stripe, RethinkDB) on a matter totally unrelated to raising money. He said that every major story in human history followed the same story arc:
1. The world is a certain way
2. Something changes
3. The world is now different

This may seem obvious, but I love the simplicity of it. I bet you that any great story you can think of right now follows this outline and your narrative should follow the same arc.

The 3-part narrative for fundraising

The world is a certain way — Here you outline your background and the current state of the market: How you were introduced to the problem, why you are an expert, and the order of magnitude of the problem today (it should be big!).

Something changes — This is your solution to the problem. As well as why you are the right person and why now is the ideal time to solve it.

The world is now different — Now explain how your solution changed the world: think product traction (metrics / milestone-focused traction). The remaining opportunity, or, why your traction will continue an increase exponentially.

Your narrative must be concise and accessible. Anything that doesn’t powerfully support one of these three points I would leave out.

I view this narrative as a story you tell through a conversation. If you have a powerful narrative you should be able to have a conversation with someone who is a novice in your industry and guide them through it, and at the end they should think your company is amazing and probably going to be very successful. In fact, to refine my narrative I often do exactly this (it doesn’t have to be with potential investors—more on this below) and use it to iterate on the story I …