A Storytelling Coach More details here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ravishankar-iyer/
This week we are covering storytelling techniques in an article by VC investor Sajith Pai, where he profiles the work done by a startup called Smartstaff. On Monday, we'd looked at how he'd started with a human story and on Tuesday we looked at the principle of 'Show, don't just tell'.
In today's #SOTD, we are looking at two techniques: Extrapolate from one individual story to show the big picture data and use callbacks
a. Show the big picture data
Starting with a human story makes the overall narrative relatable. But ultimately investors want to see the numbers. So it is important to do the math and figure out the total market size.
Investors have a metric for this called the TAM or Total Addressable Market.
Sajith picks up a number from a report by the Indian Staffing Federation, does some basic math and comes up with a jaw-dropping insight (emphasis mine):
b. Use callbacks
The article starts with the story of Mohd. Samim and then dives into Smartstaff's operating model. It then discusses the overall market opportunity.
But then, notice how Sajith ends the piece:
This way of ending a piece is known as a 'callback' or 'referback' (since it refers back to a story element introduced earlier). It is a cool technique used by writers (and standup comedians!) to give the audience a sense of completion to the story
#SOTD 78
Ravi
PS: Here is the context for #SOTD and the 'Ultimate Guide to Storytelling Techniques' framework I use - in case you joined this series late! Here is the archive of previous posts. Click here to subscribe.
A Storytelling Coach More details here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ravishankar-iyer/
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