Narrative strategy
for tech teams

Narrative strategy is the process of turning what you’ve built into a story that makes people care — investors, users, partners. It’s not copywriting or branding in the traditional sense. It’s figuring out what your company actually stands for, who needs to hear it first, and how to say it so it lands. For technical founders, especially in AI and fintech, the gap between what you’ve built and how you talk about it is usually the biggest bottleneck to growth. According to CB Insights, 14% of startups fail due to poor articulation of what made them different.

Before your first fundraise, or the moment you realize people don’t react to your product. The earlier you lock in your narrative, the less you spend fixing confused messaging later. Ideally, you want your positioning clear before you build your pitch deck, launch your website, or start producing content because all of those are downstream of how you talk about what you do. Teams that come to me pre-launch save roughly 2–3 months of rework compared to those who try to retrofit a story onto scattered messaging. If investors are interested but not converting, or users sign up but don’t stick, that’s the signal.

Marketing is distribution, it gets the word out. Narrative strategy is what you’re actually saying when you do. You can run ads, post on X and LinkedIn, and show up at every conference, but if the core message doesn’t land, you’re just spending money on noise. A study by Edelman found that 81% of consumers need to trust a brand before they’ll buy from it. Narrative strategy builds that trust layer: the logic of why you exist, who you’re for, and why now. Marketing then amplifies it. Most startups I work with don’t have a marketing problem; they have a clarity problem. Fix the story first, then scale it.

Most teams feel the shift within 2–4 weeks of having their narrative locked. Your pitch conversations get shorter and sharper. Investor calls lead somewhere. Your homepage actually converts. The positioning work itself typically takes 2–3 weeks depending on scope. Execution — launch decks, content sequences, announcement strategies — adds another 2–4 weeks. But the first signal usually comes fast: founders tell me their next investor meeting felt completely different. Long-term, startups with consistent positioning see up to 23% higher revenue growth. The work compounds because every piece of content you create afterward is building on the same foundation.

Yes. You don’t have years of inconsistent messaging, confused landing pages, or a pitch deck that’s been Frankensteined by four different people. The Founder Session is designed exactly for this — 90 minutes, you walk out with a written brief and a clear next step. At pre-seed, the narrative is often the product’s first proof point: it shows investors you understand the market and can articulate your edge. If you’re pre-revenue, your story is doing most of the selling. Getting it right early isn’t a luxury, it’s the highest-leverage move you can make.

I work primarily with AI, blockchain, fintech, cybersecurity, and privacy-focused teams. My background includes launching and growing products across DeFi, fintech, and privacy tech. I spent 7+ years in crypto comms, hosted 60+ podcast episodes with builders from major protocols, and spoke at conferences like EthCC and ETHWarsaw. That means I already speak your language. I also work with deep-tech and B2B SaaS teams where the product is genuinely complex and the founding team is technical. If your biggest communication challenge is “how do we explain this to normal people,” we’re probably a good fit.

Absolutely. Investor storytelling is narrative strategy under pressure: you have 15 minutes to make someone believe in a future that doesn’t exist yet. I help you structure the logic of your pitch, sharpen your positioning against competitors, and make sure every slide earns its place. According to DocSend, investors spend an average of 2 minutes and 41 seconds on a pitch deck. That means your narrative has to land fast and stick. I’ll make sure the story they tell is one worth funding.

Agencies are built for execution at scale: ad campaigns, media buys, content calendars. That’s useful when you know what to say and need to say it louder. But if you don’t have the core story figured out yet, scaling the wrong message just burns cash faster. I work upstream of agencies. I help you figure out your positioning, voice, and core narrative before you hand anything off to a team that will amplify it. Think of it as architecture vs. construction. Most startups don’t need a 10-person agency. They need one strategist who understands their space and can give them words they’ll actually use.

It starts with a Founder Session, a 90-minute call where I diagnose the core narrative gaps. Most founders start here because it’s fast and gives you immediate clarity. If we move into a full Narrative Strategy engagement, I spend a week in research and interviews: your product, your market, your competitors, your users. Then I build the positioning doc, pitch variants, and copy. You get one round of revisions, and the final deliverables are ready to use immediately. For Launch Execution, we add a content roadmap and announcement strategy. The whole process runs 3–4 weeks. You get what you need and move on.