Founder’s Handbook: Stories are leverage; without a product, it's just self-amusement

Author: Joel John, Decentralised.co

Translation: Felix, PANews

Many marketing campaigns in the crypto space fail perhaps because founders and teams don’t know how to “tell stories.” Decentralised.co, a research and writing platform focused on Web3, was founded by Joel John, who is also the main author. In this article, he discusses the importance and methodology of storytelling. Below are the details.

My career has witnessed three venture capital funds and one hedge fund go from nothing to something. Over the past three years, I have also achieved the same with Siddharth and Saurabh Deshpande for DCo. In many ways, my career revolves around culture, capital, and cryptocurrency. As someone whose professional life mainly involves storytelling and capital accumulation, here are some key points I hope entrepreneurs will understand.

A story is what remains after a click or a view. It is the imprint left in people’s minds when they recall a brand, even long after the marketing message has been digested. Some call it influence. Personally, I believe that a story symbolizes what a brand represents. Apple encourages you to “Think Different,” Nike advocates “Just Do It,” and Kanye West urges you to “Love Yourself.”

The impact of a good story includes the various emotions people feel, their thought processes, and the cognitive share that a brand accumulates in people’s minds.

If you can create influence and resonance within 10 seconds, build your brand around that. If you believe what you are creating has depth and requires time to unfold, then invest in media formats that attract people to spend time.

Media is always changing, but ultimately, what determines the quality of a brand story are the choices that shape the brand. Founders often think that some media exposure equals storytelling. Actually, that’s not the case. Media simply condenses the founder’s claims. If they cannot clearly communicate their message to creative teams trying to tell the brand story, there will be no story to write. These founders also spend a lot on marketing but still wonder where the problem lies.

• Large events are not stories.
• Sponsorship ads are not stories.
• Talking about your fundraising in VC discussions is not a story.
• Employees sharing your content is not a story.
• Traders mentioning your stock price is not a story.

The quantification of media reduces creators to clicks and numbers. When creators are quantified by metrics and assigned by algorithms—their motivation becomes collaborating with every brand and monetizing every exposure.

A brand endorsed by creators working with all brands does not truly represent any one brand.

Audiences understand that brands are in it to make money. Creators understand that collaborations are to expand influence. Brands also understand that creators only care about how much they can earn. Stories built on indifference are not worth anyone’s time.

This is the current state of the attention economy. It was once a fertile ground for stories to flourish, but now it has become a toxic pond of AI-generated garbage, nauseating. It compresses culture into dopamine hits, simplifies emotions into instant expressions, and quantifies what should be felt.

If I just raised $45 billion for a venture fund, I think I would smile like that too.

In the hands of great capitalists, a story is leverage. Masa, when explaining the future to the Saudi crown prince, can raise $1 billion every minute—this is his story. Elon Musk leading a generation to aspire to live on Mars is another story. Steve Jobs dedicated himself to making computers personal, which is also a story. The commonality among them is how stories empower them. Stories help in capital formation because they are more memorable than numbers. The language of finance is numbers, but its grammar is driven by emotionally charged stories.

Advertising is a clear call to action. Stories, on the other hand, are implicit calls to adventure. You cannot fully outsource this to your team. The best entrepreneurs personally craft their stories. Of course, they leverage external help to convey, iterate, and spread their stories. But the core premise must be set by them. You cannot just hand it over to others casually. Like a garden, stories need to be cultivated, planned, fertilized, nurtured, and cherished—often requiring teamwork.

About Chris Sacca—perhaps my favorite venture capital figure—his story

Steve Jobs spent about 13 years building Pixar before returning to Apple. During that time, he worked with Ed Catmull to understand how to tell great stories, with emotion and rhythm. Technology needs to be human-centered to have social impact.

The Disney stock Steve Jobs acquired through the Pixar deal earned him more than what he made at Apple.

Most founders cannot afford to acquire a studio and spend 14 years on it. But they might support creative people. Stripe does this through its media initiatives. Ramp often does so by sponsoring podcasts. Henrik Karlsson calls this a “circle.” He believes shaping our social graph is fundamental to forming our worldview. If you want to craft great stories—develop the habit of appreciating excellent writers, follow them, leave comments, and before writing, understand the essence of outstanding works.

If Michael Jordan hadn’t won so many championship rings, would his sneakers still matter?

Without practical products or iterative releases, stories are overrated. You can have the most viral marketing campaign that moves people, but if ultimately no product can be used by users, invested in, and sustained, all that effort is wasted. Founders often confuse viral media campaigns with attractiveness. They are not the same. Attractiveness lies in the emotional connection people develop through repeated use of a product. Without a product, there is no story.

If Apple’s products weren’t so inspiring, its “Think Different” campaign would be very different. Many failed crypto marketing campaigns are due to this. They create hype on platforms like X but leave users confused. Worse, a flood of jargon makes users feel lost. If you don’t want to target a large potential market, just use jargon.

A story related to capital markets will be affected by price movements. If your price chart is trending downward, effective marketing might actually cause pain because it reminds people of their losses. That’s why top creators almost never “issue tokens for themselves.”

In crypto, marketers often confuse tokens (a product) with their functions (also a product) and use cases (usually a UI). The story of a token is reflected in its price; its function is reflected in its governance mechanism; and its use case is what should be marketed. These three are distinct stories and should not be mixed. Founders often combine them. Worse, they engage in overly optimistic “cotton candy tests,” promising price surges and leading people to adopt a bearish mindset.

You should communicate the fundamentals of tokens through data products, explain their functions via DAO forums, and showcase their use cases in X posts. Different media, different audiences.

As capital markets and the attention economy intertwine, those who tell the best stories will be able to influence markets. Hindenburg Research is a company that uses excellent storytelling to allocate and support capital. Packy McCormick runs a venture fund while writing one of the best newsletters online. Storytellers with distribution channels can amplify the leverage of capital to maximize their own benefits.

A great story without a product may last longer than a good product without a story. But unless both are intertwined to create enough profit margins for survival, there is only one inevitable outcome: extinction.

Inspiration may come randomly, but you won’t wake up one morning and become an athlete or warrior. Becoming an influential writer is the same. Storytelling is a skill that requires time to hone. Cultivating taste and insight into storytelling presentation will bring unexpected rewards over time.

One point to understand is that no one cares. You have countless opportunities to try. As long as you don’t flood people with shoddy content but provide what they want, the audience’s tolerance can far exceed your expectations.

Inspiration doesn’t always strike while working at your desk. As krs.eth often reminds us: many inspirations come from extreme exploration. You need to immerse yourself in random side tasks unrelated to your main work. All the secrets are hidden there.

Related reading: From Foundation to Pull, Sharp Review of 21 Mainstream Crypto Narratives for 2025