Web3 industry insiders reveal the "Founder’s Handbook": Stories are leverage; without a product, it's just self-entertainment

Decentralised.co founder Joel John points out that the core reason for marketing failures in crypto is the inability to tell stories. Truly effective storytelling must be built on products, culture, and long-term beliefs, rather than short-term exposure.

Many marketing activities in the crypto industry fail perhaps because the founders’ teams don’t know how to “tell stories.” Joel John, founder and main writer of the research and writing platform Decentralised.co focused on Web3, posted an article interpreting the importance and methodology of good storytelling. Below are the details.

My career has witnessed 3 venture capital funds and 1 hedge fund from inception to success. Over the past 3 years, I have also achieved the same feat 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 clicks or views. It is the impression left in people’s minds when they think of a brand, even long after marketing messages have been digested. Some call it influence. Personally, I believe a story symbolizes what a brand represents. Apple encourages you to “Think Different,” Nike advocates “Just Do It,” and Kanye West encourages you to “Love Yourself.”

The impact of a good story includes the emotions people feel, their thought processes, and the market share of recognition accumulated in people’s minds.

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

Media is always changing, but ultimately, the decisions that determine a brand story’s quality are made by those shaping the brand. Founders often think that some media exposure is a story. Actually, that’s not the case. Media simply condenses the founder’s claims. If they cannot clearly communicate their stance to creative personnel trying to tell the brand story, there will be no story to write. These founders also invest heavily in 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.

Image source: Joel John

Quantification by media reduces creators to clicks and digital metrics. When creators are quantified digitally and their content is distributed by algorithms— their motivation becomes collaborating with every brand and monetizing every exposure.

A brand endorsed by creators working with all brands actually does not truly represent any 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 money they can make. Stories built on a foundation where no one cares are not worth anyone’s time.

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

Image source: Joel John

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

In the hands of excellent capitalists, stories are leverage. Masa, when telling the Saudi crown prince about the future, can raise 100 million yuan every minute—that’s his story. Elon Musk leading a generation to aspire to life on Mars is another story. Steve Jobs dedicated himself to personalizing computers, which is also a story. The commonality among them is how stories empower them. Stories help form capital because they are more memorable than digits. The language of finance is numerical, but its syntax is driven by emotionally charged stories.

Advertising is a clear call to action. Stories 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 fundamental premise of the story is devised by themselves. You cannot hand it over casually. Like a garden, stories need tilling, planning, fertilizing, nurturing, and cherishing—and often require teamwork.

Image source: Joel John

About Chris Sacca, perhaps my favorite venture investor profile.

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.

Image source: Joel John

The Disney stock Steve Jobs gained through acquiring Pixar was more than what he earned at Apple.

Most founders do not have the resources 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 sponsors podcasts to achieve this. 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.

Image source: Joel John

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 hottest marketing campaigns that move people, but if ultimately there are no products for users to use, invest time and effort in, and continue using, all that effort will be wasted. Founders often confuse viral media campaigns with attractiveness. They are not the same. Attractiveness lies in the emotions generated by repeated use of the product. Without a product, there is no story.

If Apple’s products weren’t so inspiring, its “Think Different” marketing campaign would be very different. Many crypto marketing failures stem from this. They create hype on platforms like X but leave users confused. Worse, a flood of jargon makes users bewildered. If you don’t want to target a large 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, as it reminds people of how much money they lost. That’s also why top creators rarely “airdrop” tokens themselves.

In the crypto industry, marketers often confuse tokens (a product), 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 marketing should focus on. These three are distinct stories and should not be mixed. Founders often combine them. Worse, they indulge 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 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 allocates capital and supports itself through excellent storytelling. Packy McCormick runs a venture fund while writing one of the best online newsletters. Storytellers with distribution channels can amplify the leverage of capital to maximize their own interests.

A great story without a product might last longer than a good product without a story. But unless both are intertwined to create enough profit margins to survive, 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 yield unexpected returns over time.

One point to understand is that no one cares. You have countless opportunities to try. As long as you don’t spam people with shoddy content but provide what they want, your audience’s tolerance may 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 secrets are hidden there.

• This article is reprinted with permission from: 《PANews》
• Original title: 《On stories》
• Original author: Joel John, Decentralised.co
• Translation: Felix, PANews