Besides understanding your industry which is great for unit economics and possessing a super analytic mind, a very important tool you should have as a Founder, Cofounder, COO, CTO etc is a strong Story telling Skill.
A Story telling skill helps you to maximize the opportunities the Social Media era provides for influencer marketing. A CEO, COO or CTO should be the first Influencer for their brand. It allows you to build followership and grow traction without spending money initially.
While you may be able to pay for this service either by signing influencer for the brand or employing someone to write for you, except you started off with some funding before launch, you will soon find out that you need some traction before investors will talk to you.
Even when you have traction, you will find that confidence and believability are key to landing investors and good story telling skills enhances your chances.
Thankfully, you can learn story telling. There are basic building blocks and dynamics of story telling. This is a developing article. I will probably write a second part to provide more detailed info on how you can start on your way to building your story telling skills.
Before then some tips:
1. Study the fundamentals of writing - start with sentence structure.
2. Shorter sentences are much better and ensure not to repeat words in a sentence.
3. A paragraph should convey an idea.
4. Don't tell long winded stories - you lose everyone before you have started.
5. Study and follow some good Story telling CEOs. I recommend Big Chief (Victor Asemota) and Jason Njoku [Can you name more?]
6. Take courses on creative writing and story telling. LinkedIn has some free courses.
Uche Aniche Convener, #StartupSouth