The Bigger Narrative

Learn why Nick Francis bet everything on a new business model—and about the new strategic narrative he built to make sense of it for his team, his investors, and his customers. With my mom on a rare vacation, my sister steps in to take the intro call.

Choosing the right enemy is critical for a great strategic narrative. Also, my mom proposes an tweak to Influ2’s name.

A $6.5B services company adopts a new strategic narrative to convey differentiation in its market and guide employees. Also, my mom wants to get more personal.

How one of the world’s largest medical device makers is using a new strategic narrative to differentiate its software offerings from those of its biggest competitor.

Foxglove’s “Goodbye prototypes, Hello production” narrative became a strategic North Star not only for selling, but also for how CEO Adrian Macneil’s team fleshes out product roadmap.

NorthOne started as an online bank for small businesses—it’s backed by top-tier VCs including Redpoint and Battery Ventures—but the vision from the beginning was to go beyond banking to add automation/intelligence around things billing, cash management—all the stuff big companies take for granted, but that small ones still struggle with. As Northone began rolling out those capabilities, however, CEO Eytan Bensoussan and his team struggled to describe what NorthOne was becoming—to customers, investors, and job candidates. So together we built a narrative around what NorthOne now calls “Connected Banking.” In this episode we dive into what that means and how Eytan and his team got there.

As OneTrust grew through acquisition, CEO Kabir Barday craved a new narrative to help buyers, investors, and employees make sense of what it was becoming. My mom likes that I showed up to my first call with Kabir sweaty from ultimate frisbee.

How Redox evolved from pitching what was essentially a technology brag to a strategic narrative about a change in the world that starts with its customers’ customers. My mom even gets what Redox does, sort of.

To power its next phase of growth, Kandji is telling a bigger story. My mom agrees you have to limit the number of people in a working group to achieve alignment.

Sloan talks about aligning Contentful’s team and customers around a new strategic narrative about “Composable Content” to evolve the company, which has raised nearly $350 million, beyond its roots as a “headless” content management system.