This is the same reason that so many startups are welcoming more individual investors, particularly those who can help tell their story, onto the cap table. It creates more surface area for more people to tell the company’s story, which lets companies control their own narrative.

NFTs have owned the conversation in a small-but-growing niche, and they’ve done it not by telling one, consistent story -- there is no NFT, Inc. -- but by giving people the tools, ownership, and incentives to go tell the million little stories about NFTs that build up to one loud narrative.

The old way to build a positive narrative was to tell a consistent story about yourself over time. The new way is to have other people tell your story for you, either directly or by association.

I think this is why certain NFT projects, even new ones, do well while others flop. Pudgy Penguins, Art Blocks, and Bored Ape Yacht Club have all captured the attention and imagination of communities of people, who in turn tell the projects’ stories, which forms a narrative around the projects that give them staying power. They built worlds in... See more

What’s new is that today, power lies in sharing the mic.

The big idea was that companies and investors should be able to tell their own stories, directly.

• Stories are discrete. One essay, one event, one customer experience. Someone might say, “Did you hear the story about Company X doing thing Y?”


• Narratives are made up of all of the stories about a company, which crystallize into what people believe and say about the company as a whole. The narrative around a company is similar to its reputation

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In World Building, Danco argued that yes, everything is sales, but sales isn’t enough. You need to build worlds. In a world of “abundant narrative and complex choices… You need to build a world so rich and captivating that others will want to spend time in it, even if you’re not there.”

But as things get more and more abstract, as we move evermore towards a world of abundance, and as more and more of what we do and buy is for things beyond survival -- like social capital, entertainment, and utility -- the ability to weave a good narrative out of a tapestry of little stories is more valuable than it ever has been. How best to do... See more