At Europe’s number one deeptech conference - Hello Tomorrow - deeptech venture, journalism and marketing collided in an exploration of the power of founder storytelling.
As Tamara said in her wrap up – what the audience got wasn’t a panel discussion. It was masterclass.
If you missed the show, don’t worry – we've got you. We’ve boiled down the main talking points and linked to the full video below.
Watch the full panel: “How to Craft Your Deeptech Story” with Tamara Sword, Francesco Moiraghi, Shuo Yang, and Mike Butcher.
OUR PANEL OF EXPERTS
Tamara: “Storytelling is one of humanity’s oldest technologies. And I say technology intentionally because storytelling is a way for us to take complex information, encode it, and make it viral. And in deep tech, storytelling can be an accelerant.”
Mike: “Traditionally, many years ago, people who are coming from the sciences didn’t really court publicity. They went into peer-reviewed journals. My father was a malaria scientist for 40 years, and I was around his house the other day and he was terribly excited because he was having a - he's retired by the way - he was having a paper published in The Lancet. But now of course, in the 21st century, publicity is very key to business and companies."
Shuo: "When you’re a founder, most of you are going to be the smartest person in the room, talking about highly technical terms that make people realise they don't know what the f*** you're saying. And where there's ignorance, the next obvious step emotionally is fear. And then where there is fear, there is the answer no. So part of what you're trying to counter is: you need to use storytelling to create a safe space for your audience - whether it's an investor, whether it's a potential customer, whether it's a potential employee - so that you can create that opportunity for people to take risks and for progress to be made."
Francesco: "Why would somebody from a S&P 500 company - who has way better things to do than to listen to a random founder - trust you to deploy a system and to take a risk with a pilot system? When you see that level of complexity, then you understand how the narrative is basically the only thing that matters."
ThoughtLDR Takeaway: Storytelling isn’t unicorns and rainbows - it's a technology that makes your company story memorable, engaging and viral. Groundbreaking deep tech isn’t enough - without wrapping it in a narrative, your domain expertise can actually intimidate the very audiences you need to convince. Storytelling neutralises fear, makes the unfamiliar feel safe, and helps customers, investors and even talent say “yes” instead of “no.”
Francesco: “Purpose, One hundred percent. The only coherent element that can drive a company through ten years of pain is that sense of purpose. You're not selling to VCs. You're selling to fifteen years of history."
Shuo: “The most compelling founders are able to really articulate not what they're selling or building, but really tell a compelling story of self. Because the story of self is what opens the door that allows the founders to make other people care about that thing that they’re actually building."
ThoughtLDR Takeaway: Great stories are rooted in the founder’s reason for showing up, even when it’s hard. Your product, your go-to-market – these will change as you scale. Purpose is what endures. Get it right and it will carry you through what in deeptech could well be a 10 year journey.
Francesco: "They need support as they need support in other part of their business. If you liberate yourself from the idea that storytelling is a sales thing, and you start thinking it's about crafting the identity of your company, then it doesn't matter if you come from an academic background. You as a founder must own the identity and the narrative is just a way to structure it in a way that's accessible to others. You have to dominate the narrative. You have to be absolutely obsessed with every single detail of that narrative because that’s the identity of the company you’re building. We are in an unprecedented moment where for the first time founders can do much more than they were able to previously do in terms of communicating directly. There are some incredible masterclasses in communications on X by some great founders."
Shuo: "Something of this magnitude of importance cannot be trusted to anyone except the founders. Who’s better suited to tell that deeply personal story of why you, as a human being, are taking the risks for the next five to ten years to build this? Anyone else is doomed to tell an inferior version. When we back founders, we really look for that storytelling potential."
Mike: "Storytelling is really important. When we do TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, it’s in front of 2,000 people in the audience, 10,000 attending the conference, and another 10,000 people watching the live stream. When you pitch on stage in the Battlefield section, you get six minutes to pitch and six minutes of Q&A. To get to that point, those people have gone through six weeks of training with our editorial team – completely free – on how to pitch on the TechCrunch stage. Honestly, it's very tough. And that pitch process sometimes changes the company. Because they start to work that muscle of how to talk about what they do – their short-term vision, midterm, long-term – and things start to change. They go in looking like one company and sometimes they come out a little bit different, actually. Just by over and over, talking about what they're doing. The more you practice, the more you do it, the more you realise there are chinks in the armour.”
ThoughtLDR Takeaway: Every founder needs to own their own story. Sure, founders can and should get help, but you are the guardian of your company’s identity and, if you’re in deeptech, be prepared to tell and retell that story for ten years or more. Deeptech is a long journey with a challenging roadmap - your story is the red thread that can help carry you though.
Shuo: "The short answer is no. Founders should really understand: 90% of investors are awful. They're not going to add value to your company. If you're working with a firm that doesn't have strong storytelling themselves, then it's super unlikely they have anything interesting to teach you about storytelling in itself. A lot of deeptech founders come from academia, but what we're talking about is essentially a performance art. And there is a lot of really interesting learning on how you get good at that. You practice, you train. Finding ways to create positive feedback loops, to actually find safe spaces to start telling the story - but also to start telling the story poorly so you can get that feedback and work on it to become better. Founders that master and find creative ways to do that feedback loop get better faster, then they survive and they ultimately succeed."
Francesco: "It's true, founders will need help. My perspective is more pre-seed which is a stage where there is zero marketing. The logo is awful. The deck is horrible. Worst deck ever for every single company you see. That doesn't matter, right? I discount that to zero. When you come in early, it becomes even more evident that narrative is about identity. Yeah, you will have a fancy logo at some point. You will have a fancy website with weird animations, that doesn't matter. The earlier you get, the more you see the storytelling is a pure element of identity, of how that founder thinks about their company and what they want to build and create."
Mike: "I am a bit concerned we're building a nation of reality distortion field Steve Jobs wannabes. I do think you have to be authentic. You don't have to be like that. You have to be yourself."
Mike: "I was on a Zoom call the other day with a founder, and he was giving me War and Peace about this thing. And I'm like, 'Dude, what is it? What does it do? Can you stop telling me your vision?'" Hang on for a second, how does it work please?
Shuo: "It's a great point. The great story still has to authentic and supported on the foundation of truth - on the foundation of how well your technology works, techno-economics, the realities of physics. It's also really important as investors, we have a responsibility to distinguish where does the story begin and end, does the technology actually work."
Francesco: "Fraud is fraud, guys. But those examples [like Theranos and WeWork] are probably the consequences of seeing storytelling only as sales. If storytelling is an end in itself, then it takes its own direction and the company doesn’t matter anymore. There's a huge hiatus between fraud and a company that is ambitious and crafts a story that's ambitious."
ThoughtLDR Takeaway: It's important not to let a few bad actors be a barrier to unlocking your storytelling power. Your story must have substance and be grounded in truth. A good story opens doors, but if there’s nothing substantive behind or the story becomes an end in itself, it should be a red flag to investors, media and customers.
Shuo: "Everyone cares about storytelling. The best people in the world already work someplace else - they’re already well-compensated. And in the early days of your business, you don’t necessarily have the ability to give them the most lucrative offer. So you need to find something else to really build that compelling story around - hey, why should you change your life, take this risk, and come here and work for me?"
Francesco: "The only way to level the field and to present yourself as a reliable partner - that a company will spend money on, time on, resources on, and also part of their image - the only way to level the field and be able to interact as equals is by virtue of storytelling."
ThoughtLDR Takeaway: A compelling story is how you convince top-tier talent to leave high-paying jobs to build something unproven. As a founder, great storytelling is your edge in a talent war you can’t win on salary alone.
Mike: "The messaging coming out of B2B SaaS is, 'We're going to sort of scan your receipts faster,' or God knows what else. These days, the storytelling right now is AI. That’s the big trend. And obviously we're on Generative AI, and so everyone's got an AI angle. You think you're on your own with an AI angle. Everyone's got one. You've got to think of how you're going to stand out a bit. The advertising world has a phrase called “cut through.” In other words, you’ve got to cut through the market and stand out.
The advertising world talks about "cut through". In journalism we have a phrase - News is not ‘Dog Bites Man’, because somebody's being bitten by a dog somewhere all the time. News is ‘Man Bites Dog'.
The enterprise platforms, they're hooking into the acceleration of things like AI and how — that exponential growth that's going to happen. When you're talking about deep tech — yes, there may well be some AI element to it, but it's very science-oriented as well. You're applying something that’s come out of research, perhaps real R&D — deep, heavy R&D — into a new world and sort of cutting through in that way.
Because of what’s going on internationally and geopolitically now, somebody said to me, “Well, it's deep tech — but all deep tech is defence now.” So defence is now an angle in terms of how you're going to talk about what you're doing.”
Shuo: "We have to make a distinction. SaaS is a business model. Deeptech is a kind of company - and technology. You have to find the uniqueness in your own specific situation, regardless of your technology, regardless of the business model. The more you can understand that unique angle, the more equipped that you'll be to actually tell the most compelling story. And you will have to be very agile with it as times change."
ThoughtLDR Takeaway: SaaS sells features. Deeptech sells belief. Your story isn’t “we’re faster.” It’s “we’re reimagining how the world works.” That’s what makes it newsworthy - and memorable.
Francesco: "You can sound like a dreamer. But lack of substance is very easy to spot. It’s one question away. So sound like a dreamer as much as you want, as long as you have command, not only over the narrative but also over the business and how that business is going to play out, and the challenges of the market, the technology and everything else. There are many elements in the way the founder frames a narrative that for an investor are a good proxy for what this company is going to look like in the future. Does this narrative present features so I know that this founder in the future will be able to understand the dynamics of a market. Know that investors will use a narrative as a proxy for the objective elements - the business, what you are capable of, the market, the dynamics and everything else."
Mike Butcher: "Don’t be afraid of talking about your vision, or talking about your dream. Because it’s going to excite somebody, I dare say. And the dream is the Trojan horse for getting the story inside the company that you are talking to, the investor you are talking to and the person you are going to hire."
ThoughtLDR Takeaway: With a ten plus year roadmap ahead of you, dreaming is allowed - expected, even - in deeptech storytelling. But you must be able to follow it up with substance. One good follow-up question should never unravel your vision.
Shuo: "I really like how SpaceX tells their story. I know it's not popular to like Elon Musk companies at the moment, but SpaceX always captured the imagination of people, right? They don’t say 'reusable rockets' - they say 'we’re making humanity an interplanetary species."
Francesco: "Apple was built with the intention of injecting liberal arts into computers. That’s an avant-garde. That’s a movement. Nvidia is a movement. Stripe is a movement. SpaceX is a movement. That’s the level."
ThoughtLDR Takeaway: The best storytellers know that creating a movement > than pitching a product. What’s the greatest potential you can unleash on the world? In storytelling, no one wins prizes for marginal improvements to the status quo so laser in on the biggest change to the world your innovation can deliver.
Shuo: “It’s okay to get help. But at the end of the day, it's the founder’s responsibility. Most of your job is communicating the vision."
Mike: “When you're doing a tech company, or a high-growth deeptech company, 50% of your job is communication, maybe even more. You are trying to do something unusual and different in the world - you're not selling socks. Communication is so, so important. And of course I would say that as a journalist.”
ThoughtLDR Takeaway: The bit no-one tells you when you're launching a deeptech company is that telling your story is 50% of your job as a founder. You should get help and advice from experts - but you can’t outsource ownership or delegate vision.
Shuo: "The quality I find most common in great storytellers is that they're very comfortable with themselves. Because if you're comfortable with yourself, you can talk about yourself in an authentic way and you can lay the foundation of creating a comfortable and safe space with others as well."
Mike: "In the military, they often use the phrase that you can't anticipate how you will behave in a certain situation, but you can train for it. And as soon as that situation happens, your training kicks in. Founders and entrepreneurs do need to train in a similar manner for scenarios where they are going to have to face a journalist, an investor, a corporate partner or a politician perhaps. Practice. Rehearse. Do it in front of the mirror! Get your 30-second pitch down, your two-minute pitch, your 10-minute pitch. And then you can trot it off. And someone will go - 'Ah, thank you. Now I get it.'"
Francesco: “Surround yourself with the best possible people that can provide great examples and that's a horizontal truth for your business. The best founders know where to get the best advice to unlock a certain problem."
ThoughtLDR Takeaway: You don’t need to be a natural. You just need to practice. Rehearse, refine, repeat. Get feedback. The more you practice, the more your story will evolve and the more confidence you’ll inspire. And markets move on confidence.
Tamara: “You know, we didn’t have a panel today - we had a masterclass from my incredible speakers. And what did we learn? Well, we learned: if you’re a founder, be guided by your purpose. Let that guide you. It’s okay to get help - but you have to own it. And when you’re picking investors, pick investors like these guys here who are fantastic storytellers.”
ThoughtLDR Takeaway: Your technology might well be brilliant - but if you can’t make people believe, you won’t realise the full value of what you’ve invented. Storytelling should be recognised as one of humanity’s first technologies and it remains one of the best ways for deeptech founders to win hearts, change minds, raise funds, build teams, and move markets.
Want to work with the thought leaders of thought leadership to sharpen your deeptech storytelling so you can change the world faster? 👉 Let’s talk.