Your product’s story is its design, its features, images and videos, quotes from customers, tips from reviewers, conversations with support agents. It’s the sum of what people see and feel about this thing that you’ve created.

And the story doesn’t just exist to sell your product. It’s there to help you define it, understand it, and understand your customers. It’s what you say to investors to convince them to give you money, and to new employees to convince them to join your team, and to partners to convince them to work with you, and to the press to convince them to care. And then, eventually, it’s what you tell customers to convince them to want what you’re selling.

And it all starts with “why.”

Why does this thing need to exist? Why does it matter? Why will people need it? Why will they love it?

Quick stories are easy to remember. And, more importantly, easy to repeat. Someone else telling your story will always reach more people and do more to convince them to buy your product than any amount of talking you do about yourself on your own platforms. You should always be striving to tell a story so good that it stops being yours—so your customer learns it, loves it, internalizes it, owns it. And tells it to everyone they know.

The best way to do that is with a compelling story. And knowing your audience. Even in Silicon Valley, most VCs won’t be technical. So don’t focus on the technology, focus on the “why.” [See also: Chapter 3.2: Why Storytelling.]

6.2. The Board

“Good CEOs walk in with a presentation of where the company was, where it is now, and where it’s headed this quarter and in the years to come. They tell the board what’s working but they’re also transparent about what isn’t and how they’re addressing it. They present a fully formed plan that the board can question, object to, or try to modify. Things might get a little heated, a little bumpy, but in the end everyone walks out of the meeting understanding and accepting the CEO’s vision and the company’s path forward.

Then there are the great CEOs. With great CEOs the meeting is smooth as butter.

We don’t always realize it, but what we do and how we do it are themselves pitches. We’re conveying a message about ourselves, our work, or our organization—and other people are interpreting it.

Take some time to find out what they think you’re saying. Recruit ten people—a combination of coworkers and friends and family. Then ask them which three words come to mind in response to one of these questions: What is my company about? What is my product or service about? What am I about? Make it clear that you’re not asking them for physical qualities (“tall, dark, and handsome”) but something deeper.

Once you gather these words, look for patterns. Many people are surprised by the disconnect between what they think they’re conveying and what others are actually hearing. Knowing is the prelude to improving.