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Christina Farr

The Storyteller’s Advantage

How Powerful Narratives Make Businesses Thrive

Praise for The Storyteller’s Advantage

“Christina Farr has written an eminently useful and inspirational book—one that demystifies storytelling and can help anyone on their journey to break through the noise. Keep a notebook handy; you’ll want to get brainstorming while reading.”

—Sarah Frier, author of No Filter

“Today, the ability to tell a clear and compelling story is no longer optional—it’s a defining factor in success. Christina Farr delivers a masterclass in the art and science of storytelling and proves how it is the thread that turns intention into impact. With insights drawn from the most compelling voices across industries, this book is equal parts practical guide and inspiring manifesto. This book is a gift for anyone who wants to sharpen their voice and tell stories that truly matter.”

—Alyssa Jaﬀee, partner, 7wire Ventures

“At a moment when compelling and eﬀective communication has never been more in demand, Christina Farr elegantly provides a roadmap for all of us to uplevel what we say and how we say it. This is must reading for anyone who wants their words to actually have impact and move audiences.”

—Dr. Vin Gupta, former chief medical oﬃcer, Amazon

“In her groundbreaking new book, Christina Farr makes a compelling case that storytelling isn’t just a nice-to-have skill—it’s the competitive edge every business leader needs in today’s crowded marketplace. Whether you’re a founder who hasn’t grasped the importance of a communications strategy or a business leader looking for the tools to build one, Farr’s practical wisdom transforms storytelling from an intimidating art into an essential, learnable business skill—one that will serve you from the boardroom to the wedding toast.”

—Soraya Darabi, founder and general partner, TMV

The Storyteller’s Advantage

How Powerful Narratives Make Businesses Thrive

Farr

Christina

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For Wendy, the most gifted storyteller I’ve ever encountered

PART 1: WHY STORIES WORK

PART 2: STORIES THAT SELL

PART 3: HOW WE RECEIVE STORIES

Introduction

Good storytelling can inspire, elicit action, persuade, and change minds. Few tools are as valuable— and accessible— for businesses in our global world, where millions of us live and conduct our work online. Because so many of us in our digital economy have bought into the slogan “Data is the new oil,” most companies have come to revere numbers and to undervalue storytelling.1 Most of us in our careers have received requests from managers to prove our progress in linear terms, ideally in the form of metrics that can be presented in charts and graphs. Storytelling can seem more subjective and its results less tangible. How do you know if it was a feat of masterful storytelling, a slick demo of the product, or a combination of the two that won over an intractable customer? Can any of that be proven? Perhaps not, but most of the leaders I have interviewed for this book would acknowledge that storytelling often plays a significant role. And yet, very few organizations provide resources and opportunities for employees to become better storytellers.

We seem to have forgotten that data, just like oil, is useless in its raw form. In fact, data is not the antithesis to storytelling. It is a potential partner or ally. Data scientists at the top universities

are routinely learning storytelling techniques so that they can turn raw feeds of numbers into something emotionally moving, useful, and actionable. 2 Without the added layer of storytelling, data lacks meaning; most humans will struggle to interpret and digest, let alone remember, it. 3

“You can be successful with a great product that fi nds an audience and gets in front of them,” said Neil Lindsay, a senior vice president at Amazon, who runs the health group and previously ran Marketing and Prime worldwide. “You can be a lot more successful if you can amplify the truth about what you do and share the emotional benefit it can bring to people’s lives.”

Lindsay shared an analogy of buying any old jacket versus a Patagonia jacket. The two jackets might look and feel about the same, both functioning to keep you warm on a hike, but the Patagonia choice carries greater meaning because the brand has put so many resources behind sharing its story. Patagonia makes clear that it loves the wild parts of the earth. Its website includes multiple references to its mission of conservation, proudly proclaiming that we as humans must use our pioneering spirit to defend “our one and only home.” The company has also put its money where its mouth is (as we’ll discuss, one important aspect of storytelling involves backing up claims with action) by funding environmental nonprofits and climate solutions. Patagonia ranks as one of the most reputable brands in the United States, associated consistently with such positive values as favorable consumer experience and sustainability.4 Hence, so many consumers continue to buy Patagonia jackets.

Human beings have been telling stories for millennia. Our brain evolved to process stories, to organize details into plots and

form them into long-lasting memories. So storytelling should be a priority for every company today at the leadership levels, running all the way through the organization, across the legal, human resources, policy, product, and operations departments and not just public relations and marketing. As e New York Times puts it when speaking to potential advertisers, “Consumers, more than ever, want to have a genuine connection with the brands they so loyally support. However, consumers can’t be loyal until they understand a brand’s mission and purpose. Storytelling bridges that gap.” 5

Most companies I see today are falling short when it comes to storytelling. I say this confidently, as someone whose job for the past fi fteen years has required them to spend a lot of time listening to poorly told stories. And I mean a lot. I would estimate that I have listened to 5,000 hours (equivalent to about seven straight months) of founders, CEOs, and company spokespeople trying to communicate what their products do and to win over potential customers to their business models, much of that in the form of PowerPoint presentations.

Being on the receiving end of so many company pitches was a big part of the job I signed up for as a business journalist at CNBC, Reuters, and Fast Company and later as a health and technology investor at OMERS Ventures, the private company investment arm of one of the world’s largest pension funds. From there, I joined the strategy consulting and legal fi rm Manatt, where I continue to invest in and advise companies. Th roughout my evolving career, as an advisor, investor, and journalist, I recognized that I was on one side of a transaction. In the fi rst part of my career, I knew that most companies viewed me as a necessary tool in achieving a broader agenda

to gain attention. In the second part, my value was connected to my access to funds, which could help fuel a business to the next phase of growth or keep it afloat until the business model started to work. Nowadays, I try to straddle both sides of the equation, helping founders and business executives use storytelling to achieve their goals, knowing that there is no better way for them to get ahead.

Looking back to all these pitches over the years, most of the encounters were unsuccessful in the technical sense—I did not write a check or put the company or its CEO in print. But occasionally I found myself truly riveted by the person sitting across from me and compelled to help. In those moments, the transactional feeling fell away. I wanted to root for those businesses, despite any skepticism I harbored going into the interaction. A switch fl ipped in my brain because I bought into the company’s story on an emotional level. Each time that occurred, it reinforced something fundamental for me: Good storytellers will inherit the world.6

You might object that plenty of successful companies have bad storytellers at the helm, and you would be correct about that. But as we will learn throughout e Storyteller’s Advantage, storytelling can be like gas poured on a fi re. If the business is legitimate, a good story will help things progress much faster. Even with a dubious or poorly performing business, a good story—in the hands of a master storyteller— can rocket a company to stratospheric heights before the inevitable downfall. The major reason behind that is obvious: When a storyteller captivates their intended audience, be it a media personality, a potential customer, or a new hire, they have won over a key ally.

With enough alliances, companies can build up momentum quickly. Great team members flock to the business, investors pile in, and the press takes note. And yet, I’ve heard storytelling capabilities described in the pejorative, particularly in Silicon Valley, where I lived and worked for more than a decade. If a founder is described as a “good storyteller,” the assumption is that the company is more hype than substance. As former Activision Blizzard communications chief and Shopify board member Lulu Cheng Meservey shared with me, negative sentiment toward storytellers is far too pervasive in the business world— and it should be the exact opposite. She believes that any company with compelling stories to share with the world could be “twice as successful,” and those who believe otherwise are likely to be bad storytellers. “It’s sour grapes,” she said.

Delian Asparouhov, an investor at the venture fi rm Founders Fund and a founder of Varda Space, believes the technology industry could most benefit from great storytelling. The more technical the business, the more important the narrative is. “With a consumer social application, you can just ask someone to download it to get them excited about it . . . [but] with anything that touches on AI, or climate, or space, or new science, usually all you’ll have is the story for years.” Imagine Mark Zuckerberg pitching Facebook in the early days. He would only need to demo downloading the app. The companies building the truly breakthrough technologies— self-driving cars, artificial wombs, carbon capture, and so forth—have very little to go on but the story. These companies typically need to raise capital for a decade or longer but may have little to show for themselves in the form of progress toward their goal. To believe in a future where this

technology is mainstream requires imagination. What builds imagination? A remarkable story.

So what kinds of stories are worth sharing for anyone, whether it’s a CEO or a junior professional a few years out of school? Well, that is the very question we will explore throughout the pages of this book. e Storyteller’s Advantage will share plenty of real case studies and examples of companies of all sizes that used storytelling in profound ways, both to overcome key setbacks and to shout from the rooftops about their success (without annoying anyone in the process). As we will discuss, being a great storyteller does not mean having a big ego, and it does not require constantly posting on social media. Plenty of founders, executives, and employees approach communications in an authentic way. At its core, storytelling only works when the storytelling is genuine— otherwise, the audience will feel as if they are being sold to and will tune out. “The best stories are the most authentic,” said Lindsay, the Amazon senior vice president.

Here’s the good news: Unlike most professional skills, storytelling does not require a huge investment of time or resources. Truly anyone, at all levels of an organization, can do it—with the right training and commitment. Contrary to popular belief, storytelling is not an innate quality that some people possess and others lack. Being good at storytelling requires discipline, preparation, and practice, like anything. And even the self-professed “experts” can improve their skills by refamiliarizing themselves with the basics or by soliciting constructive feedback.

Learning to be a better storyteller can also be fun and creative. Consider former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, who credited a lot of his success to improv, a form of spontaneous, unscripted

theater where actors make up ideas on the spot.7 As he explained to Bloomberg, improv is like company building in that it encourages people to come together for a shared goal. The lesson here involves adapting in the moment to any new story, no matter how kooky or unexpected.8 That is a valuable skill for anyone working within a diverse organization where many cultures, languages, and viewpoints vie for representation. For those who can’t imagine themselves doing improv, there are plenty of other venues in which to practice sharing a story, be it LinkedIn, a conference, an internal team meeting, or an oﬀ-site presentation. My favorite medium most days is X, because I’m drawn to the idea of communicating in pithy sentences. My least is anything involving video, because I still cannot get to a place of comfort hearing my own voice.

We’re all busy, with far too few hours in the day to refi ne our skills. So functionally speaking, how do we make storytelling a priority? For most corporate executives, anything that involves brainstorming, thinking, writing, and sharing ideas often takes a backseat to the treadmill of urgent meetings and projects. So I see many company leaders today thinking they can hand oﬀ the task of storytelling to someone else. Most companies outsource the narrative to a bewildering number of PR agencies and marketing fi rms that pull together scripted “talking points” and messaging documents. I cannot overstate this: That is not the same thing as storytelling. Those eﬀorts often fall short because storytelling is deeply personal and requires a connection with the audience, be it a customer, an investor, or another key stakeholder. To truly work, it needs to be baked into executives’ or operators’ calendars from day one. They need to make time for it.

When I’m advising companies, I recommend starting with a simple, achievable discipline: Carve out an hour in the morning to read the news or practice jotting down thoughts in a free-form manner, even if these ideas will never be shared with anyone. Ask questions like “Why did I start or join this business in the fi rst place?” From there, consider what you uniquely know and might share with others.

Becoming a “thought leader,” the ultimate goal for most executives these days in their pursuit of storytelling prowess, will not be possible in a week or even months. And it certainly won’t be made possible by outsourcing the job. As a friend of mine, communications professional Jacquelyn Miller, who formerly worked at both Google and Amazon, often points out, “Thought leaders have to have actual thoughts.” As obvious as it may sound, that means having time in the week to think and process information. There’s no shortcut, like commissioning a ghostwriter to put something together on an executive’s behalf that an agency representative can blitz out to various press outlets. No matter how talented that hired writer may be, it is impossible to “think” another person’s thoughts for them, and the result is often well crafted but generic. The same is true for storytelling. The right person to share the story is the one who lived and experienced it. The heart of good storytelling isn’t just the act of communicating the story. It’s an appreciation for the audience. Storytelling is rarely eﬀective when one side is interested in pushing their talking points or messaging versus finding ways to connect with the person or group they’re talking to. That is where marketing departments at businesses globally should shift their thinking and their resources. We need to have fewer conversations about what we want to tell the

world about the companies we work for and far more about what we can do to intrigue or support our audiences (with a focus on their needs, their goals, and their priorities). Th inking about the audience is a powerful way to stand out in the sea of content that has an explicit business agenda and seems to be written for no one in particular. Does anyone care that a CEO they’ve never heard of is going to empower us with a platform for data transformation in the cloud? Probably not, particularly without context about why it matters. The vast majority of content out there isn’t storytelling. It’s jargon soup.

Another hot tip? The internet has made it easier than ever to reach these audiences via an endless array of options from LinkedIn to Substack—but this also means there’s no longer such a thing as true segmentation. If the goal is to speak to a customer, great— but anything that gets published online can be read by a consumer, the press, an investor, and so on. And those messages can fall fl at— or, worse, get misinterpreted. Uncovering any information about a business only takes a simple Google search. The task now, as we’ll discuss throughout this book, is to consider the needs of not just one audience but all audiences in tandem. Fortunately, stories are universal and have become more important than ever because they can help bridge the gap between those audiences.

In Part 1, we not only cover the stories most used in the world of business and unpack why they work, but we also hear the stories behind the greatest storytellers. Part 2 delves into the brands that are most eﬀectively sharing their stories across a variety of channels and details how professionals can access storytelling in their own lives. And Part 3 provides an overview of some of the ethical dilemmas associated with storytelling, spotlighting

those who have used it for evil, as well as of newer technologies that could hinder or improve these eﬀorts, such as artificial intelligence. I will also touch on the pervasive biases that still impact storytellers—because it’s about not only how we tell the story but who is telling it. Studies have found that audiences receive a story far more positively if it’s shared by a white male rather than, say, a nonwhite female. So how do we overcome that?

Beyond hearing from the storytellers themselves—the CEOs and other business leaders who have mastered the skill—I’ll suggest new styles of working and building teams that incorporate storytelling. In that vein, I will propose a new framework that I call “founder-led communications,” which puts the founders and the creators back in the driver’s seat when it comes to articulating their own story. That does not mean that the CEO should be the only one to take charge of the story—I’ll discuss how to weave narrative into a company’s culture and values so that everyone within the organization has a voice. My point is that leaders should avoid oﬄoading responsibility too soon for communications and storytelling, before they’ve had time to test these out on key audiences themselves. Just as in founder-led sales— an increasingly popular technique that involves founders taking point on communicating with customers versus hiring someone else to do it— leaders have to master their own story before anyone else can. Once there’s real evidence of traction, it might be time to bring on a team—but not before.

The Effect of Being Transported

Have you ever been in the presence of a truly great storyteller? Looking back on those experiences where I’ve encountered one,

I can recall the most minor details, including what restaurant we sat in, if it was raining, or what I wore that day. The exceptional storytellers I’ve interacted with include founders, senior executives, and CEOs, like Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia; Anne Wojcicki, CEO of 23andMe; Aaron Levie, CEO of Box; and Alexis Ohanian, founder of Reddit.

The fi rst time I met Ohanian, at the South by Southwest conference in the early 2010s, I was a junior reporter at VentureBeat in my early twenties. I can still recall how crowded the bar was, the smell of beer mingled with sweat in the ninety-degree heat, and the hour I stood in the line to get in.

In our fi rst one-on-one conversation, he shared the story of the original idea for Reddit: A food-ordering app he created with his friend and roommate, Steve Huff man, while they were at college together. That idea proved to be a bad one; it went nowhere. But he told me how a fruitful meeting with technology investor Paul Graham set the early team off in a new direction to create “the front page for the Internet.” 9 Th at story nestled into my brain, as did many of the other anecdotes he shared, taking up permanent residence there. What was so effective was the vulnerable admission from Ohanian that his original idea had bombed. It made him unique, given that most people I met with in those days described their path as a series of unstoppable wins. It also made him human. Ohanian’s story intrigued me, and we spent a couple hours chatting and hanging out.

That was one of my fi rst professional encounters with a great storyteller, and it stuck with me. There’s a reason Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, a skilled public speaker, once described the storyteller as the “most powerful person in the world.” Most of us tune out

when we feel pitched, but we become far more alert when we are in the presence of a good storyteller. We have all faced hardships and challenges. Hearing those stories from others reminds us of what we share, helping us form meaningful relationships in the process.

“You have to use stories when you’re trying to inspire people,” said Anne Wojcicki of 23andMe, a company that has sold at-home health and genetic tests to millions. Storytelling is a tool for companies to stand out at pivotal moments, including those inevitable hard times. Wojcicki has been through plenty of those. She’s lost key customers, faced cyberattacks, handled pushback from federal regulators, had board members publicly quit, and weathered drastic fluctuations in her company’s stock. She gets through all of that with the help of storytelling.

It has also had a direct impact on the metrics that matter to her and her business, which has reached some incredibly high highs and low lows (as of the end of 2024, Wojcicki is embroiled in a public battle to take her company private). One particularly important one: 42 percent of the company’s employees have stuck around for at least five years, while an additional 4 percent have “boomeranged,” meaning they have left the company and come back. The industry norms for a company of this stage and size is a tenure of less than four years.10

Wojcicki said that when she senses her team needs to feel motivated or inspired, she tells them a story. One of her favorites involves a 23andMe user who discovered via one of her company’s tests that she was part Inuit. That woman was so touched that she quit her job and moved to the Arctic Circle. Th ree years later, she emailed 23andMe to say she had “found her true calling.” Th is

story also served as a not-so-subtle nudge that the team better not mess up when it comes to delivering test results: An inaccurate one could change someone’s life in profound and potentially irreversible ways. But it was also a reminder that people take these tests incredibly seriously, and therefore the job of someone working at 23andMe mattered— at the very least, to this subset of users.

When all else fails, Wojcicki also tackles tough questions with her trademark humor and wit, another key component to good storytelling. When journalists called about the termination of a lucrative partnership after a sixteen-year run, Wojcicki shot back, “Would your teenager go for another sixteen years with mom?”

At the core of good storytelling lie humor, authenticity, simplicity, and surprise. Th is is easier said than done. I’ve personally read thousands of websites across every industry over the years, and the biggest compliment I can muster for many of them is “dry.” The reality is that most of them are barely comprehensible. Th at’s disappointing because, as the saying goes, there’s only one chance to make a good fi rst impression. Are companies doing that with a “solution” that “integrates with workflow in the cloud”? And don’t get me started on the overuse of the word “platform” on corporate websites (what’s wrong with just calling it what it is, such as an “app” or a “website”?). There are countless moments in the corporate world when brands could build strong connections to their customers and other key stakeholders but fail to do so. We’ll discuss some of the most common marketing myths and misconceptions driving so much of this bland and emotionless copy— which I refer to as “corporate speak”— and how we can do better.

We Have Always Been Storytellers

Somewhere along the way, we’ve lost touch with the storytelling aspect of our fundamental nature. Human beings have always thrived on narrative, not on a stream of facts or statistics— and certainly not on corporate jargon.

Studies show that stories are powerful because they forge connections between diverse communities and because they convey culture, history, and values. Uri Hasson, a professor in the Department of Psychology and the Neuroscience Institute at Princeton University, has scanned people’s brains to understand how we respond to hearing stories. He has learned that when told well, stories act as a bridge between people who might start out with diﬀ erent mindsets. As he put it, “If you start to get me, your brain starts to be similar to mine. . . . And if you really get me, we become more and more similar in our brain responses.” In one study, Hasson and his team recorded brain activity in pairs of subjects as one told a story and the other listened. Th e greater the listener’s comprehension, Hasson found, the more the two brains started to sync.11 The scans showed that high-functioning areas of the brain, such as the frontal cortexes, became even more aligned when the stories came from real life.

Hasson told me that storytelling is most eﬀ ective when people “click,” which most often happens when the storyteller throws out the script and focuses instead on connecting with their audience. As he tells his own students, that does not mean winging it without any preparation. Hasson encourages his students to put themselves in the shoes of listeners or viewers and think about why they should care. “The audience wants to learn

something, but there needs to still be a story with a beginning, middle, and an end,” he explained.

As neuroscientists have found, stories are also powerful because they can stimulate parts of the brain associated with making predictions, which in turn encourages cooperation between two or more individuals. That cooperation occurs when neurochemicals are released in the brain, such as oxytocin, which is associated with feelings of trust, empathy, and reward. There’s a reason why narratives are so helpful in inspiring people to donate to charity, for instance. They help us feel more connected to an individual or species or geography, even if we aren’t directly experiencing negative impacts. And there’s a growing body of evidence via brain-imaging studies that storytelling is strongly linked to memory, which explains why I was able to recount details of that meeting with Ohanian years later. For these reasons, storytelling can also become an ethical liability, as it can be used for good or for evil. In Part 3, we’ll discuss how the CEOs of notorious companies like FTX and Theranos used their storytelling skills to perpetuate fraud and got away with it for years.

If CEOs were aware of the power of storytelling, no business would be reduced to jargon and slideware. Neuroscientists like Paul Zak, who teaches at Claremont University, now advise all CEOs—regardless of the stage and size of the business—to lead with a powerful story that includes some moment of setback to increase tension— and to do that before launching onto any deck. “In terms of making an impact,” he writes, “this blows the PowerPoint presentation to bits.”12

PART 1 WHY STORIES

WORK

The Founder as Chief Storyteller

The most powerful person in the world is a storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values, and agenda of an entire generation that is to come.

—Steve Jobs, late Apple CEO

When Alexis Ohanian founded Reddit in 2005, he had a vision to create “the front page for the Internet.” It might be hard to remember the web from back then, but it was a disorganized mess, and many of the most popular websites we rely on today did not exist. Ohanian and his cofounder, Steve Huﬀ man, set out to build a place where complete strangers could go to discuss current events, politics, their spouses, their kids, their cats, and everything in between.

Back in the early days of Reddit, the company’s leadership team were a bunch of twentysomethings playing multiplayer video games like World of Warcraft until the wee hours of the morning. Per Christine Lagorio- Chafkin’s brilliant book We

Are the Nerds, the whole business idea came together through a series of happy accidents and some nudging from investor Paul Graham, who had encouraged the team to move away from a food-ordering app idea. Ohanian came up with the name “Reddit” at the University of Virginia’s library after deciding between it and “Reditt”; he went with the former because it seemed easier for people to spell and say. Huﬀ man and Graham weren’t exactly fans of the name, at least not initially, but Ohanian said he put his foot down and went with it.

Because of the founders’ lack of professional experience and the boldness of their vision, there were real reasons to believe that Reddit would not succeed. Most social apps were monetized via advertising, which the founders could only unlock by demonstrating strong user growth. So how would Ohanian, Huﬀman, and the early team get vast numbers of people to continue to flock to Reddit? Early on, Ohanian—who oversaw all things nontechnical—made the choice to dedicate a sizable chunk of his day to public relations and communications, taking on responsibility for activities that would help get the word out. For a consumer-facing company like Reddit, getting that right was crucial. An article or mention by an early internet influencer on a then-popular technology site like Mashable , TechCrunch, or VentureBeat (where I got my start as a tech reporter) could drive a lot of interest in what the team was building, leading to a key inflection point for the business. Reddit relied on retention— people using the site religiously while in line for coﬀee or sitting on the toilet— to be successful. And without a strong user-acquisition plan, they’d be stuck on the starting line forever.

So every day for about five years, Ohanian carved out a few minutes to personally cold email anyone with a platform, whether a blogger, influencer, or journalist, and ask them to meet and have a chat about Reddit. As the years went by, he came up with more creative ways to meet these folks in person. Periodically, for example, he’d go on what he would refer to among friends as a “fake media tour.” Media tours were (and still are) a way for big companies to get their CEOs in front of the mainstream media. Typically, public relations teams with big budgets organize these tours. Flanked by an entourage of communications professionals carrying dossiers on the journalists, CEOs show up to newsrooms with steely resolve, ready to share their companies’ wins and deflect any uncomfortable questions. On a personal note, I’d spot these dossiers while working at CNBC when they would slip out of the executives’ folders by accident. Companies spend big money on these tours, which sometimes also culminate in fancy private media dinners.

Ohanian was far from a big shot— he was the founder of a website that for years very few people had heard of, and he had no budget for a PR entourage (nor did he desire one). So he would occasionally buy a bus ticket from his home in Boston to New York City and send a few reporters an email to say he was in town for Reddit’s very oﬃcial “press tour.” He asked if they wanted to meet with him and nudged them to get on his schedule as soon as possible before all his slots got booked up. Ohanian initially thought no one would show up, but he soon realized that reaching out with a personal note— and a vibe that seemed more relatable and familiar than desperate— did the

trick. Then he would sit in a café for a few days and chat with the people who turned up. There were no high-priced dinners with wine pairings, and he slept on friends’ couches before taking the bus back home.

Don’t Outsource Your Story

When companies refer to “PR,” they often mean the function that drives buzz for the business by getting headlines. Many founders assume that hiring a public relations fi rm (or an on-staﬀ PR lead) will quickly get them regular, glowing write-ups in e New York Times and e Wall Street Journal, which they can then share with their target audiences on Facebook or LinkedIn to drive demand and generate leads. Or better yet, they might get physical press clippings, which are a nice ego boost, even though fewer and fewer people read printed newspapers and magazines. These clips can be framed to adorn oﬃce hallways or sent to family members to stick on the fridge.

Th is way of thinking, however, leads companies to take a very hands- oﬀ approach to press coverage. As I’ve seen it done for years, the company hires an agency, points to a highlight or milestone it wants to promote (a product launch, a funding round, a key hire) or a set of “messages” it wants to impart, and then sits back and lets the agency go to work until the media ask for an interview. At that point, if there’s any interest at all, an assistant arranges time via the public relations pro who is in touch with the journalist on the other side. Th is kind of arrangement builds in at least two or three levels of disconnect between the interviewer and interviewee. Then, at the time of the interview, the communications team attends the meeting and sometimes

even chimes in with answers or comments. Usually there’s also some heavy coaching going on behind the scenes to ensure that the founder or CEO is saying the “right thing” and not revealing private or sensitive information. The hope, from there, is that this will result in a rave article with all the talking points included.

Th is strategy is rarely effective, particularly when it’s so hands off, which Ohanian realized from the start. He took a much more informal approach—but he also treated PR very differently than most founders and CEOs do. He viewed it as a strategic investment in the long-term success of his business, not a necessary evil to achieve a set number of press mentions per quarter. And he didn’t treat his relationships with the media as purely transactional. Even if a meeting didn’t result in a press mention for Reddit, he could categorize it as a win in other ways— and therefore as worth the time. As the company grew, he continued to view public relations as a priority— and something that he would personally manage rather than fully outsource to someone else.

Ohanian was also special in that he did not bristle at the idea of incorporating communications into his job description. Many CEOs will stress that they’re too busy, given they’re also on the hook to recruit, answer product questions, manage teams, and conduct meetings, among a host of other responsibilities. But I’d argue that communications should be extremely high up on any CEO’s priority list, and Ohanian would agree. It’s a catalyst to drive everything else. For example, winning over talent is typically far easier if they are aware that the business exists and perceive it as a cool company to join. While considering a role at a company that isn’t yet a household name, it’s downright useful to be able to email out a press article to friends and family

members (“You may not have heard of it, but this start-up is the real deal!”). An emphasis on communications makes everything else that little bit easier.

So here’s how Ohanian made every interview count:

• He built a network and a following. Reporters meet with a lot of companies and are trained to be on the lookout for stories that might pique the public’s interest. Ohanian realized that speaking to people whose job it was to regularly network, assess companies, and interface with the public would be inherently valuable for him as a cofounder. And even though he wasn’t yet a noteworthy CEO, Ohanian said he knew reporters would rather open and reply to an email from a CEO than a fl ak, an industry term for a communications professional.

• He viewed journalists as a discerning audience— if he could win them over, he could win anyone over. By paying close attention to the person’s body language and other visual cues, he could determine if his story was resonating. Could he be telling it diﬀ erently or better? If he could convince this naturally skeptical audience to care, might that help him be a better storyteller when trying to convince other important audiences too (when recruiting, pitching investors, making sales)?

• He leaned into the “butter y e ect.” Journalists have big networks and are purveyors of information, most of it not conveyed in print. So meeting with them could open doors for his business. Case in point: Ohanian once had