Project: Company Story

In this unit, we walked through creating a compelling mission statement and company story that resonates with customers.

After going through this process with hundreds of companies, we realized that your company story can inspire new insights about your business’s goals and values—it can help you generate ideas about your mission statement.

So we recommend creating your company story first. Our project walks you through this process.

1. Open and save a copy of our Company Story project template.
   
2. Earlier, we noted two philosophies for writing your company story: the origin story and the consumer-based approach. Decide which approach you’d like to take.
   
   Some questions to consider: Do you (the founder) have a unique background or experience tied to your product? Was there a unique inspiration for your product?
   
   We recommend choosing the origin story approach if you answered yes to the previous questions. Otherwise, focus your company story on the consumer.
   
3. Before writing your story, identify these key elements to help structure your narrative.
   • Main character: Depending on which approach you take, this is either you (the founder and other co-founders) or your customer.
     • Origin: In Airbnb’s story, Brian and Joe are the main characters, with the story written from Brian’s perspective.
     • Consumer-focused: In BIC’s story, the customer is the main character.
   • Supporting characters: Other key figures in the development of your company or product. Your company plays this role in consumer-focused stories.
     • Origin: For Airbnb, these were the three guests (Michael, Kat, and Amol) that Brian and Joe hosted in their apartment.
     • Consumer-focused: BIC is the supporting character.
   • Setting: The context of when your company was founded, or when the idea for it first appeared—think place and time.
     • Origin: Airbnb’s story takes place in San Francisco in 2007, during the weekend of a major design conference.
     • Consumer-focused: BIC’s story takes place in a more general setting—everyday life.
   • Problem: The challenge, conflict, or inciting event that affects characters.
     • Origin: In Airbnb’s story, Brian and Joe were trying to figure out how to pay their rent.
     • Consumer-focused:: Before BIC, customers didn’t have very good writing tools.
   • Solution: How characters responded to the problem, e.g., the creation of your product.
     • Origin: Noticing that hotels were sold out, Brian and Joe inflated three airbeds to host guests visiting for San Francisco’s design conference.
     • Consumer-focused: BIC created a better writing tool (and other everyday products) for customers.
4. Use the key elements identified above to write a basic framework for your story. Think of this as the minimum viable story for your company—there’s no need to go into detail. Focus instead on introducing those involved in the making of your company and product: the characters, setting, and problem that inspired its creation.
5. Answer our guiding questions with a few words or short sentences.
   • What is the main character’s relationship to the supporting characters? (For consumer-based stories, the main character should be the customer while your company plays the supporting character role.)
   • Did the setting impact any of the characters? If so, how?
   • What emotions did the problem create?
   • What were the consequences of leaving the problem unsolved? How urgently did it need to be solved?
   • What emotions did the solution create?
   • Why should readers care about the solution? How does it relate to them?
6. Use the answers from the previous questions to add relevant details to your minimum viable story. The idea is to make your story more compelling by appealing to readers’ emotions.
   
   For example, Airbnb injects emotion into its story with details like:
   • Brian and Joe became friends with their guests. (“Our guests arrived as strangers, but they left as our friends.”)
   • People don’t just use Airbnb to explore new places—they use it to experience a deeper connection with their travel destinations. (“They experience a deeper connection to the communities they visit and the people who live there.”)

Similarly, BIC translates the practical value that its product brings into emotion. Its story highlights how its pens “gave everyone the power of creative expression.” It then adds that it designs other everyday products with the goal of creating ease and delight.