The Storytelling Entrepreneur Has No Clothes: Risks and Rewards of Narrative Pitching

Abstract

Scholars have shown that individuals and organizations can tell resonant stories, or narratives, to persuade audiences to evaluate them more highly. Yet other research has cast doubt on the persuasive power of storytelling, particularly for professional audiences like investors. To explore the conditions of narrative persuasion, I qualitatively study the practice of storytelling by entrepreneurs and responses by angel investors. By coding a representative sample of 330 pitches on the reality show Shark Tank, I produce the first catalogue of startup stories in pitches, focusing on character, tropes, temporalities, and shapes. This catalog illustrates isomorphism in pitching and the targets of narrative claims (e.g., the entrepreneur more than the market opportunity). While all Shark Tank entrepreneurs narrate answers to investors questions, only a third tell a story in the elevator pitch. Even when investors acknowledge such stories as high-quality, coherent, and resonant, they may still discount, dismiss, or counter them, instead demanding data, fact, and “substance.” I hypothesize that these limits to narrative persuasion derive not only from a competing institutional logic, but also from narrative’s malleability and conventional usage. I contribute the first catalog of startup stories and a novel theory of narrative backlash to entrepreneurship research, strategic communication, and institutional theory.