Narrative is Infrastructure
To own or be owned
Jenni here! I read and study a lot of business content and I always think they are better suited for life. I break down one powerful business concept and show you how to apply it to your own journey (or business if you choose).
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In today's post, I explore:
What billion-dollar companies understand about narrative as not just marketing, but a self-fulfilling prophecy.
What Tesla and other unicorns understand about narrative and how it illuminates how we think about shaping our own paths.
“The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda of an entire generation that is to come.”
— Steve Jobs
The power of narrative ownership hit me recently when I read CJ's post about Monday.com's IPO strategy. Their refusal to fit into the familiar mold that investor bankers wanted to squeeze them into—and instead, doubling down on their own narrative—paid off.
This made me revisit Kevin Kwok's seminal piece on Narrative Distillation, which reveals how the most successful companies use narrative in a way most of us haven't considered—and more importantly, how it applies to our own lives.
The Narrative Leverage: How Tesla created a self-fulfilling prophecy
The best founders and companies have figured out that owning their narrative gives them significant leverage. It extends beyond just raising capital — it affects every aspect of the company’s success.
Tesla's narrative wasn't just about marketing—it was an intentional strategy.
Tesla operated in an industry where new approaches could work as costs improved, but required "massive and cheap access to capital for extended durations."
How did Tesla fuel its growth?
Through a narrative that drove unprecedented valuations.
Tesla consistently positioned itself as a tech platform, not a car company, by emphasizing software, AI, and data capabilities. It referenced tech metrics (data collected, software updates) over automotive ones.
This resulted in tech-company multiples (80-100x) vs. auto multiples (10-20x).
And the impact?
Raise massive amounts of capital
Attract top talent with stock options
Fund long-term investments
Survive periods of negative cash flow
Tesla was able to create a self-fulfilling prophecy: its ability to maintain high valuation multiples (ie high perceived value) through strong narrative wasn't a distraction—it was perhaps, as Kwok put it, "the most important driver of the company's ability to succeed."
Narrative IS infrastructure
Narrative isn't something you build after success - it's infrastructure you need to build success.
Stripe transformed payment processing by creating a narrative about "increasing the GDP of the internet"
Airbnb turned "sleeping on strangers' couches" into "belonging anywhere"
Shopify reframed itself from "e-commerce platform" to "making entrepreneurship accessible"
NVIDIA transformed from "graphics card maker" to "the brain of AI" long before AI was mainstream. Jensen Huang consistently pushed this narrative for years, which positioned them perfectly for the AI boom.
These narratives weren't just marketing - they were tools to:
Attracted talent to work on otherwise unsexy problems
Gave customers confidence to try something new
Created the conditions for innovation
Guided internal decision-making and culture
Traditionally, we focused on achieving success first, then tell our story.
Just as companies use PE (Price to Earnings) ratios to borrow against their future potential, you can use strong narratives to create opportunities today. Kwok calls this concept "PR ratio" (Perception to Reality ratio).
This changes how we should think about our personal narrative.
A manager waits to accumulate years of team experience before pursuing executive roles.
A founder builds in stealth until the product is perfect, then launches.
A data scientist spends years working on projects, then starts sharing their knowledge.
Instead, you need the narrative to create the conditions for success.
Put the cart before the horse.
Breaking into tech? Create fintech analyses and build a following
No tech connections? Start a tech interview series to build credibility
Want bigger projects? Create case studies reimagining popular products
Just as a company’s narrative is intertwined with its progress, your personal narrative is deeply connected to your actual growth and trajectory.
Instead of thinking about narrative as "selling yourself," think of it as creating conditions for success.
Building Your Narrative Infrastructure
Those shaping their personal narrative must intimately understand how different people in their life—friends, colleagues, mentors, network—perceive them. Your narrative isn't static; it evolves with each step of your journey. Each action you take shapes your story, and in turn, your story shapes your future actions and decisions.
Audit your current infrastructure:
How do different people see you?
What are you becoming known for?
Where do you add unique value?
What opportunities naturally come your way?
Create evidence systems
Each project becomes proof of capability
Each relationship reinforces your story
Each skill adds to your infrastructure
Each challenge demonstrates your narrative
These build evidence for your narrative, and simultaneously, your narrative guides:
Which projects strengthen your story
Who helps build your narrative
What skills support your position
Which challenges prove your point
Like any great story, your narrative gains power not just from its vision, but from the daily choices that bring that vision to life.
The LMF (Life-Market-Fit) takeaway
Your narrative isn't just about communication - it's about creating the conditions that make your success possible. Just as Tesla manifested its success with its narrative a priori, your narrative creates the conditions for your next leap. This isn't theoretical—we've seen how companies build entire infrastructures around their stories, transforming payment processing into "increasing the GDP of the internet," and turning graphic cards into "the brain of AI."
Your narrative works the same way. It's not about waiting to achieve success before telling your story. It's about building the infrastructure—the evidence, the systems, the relationships—that make your future inevitable. Each project you choose, each skill you develop, each connection you make becomes part of this infrastructure.
This isn't about fake it till you make it. It's about understanding what Tesla, Stripe, and others have proven: narrative isn't just description—it's architecture. And like any great architect, you have the power to design what comes next.
