yeah I just wanted to spend a couple of minutes talking about something that I think is absolutely vital to startup success but although it's fundamental is often somewhat overlooked and that is really the invention the creation of the story of your startup this might sound
obvious or basic but it turns out that getting this right is actually not intuitively important and the reason it is so important is because startups are so hard they're so very very hard it is almost certainly going to be the hardest most difficult thing you will do in your professional career and if you don't
create a story for the right story that you can tell yourself to keep going when things go wrong you'll quit and your startup will die so it's worthwhile my YC partner Aaron Harris who's going to be giving a lecture later on in start-up school thinks and talks a lot about
stories and I'm indebted to him for a number of the ideas and what I'm about to say so there are stories and there are stories and the famous author Ian Forrester maybe said it best many many decades ago when he gave this example so the King died and then the Queen died is certainly a story but it's not a very
interesting story is it it's not a story that grabs you it's not a story you necessarily care about but the King died and then the Queen died of grief well there's something there there's something that grabbed me there's something human there there's something in that story that seems to matter and
it turns out founders spend a lot of time telling stories they tell stories about what they're doing they tell stories about the future that they're trying to create they tell stories originally maybe to their parents to their friends to they're family eventually two co-founders potential customers partners
in the company investors but most of all they need to tell a story that resonates with themselves it's the story of your startup that will nourish you that will keep you going through hard times and setbacks it's a story that will persuade you to actually do this crazy thing and it's the story
that will maybe just for those others per Sade them to join you on your journey how crazy it is to convince someone else to follow you on such an uncertain path it's not easy so we actually spend a lot of time at YC helping people craft and sometimes even reimagine their stories you