4 Comments

Great article. Big fan of the narrative that these modern masters have articulated. I spent time with Team Stripe at last week's Slush conference and that "clarity" shone through.

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Ah, so cool to hear! They are truly spectacular at it.

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I love this! One question I think about here is that return to narratives are also volatile - was great in the zirp, less so today. Or a diff way to think about it is that it changes dramatically.

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Fully agree with this. My sense is that during ZIRP it became hard to tell a grand narrative based on numbers/traction (they were too far out of kilter) so further reaching, more speculative narratives became especially attractive. Now, it feels like if you're just offering a story without some clear connection to reality there's (reasonable) skepticism.

In all environments, I think you want a strong story and should work to cultivate soft power -- but the focus changes.

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