FCF Storytelling

Thank you so much Sean. Hi everyone. I see that we have a good number of people who still have the stamina to survive yet another morning working on your project and I'm actually fairly impressed because

I've been around for this session. This is my third session with everyone and I feel the effort and the enthusiasm that you guys have put in is amazing, right? So, oh wow, someone is putting Fireflies in the ticker. Interesting. Let me know how it goes. Okay, let's begin by me sharing my slide.

See if I can get it up. Can everyone see my slide? Nice. Okay. So a bit about myself before I begin. My name is Mahmoud. My name is Saiful, Saiful Anwar. Just call me Saiful. And even when you want to...

kind of chat with me later it's just Saiful no Mr. Sir, Sir especially Sir don't call me teacher please I'm sharing from experience I'm sharing from the people I know and I'm sharing from the perspective of someone who actually feels very passionate about that thing not from someone who is teaching you because you need to learn something if you do gain something from this that's amazing if not this is just something I'm very very very passionate about

I built this deck specially for this session.

I understand that you guys have been going through weeks after weeks of mentoring and refining your idea and all that. I want to give you something easy that you can use straight away without the need to kind of overcomplicate things. So this framework event was built especially for the ASEAN Future Catalyst Fellowship Programme.

Let's begin by a bit of a check-in. Everyone's all right? Opening. So two thoughts on your mind. You can share both or you can share one. So first is what did you sacrifice to be in here this morning? And second thought is what do you achieve? What do you want to achieve in this session today? So just open the meeting chat and type in your thoughts. We have our first input.

Sleeping, yeah. I had to wake up early for this also. It's Saturday, I could have slept in. I fear you. Wow. Okay. I hear a lot of opportunity cost with regards to time. Interesting. Okay, a bit more. What do you mean by morning laziness? Hmm.

I am just waiting for inputs. So I'm going to read out from what I'm seeing in the chat. A lot of people talk about sleeping, not enough rest, feeling lazy in the morning, kind of sleepy. At the same time, you're talking about how you can learn to communicate your ideas. So that's what you're looking for. Okay.

craft stories and pitch like steve job i'm not gonna use steve job as an example though i'm gonna go more local this time around yeah okay how to convince investors how to uh i'm judging panels i like that i'm okay with that nice so um the sense i get and this is all from the chat is that we are looking into

how we can craft better stories, better pitch, communicate ideas, how to convince people. So the idea of crafting, the idea of communicating, the idea of convincing, which also includes delivering effective pitch. Yeah, point of the session. And all of you, if not most of you, are sacrificing sleep.

one person even mentioned studying time. All right. So I thank you for putting in this time to be on the session. I assure you it will be worth your time and it would make a difference because the examples and the studies that I'm going to follow is based on award-winning pitches. All right.

At the same time, because I'm not looking at your video and I do realize only whose face can I see right now? I only can see Sean's face, right? I also understand you don't want to show your Saturday morning face. This is me after...

like brushing my hair and like putting my plants so can i ask that if you agree to something i say or you want to acknowledge then just react can we try that react first can everyone react or is that i can't see my okay cool nice so i'm gonna look at your yeah and i will be looking out for reacts okay

Cool. Thank you. All right. So now I know that I have a captive audience. I will begin our session. So a big battle against the Sandman. So this is what we're going to do today. We're going to do a bit of our check-in. I want to share why stories win. And part of this is really about convincing you that stories work.

not just stories as fairy tales, but stories with regards to pitching, specifically with regards to pitching. We're going to use a framework that I said I developed specifically for this group, and I decided to use the word story as the framework. So, die die, you cannot forget, right? So, what do you remember today? Story. How what story stands for? I'll tell you later. We're going to look at a case study,

by STICM. And if you guys know STICM, Yingkai and Adam are locals based in Singapore who won the Hout Prize, one of the most prestigious prizes in the startup world. And that's a cash prize of $1 million. My earpiece just died on me. I'm going to change my speaker. So if you are talking, know that you're on speaker.

Hello, I see another face. And after that, you're going to do, you're going to sculpt your own 60 seconds. You're not going to come up with a whole pitch by applying this story framework. At this point of time, I appeal to all of you to take the time to run your pitch, to switch on your video, run a 60 second pitch, and then I can share and we can learn together whether you hit the mark.

Is that all right? Okay, so from now till say the end, maybe in an hour's time, okay, if you need to do your hair, freshen yourself up, wear nicer clothes, please do that. I will give you some time later so then you can switch on your video and be confident to be seen. Is that okay? If you're okay with this, can I get a thumbs up? Oh, thanks, Tian. I can see Tian also. All right. Yeah, Tian was in my previous session. Okay, cool.

okay i'll wait okay cool so i'm just looking out for thumbs up so that i can see engagement and move on thank you so much right so you will walk away with this which is basically what i shared just now but um i think more importantly it's that don't data down right so i would just say don't data down before we begin anything right and that's the specific reason why data dumping doesn't work okay

I took the time to research this to just prove to you data dumping doesn't work.

There is a statistic outside saying that storytelling is 22% better than just statistics, but that's a false narrative. The study did not exist. Instead, I actually looked through several studies to realize that there's three levels of difference that a story would do better than just statistics.

it is more impactful. What does it mean, impactful? That means once you tell a story, people believe in it, after a while, they might rethink, right? Someone tell you some gossip, you'll be like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Then after a while, you rethink. Is this true or not? So even the idea of rethinking, stories have a higher impact than just statistics. After one day, if people are asked to rethink, only 32%

I mean, 73% of them would be influenced by stories and less than half of that number, 32%, would actually be impacted. So basically, 73%, if I listen to statistics, I can change my mind. But 32% would change their mind. Only 32% who listens to stories would change their mind. So that's how much impact it has.

Stories also make things more memorable. So in a study, and this is very interesting, is that they made students remember things

And 65 or actually 63% remembers better than 5%. We just remember the statistics. So it makes things more memorable. And finally, if you will ask someone to remember, oh, I shared with you something and whether you can remember it later, stories are more memorable in terms of the accuracy of being remembered. So if you give a statistic, you say a number, you say what you do without a story tied to it,

And you ask someone later, they will change what you say, or it will not be as accurate. If you tell a story, there's a higher retention, higher memorability. Do you see, like, can I convince you that stories are good? But this is out of context, Ma. This is not pitching. So I gathered five inputs from people who are investors and what they say about stories, right? And

Ben Horowitz, who does a lot of investment into AI, still calls the CEO as the chief storyteller. If you talk about Naval, he says if you can't explain it to a five-year-old, then you

There's no point explaining. As a matter of fact, the point of speaking to a five-year-old is that when we were younger, when we were trying to learn things, we were taught in stories. So the idea that the human mind learned by hearing stories is exactly the reason that stories make sense. But more than anything, in making pictures, stories don't just make sense. Stories win. Stories make you happy.

win investors, win audience. And if you're the best storyteller of the lot here, win this competition. So that's my case for asking you to believe in stories. Do I have the crowd here? You guys believe in me? Again, thumbs up. If I'm getting to you, wow, I see hearts. Wow, that's higher even than thumbs up. Show me some love. Okay.

I'm pretty sure some of you, if not most of you, already get this. But my point is that I don't want to come by just working on that. I want to prove to you that it does work. So what we'll do is that, can you spot the difference? Just for the sake of realizing, just to make sure we're on the same page here, right? If you just talk about a pitch and some of you are still in this state,

"Oh, our platform does this and our time is this much, and we project this amount of money and we need this amount of funding." It's accurate, it is correct, but it doesn't make it memorable, doesn't make it impactful, doesn't make it win. But if you start with a story and you talk about the people who are going through it, and you put a story in the mind of the investor, you're one step ahead.

Okay, so remember, we're going to use the framework story, S-T-R-O-Y. So this is my first flash of it. We're going to talk about the scene or setting. We're going to talk about tension.

Like what is the tension within it? We're going to talk about how you overcome the tension. We're going to talk about results and a bit of resolution after you overcome. And finally, your move, right? And storytelling has many different forms. You have things of like a hero's journey. You have...

like uh like brand stories like a voice um you have the pixar pitch yeah uh and then dan hammond who is the uh creator of um rick and morty who has like his i think what's 12 steps or 10 steps or writing a story i don't want to bore you nor do i want to overload you with all of that

Honestly, the content about storytelling are vast. The literature, the people writing about it are so much. But I wanted this one of hours between us to be succinct and something you can use straight away. All right. So just remember story as the framework. The scene of setting tension to overcome the results and your move.

Okay. I'm going to go one by one. And at every point of time, I want you guys to give some examples. So then, so I'll be looking into the chat. So on my screen right now, I see your videos. So I can see your reactions. I see the chat and I see my slides, right? So then I would wait for kind of inputs from you before I move on to the next one. So that would be the flow. I'll share. I will wait for your inputs and then we'll move on to the next one. All right. So,

What is the way to open a pitch? Of course, you're going to start by saying, hi, my name is, my company is, we do this, that first liner. That is always the start. But that is almost like when you meet someone, you introduce yourself, you shake their hand, you say that one, two liner. That is not the story. That is almost like the...

first page of the book. That is almost like the title slide, right? That is just that first glance. Right after introducing yourself or the company and what you do, this is where the scene or the setting starts, right? When I was doing this, generally, people would say, oh, focus on a certain group of people or focus on an individual. But I realized that some pictures, they don't focus on one. They go big.

They'll talk about, oh, what's the big problem in the world today and stuff like that. So I'm going to share that there's two strategies to this. One is to do setting. That means you tell the big story. What's been happening? What's happened? And then that big story, then you introduce what's wrong. Or you can zoom in. You can talk about, hey, this is the specific thing which is happening. When do you choose? You choose based on your experience.

the problem that you identify. If your problem is very clear that it affects a certain group of people that it needs to have that relatability, then you go C. But if your problem is something that is widespread, affects civilization, communities, then you go big picture. Can you transit from one another? Yes, you can. You can start with a setting then go down to a C. But there is, these are both very

use of introductions that would help your storytelling. So don't force yourself to tell once upon a time then there's a person. Not necessarily. To prove my point, I won't share my

what you call this i won't share pictures but i'll share uh movies right so now i'm going to show you two movie intros and then you tell me which one is the setting and which one is the scene okay all right um let me double check make sure i can share my sound okay cool i can share my sound two months for video sharing okay now i'm gonna share now okay give me a sec let me okay i just want to make sure my sharing includes sound if not then

I would be quite embarrassed that the thing doesn't work. So I'm going to play first. If you can hear, again, just react. And how about this? Oh, no. Okay. The first movie. Okay.

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so

okay uh i can of course play all the way to the end where okay um oops

That was the last slide. Let me go back. All right. I'm going to stuff myself in the corner of this slide. You guys can see me. So the reason why I... Quickly, can someone share with me which one do you think is the setting? So which one do you think is the scene? Okay. Right.

And it's nice. So you guys get it. Like, it's okay to start with this way, right? It's okay to start with when you are focused on setting or scene, right? Do you want to hear real examples of how a pitch would start with setting and one would start with scene? Yes. All right. Of course. Right. I'm going to share with you.

Let me go back and... So I'm going to share with you the one video by... This is by a company called Brightwheel, right? I use them a lot when I am teaching about pitching because they have one of the best sharp tank pitches, right?

And the thing about Brightwheel, their pitch is that it was so good that you assume that their business was already validated. Because their business that Brightwheel does is to provide...

I'm going to give you a bit of setting before I show you the video. Their business is to provide educational communication or like a business communication tool between parents and preschool. Okay, I found a video. I'm going to share it in a while. And you might think that they are like, oh, of course, everyone has to do it.

But before you watch the video, let me share with you that this video was pre-COVID, right? It's pre-COVID. That means this did not

There was no impetus from COVID to actually do this. And right now, those who are still in school or if you know your siblings and are still in school, every school in the world who is connected to the internet would have to have some form of learning management system or way to communicate with parents. So Brightwheel did this before COVID and listen to how he opens it.

I include that captions that I made it more clearer. So I'm just going to skip. Sorry. Let's go. Hi, Sharks. My name is Dave Vassen. I'm the founder and CEO of Brightwheel. I'm here seeking a $400,000 investment for a 4% equity stake in my company.

Brightwill is the mobile app for preschools, daycares and families. And we are completely revolutionizing early education. Now, I believe all of us are parents here. And I want to ask, when you come home after a long day and you ask your kids, what did you learn in school today? Does this sound familiar? Okay. I don't even want to show you what he shows next. Because I'll share that later when we talk about tension. Before he even starts the conversation, he said these few words. He said,

sharks, I know all of you are parents, right? And when you try to talk to your preschooler, what did you learn today? So what he did is that the scene he was building wasn't just one individual. He brought the judges or the sharks in shark tank into the scene. He made the scene alive.

And what he did later builds the tension because he says, does this sound familiar? Right? A lot of you have heard pictures that say, have you ever been in this situation? This is a cop-out version of this because you are trying to pull the person in. But he does his research so well that he can just say, you are a parent, I'm a parent, you understand this, this is the scene. Then he showed it. I don't know!

This is the experience for millions of parents across America. This is the scene. He made a scene, but then he did not stop at the scene. You realize he actually made it bigger. And this is actually one of the best example, I feel, of how within the first few seconds of him stepping in, even after he made his ask and tell, he got everyone ready. There is no point whatsoever after this. Nobody believed that he's...

his setting of the scene or what he said is not important because he made it so relatable, so important to them. I'll show you stickem and how they did it slightly different, but I want to use this as an example of how from here you move on to the T, which is tension. So just here, what is the tension? And if you can, write the word tension.

That's the phrase that he used that described the tension.

Every single day, and especially for younger kids. You've been apart from your little human being for six, eight, ten hours a day, and that is all you get. You know, you want to be a part of their day. You want to add to their running once you come home, and you can't. And it's gut-wrenching. And on the other side, on the school side, it's no better. In addition to actually educating our kids, teachers are managing a ton of paperwork. Let's face it, they're actually managing parents. And on top of that, they're even running a business. The system is broken, and Brightwheel is the solution.

Alright, so there's two sets of words that he used. Can I get anyone to write down? How did he describe the tension? What are the two words he used that describe the tension? If not tension, I mean the problem. The system is broken. Very good. Thank you. But before that, he used another phrase. Yes, gut-wrenching. This, thank you so much. With this, I want to transit into tension, right?

when you're talking about the problem identification you don't just talk about the problem but you talk about the effect the problem has right you make it painful so right now those who are into ux or even

user journey or design thinking, you always use this term pain point. Oh, what's the pain point? What's the pain point? Right now, when you share the pain point, you must make it painful. It must be painful. Okay. You must show that it's urgent. You must show that it is something that if you don't heal, it will rot. That's how you share problems, right? You make it a tension. Okay.

I'm going to pause right now and ask if there's any questions. If not, I want to go to our first exercise, a very quick exercise so that you guys can apply this too. Is there any questions? Give me a sec also. Okay. Nope. We're good. Right. Okay. I will now ask

everyone individually for your problem decide for the thing that you're going to do

Are you going to do setting or scene? And if you can, tell me why. So the reason, the way we choose, that's why I'm putting them together, is that the way you choose your setting and scene is how you want to move to your tension. If the tension is what we call macro, that means it's a big level problem. You start with a setting.

If the problem is individual, it's micro, you start with a scene, right? So if you can, in the chat, just write, if you're going to do your opening, right? Do you want to choose a scene or a setting? And then you tell why. Yeah, and why. Kin, why would you choose a scene? Don't need to go into details of the problem, but share with me why you would choose a scene and why you would choose a setting. Take some time. I know it requires a bit of thinking.

Good. Ronen, do you have... I'm going to respond to your questions because that's the best way you will learn now. So if you can, who is the character? The more inputs you do now, the better and easier for you to come up with your 60 seconds later. Yes, Tian? Okay, good. Ah, you're right. That is right.

The toddler problem is a widespread problem, but he choose a scene, right? I was hoping that someone caught on that. The reason why was because he could narrow it down to a human experience, right? He could narrow it down to one human experience. That one human experience is the pain point. Then he pair it up with a systemic problem, right? Okay.

yeah so be mindful that like i said you can move from scene to setting and setting to scene but the point is that i'm using storytelling terms by the way and the reason is because i want you guys to be very clear that you don't force yourself to make that one experience the main character in the scene is okay cool okay now okay um yeah i i think it is important to know also there's no right or wrong

Honestly, it is okay to start both ways. It's okay to start with the bigger picture and then go down to scope. Or just start with a bigger picture, then talk about the problem at the bigger picture problem, right? And I'll give you the stick-em example later with this. So this started off with a big picture, while others would start with a small picture, I mean with a zoom-in kind of scene, where they would start, you know, the common...

Imagine you are or something like that. And that itself would stop the whole thing, right? Then you have to kind of bring yourself in. Before we move on to tension, I'll give you the cheat code for this. Are you ready? It's not on the screen. It's not on anywhere. If you hear it, you will hear it, right? The thing to choose is the one with the least friction

the easiest for you to connect to your judges, to your audience. Star Wars was supposed to be an epic. Star Wars was supposed to be mind-blowing, galactic empires fighting each other. It started with a big setting. Guardians of the Galaxy wasn't about big people fighting together. It's about individuals, about characters. Both are about space, both are about wars, both are about people fighting.

But the transition to it is that, yes, I'm going to tell you about the battles or the big thing. Are there characters in Star Wars? There are. But they start with a big setting because that was important. The most recent Superman movie started with a setting, setting, setting, setting. What happened the last three months, three days, then after that, going to a scene. You get me? But the point is that what has the smallest, requires the least effort to get your point.

okay if the least effort is to talk about big problem that people already know about or people are clear about start with that if it's easy to get them emotionally through a story is then do that are we okay right so think about what would get to your audience especially your invest your your judges fastest you choose that one way is to practice with your friend okay or trust us people so you can even do a b testing if it helps you okay right now

Before we move on, I'm going to give you guys some time, right? If you need to confer with your group mates, you can, right? And right now, if you can, how can you write

Yeah, remember just now the words, system is broken, the feeling is gut-wrenching, right? So that is a cognitive part, which is you're analyzing, that's the mind part of it, and then there's the heart part of it, right? So think about both of these. Find, like, at this point of time, I want to hear for at least every group, what words can you describe your problem with that can build tension, okay?

I'll give you an example which doesn't work, right? Like 50% of students do not have access to something. That is a statistic. Remember, statistics are not memorable. Statistics are forgettable. Statistics don't have impact, right? So if you are supposed to change your problem statement to a statement that is full of tension, that has emotive words, right? How might you write it?

okay i want you guys to give a try don't think too much about it whatever comes to your mind write it in the chat right i'm gonna give you guys some time okay how much time do you think maybe i'll just give you guys two minutes to do this it's an exercise that would be useful for you i know some of you okay pause i know some of you may think that english may not be your first language and tough it's okay the point is that it's

It's the learning of how to rewrite your problem statement. So we're going to try that. So rewrite your problem statement from your group in a statement that will have tension. Show who's suffering, show what's the root cause, why is it now, how big is the wound, and use emotive words. Make it so real. I would ask everyone to write and then I would comment. That way we would learn as we go. Two minutes starts now.

Write it in the chat. Yeah. I'm going to use the only example I see on the chat for the brave Mangluk to share. Right. I'm going to just share how you might make this more painful. Right. So the problem statement is people don't have any proper way of recycling e-waste. Right. Question. Do people want to recycle? Yes. People want to recycle. Hold on. People want to recycle. People want... People...

Good. So the pain is that waste is building up in the house and it's making life more uncomfortable. Or you can share something like people want to be involved and make the world a better place, but they feel disempowered. They feel they don't have the opportunities to share.

Right? And people are frustrated. So you use emotive words like this. Right? So Man Lok, can you rewrite it? How people would feel and what struggle people face. Having no way is no tension. I don't have a way to do this. I don't do lah. Right? If I don't have that way, I won't do it. That's not a tension. Tension is something that if you don't resolve it, it will break you.

Again, having access is what does it show? I like, Tian, that you're writing it like it will be liberating, but go the other direction. If they don't have it, what happens?

Yeah, share it like they'll fall back behind. They will lose out. So you want to build that tension. That's how you do storytelling. I'm going to allow for one more minute because I really hope that you guys can apply this. If you write it, you get inputs, right? This is your chance to write and learn. I'll give one more minute. Rewrite your problem statement on the group chat so that I'm able to apply how you build tension.

All my assumption is that young people experience imposter syndrome. Good. Good enough that they have imposter syndrome. But when they... Nice. All right. I'm going to help you out here. I would say, what is the root? What is their need? What do they want to feel? They want to feel authentic. Right?

So when you want to put attention, you want to say that you want to achieve something or they are losing something up. So always, always look at tension as one thing. That one thing is that they don't have it. They'll lose out. They will fail. Something bad will happen to them. Right? So you want to rewrite it about authenticity. Okay. I want to thank the three brave souls who wrote, right? See, I got thanks. You're welcome. Right? Good.

Good. So the idea that they cannot contribute to their home economy, that they feel like, you know, yeah. Honestly, Tian, if you want to, right, you can even say people will feel like losers, right? That feels like, right, and I don't want my generation to feel like losers or something like that. So you make it more painful, right? You can put information later, but my point is that I want you to be able to make it emotive at a small time, okay?

I don't want to hold everyone else's time back. Thanks for the three people who are willing to be brave and share your words. Oh, wow. Okay. Last one. When you start self-studying, do you feel overwhelmed? Good. All right. Okay, good. Overwhelm is a good way, right? But you may want to put, right, this is good enough. Do you feel overwhelmed? Do you see many full courses? And can I suggest one thing? You share, right?

Then as a result, right, you get nothing done, right? Spend too much time deciding, okay? Yeah. Whoa, now then everyone start writing. Okay. Every hour turns into a preventable hazard. We don't want a climate crisis. We have got, yes. Okay, good. Good enough, Abdullah. Right, but you're putting the urgency into it.

But I think the thing about sustainability is that you cannot start with setting. So this is my rule of thumb because the setting for sustainability is quite obvious and everyone knows it. You must show the scene of how you can empower people. Yeah. Good. Jenny, good. But share about when they don't have safe toilet, what happens, right? Yeah. What happens after? Okay.

So the tension could be, for example, like the diseases, the lifestyle and all that. So the tension must exist in it. The inability to in excess is the first two lines. And then you must share what the tension is. All right. Okay. Okay. A lot of you. Yeah. What happens after? Okay. That's the tension. Okay. Time check. 11. I'm going to move on. Suddenly I have a lot of ones to reply to. Okay.

Thank you so much, everyone. Oops, I realized my video is off. Okay, what I'm going to do is that I'm going to share the next few parts in a row because I think these are the parts that you guys get it, right? So when you... Basically, tension is your problem, but you want to rewrite your problem statement. I know all of you will have your pitch deck and will write your problem statement, am I right?

Okay, but what I want you to write your problem statement as is to also speak of it as attention. It doesn't need to be the words on your screen, by the way. This is important. Storytelling is not only about the words on your screen. It's about how you speak of it. The word gut-wrenching, the word broken wasn't on the screen, right? But the way he speaks about it is how he's delivering it.

So after sharing your tension, you want to show that you are the solution, right? That you gain something, that you're able to overcome this tension. And this is when they feel like when you have a high tension, your solution becomes the hero. The solution becomes like what would relieve, right? Yeah. But at this point of time, again, clarity, ease of understanding, right?

What I realized, and this is my experience to working with a lot of startup founders, especially early stage, especially those who are pre-seed trying to show their ideas, you go technical very fast. So less technical, more clarity, right? And more importantly, why you? The idea that your solution or what you're able to overcome is the solution, okay? I'm just going to leave this for a while. Any questions with regards to this?

if you guys understand this thumbs up for me please before i move on to the next slide oh yes you have a question go uh so i i understand your point about being like you know very clear about what you like you know what you are doing and such thing like that but i was wondering like you know it's

If you are talking to people who are very special, like scientists for example, they prefer a more concise language. They prefer more scientific language. What do you think should be the case? Should you still go for more emotional language?

Yeah, that's what I understand your struggle very much, Tian. I think it's always knowing your audience, right? And storytelling has to do with your audience.

okay so just just to remember what i'm sharing with you is to help investors understand you not all investors are technical people not all investors understand the technology or the know-hows behind something but they understand concepts they understand but if this is a problem this is a solution it can solve if you make that logic they are good so your question is how about if you're talking to scientists then you speak

to speak to scientists, what would be a scene or setting that scientists understand? What would be the tension that scientists understand? Right? So it's the same concepts, but the point is you change it to your audience. So a scientist would want to make sure that evidence is the central of all things. Am I right?

yeah so your setting or scene must show that there's either lack of evidence evidence are not compelling or something or evidence are showing something else then the tension comes within the lack of evidence evidence not ready or we found insights or whatever so that it must match your audience so tension doesn't need to be emotive if you realize i don't say it's emotive but i'm sharing you to be emotive because speech

Dex, Kea, I'll share this now, I will share this later. This was by, I was doing a panel yesterday with a few startup founders two days ago, and this was one of the lines, he said, a pitch is not a presentation, a pitch is performance, right? Because you're trying to convince people, you're not just showing, if not, just give your slides, they read it themselves.

They can read, Ma. Right? But it's a performance. It's about convincing, showing how you feel. And that's why when you talk about overcome, it's about you being the solution. All right? Because the solution cannot exist without you. That's the overcome. All right? Are we okay? Okay. Again, thumbs up if you get what I mean. The overcome is a hero. It's like, yes, thank you for your answer. And you introduce the hero. All right? Okay. Thank you. Thank you for your answer.

Okay, half an hour to go. I'm going to wrap this up in a while and then we can start working on our own...

60 seconds, right? So then you show the results, right? Or the resolution sometimes. So the point is that you don't want to show results that are fluffy. So the thing about storytelling is that when you are at this stage, it must hold ground. It must resolve. So you know the tension that you're building just now, right? So for example, I'm going to use one of your examples here. When you talk about... I'm trying to choose one.

when you talk about um imposter syndrome right so the one of the one of the the tension is about how

young people experience imposter syndrome, they're intimidated, they feel inauthentic, right? So when you introduce this, you are the solution to do this, then your results must already address. People feel less imposter syndrome, people feel more genuine, people feel this, right? And this must be either by your stats or by your research, by your feedback, by people who use your product, people give reviews, then your results must match, right? And it

depends on what level, what stage you are. And this is important because your results cannot be all, all good. So don't, don't come up with fake results. So I decided to show that when you're early stage, you talk about interviews, you talk about your prototype, you talk about letter of intent, showing that people believe in you. Right?

You're trying to build belief. But if you're already growing, you already have some traction on the ground, you show how many people you serve, how much revenue you got, how much partnerships you have, and what people are talking about you in the media or social media or the press.

If you are already doing well at that level and you want to grow even bigger, you talk about how you're doing well. You want to talk about progress. Say this month I do well, next month I do, this month I do well, this month I do even better, this month I do even better. January 100, February 200, March 1000 or something like that, right? You want to have measurements which are clear because you want to show that you're not just telling a one-off story, but it's growing.

or scaling. Then finally, if you can, because again, you want to share your story, right? That you want to get validation. If you want to have awards or recognition, this is where you put them in, right? So this is how you show results after showing solution. You know, it must pair up. Okay. Yeah. I'm going to show the last slide. And this is, so once you do this,

Now, this is the part where you need to flip the story, right? So now, you see, big story is seen, shown already. This is what's happening, right? This is the tension between what's happening. I'm coming in to break the tension and I can do it well. So what do you do next? You flip it. You tell your audience, you say, this is your move, right? It's your turn to make the difference. You can invite them, join me, right?

You can say, support me, give me money, funding. Join me, become my partner. Try my product, become my user. Help me be better, become my mentor. Tell the people about me, be a part of this movement, amplification, right? Vote for me, competition, right? This is the part where you tell them in your move, you can make the world a better place, right? Never ever end with thank you, can I have question please, without making this.

This is where some startup which has shared their story results already. Thank you very much. Any questions? No, you have to flip because you tell your story already. You must make them involved in it. This is where you tell that story. So don't just end off by saying, thank you very much. Questions, please. No, you must say, tell them what's their involvement in this. So I'll run through again. Build the story, build the scene, build the setting.

tell the tension within it introduce yourself break the tension show why you're doing well then with this you hand over to whoever is listening to you if this is clear thumbs up then i will go into the stickum uh example all right we're good okay for the stickum example i did not download their video so i'm gonna open the youtube video give me a while to open their their their pitch and we will hear

we will break it down bit by bit like i will break down exactly what they say i will show you the right okay i'll show you exactly what they say their pitch is only four minutes i will stop every few minutes to show you what they say okay can you guys see the stickum uh slide thumbs uh or my thing i mean the let me just confirm

Okay, I will remove myself from this. I'll put myself in the corner. Maybe this corner. Okay. All right. I don't want to block the words. So you should see the stick-em slide. I will only stop at the end of the... So it's around five minutes.

One minute intro by the host and then there will be four minutes. I will pause to bring the story framework in. The next and the last team to pitch on this global stage for the million dollars is a team from Singapore. Two of the founders met actually in kindergarten. They studied together in primary school

And then years after, they started having conversations in a robotic club about what they missed when they were in school. So they decided to build it. Now, as I invite them here on stage, they have a bet for you. They bet that you will wish that you had their product when you were in school as well. Please join me in welcoming the team from Singapore, Stick'Em. At this point of time, you realize that the host was their hype man.

The host actually made it so good for them that everyone wants to listen to them already. So if you are lucky to get a host as your hype man. Four minutes starting now. Good luck. Every incredible idea that we have heard today is a demonstration of good STEAM education.

STEAM education is more than just learning about maths or doing well in sciences. It's about developing essential 21st century skills like critical thinking, problem solving and creativity. At the same time, the World Economic Forum shares that in the next decade, the five top most required skills are the same skills developed through STEAM education. That's why STEAM education has become a fundamental need for the next generation, especially in the age of AI.

In the chat, very quickly, did they use scene or setting to do their introduction? I get one answer, I'll move on. Or if you just want to speak up. Setting, nice. So you guys get it, right? Will they? Yeah, very nice. Can you use scene? Of course you can. I'm just sharing that this is one of the ways they do. Now, listen out for the tension.

But the reality is that there are nearly a billion children who are growing up without access to STEAM education. And there are two main reasons behind this. One, current STEAM education infrastructure is ridiculously inaccessible. It's either too expensive or too complex for public schools to be using it. And two, there are simply not enough teachers who can teach these things. Because if you can teach coding and robotics, you will not be teaching in a public school. What's the two tensions that they talk about?

There's the word that he used before inaccessible. Anyone remember? If not, I can play it back. Yeah, but it was expensive. Yes. But he used a very strong word. I'm going to play back so that everyone can hear. Ridiculous. Thank you, Jenny, for paying attention. Right? If you can teach coding and robotics, you will not be teaching in a public school.

And this is the part where I thought was so smart. He says that the good teachers will not go to public school. He's calling out the reality. He's saying that this is the problem, that the tension is good teachers will not even go to public school to teach this, right?

Then they gave the solution and they started by STICM. They did a funny thing here, they jumped on stage, but yeah. And STICM is here to change that. To tackle these two problems, we've created a STEAM kit and paired it with an online platform for teachers. Our STEAM kit consists of geometric connectors, chopsticks and electronics that can be controlled by any phone, any tablet and even the ancient computers you had in your schools growing up.

This all comes together into a STEAM kit that is so intuitive that even 9-year-olds can create robots like this on their own. For teachers, Stickem Academy provides ready-to-use lesson materials that are self-directed and aligned with their local curriculum, empowering any teacher from any school to conduct their own STEAM lessons.

so this is how they do they are overcome the tension was very clear ridiculously inaccessible it's expensive then they actually shared right so they brought two problems to two users here if you realize one was the student who doesn't have access and one the fact that school systems don't have teachers who are trained and they answered both right so the the tension they built

was exactly what they talk about. That is the clarity that you need to have. You cannot ding-dong your story, your problem, but then when you say your solution, it doesn't match your problem. Okay? So, now you realize that they were very clear that

They even mentioned that it's accessible because he said ridiculously inaccessible. But they replied by saying it can control by phone, by tablet and ancient computers. So you see the match ridiculously inaccessible to you can even use your ancient computers.

They're going to answer the issue of expensive later, but my point is that when you see a problem, you must show your presentation later answers the problem. This is the clarity. So the tension was built already. They replied to the tension. Now listen to their results, right? So the overcome is that Sikkim provide this very clear two forms of solution. Empowering any teacher from any school to conduct their own STEAM lessons.

With these products, STICM is now in 11 different countries providing quality STEAM education to over 12,000 students by empowering over 1,200 teachers to teach it with confidence. You realize the statistics they chose were exactly what they mentioned earlier. Students, teachers and schools. They did not... They... They...

Of course, they mentioned countries, but my point is that they went back to exactly what you were talking about. So your statistics must match your story. Your statistics cannot just be random statistics that doesn't help build your story.

And these numbers just keeps growing up. In fact, we are growing faster than ever before. We have achieved 100% month-on-month growth over the past three months, generating a total of $89,000 in revenue. But this is just the beginning. We have new schools constantly signing up, but we also have 90% of our existing schools repurchasing every single year. Why? Because teachers understand they can teach better with Stick'Em while also having real learning outcomes.

But don't take it from us. Take it from the public school teacher who won an Outstanding Innovators Award or the rural school in Uganda who ranked first in the country after using STICM. These prove that the methodologies that we have developed with top-tier research teams from Singapore are effective.

So this is where he answers the expensive question, right? So it's okay for you to build attention and then share your solution a bit earlier, right?

I do feel that this way of sharing helps them build up the credibility first when they introduce this point, people were ready to listen. Beyond just affordability, our competitive edge is that no other product out there is able to engage schools without STEAM teachers. For us, what we do is that we provide STEAM education to any school that do not have STEAM teachers.

With that, we have generated nearly half a million dollars in revenue, completely bootstrapped while still in school. And guess what? We just graduated. Imagine what we'd be able to do with a million dollars. This was the start of your move, right? So they already shared, we just graduated. We are free. We don't have school holding us back. Then they flipped the story. Now, listen to how they flipped the story.

With a million dollars, we unlock 17 billion dollars in market by scaling our production, sales and marketing. And going forward, we're going to grow and sharpen our impact by using the OECD metrics to measure the development of our students over a six-year horizon. So why us? We're living proof of what good STEM education can do. We've spent, with over combined 50 years of experience, we've spent half a decade building Slicum, a quarter of our lives. So we know that this is going to work.

Look, we're making STEAM education simple enough for almost any teacher to teach it and accessible enough for almost any student to afford it. With your help, we can bring access to millions of students, future change makers who might stand on this very stage in 10 years with their own innovations. But without STICM, we might never know. Let's hear the applause. If you guys want applause, you can applaud. Make sure you can hear it.

I hope that by just hearing this, you are able to see that the elements of what I've shared earlier was in what they say. Of course, my bad. I think I'm sharing the wrong screen. All right. The elements of what I shared was there. So I'm going to move ahead. We shared this already. Okay. So can I ask right now,

I'm not going to do in breakout rooms. I think there will be a lot of coordination. So instead, I'm going to ask you to be able, so I'm going to make it an open thing. I'll give you less than 10 minutes, maybe just five minutes. Take your time to come up with what you can. By this point of time, I want to appeal to everyone to be able to sit out in this room, right? This will be a chance for you to

to be able to practice actually like speaking to a group of people right if not tomorrow would me maybe daunting on you and you'll be able to get your inputs um now today right now okay so um in lieu of time i'm gonna change this to five minutes but just follow this simple kind of like um solution just for today so that you're able to practice what we should talk about okay

okay i'm gonna put the timer for five minutes uh if you have any questions write it in the chat so then i can reply or if you want to speak to me just speak up um and we would i'm happy to answer any questions okay so five minutes um if you are ready just type in the group saying that i'm really then i'll let you be the be the first one to share

I know I'm taking a risk because yeah, right? I don't see any questions. So I'm assuming everyone got the understood assignment. If you are struggling again, just if you need to, you can also DM me. Oh, you can. Can you guys DM? Yes, you can DM. If you need to, you can DM me. But I would share with everyone your question.

We are only stopping at solution overcome, by the way. I'm not asking you to share your results or your ask. I'm just asking you to start with that, right? By the way, just to share, for Stickum, their scene was four sentences, not two sentences. It was four sentences. Their tension was, I think, another three, four sentences. I forgot to count. Yeah. Then they jumped on the stage. Stickum is the answer. Amuse me a bit.

If you are working on your opening right now, can you do a react so I can see who's actually participating? Thank you very much, Kin. Wow. I see more hearts bouncing all over. Thank you much, Abdullah. All right, Jenny. Haptics Group, Genevieve. All right, cool. Thanks, guys. Just want to make sure that, yeah. Okay.

Yes, it's totally fine if you don't participate. I doubt we can hear everyone. But if you do participate, it will be a chance for you to be able to refine your pitch at the essential level before next week. Is your pitch next week? Am I right? Or is it two weeks from now? Exactly. So this is already spending time. Okay, so before I ask anyone to share anything, I would say that

Let's begin with the fact that you are sacrificing sleep, you're sacrificing school time, you're sacrificing Saturday morning to be here, right? You're already present, you already spent time listening to all this. I assure you, if you apply it, even in this short form, right, it would be valuable for you.

Okay, so with that, I have seven more minutes with you. If you, anyone ready to speak, unmute yourself, share your short story form. And we're not doing why, but yeah, we're just doing STO. All right. Okay. If we can, we just do STO and I'll open the floor. The bravest soul, please take the mic.

Yes, go, Kin, don't raise your hand, just unmute yourself. So I will start what I prepared. So Jane is a student from Myanmar who is studying English and she suggests for three ways to start learning English and find countless platforms on the internet.

like free courses, YouTube videos, websites, and many other resources. Everything is available, but she doesn't know how to study effectively with so many options or whether she should focus on just one.

Even after studying constantly for three months, her English state hasn't improved much, which feels deeply frustrating and even heartbreaking. That's why we designed a website called Daily Good Love, a platform where users can sign up for different challenges based on their goals. And they receive structured daily texts for 30 days, carefully combining YouTube lessons,

quizzes, useful websites, writing practice and essay checking tools in one guided system. Can we give her a round of applause for taking the helm to start first? Right? I want to see your reaction. I want to see the reacts. Right? Amazing. Good on you for starting up and being brief to start first. And I think it was an amazing idea. It was a good delivery.

I have two points just for you to take note, right? You are saying many sentences. Yes, Malok, that was pretty good. I agree. You're saying many sentences that can be condensed. The thing about pitch and not a movie is, or even Netflix show with many, many episodes, you cannot keep saying the same thing many different ways. So my suggestion, and if you realize for this assignment, I said two sentences each, right?

Okay, so if you can do two sentences, I will try to help you out with two sentences. Let's try, right? Is you can just say this person individual is a student in this place of this country of this background. That's your first sentence, right? Be clear who's your setting. And then the next sentence is that the person is the person's aspiration is to do this or the person wants to feel this, right?

because you're not solving showing the problem first you're shedding the tension you're sharing the setting you're not showing the problem yet right you're not building attention so this person is in this place doing all this and this person aspires to do this this is their dream this is what they want to be right then you introduce but after going online looking and spending three months doing this nothing was working for them they feel this and they feel this and this happened to them by just having four sentences

It's enough for you to capture everything that you said just now. Was that helpful? Right? My suggestion is to write this down and practice them. Okay? Then you introduce yourself. Right? So when you share this, then you either, okay, this is the point where you can use AI. Right? Ask AI to condense your sentences. But when you condense your sentences, the next thing you do is talk to someone and get their response to it. Okay? Yeah.

I'm not against AI by the way, I'm for AI, but my point is, time is the essence. Alright, good. Next person, go. Go, Tian. Alright, thank you. So I will be delivering my opinion now. Imagine you are a student in Myanmar. Your family is trying to earn a living day by day. And you want to get out of this poverty that your family is having.

But, and you also know that the best way to get yourself out of poverty is to get into the unit, a good university to get into a good job. However, you can't afford to get a qualification to get into the university. You don't have the language skill or the academic skill to get into the university. You

you are losing job opportunities because you don't have the qualification to get into university. And that is what we are doing right now. So we know any students can afford to get the material to get to this international qualification. Thank you. Good. Another round of applause for Tian. Okay. Nice.

Pain is there, clear. Maybe make it a bit deeper. Make it about, because you're talking about Myanmar, because you're doing that setting, then you maybe go regional. How other countries are having it. So you're falling behind even your peers from other countries. And you know this because you're in ASEAN. You're in ASEAN. The whole point is this ASEAN future catalyst, right? By just sharing that you're falling behind other ASEAN countries, you got the context already. Because the audience already know we are talking about ASEAN.

Alright? So that pain must be more than just falling behind. Second is that this is my suggestion. You can choose to ignore this if you want to. Don't use imagine. Why? Because when you start imagine, you're actually putting them, asking them to imagine. Right? Instead, tell the story. This is a story of give me a Burmese name. Tian, give me a Burmese name. Ah,

I'm not a Myanmar person so I don't really know maybe for example someone give me a Burmese name a very common Burmese name write it in the chat now Kin good I have a friend whose name is Kin also she's a paramedic in Singapore this is recorded so Kin is a very common name in Myanmar so you can see this is a story of Kin

Kin wants to do well in her work, in school and thrive in life. She sees her peers in ASEAN doing so much better. Unfortunately, she doesn't have access. She's not qualified or whatever. So you start, this is the story of Kin. You can put an image of someone and all that. But then you say, this story is not alone. This is the story of how many Burmese students. Then you show the number. You start from a scene, then you build to that setting. Then you build that tension that it's not just one person. It's many people and they face this problem.

And you can say Kin is fictional, but her story is real. If doing this is that I'm presenting you the story. If you say imagine, then their imagination might be slightly different. Plus, they have to reaccess what they know about school and stuff like that. Unless you're very clear, all of them understand what you're talking about. Like, Brightwheel, right? He knows all of them are parents, right? Then you can start with that.

okay so know your audience okay so my suggestion is tell the story don't start with magic okay okay um sean is it okay if i take a few more they still want to share uh i think the next speaker will be coming in soon i'll take jenny maybe maybe the person can talk about the others if they want to stay already so they can go for a quick breakfast oh yeah yeah sure sure okay so this is i i hear you sean um how long is your toilet break five minutes

Five minutes. Okay. We'll do the next five minutes. If you want to be, you're keen to listen in, stay on. I'll take Jenny and then can I show, see a few more hands of people who wants to try this exercise? If not, then Jenny will be our final participant. Cool. I'll just go. Okay. Okay, cool. Jenny, go ahead. Thank you. Just want to take a time break. Thank you so much for listening in. Come back at 11.35. All right. Okay, Jenny, go. Okay.

In Daravi, a slum in Mumbai, a mother named Asha wakes up before sunrise to take her young son to the toilet. They are forced to go early because the shared toilets become crowded and dirty once the day begins. If they are late, Asha must stand in a long line for hours with her child or search for a place outside with little privacy.

For millions of families, this daily reality is unfair and often inhumane, and more than 1.5 billion people still live without access to a safe toilet. And that is why we are building Loo Kit, a simple portable toilet kit that gives people dignity and a safe and private place to use the toilet when proper facilities do not exist.

No notes. You applied whatever was shared. You did very well. Round of applause for Jenny. That was as good as it gets. All right. Can I say you can do better? I'm sure you can, but I will give you time to share with others and get inputs. But I think applying the framework, you did well. Thank you so much for sharing. All right. Next, KZin Lin.

Okay, hello, my name is Kaysen Lee and I'm from Myanmar and I started my opening. So Miya is a 34-year-old base food entrepreneur who said through WhatsApp to a few regular customers, why taking care of our own family.

and she wants to grow her business online but she does not know where to start like many women entrepreneurs she is afraid of using new digital tools because mistakes cause times of many and in ASEAN more than 60 million women run small business yet many still struggle to adopt digital tools and grow online and that's why we created a land to

program a program that's corner business student with woman entrepreneurs so and to guide them step by step in using digital tools and also business grow and so they can be more confident and using online tools for their business nice I think you get the flow you got the okay I think the pain is not strong enough having no access to digital tools is just I don't have access but if you don't have access means what

you will fall behind, you get less revenue, your business will not grow. Pain must be stronger than that. Just thank you for suggestion. So you must say that, same thing like Tian just now, you must say like, oh, they will fall behind their ASEAN counterparts or they will lose out. So use words like they will lose out, they will fall behind. It's not only just no access to,

Alright? So just keep that tension. The flow is right, the consequence is right, it's just the tension must be more painful. Alright, with that guys, I thank you and thank you for giving me extra 4 minutes and I enjoyed this! Alright, Sean, thank you so much for inviting me! Thank you, Saifu, for supporting the program again. So, yeah, thank you for supporting your morning and I believe the fellows all enjoyed the program as well, so...

yeah if any of you wish to talk to saifu again he's in the discord channel too or if you want to have his contact you can ask in the group or ask me saifu do you mind i share your contact with them bing gain or email am i lagging or is it lagging i am lagging okay hold on i would i'm gonna close my screen and

give me a sec i apologize i got too many things running my computer running for the last one and a half hours so yeah i was lagging yeah i'm totally fine any contacts to be shared okay and i'm on discord so yeah some of you have already added me or it's great yeah okay thank you so much okay next we'll begin