The investment story is a marketing story specifically for investors. It’s a business plan, a features list, a market opportunity and an analysis of conditions. It’s a presentation deck, a series of meetings with founders, and a set of complicated discussions about finance and return.
Mitigation of risk tends to be investors’ biggest concern, so an investment story often needs a laundry list of answers to possible failings. So investment stories are often a bit like Tetris, slotting together oddly shaped components into a recognisable pattern to convince someone to sign that cheque. The story is asking for a bet on the part of the investor that your project will succeed, so like any good better they want to know how to hedge the bet.
A big mistake that many startups make is to tell the same investment story to customers as their marketing story. The public won’t care because a competitive advantage isn’t a cause and a key feature sitting amid a suite of middling-to-bad features is not something worth fighting for. There’s nothing world-changing about a game (or any kind of product) that seems stuck together from parts just to fit into any old genre, and players feel that. When investment stories dictate marketing stories, the results are apathetic, so why should anyone care?
