• SUBJECT. Who is the main character of the narrative? You, your founder, a friend, colleague or previous employer? Example: Our founder / Sean / He
  

• ONCE UPON A TIME. When did this happen. What was going on at this time? Example: Started his first company in college three years ago.
  

• SITUATION. Set the stage. Describe the scene. Example: He was looking for an Android developer for an app and sat down with a recruiter to outline what an ideal candidate would look like. The recruiter said she’d get back to him with candidates shortly.
  

• CUSTOMER. Describe your target market or characteristics that match your current prospect. Example: The recruiter /She
  

• PROBLEM. Describe the problem. Example: Sean soon learned that ‘shortly’ meant ‘ten days.’
  

• FEATURES OF PROBLEM. Recruiters work on commission, he wanted to know why it’d taken so long. She showed him her screen, which had 50 tabs open, each representing different aspects of a candidate’s online profile and work history - each living in a different system of record. He realized that recruiters are missing one place to go for key, up-to-date candidate information.
  

• COST. How does the problem translate to time or money. Example: By the time the recruiter sent candidate profiles to Sean, he’s already sourced his own candidate, translating to thousands in lost business for the recruiter.
  

• IDEATION PROCESS. Identify the process of understanding what the need is and hypothesis what is need to fix it. Example: Investigating further, he learned that this challenge exists for most workflow management tools. None of them track people, they just track activities on people. There wasn’t a simple way to keep a person’s online personal and professional footprint up-to-date in workflow management tools recruiters, salespeople and marketers use everyday.
  

• SOLUTION. Keep this brief. It is about you, not what you do. Ta-da moment! Example: As a result, he started TalentIQ.

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