Find Your Startup’s Billion Dollar Story

The trick is to write the ending first and work backwards

Joe Procopio
5 min readOct 14, 2021

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Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

Think about your favorite television show.

I’m willing to bet that it started off a little slow, then hooked you. It had a great season in the middle of its run, then ended in a way that was either wholly satisfying or frustratingly flat.

This is how episodic writing creates a great long-term story. Now, what if I told you that building a startup, by its very nature, follows the same episodic storyline. So let’s figure out how to apply this kind of storytelling to your business, and write an ending that’s wholly satisfying and successful.

Then we’ll carve out the path to get you there.

Every scripted television series follows three main arcs.

The A-story arc is each episode. It’s what is happening in front of you right now. Almost all the episodes are self-contained, and each A-story can be enjoyed on its own. However, there are always plot lines that don’t get wrapped up at the end of each episode, because they point to a larger story arc.

The B-story arc is each season. It has its own expanded plot, new twists, maybe even new characters. The B-story usually has its own beginning and end…

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Joe Procopio
Joe Procopio

Written by Joe Procopio

I'm a multi-exit, multi-failure entrepreneur. AI pioneer. Technologist. Innovator. I write at Inc.com and BuiltIn.com. More about me at joeprocopio.com

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