See show notes for this episode: S 02 | Ep 15 Show, Don’t Tell: Donna Griffit on Breaking Through with Product Demos.
0:00:15 — Alex Shevelenko
Today's guest is Donna Griffit, a world-renowned corporate storyteller and pitch alchemist. She has worked with over a thousand startups, Fortune 500 companies, and leading investors across 30 countries. She's helped them raise over a billion dollars by transforming complex — I would say sometimes boring — ideas into clear and compelling narratives that win funding, customers, and markets. She is the author of Sticking to My Story: The Alchemy of Storytelling for Startups. Donna, welcome to Experience-focused Leaders.
0:00:58 — Donna Griffit
Great to be here, Alex. Thanks for having me.
0:01:01 — Alex Shevelenko
Well, I'm so fired up to meet a fellow storytelling guru. We have a very narrow understanding of storytelling — more focused on the digital — but one of the things we pride ourselves on is picking the best ideas from practitioners like you and bringing them into our platform. And I think part of that platform is becoming the podcast, so I'm very excited to learn.
I wanted to kick off with one of the quotes from your book, and then maybe we could extrapolate from there. Does that sound like a plan?
All right, fabulous.
My sincere belief is that everyone has a story that is unique and compelling. There are no boring stories — I was wrong about that. There are merely layers and stacks of information piled up, obscuring the beauty of the story. I’m here to help peel the layers away and let startups polish their stories until they shine like the top of the Chrysler Building.
So let's get into it.
0:02:09 — Donna Griffit
That's a quote from Annie, for anybody who grew up with Broadway musicals. So, all right.
You know, it's funny because I wrote this about three years ago, and I'm always looking for new metaphors — they just emerge for me. So I was thinking in layers. Since then, it’s evolved into polishing diamonds: the facets and everything. You look at a piece of coal — it doesn’t look very shiny — but you can completely transform it, and that's truly the point.
And one of the reasons I call myself a pitch alchemist, and not just a pitch magician (which I kind of am as well), is that I’m already working with a great element. It’s solid. I just turn it into something more precious. I work with so many startups that are brilliant and important, yet people can’t see beyond the layers, beyond the dust, beyond the cobwebs — beyond the coal. And once we go through this polishing process, the shine comes through.
It’s like the brilliance emerges — and it's amazing. It really is. It's such a satisfying moment, too. It’s like, Oh wow, I didn’t realize how brilliant this could truly be.
0:03:39 — Alex Shevelenko
Yeah, it’s funny you bring up the brilliance of the founder. And by the way, you've also worked with corporates in your previous roles. Generally, the more complex and important the idea — and sometimes the smarter the people who came up with it — the more difficult it is for others to understand it, engage with it, or act on it. Right? Buy it, for example.
And it’s this paradox — the world is poorer because our brightest minds aren’t able to get out of their own minds and communicate to people who are not experts in that field. So true. And sometimes I describe it like this: founders, when they think about their message and their idea…
0:04:38 — Donna Griffit
Here it is absolutely clear, brilliant, beautiful. They see it. And then somewhere between that and where it's presented to the rest of the world, there’s a disconnect — like a missing circuit. And I’m there to reconnect it. I don’t write their stories for them; I take all of the data, experience, and stories and tie it all together, processing it with this magical element of storytelling.
I was just saying to my daughters the other day — it was Rosh Hashanah, and we hosted 25 people.
0:05:19 — Alex Shevelenko
Twenty-five people — wow, that’s quite an understatement. L’shana tova.
0:05:23 — Donna Griffit
And we’re still wearing red for the apples, because we’re recording on the second, third, fourth day — whatever — it never ends.
So I was looking at the ingredients. I was making this beautiful pot of pomegranate-braised short ribs, and there was a package of raw meat, a bottle of 100% pomegranate juice, a bunch of chopped vegetables, some seasoning, and beef stock in its little jar, waiting to be turned into stock. And I thought: if my guests came over and I served them a platter of those raw ingredients, they wouldn’t have been very pleased with me as a hostess.
But after spending hours seasoning, searing, boiling, chopping, and putting it all together — and letting it cook — we had this beautiful dish that was just delicious.
And that is exactly what happens with founders who come to me. They bring all these raw ingredients that are discombobulated — dessert mixed with dinner, appetizers all over the place. When we separate it out and cook it into a meal, adding that magic ingredient — for cooking, it’s love, and for writing pitches, it’s storytelling — the experience is completely different. Same ingredients, completely different experience.
0:07:00 — Alex Shevelenko
That's so wonderful. For the folks who relate to RELAYTO in the audience, we think of RELAYTO as — maybe your content is the meal, and Donna will help you prepare it in an incredible way — but we could be the table settings, the beautiful lights that you prepare, the soul. I’m not very good at plating.
0:07:20 — Donna Griffit
I'm not either. I’m good at talking — I can do a lot of things — but with my hands I’m less talented. Which is fine, because my father-in-law is an artist, Florence-trained, so my daughters and husband have that talent. I’m cool giving that up. But you know, we all have to excel at what we excel at.
0:07:40 — Alex Shevelenko
But yes, we do need it to look great as well as sound great. And I think, when you were talking about cooking, I remembered one of my favorite quotes from Steve Jobs, which is when he talked to a group of his designers and said, “You guys baked a beautiful cake, but for frosting you covered it with dog shit.”
0:08:10 — Donna Griffit
Usually it’s the opposite. People will take a pile of crap and sugarcoat it and put ribbons and bows on it — but it’s still crap. But that’s interesting.
It’s interesting because, again, the ambience of the experience — when you enter a room, if it smells bad or the settings are dirty, your spoons and forks are dirty — it’ll show. And it takes away from that Michelin, Florentine cooking experience.
And what I take from what he said is that Apple is so design-driven — everything being flawless, simple, beautifully packaged, beautifully created, the Jony Ive way. Sometimes I’ll see a great deck, but the design is just — oh my God — my eyes bleed. And that can’t work either.
It has to be a blend. Design isn’t just making it look pretty or decorating it with ribbons; it’s about elevating the message. Because everything visual on a slide, we ascribe meaning to.
0:09:30 — Alex Shevelenko
That’s right — and typically it’s the first thing that hits the eye, right? That split second.
0:09:36 — Donna Griffit
That saying: you never get a second chance to create a first impression. Yes. I would not have posted my pan of delicious short ribs on Instagram. I don't Instagram, but I wouldn’t, because although it tastes delicious, it doesn’t look very good.
It’s just a pan filled with chunks of meat with this beautifully glazed sauce — but it’s going to look like… meh. So there’s no point. Now, if somebody plates it — puts one piece, garnishes it with pomegranate seeds and a scoop of my Robuchon mashed potatoes — then it’ll look as beautiful as it tastes.
We were all sitting out in the yard — it was kind of dark, nobody was looking at what it looked like, everyone was just ready to eat. But when you are presenting something visually, you have to consider that as well. How is it going to read? Because we start, like you said, with our eyes, and then it goes to our ears — which is the same center we use to process reading. People think reading is a visual thing. It is not. It’s an auditory thing.
Because you and I both have English software — we know how to decode English. Actually, I do not speak—
0:10:50 — Alex Shevelenko
You don’t have English?
0:10:51 — Donna Griffit
Well, I don’t know how many other languages you speak — I’m guessing at least two or three — so you have that software that I don’t have. If I was to— what’s your native language?
0:11:02 — Alex Shevelenko
Russian.
0:11:03 — Donna Griffit
Russian. So if I see Russian, I can’t even make out the alphabet — it’s very different. I can say, “Oh, that’s Russian,” visually, but I can’t decode it. It stops at the visual layer.
But now AirPods have simultaneous translation — that’s not for reading, that’s for listening. If I’m listening to someone speaking Russian, it will automatically decode it for me.
So what happens is: people load up their slides with text. And we’ve been trained in school that if something is up on the board, we’d better read it — the board, the whiteboard, the blackboard, whatever era you grew up in. But what happens is you cancel out hearing the person speak.
If your slides (not yours, of course — someone else’s) are filled with bullets and paragraphs, there’s no way the audience is reading and listening at the same time.
0:12:07 — Alex Shevelenko
Busy signal — yeah. And I think one of the reasons why I founded RELAYTO is that I went back to some of my frustrations as a communicator. I started at Microsoft, with PowerPoint and the Office team, so we saw that problem. But interestingly, in consulting, when you join consulting, you write really thoughtful slides — but consulting slides tend to be not presenter slides as much.
0:12:37 — Donna Griffit
Basically — I see that at Stanford GSB all the time. People who came from McKinsey or BCG…
0:12:45 — Alex Shevelenko
Oh my God. Yeah, it’s like it’s in there — not quite Tolstoy, but close enough. There are some bullets; it’s like Tolstoy written in the original language sometimes. And I was probably doing that — I don’t remember — but what I definitely remember is that I thought I was very smart. I was full of myself. This was even before Stanford.
As one partner said — I was a consultant, doing an MBA-level job before the MBA — and he joked, “Shevelenko thinks he’s a partner.” And I thought I was very smart, thinking that I understood everything, that I was switched on, and for whatever reason people were absorbing my ideas or buying into them.
And that kind of opened up this realization: you can have the best ideas in the world — or what you think are the best — but if you can’t get them across, if you can’t get people excited, if you can’t make them feel like the ideas are their ideas instead of you shoving information at them, it’s a struggle.
0:13:56 — Donna Griffit
I’ll quote another Silicon Valley great, Stewart Butterfield from Slack. He was interviewed by Reid Hoffman, and Reid asked him, “What’s one piece of advice you would give your younger self?” And he said: focus on storytelling, on convincing people, because if you can’t do that, it doesn’t matter how great your products are.
And I always joke when I give workshops for companies that come from Korea, Japan, Europe — anywhere — when they come to Silicon Valley, I say, “You should ask to be taken to see our very, very, very, very big graveyard of all the apps and technologies that didn’t quite make it.” And they’re like, “Where can we see it?” And I say, “I’m kidding, guys.” (Humor doesn’t always translate.)
But truly, we want to see you succeed. We want to be able to say, “Oh my gosh, he was in my workshop, she was in my workshop years ago — and look where they are now.” Storytelling is a huge part of that, because if you have wonderful products that sit on shelves — or in your virtual inventory — what have you done?
0:15:05 — Alex Shevelenko
Nothing. It feels like a tragedy — it is.
And I think this is why what you’re doing is really important. Because let’s imagine — and we’ve seen this — the UN is in the news now, and President Trump was accusing the UN of not doing enough to get things done. Some people say that’s just Trump being Trump, but regardless of politics, there are studies — on both the UN and the World Bank — showing that they produce a lot of content that nobody actually reads or acts on.
Or they read it and figure out how filled with absolute, biased, ridiculous drivel it is, and some of the sources they use are absurd. But I think they build on the assumption that nobody’s going to read it — yet it feels like it’s being read.
It got to the point where the most downloaded World Bank report was the one stating that nobody reads World Bank reports. And so it perpetuates this cycle.
0:16:14 — Donna Griffit
I filled in a survey this morning — oh, by the way, this little furball I’m dog-sitting is Lola. So if you see a little white ball of fur pop up, understand. Beautiful, very good listener — Lola’s got a lot to say right now.
So the survey — question number 17 said: “Many people fill out surveys and don’t even read the questions. To prove you’re not one of them, please mark Answer 3.” And Answer 3 was nonsense. And I thought: how clever — to check if it’s a bot or a real human.
0:17:01 — Alex Shevelenko
So, how do we help? I think this goes beyond just startups. Startups happen to be at the forefront of trying to take something new and complex and make it understandable. What do you see as the biggest sins in storytelling? I think in your book you talk about the first 30 seconds, the first impressions — but what would you say are some of the most common mistakes that are easily avoidable?
0:17:31 — Donna Griffit
Oh wow — where do I even start? First of all: not having a story. Okay, let’s start there. I get so many decks that go straight into the solution and not the problem. (I’m going to let Lola out for a second while we continue pondering it.)
Second: when you don’t have a personal story — a personal narrative about how you came up with the idea and how it all started — you’re missing a huge opportunity to engage investors, potential clients, and partners in the dialogue of what truly drove you to take this crazy journey.
And it’s fascinating, because they can’t argue with a personal narrative. If you’re talking about a personal pain, a family pain, something that happened that showed you I need to do something about this, and you’re not using it — talk about tragedy. What a waste.
Stories stick. You don’t walk away remembering CAC, LTV, or projected revenues for 2026. Nobody’s going to remember that. They’ll refer back later — but they will remember the story of someone whose father was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in his 50s, nothing helped, so he set out to find a solution, discovered a bigger problem, and built a multi-billion-dollar company.
And when I later worked on their sales deck, the story wasn’t there. I asked the VP Sales: “What’s going on? Why aren’t you telling the Ron and Rafael story?” And they said, “We get 15 minutes with Whole Foods — we don’t have time for a story.”
And I said: Guys, there’s always time for a story.
Then they told me something incredible: both the VP Sales and the Director of Sales also had fathers diagnosed in their 50s with type 2 diabetes. And I’m like — you’re sitting on a storytelling gold mine. How are you not using it? Are you mad?
It’s like having a treasure chest full of gold coins in the corner of your house and saying, “Well, I don’t know if I should really spend them…”
0:20:20 — Alex Shevelenko
I’m like, come on — yeah. But is it one story, or is it multiple stories? There’s a founder story, there’s a future layer.
0:20:30 — Donna Griffit
It’s layered and rich. There are a few different kinds of storytelling. First of all, the origin story — and you don’t have to have a sick father to tell a good origin story. It could be a place you worked, something happening in the world.
For example, I just finished working on the deck of a Series B company, and they’re very big in cyber. The whole focus of cyber now is moving to brands as well — in the era of deepfakes, fraud, phishing, smishing — all these different things affecting CEOs, and it’s very hard to protect.
So the story we told there is basically the story we are all seeing: an explosion of AI-driven fraud and scams. That’s a story because we get it — because we’ve seen it.
You can see real-world examples, torn from the headlines — things that have happened — and that’s a story too. It can be something we’re all experiencing, and it makes us go, oh my gosh, this really is a problem.
0:21:36 — Alex Shevelenko
This is really growing. So either your origin, or something in the zeitgeist — something in the air, yeah? And you can work with what’s relevant right now.
0:21:49 — Donna Griffit
What’s relevant right now could be Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce getting engaged, and you not having some way to address that in your influencer strategy. That too is a missed opportunity. It’s not the same as solving cybercrime or fraud, but there’s still an opportunity there.
It doesn’t have to be a painkiller — it can also be a vitamin. Both work. Both can make you a lot of money. You just have to distinguish which story you’re telling.
Another story type is the whole structure. You mentioned my book, and in it I had to find a structure to show people how to build their decks, whether it’s an investor deck or a sales deck. What I chose was to look at acts — like the acts of a play.
I’m a huge theatre baby — I grew up acting, studying theatre. Big shock there, right? And when I started researching for my book, no surprise but still a thrill, I found that one of the oldest forms of storytelling is theatrical writing. Greek tragedies and Shakespeare, Chekhov, Molière — they wrote in acts: Act One, Act Two, Act Three. It’s very intentional how the structure unfolds.
That’s the same way Hollywood writes. There are about eight different archetypal scripts that are written again and again.
And — by the way — I just had this moment while I was cooking. I call it my “cooking and dishes” series. I watched Hunting Wives on Netflix because it doesn’t require a lot of concentration, and I was hit with this realization: every single Netflix series that’s based on a novel is the exact same story with slightly different characters, a different location, a slightly different plot.
There’s always the misunderstood detective who sees something others don’t — usually a minority cast, interestingly enough. There’s always the dark, beautiful hero or heroine who is actually the villain, and we know they are from the beginning.
Then there’s the new person who comes to town and gets tangled in this web of deceit and lies — again and again and again. Very few series break that mold.
On one hand it’s comforting — we kind of know what’s going to happen. There are a few little twists, but still. So you have to use structure for storytelling — but at the same time, let your originality, your creativity, your content shine.
When I give you this framework, it frees you, because it removes the guesswork about the order of things. And it’s all based on investor questions or audience questions. That’s the framework: Are you answering your audience’s questions in the right order? Very important.
0:25:04 — Alex Shevelenko
Donna, I’m not pattern-matched. So if we take a step back, a lot of founders come to conversations with investors with the mindset of: I have to convince them. I have to impress them. I have to mold myself into something they will like.
And there’s obviously pattern matching that investors do, which is valuable to understand — and it sounds like you’re laying that out.
But another question is: Where can you interrupt the pattern? What is the value of interrupting the pattern? Where does it make sense to interrupt it?
Let’s assume that you want to interrupt it somewhere — what’s the most important point?
0:25:58 — Donna Griffit
Let’s make a distinction between patterns and the human behind the startup — who you are as a founder. Patterns are important because that’s the way our brain takes in information. It’s what investors expect, and it’s good — we can only deal with chunks of information. I write about the principle of chunking. That’s why it’s four chunks, four acts, in your investor deck. But again, that’s the framework. I am thrilled when we can break through the patterns.
There are a few different things. First of all: your origin story, because that’s your own unique thing. Nobody can match that.
Second: if you can give them a golden nugget — something they didn’t know about your market, about trends, about opportunities, about something that’s happening — and you bring them a chunk of information that they didn’t know, in that moment you will have won their respect and their delight as well. They hear so many pitches that suddenly there’s this wait a minute moment — a crescendo, a twist — like we’re not the same.
Another thing is your differentiation — truly finding your place of differentiation. And that does not mean trouncing your competitors. It means being grateful that they exist, and then building on their success to showcase what you’re doing differently.
There are so many different layers. Elements of surprise are another part of storytelling. For example: trends, behavioral trends — like Gen Z only looking for ethically sourced products, which gives us an edge. Or: there’s been a surge in digital health after COVID, and people have changed the way they interact with doctors. It could also be a golden nugget of something regulatory — a law that’s about to change, something they’re going to need anyway — and you provide that solution ready to go. Or something about heat in the market: one of your competitors who just raised a big round, and you’ve already gotten farther than they have — that’s like saying, take a look.
There are so many ways to avoid the run-of-the-mill pitch that sounds like all the others — so that the framework becomes transparent. It’s there, but what they’re seeing isn’t the structure. Like: you don’t see the frame of my house right now. You see walls and bookshelves and a door, and my books back there — red adds a nice punch of color — but you don’t see the framework. It’s there; we just don’t think about it, because it frees us from having to think, and then we can decorate freely. So let’s—well, we’ll probably—
0:29:06 — Alex Shevelenko
As we discussed, it might be fun to do a real, spontaneous case study of how you work. But before we dive into that, one of the themes that’s relevant for anyone concerned about AI — and you’re quoted as saying, you have to incorporate AI, you can’t escape it, it has to be part of the story.
At the same time, everybody’s talking about AI, and everybody’s saying, my AI is bigger than your AI, and we’re definitely getting into AI fatigue.
So in a world where “AI” is maybe just intelligent — another, simpler word — applications of something that used to be called automation… when everybody’s talking about it, how do you make your story stand out? How do you make it really concrete so people understand what it does?
Is that something that has changed in the last two to three years? Two years ago, if you said, I’m doing something with AI, that was good enough — and now it’s not.
So guide me on the cycle of the story — the so what?
0:30:23 — Donna Griffit
What’s interesting is: my book — I handed in my first draft in October 2022, mid-October — and the last chapter is called The Future of Storytelling, and I wrote it with Jasper because OpenAI had not released ChatGPT yet. And then two weeks later — or even a week later — GPT-3 was released, and my husband said, hey, there’s this new thing, you better check it out, and I was like, holy wow, I need to rewrite that last chapter with it.
So I wrote this book at the very, very early days of GenAI coming out to the public. I mean, it’s been around, but it wasn’t accessible. So what I did not do there was talk about your AI story and your AI moat — which I’ve now become a big proponent of — and how you tell it.
You cannot ignore it. I’ve added a slide into Act Two that talks about your proposition, your solution, to introduce your AI defensibility — your AI moat — what truly makes you an everlasting company in the face of OpenAI and Google. What is your differentiation? How will you incorporate it? What is your unique AI story?
That shows, first of all, that you’re thinking about it. Second, your unique use of AI.
One of the best examples is health tech. I was just at a speech last week — a half-hour speech — by an incredible doctor who is deeply entrenched in AI for health tech. He gave a 30-minute lecture (which probably should have been an hour) with incredible use cases for how AI can truly improve the human condition.
So it’s finding that extra something — okay, we know AI exists, but how are you using AI to improve the world, to make a real impact, to move the needle?
I think that’s the AI story, and I’m still learning as I go. New things are emerging every day, and I have to think about my own AI story as well — because, I mean, am I talking to you, Donna, or is this someone else?
Well, I have my Deck Check — who’s that? But yeah, people call me DonnaGPT, because I process these messages in real time — which hopefully we’ll do soon. But what’s funny is that I can’t say AI hasn’t impacted things, because people have great tools now to write their pitches for them.
0:33:18 - Alex Shevelenko
The problem is they all start sounding the same. Oh my God — yeah, that’s what’s really scary. And on that note: we all know there’s the deck as part of the “theater” of startups, so to speak.
And it still is necessary. But in a world where the deck can be produced — at least visually — in a decent way by some startups relatively quickly, what helps you? What else do you need to do besides the deck? We can come back to the deck and the narrative later, but is it your physical presence when you’re storytelling? Is it making sure you’re getting on calls and Zooms before sending the deck? What’s your take?
0:34:19 - Donna Griffit
What I’ve been advising, in a very practical way, is that physical presence always wins. When you can have a real conversation — whether on Zoom or in person — it’s completely different.
0:34:32 - Alex Shevelenko
So let’s rate them, right?
0:34:34 - Donna Griffit
But I can’t always tell people to do that, because sometimes they’re just told: “Fill in this pre-screener, upload your deck, and we’ll get back to you.” So you can’t always be there at first.
0:34:47 - Alex Shevelenko
They’re going to want to see the deck, they’re going to want to hear something. It’s not always in your control. But let’s say it is — let’s say we’re the lucky few who have a choice of investors, and investors who make us fill out a questionnaire might not be the right fit, or we didn’t do enough homework to reach them properly. So there’s in-person, and there’s what we’re doing right now — on Zoom. Just to be clear if anyone’s confused: this is Zoom, and you’re amazing because I can see your body language. You’re moving, you bring your furry props — marvelously.
0:35:28 - Donna Griffit
Who’s left the room?
0:35:28 - Alex Shevelenko
Yes. And you’re able to command presence in the Zoom environment. I don’t think that’s an accident. A lot of us don’t do that — I sometimes don’t. I don’t think about it enough.
0:35:46 - Donna Griffit
I might have my hands hidden, or someone might be listening while driving and not even looking at our video — so it’s just our voice and our words doing the work. It takes away one of the layers.
0:36:00 - Alex Shevelenko
So let’s start ranking. Say 10 is perfect in person.
0:36:06 - Donna Griffit
Yeah, but are you ever going to be perfect in person? How many people don’t use the opportunity?
0:36:11 - Alex Shevelenko
I showered today, Donna.
0:36:13 - Donna Griffit
Congrats. I’m just so happy — that time of the month, you know.
0:36:17 - Alex Shevelenko
Yay.
0:36:19 - Donna Griffit
Do you want to take a guess? I’m a communications coach at Stanford GSB — I’m entering my second year now, starting next week.
0:36:28 - Alex Shevelenko
I always want to go back and be coached by you. I want to go back to Stanford GSB.
0:36:32 - Donna Griffit
Somebody told me before I started at Stanford that the worst thing about GSB is that you can only do it once.
0:36:36 - Donna Griffit
What year did you graduate?
0:36:41 - Alex Shevelenko
I don’t want to say — but I’m still learning. Let’s just say it was the year when Steve Jobs was still alive and delivering his Stanford address, and it was pretty eye-opening.
0:36:57 - Donna Griffit
Yeah, so Stanford’s amazing — the community is amazing. Do you want to venture a guess what the number one reason is? They can all sign up and get a 30–45 minute coaching session with me on whatever communication issue is plaguing them. Do you want to guess what the most requested reason to meet with me last year was?
0:37:28 - Alex Shevelenko
Insecurity about how you come across with your peers?
That might touch on it, but—
0:37:38 - Donna Griffit
Broaden it a little bit. Influence — how to influence others.
Okay, it’s actually much more basic than that: small talk. Creating authentic small-talk. At events you have to introduce yourself, and then you have to continue the conversation, and people get stuck after the “How are you?” and “Where are you from?”
What I realized — and it was quite surprising at first — and then I started seeing the pattern again and again: most of these kids went to undergrad during COVID, so at least part of their college experience was online. Then the first few years of their careers were remote or hybrid. And this is also a generation that grew up with a smartphone in their hand.
These three factors together took away spontaneous immersion in communicating. It has, in a sense, crippled their ability to just interact and have a conversation. Not to mention all the external influences: Oh my gosh, can I say that? Am I going to offend someone?
And I just realized now there’s also a fourth element. And I’m like: Oh my gosh, if I have to censor every single thing I say… We all do some of that — well, maybe not on this podcast.
0:39:18 - Alex Shevelenko
You can do whatever here.
0:39:21 - Donna Griffit
But I mean — if you’re screening everything you say, how can you possibly have a spontaneous, warm, wonderful conversation?
My number one piece of advice to them is: get super curious about who you’re speaking to. Ask questions that aren’t just about the weather. You all at GSB right now have at least 10 shared experiences from the past week alone: you all took midterms, you all had Section Olympics, you all went to View From the Top with the head of Sequoia — you all did these things.
And you might have different perspectives on them. So ask: What did you think of View From the Top? Were you there? I was really inspired when he said… What was your favorite moment? And then they’ll say something and you’ll go: Oh, I missed that!
And then it starts to ping-pong. It’s about listening. It’s about genuinely getting curious about the other person and asking those questions we’ve forgotten to ask because we’re so caught up in our own little headspace that fits into Zoom. It’s interesting.
0:40:34 - Alex Shevelenko
One thing you brought up is offering your own vulnerability — sharing something that takes a small risk to jumpstart the conversation so the other person can share something beyond traditional small talk. That social gambit people use — especially well-known in Britain — where there are certain safe topics that avoid embarrassment.
0:41:11 - Donna Griffit
Passive conversation. I think the Brits are both critical and jealous of Americans at the same time — at least historically. I haven’t been in England in a long time. But they feel like Americans just say whatever they want to say — though maybe not anymore — and there’s this disdain, “Oh, so American,” but at the same time “I wish I could do that.”
Now everything happening in Britain with censoring — it’s just wild.
0:41:38 - Alex Shevelenko
Yes, exactly. It was already censored in a weird way — self-censored: It’s not polite to speak. You’re so American.
What I like about the French — my wife is French, so I get this — is that it’s necessary for them to disagree. It’s not about being disagreeable — I disagree, therefore I am. They express themselves, and nobody takes it personally — up to a limit, of course.
I protest, therefore I am. I express my opinions. I complain, therefore I am.
It may not always lead somewhere positive, but at least it reduces the need to look perfect.
And if we go back to another challenge in communication — initial social gambits and bringing that into conversations when we’re pitching — dating, right?
It feels like now I’m fortunate not to be in the generation that had to learn dating online. I learned the old-fashioned way of meeting in person.
0:43:06 - Donna Griffit
I thought online website dating was tough, but I can’t even imagine Tinder, Hinge, Bumble — all of these. Oh my gosh.
And by the way, toward the end of the semester at GSB, I did have conversations about dating, and I find that really endearing. I’m like: Oh, this is so complicated. This is so complicated.
0:43:38 - Alex Shevelenko
It’s so complicated — it’s life-changing. We live in this world that worries me because it becomes very transactional. Dating is transactional because you’re seeing thousands of people and you don’t have time to be curious and connect. And then fundraising — at least from my perception, from an investor perspective, maybe from some founders — they’re like: I’m just going to spray and pray every investor. We’re going to ChatGPT auto-blast emails and do a cover-the-earth strategy.
And it feels like a huge waste all around.
So what is that? Is there something about that culture that we need to break when we’re trying to build that initial relationship? Is it the introduction you have with a potential investor or a customer that really matters? Is it those first few minutes of small talk? What allows you to get out of that you’re just a vendor to me dynamic?
I hate this: the one thing I don’t love about selling is when people in large enterprises treat you as a vendor. I’m like, I’m a human being. We’re leading this. I don’t want to be thought of as a vendor. I don’t want to think of you as a buyer. You’re someone who wants to succeed at your work.
So we’re in a world where spam — whether it’s dating spam, B2B outreach spam, or fundraising spam — has created a lot of artificial, high-volume interactions. And I’m curious: what are you finding, besides storytelling, that helps break through that?
0:45:29 - Donna Griffit
So are we talking about dating, or are we talking about investor meetings?
0:45:33 - Alex Shevelenko
Well, what I’m trying to draw is a parallel — I think there are probably more similarities than we realize.
0:45:42 - Donna Griffit
Oh, absolutely. I use that comparison to start my workshops. If you think of the first investor meeting like a first date — and I hope that on your first date you’re not talking about your entire dating history, when you’d like to be married, or how many kids you want to have, and giving an insurance policy on why someone should marry you — you’re not going to see that person again. You might even be sued for damages!
It’s the same with investors. You have to show your cards a bit at a time, read the room, kind of woo them. Don’t throw all your Excel sheets at them, your entire tech stack, all your financials for the next 10 years. Extract the meaning.
You have the opportunity at the first meeting to control the narrative. If they ask questions, that’s great — it means you’ve said something interesting enough that they want to know more. Don’t get annoyed if they ask questions. Don’t throw everything at them at once. Be mindful and intentional.
So you asked about types of storytelling. The framework forces you to write from your audience’s perspective. And that is the most important lesson I can teach any founder: it’s not about you, it’s about them. It’s not about sounding important, it’s not about showing off your product — it’s about showing that you understand your audience and your investor, and you’re communicating in a way that works for them.
And when you get really curious and ask the right questions — like I tell my Stanford students — it’s the same thing when you prepare a pitch. Think: what questions do you know for sure you’ll be asked? What questions might you be asked? And what questions do you dread being asked? Think of the answers ahead of time, because there’s nothing worse than freezing on every question.
I dedicated an entire chapter in my book to investor questions. You have a reference point. They may get a little more industry-specific or time-specific, but it’s pretty much the same questions again and again.
It’s all about the other side. And — this is like coins and light bulbs popping in my mind right now because you just made me realize something else — it’s not just about being curious and asking questions in the moment. It’s about getting curious ahead of time.
When you write a speech or paper or article from your audience’s perspective, it completely changes the story. You engage them, not yourself. If you want to laugh at your own jokes — great, do it alone. But if you want someone to read it, get it, get excited, want to meet you, want to go on that date, not just look at your profile — which is your pitch deck — then think about them.
That’s a beautiful metaphor.
0:49:05 - Alex Shevelenko
One of the things that got me fired up about starting this project — originally almost as an agency — was the idea that I was too obsessed with my ideas and how smart they were, and not enough with how the audience would receive them and act on them. I wanted to help fix that with technology.
And as we were riffing before the call, Donna, you offered to apply your framework to help us tell the RELAYTO story better. And I’m humble about it — we’re in the storytelling business, so we need to be much better at this than we are right now. Despite being storytellers, we’ve been very product-centric — eating, breathing, using our own… I don’t want to say dog-fooding — I’ll say eating caviar, drinking our own champagne.
Exactly — yes, because of the Russian roots: caviar. And between you being Russian and your wife being French—
0:50:25 - Donna Griffit
So are you eating caviar on croissants right now?
0:50:27 - Alex Shevelenko
I’m sure, yeah, maybe it was champagne… just for, yeah, yeah. Oh, your house is just so… blah.
0:50:36 - Donna Griffit
Money freak. Yes, okay. So, disclaimer here: Alex and I have had only one conversation before. I feel like, you know, those magic shows where you’ve never met before… I know very, very little about RELAYTO, and I told Alex that. Because I’m done at GPT, one of the things I love to do most is listen to a pitch, ask some questions, and then do what I call a “pitch back” — say, okay, here’s how I would tell your story. So we have not planned this.
0:51:12 - Alex Shevelenko
I always pray. I didn’t even know you were going to ask for a pitch, but that’s fine — it could be just telling me how you’d tell the story.
0:51:19 - Donna Griffit
Yeah, in the way you’re doing it now, and then I process it through my LLM — my brain is an LLM. I always pray to the muses of storytelling and the gods of OpenAI, whoever granted me this LLM, please be with me and not have a system fail. I don’t know… we’ll see. That’s my disclaimer. Having said that, if you want to play, let’s do it.
0:51:46 - Alex Shevelenko
I love it. I love it.
0:51:47 - Donna Griffit
Nothing keeps you more alert than a real conversation. I do these a lot, by the way — online communities will sign up for a pitch back, they have two or three minutes to pitch, and then I tell their story.
0:52:04 - Alex Shevelenko
I’ll tell you roughly what feels comfortable to me as a human story, and then I’ll connect the dots to the business. So RELAYTO feels like a lifelong mission for me because my very first internship was on the Microsoft Office team, at a time when Microsoft had this beautiful Clippy — that kind of animated thing. We had all these animations, naturally, and we were the good guys. Actually, we were the good guys back then.
0:52:52 - Donna Griffit
Were you ever the cool guys?
0:52:54 - Alex Shevelenko
I thought we were cool because I came from the Soviet Union. You know, the dark empire…
0:52:59 - Donna Griffit
I like to think that I’m cool.
0:53:02 - Alex Shevelenko
Yeah, yeah. It was cool because we were democratizing communications, and we were refugees, we were oppressed… so it felt good. Mentally, I was proud of us being there. We were building this beautiful way to create the first no-code solutions. Excel was a no-code spreadsheet solution; PowerPoint was no-code, no design expertise required, and it was a lot of fun.
My project as a product manager was to look at this thing called the PDF and understand why it was taking over our beautiful creations. In the last mile, when files were downloaded or sent to customers, people were freezing Word and PowerPoint files into this format. It was basically an analog piece of paper.
Throughout my career, since Microsoft hadn’t figured out how to solve that problem, I was always paying attention and consulting. You do all this work, and it ends up dusty in print or dusty in a PDF somewhere.
I was fortunate to join SaaS pioneers like Salesforce and SuccessFactors. We redefined new categories. It was challenging, exciting. But we were still selling SaaS — better employee experience, better customer experience — on a virtual piece of paper, disconnected from what we were selling. When we launched content businesses, they were just PDFs. That bothered me. I knew better. At Stanford, I took a class on How to Make Ideas Stick, and I knew there was something else — scientific approaches to storytelling and communication.
At some point, I was fortunate enough to pick projects. One drew me in: working almost like an agency, first with Salesforce, Accenture, and Omnicom Group, helping them improve PowerPoints — messaging and format. We started turning PowerPoints into sites. Everything changed, except PDFs. From the era when I was at Microsoft to today, websites are unrecognizable, but PDFs are roughly the same. One thing led to another, customers loved it, and we productized it. That became AI — RELAYTO AI.
Now, anyone can drag and drop content — PDFs, PowerPoints, videos, links, text — and it creates two products:
An interactive site — for example, what used to be a PDF becomes a website.
A Netflix-style portal — unlike Netflix, it doesn’t just contain videos; it can contain any content, creating an extended narrative and a destination for your audience to accomplish something.
And that’s the backstory. What really motivates me is…
0:56:30 - Donna Griffit
A landing page, a website, a content portal… what would you call it?
0:56:36 - Alex Shevelenko
Yes, yes, yes. I think that’s part of the challenge. I would say it’s been easiest to show what it does versus trying to define it. Absolutely, that’s a whole other level of discussion.
0:56:46 - Donna Griffit
Let’s talk in a minute about the visual aspect, but yeah, so…
0:56:50 - Alex Shevelenko
Basically, we take a static document and turn it into an all-singing, all-dancing website — to use your earlier metaphor about Broadway — and it’s just…
0:57:02 - Donna Griffit
It takes the content and automatically generates this thing. So I could take something I’ve written, and it completely transforms it into a site without me doing anything.
0:57:12 - Alex Shevelenko
Design without you doing anything.
The one thing we found — and this is what we’ve learned — is the sweet spot. When we launched the product, we were working with high-stakes enterprise customers, some of them in regulated industries. What we noticed is that they don’t want it to completely transform the content because it’s risky. It took a long time to put it together, approve it, get the messaging right, and get the visuals approved.
So they want to transform a static experience — designed for print, not for screen — into a screen-friendly experience, but without altering the meaning. That became our big “aha.” In a lot of overlooked regulated industries — insurance, health, communications, financial services, government communications — the risk of ChatGPT unleashed is very high. You need to create something consumable, which is a big burden for these industries, but at the same time compliant. That’s the sweet spot.
We call it regenerative AI. It doesn’t generate a complete new infrastructure but regenerates it along approved guardrails to create a compliant, usable experience for the users.
0:58:42 - Donna Griffit
So you talked about being at Microsoft, working on Clippy, democratizing it, and then wondering why the PDF was taking over and why it has persisted. Why were you fascinated by the PDF of all things?
0:59:03 - Alex Shevelenko
We were worried that we were not… we did all this work on the creative side, but at the moment of truth, when the customer interacts with the ideas created in Microsoft tools, we were not there. We didn’t control what happened with those ideas. We left it to Adobe, which at the time controlled the PDF format, and it ultimately became the de facto standard.
There was no feedback loop. That concerned us because we were basically letting go of the most important last mile in the content creation-to-communication value chain.
0:59:54 - Donna Griffit
So you feel that after users exported from Word or PowerPoint to PDF, it entered a black box, and you had no idea where it went — it’s a black box.
1:00:05 - Speaker 3
Yeah, and it still is for us.
1:00:07 - Donna Griffit
And you wanted the data — you wanted to know what happened. Why didn’t Microsoft create a way to make an uneditable version? I guess there’s read-only, but…
1:00:18 - Alex Shevelenko
They tried. I think they tried but kind of missed it. PDF was able to support other formats beyond Microsoft, so it was more universal. An InDesign file could become a PDF, for example.
In a way, when we think about RELAYTO, we’re not killing PowerPoint or Word, or even PDF. We take PDFs in all their varieties, plus other formats, and we give them the last-mile touch for the modern consumer.
1:00:58 - Donna Griffit
I’m confused about how that relates to PDF. You’re creating something with guardrails that transforms content into a living, breathing experience that’s fun and engaging. Why is this like a new PDF? Is it something you own, where you get data on interactions and what people are reading? Is this the “living, breathing PDF”? What are we looking at?
1:01:35 - Alex Shevelenko
Yeah, that’s one way to think about it. One way is to see it as a document versus a website — or an AI-powered, modern website.
1:01:53 - Donna Griffit
Isn’t the bigger pain the daunting thought of creating a website? Wix kind of solved that, making it semi-easy to create a codeless website, but all of them look the same. So what’s different with RELAYTO?
1:02:09 - Alex Shevelenko
So I think when you think of an average B2B person — even a B2B marketer, like a product marketer — they don’t have either the permission or the platforms within their organizations to create something like Wix. And then, if you go beyond the marketer to the sellers… do you want sellers figuring out how to use Wix and build a custom website? Even if it’s easy? No.
All these tools have templates, but in industries like insurance, you often have approved documents you must use. If you’re a broker delivering insurance, you don’t even control the product — it’s a PDF from your insurance carrier. Most people in that role will never use even the simplest no-code or low-code tools.
1:03:13 - Donna Griffit
But back in the time of Wix, I don’t think they even called it low-code.
1:03:18 - Alex Shevelenko
That’s pretty new. But even with the new tools, the coin of the realm is still the document. Every document wants to be consumed, but to do that, it needs to be turned into something more digestible.
We’re marrying the simplicity and universality of a document with the power of an interactive, web-like experience. That’s the sweet spot. We’re not trying to replace Wix or corporate content management systems — we’re creating for niche use cases where neither works well today.
Is it because of regulation? We’ve seen it in enterprises that aren’t even deeply regulated. Mostly, the reason is that creating a truly custom experience is complex. Wix is great for simple things, like a band site or personal website. But a 200-page annual report? That’s much harder.
1:04:43 - Donna Griffit
So you want to transform a dense annual report — something nobody actually reads — into a guided, immersive, beautiful experience where people live it. Imagine living museums where you can touch a wall and a video pops up, or use non-linear navigation. You don’t just go through a gallery — it’s an immersive gallery of knowledge.
1:05:14 - Alex Shevelenko
There’s a balance. In some cases, you can go very advanced; in others, even basic things like navigation or immersive videos are enough. And you guys can do that automatically — in like 30 seconds, you get a transformed experience.
1:05:33 - Donna Griffit
What was the real pain point you saw? Microsoft and everything is amusing, but I don’t think that’s the real origin story. Can you think back to the moment when you realized, “Oh my gosh, we can do so much better”?
1:05:53 - Alex Shevelenko
I was a former consultant at SuccessFactors and often wore the product marketing and competitive hats. I was enabling the entire sales and go-to-market organization with content — shiny binders, PowerPoints, everything. I pushed PowerPoint to its limits, but it still wasn’t enough.
1:06:23 - Donna Griffit
There’s the pain — now I feel it. That’s the story we can all identify with. Being part of consulting, and before that at Microsoft, we were obsessed with disseminating knowledge and content — everything from PowerPoints to shiny binders that often collected dust.
Even PDFs, which have been used for decades, are rarely fully read. People skim or scan, and what’s relevant to one person may differ for another. If content could leap out to the right person at the right moment, it would be transformational.
RELAYTO completely changes how we interact with knowledge, data, and content. We take research, knowledge, and content and transform it into an interactive, immersive experience that understands the consumer, surfaces the most important information, and transforms it into videos, images, even memes. It makes content consumption almost like scrolling social media — interactive, personalized, and fun.
It’s time to break out of slides, PDFs, and basic scrollable websites and create a new form factor for consuming data.
1:09:12 - Alex Shevelenko
Yes, exactly. We always struggle to balance the value for the creator versus the value for the consumer. These are our two key stakeholders. You’ve finished strong with the consumer perspective, but for the creator, building a custom website — even a scrollable one — is a big lift. That’s another pain point we’re addressing.
1:09:54 - Donna Griffit
The question is, who? Okay, so let’s rejigger that a little bit. If we look at it from the perspective of the creator, we’re pouring our blood, sweat, and tears into this. But just because I know how to write content or do the research doesn’t mean I know how to make it look good, make it interactive, or build a website.
A lot of organizations have problems with Wix, Squarespace, or other tools because they don’t align with corporate policies. Transforming content takes too much work and too much time — and that’s where we come in. You’re adding that layer, which addresses the two sides of the problem.
1:10:34 - Alex Shevelenko
Yes, I think that’s great.
1:10:36 - Donna Griffit
Did you focus on the right side? Usually, when you focus on pain, you focus on the person paying the bill at the end. But the real pain is often the end user. This is a B2B2C or B2B2B play.
1:10:50 - Alex Shevelenko
Yes, and this is related. Maybe you have tips on how to tackle this. I mentioned that we’re shifting from a horizontal pain — this is universal in most B2B organizations — but in regulated industries, the pain is more visceral. The consumers are used to TikToks and short-form content, but they’re forced to read boring, regulated materials that are hard to digest.
One of our use cases: employee benefit advisors and brokers. They’re basically an outsourced HR function in organizations of 50 to 2,000 employees, delivering benefits that account for 25% of employee costs. This can be critical — the right health insurance could prevent financial disaster — yet most people don’t understand it. Companies are paying for it, but employees don’t know why.
Think of this: if marketers struggle with this, imagine an HR team. They can’t get an agency, they don’t know where to find one, and yet this is the ultimate B2B2C purchase — equivalent to buying multiple houses in a lifetime. It’s one of the biggest financial decisions in the U.S., and that’s the tragedy.
Benefit brokers found us — we weren’t even looking for them. They said, “We have this problem: we can’t create these massive sites. Our resources, our time — it’s like tax season, when everyone does open enrollment at the same time.” That’s a live example of how RELAYTO gets used.
I struggled with explaining the big vision — the kind of opportunity everyone could get excited about — and then connecting it to a very specific, relatable use case: spending 25% of your compensation on something you don’t understand. That frustration is real. How would you deal with that?
1:13:31 - Donna Griffit
First, let’s go back to what you said about the visual. Seeing is believing. In your case, you’re highly visual, so you must start there as soon as possible. A powerful demo, walkthrough, or screen capture is key.
Before I tell you anything else, let me show you. We’re almost out of time — I just realized we’ve been talking a while, and I have another coaching session coming up.
Here’s the thing: the last time our brains got a hardware upgrade was 36,000 years ago. I’m not talking about software updates; I mean the prefrontal cortex, the largest processing center of our brain, responsible for visuals. Its first function? Helping us stop killing members of our own tribe because we could recognize them.
We need visuals now. Steve Jobs — whom you brought up earlier — is a perfect example. When he showed the iPad, it was a “Simba moment”: “Oh, okay, I get it. It’s like a really big smartphone.” Someone tore their computer in half — suddenly, it clicked. Sometimes we just need to see it to understand why it works.
If you were my client, I’d say: start by introducing yourself, then say, “Before I tell you more, let me show you something.” Do a 30-second walkthrough of a dense paper, like a typical McKinsey report. Show it through RELAYTO: highlight cool features, the interactive aspects.
You wouldn’t do this all the time, but remember: you asked how to break through and do something different. This is different — you’re breaking your own mold. This is how users and customers experience RELAYTO. It’s a revolution in content consumption.
Now that they’ve seen it, backtrack a little and tell your origin story. You’ve wowed them, hopefully dropped their jaws. You’re showing content consumption in a completely new way — living it, not just reading a PDF. You don’t even need to show the full transformation.
1:16:25 - Alex Shevelenko
You just need to show the actual.
1:16:27 - Donna Griffit
You can show it — okay, just scroll through a PDF. We all know what that looks like now.
1:16:33 - Alex Shevelenko
Yeah, imagine what’s on those pages leaping out to meet you. Beautiful. I love how you had a dramatic pause — “There’s a revolution club.” That was very, very beautiful. Any other tips, Donna, that you’ve picked up through this experience, maybe something other founders should be thinking about?
1:16:55 - Donna Griffit
I mean, it really would take a deeper dive. I need to see the product. That’s usually the first thing I ask startups to do: show me the product. Walk me through it from a user perspective — how I would build one, and then how I would consume one — because there are two sides.
1:17:15 - Alex Shevelenko
Two separate sides, yeah.
1:17:17 - Donna Griffit
Exactly. And then there’s the consumer — different people, different pains, different needs.
1:17:22 - Alex Shevelenko
Donna, this has been amazing. I think people are lining up to learn about your method. How can they find you, and how can you help them with their story?
1:17:32 - Donna Griffit
I make it very easy to find me: DonnaGriffit.com — two F’s, one T. There’s a story there; it’s not Griffith or Griffin, which often confuses people. That’s where I am.
Also, I’ll add to the show notes: the Deck Check. Deck Check is at donagriffit.com. This is my AI version of myself that helps you. You can upload your investor deck there for free. The back end uses OpenAI, but it’s my own proprietary system — not publicly out there as much as anything else. It gives you a score and tips to improve it. People keep coming back, making improvements, uploading it again — the score goes up a little, then down a little — and it keeps going. So feel free to play.
My book is another option. I’m personally partial to audiobooks, so I recorded an audiobook in my own voice. If you’re driving in traffic, we can spend a few hours together talking about it.
Those are the main ways: website, Deck Check, and book. And please do mention Alex’s show and RELAYTO so I know where you came from. You’ll have a special discount as a listener.
1:19:00 - Alex Shevelenko
Thank you so much, Donna. What a great masterclass in storytelling.
1:19:05 - Donna Griffit
Thank you so much. Have a great day!