If you’re an entrepreneur struggling to raise venture capital, it’s probably because you don’t know the work of a literature professor from the 1970s named Joseph Campbell.
Yes… a 1970s literature professor.
I realize the kind of people reading nerdy, tech entrepreneurship articles don’t care much about literature professors, but I bet a lot of you do care about Star Wars, so I’ll mention that Joseph Campbell’s work inspired George Lucas. Now are you more interested?
In 1949, Campbell published a book called The Hero With a Thousand Faces. It’s honestly a slog to read, especially for generations weaned on Netflix and TikTok, but the core concept is easy enough to summarize, so I’ll do that here. The book argues that every famous story of individual triumph you’ve ever encountered, from the Iliad to Star Wars to Harry Potter, and even the story of Jesus, fits within a concept Campbell calls the monomyth. The monomyth is a series of stages every story progresses through that create what he considers to be a compelling “Hero’s Journey.”
That journey looks like this:
While the pedantic English professor in me would love to walk you through all the stages and carefully explain how each one maps into some of the most famous and popular stories you’ve ever experienced, that’s not the purpose of this article. However, if that kind of thing interests you, you might enjoy this YouTube video.
For everyone else, the reason I’m telling you about the Hero’s Journey is because you can become a better fundraiser by understanding why the Hero’s Journey is an effective narrative structure. Simply put, the Hero’s Journey is effective because it methodically builds the kind of context audiences need in order to follow a person’s progress from nobody to somebody.
For example, going back to Star Wars, imagine if you met Luke right as he’s battling Darth Vader and climatically says, “No, I am your father!”