Why nobody understands what you do (and it's not their fault)
I've been in Barcelona for a week. No network, no introductions, nobody who owes me a favour.
Every conversation starts from zero.
There's something clarifying about that. When you can't rely on context, when nobody already knows what you do or why it matters, you find out very quickly whether your story actually works.
It's the same situation most founders are in, every time they walk into a room full of strangers.
The assumption that kills most founder stories
There's a thinking error I see constantly. Founders assume that the right people will understand what they're saying.
"People who need my product will get it." Wrong.
Your potential customer might not know your industry's terminology. They might not realise they have the problem you solve. They might not even know that what you're building exists as a category yet.
It is not your audience's job to meet you halfway. It is your job to start where they are.
That means writing your brand story for the person who has never heard of your product. Who doesn't know your industry's shorthand. Who might not even realise they have a problem until you describe it so precisely that they think: "wait, that's exactly me."
That's the bar. Not "will my ideal customer understand this?" but "will someone who doesn't know they're my ideal customer yet understand this?"
The jargon trap
Every industry develops its own language. Terms that make perfect sense to insiders and nobody else. Founders absorb this vocabulary fast, from investors, advisors, accelerators, and start using it before they realise it has become a wall. I suspect some people do it to sound smart.
The problem isn't just that people don't understand you. It's that you make them feel stupid. No one will admit to that. But they nod, smile, and quietly move on.
You lose the room without knowing you lost it.
I see this in pitches, on websites, at events, in investor decks. Founders who know everything about what they've built and almost nothing about how it lands on someone hearing it for the first time.
The ones who break through are the ones who can explain their brand narrative the way you'd explain it to your parents. Not dumbed down. Just human. Concrete. Without assuming shared knowledge that isn't there yet.
What brand storytelling actually does
Storytelling isn't about finding a clever angle or writing emotional copy. It's about starting where your reader is, not where you are.
Most founders explain their product. They describe what it does, how it works, what makes it different. All correct. All forgettable, to someone who doesn't yet care.
The shift is small but it changes everything. Instead of starting with what, start with why someone would care. Not your why. Theirs. The thing they're already feeling, already frustrated by, already hoping someone has figured out.
When your brand story starts with something your reader already recognises, a situation, a frustration, a question they've been carrying around, they lean in. They stop wondering "is this relevant to me?" because they feel it is.
That's the difference between a website that informs and a website that connects. And converts.
Why this is hard to do yourself
You know too much.
You've spent months, sometimes years, inside the problem. You understand every nuance, every edge case, every reason why what you've built matters. And that deep knowledge, which is genuinely valuable, is also what makes it hard to talk about in a simple way.
What I do when working with a founder on their brand story is ask them to forget what they know. Not literally. But to try to hear their own story through the ears of someone who has never thought about this problem before.
That's almost impossible to do alone. Not because founders aren't smart. Quite the opposite. But because proximity distorts perspective. You need someone outside the building to tell you what's landing and what's not.
Starting from scratch
I moved to Barcelona partly to experience that feeling myself. New city, no network, no one who already knows what I do.
Every conversation is a test. Every introduction is a chance to find out whether the words I use work, or whether I'm falling into the same trap I help founders avoid.
So far, the version that works is the simplest one. Not the most comprehensive. Not the most impressive. Just the one that makes someone say: "oh, that's what you do."
That's all a brand story needs to do, in the end.
Bram Vuylsteker is a brand storytelling consultant based in Ghent and Barcelona. He helps founders and scale-ups find the story underneath the product and turn it into copy that works, in Dutch and English.
