Building Blocks

Building Blocks are the compelling points that create the foundation of your company's story—your vision, market, customer, and product. They are the memorable facts, anecdotes, data, and insights that make people believe in what you are doing. You’ll use Building Blocks to create a compelling company story that communicates an exciting direction. Your company story will help you recruit first hires, land customers, and fundraise.

The Building Blocks doc is a living doc where you will build a repository of messaging and key points to create content, including your website and fundraising deck. There are four Building Block template tabs to help you organize your content.

OCV will help you start your Building Blocks during Office Hours. Complete the pre-interview questions on the worksheet tab before your first Building Blocks Office Hour.

Write down the two-sentence company description that you will recite at every Group Office Hour in the description field on your company dashboard.

The goal of the two-sentence company description is to make it very clear what your company does and to establish credibility. It should be forward-leaning and provide enough information to pique people's interest in learning more. The target audience for the two-sentence description is investors, rather than potential users or customers. Mention the open source project you’re building around if it’s well known and an important part of your growth story, and/or you are the creator, or the company is the lead maintainer.

It’s most convenient when there is a closed-source incumbent that makes a lot of money, and its customers don’t love it. When this option is available, consider including a statement like, “we are the open source version of X.” For example, “Authentik is the open source alternative to Okta. Okta makes $X per year and has had # of security breaches in the last year. Open source Okta makes sense because… ”

Your worksheet is a workspace to collect relevant information about your company and track proof points. It’s a knowledge center where you can draft your value props, document anecdotes, and collect information. Connect your worksheet to an LLM to generate content or get ideas. The more up-to-date you keep the worksheet, the better output you’ll get.

The worksheet is pre-populated with six building block categories: product, value props, market, unique insight, traction, and team. Use the prompts below to start collecting information for each category.

Build a habit of consistently adding to your worksheet by documenting new insights, feedback, and major milestones. For example, track the growth rate metrics you’ll share in the monthly investor update, add notable takeaways from customer calls, links to competitor news, etc.

The company story tab is where you will draft and workshop your company story. A company story is a narrative that communicates who you are, what you do, how you do it, why you do it, and who you do it for. You’ll use the most compelling points from your worksheet to create your company story. Compelling points are unique to you and immediately resonate. They help audiences connect with your vision, purpose, and momentum.

The slide titles tab is where you will draft and workshop your fundraising story. Your fundraising story is a version of your company's story tailored for investors. You’ll use your fundraising story to generate your pitch deck. Use the table in the template to workshop your slide titles.

The content ideas tab is a workspace for brainstorming and tracking content ideas. These ideas can be anything from website copy updates to blog posts and videos.