Stage Narrative Shift

---
name: stage-narrative-shift
description: "**Mode skill.** Default-enabled on the Stage specialist."
metadata:
  author: wayland
  version: "1.0.0"
  category: "stage"
---

# narrative-shift

**Mode skill.** Default-enabled on the Stage specialist.

## When to use

Use as the **first step** before any deck drafting. Use also when a deck is not landing — the diagnosis is almost always that the shift is weak, generic, or absent. Covers seed and Series A narrative work, investor-update openings, demo-day openers, and founder-bio "why now" statements.

A pitch without a named shift is a feature list. This skill produces the one-paragraph spine the rest of the deck hangs from.

## The shift sentence

Andy Raskin's macro pattern, condensed to one fillable frame:

> *"There's been a fundamental change in the world. [Old world] is ending. [New world] is here. The winners will be the companies that [strategic move]. The losers will be the companies that [opposite move]."*

The frame is fillable in any domain. The work is making it true and specific enough that a sceptical investor cannot dismiss it in one line.

## The three-question test

Every candidate shift sentence has to pass all three:

1. **Recent.** Is there accelerating evidence in the last 24 months? Older than 24 months and the room asks "where have you been?" Newer than 6 months and the room asks "is this a blip?"

2. **Irreversible.** Is there a structural reason this cannot revert? Regulation, technology cost curves, generational behaviour change, supply-chain reconfiguration. A trend that could reverse next quarter is a marketing observation, not a shift.

3. **Creates new winner criteria.** Does the shift change *what it takes to win* in the buyer's world? If the same companies win after the shift as before, the shift is real but irrelevant to the pitch.

A shift that fails any one of the three is rejected. Ask the founder for the next candidate. Iterate until one passes.

## Procedure

1. **List five candidate shifts.** Ask the founder for five things that have changed in their *buyer's* world in the last two years — not five things they care about.
2. **Score each against the three-question test.** Recent / irreversible / new winner criteria. Most will fail at least one.
3. **Pick the shift the company is uniquely positioned to ride.** Of candidates that pass, pick the one where the founders' earned advantage maps to the new winner criterion.
4. **Write the shift sentence in the Raskin frame.** Specific enough that a competitor cannot copy-paste it.
5. **Stress-test against three competitors.** Name three companies in the adjacent space. Does this sentence describe what *they* do? If yes, rewrite until it picks out this company's move, not theirs.
6. **Locate the proof point.** One dataset, news event, or regulatory move that makes the shift undeniable in one citation. This becomes the slide-one proof.
7. **Lock the sentence to `TEAM_MEMORY.md`.** Stamp under `## Pitch`. Coin's market build and Mira's deck cover both depend on it.

## Decision rules

- **No shift, no deck.** If no candidate passes, the company is not pitch-ready. Send the founder back to validate before drafting slides.
- **Shifts beat trends.** "AI is rising" is a trend. "In 2025, the average B2B buyer evaluated three AI vendors before requesting a demo from any of them" is a shift with operational consequences.
- **The shift belongs to the deck, not the company forever.** A new round or new evidence often warrants a new shift. Do not freeze a sentence past its usefulness.
- **Old world / new world phrasing must be parallel.** "Old world: ten-person sales teams. New world: AI." is not parallel. "Old world: ten-person sales teams. New world: two-person teams with AI tooling." is parallel and concrete.

## Anti-patterns

- **The eternal shift.** Anything that has been true for a decade is not a shift, it is wallpaper.
- **The personal shift.** "I got frustrated with X." Decks fund world shifts, not founder origin stories. Save origins for the team slide.
- **The vendor shift.** "Companies are adopting more SaaS." This is the vendor's narrative, not the buyer's. The shift must be true from the buyer's seat.
- **Two shifts stacked.** Pick one. Two shifts split the room's attention.

## Before / after

**Brief:** "Help us frame the opening for a seed deck. We sell a tool that helps small ecommerce stores reply to customer-service emails faster."

**Before** (generic, eternal, vendor-side):
> *"Customer service is hard for small businesses. They lose customers when replies are slow."*

**After** (specific, recent, irreversible, new winner criterion):
> *"Old world: a small ecommerce store competed on price and reviews. New world: review platforms weight response time inside scoring, and Google's shopping rank pulls from those scores. Winners reply in under one hour. Losers triage the inbox once a day."*

The "after" creates new winner criteria. The "before" describes the company.