Welcome to the seventy-ninth edition of '3-2-1 by Story Rules'.

A newsletter recommending good examples of storytelling across:

3 tweets
2 articles, and
1 long-form content piece

Let's dive in.

𝕏 3 Tweets of the week

Not sure about a year of the 20s being worth 4 in your 40s (I'm learning more now than ever). But agree with the idea of the 'peak freedom, no expenses and no kids'. If I hadn't busted my ass in my consulting stint in my twenties, I'm not sure I'd be where I am today.

Thought-provoking viewpoint. My comment to the post on LinkedIn: 'The good news is that storytelling is always a part of us. And it's a very learnable skill! Plus the ability to read widely and write well can only amplify our storytelling skill.'

Apple banned typewriters in their organsiation in 1980, to force people to move to computers! What are you mandating in your company? :)

PS: I downloaded the MacOS app for ChatGPT. Hopefully I increase my use of Gen AI...

📄 2 Articles of the week

a. 'In 2024, it really is better to run a startup in San Francisco, according to data and founders who’ve relocated' by Julie Bort (Tech Crunch)

Over the last few years (especially since the pandemic), there is a persistent narrative about the decline of San Francisco as a city and the Bay Area as the pre-eminent hub for tech, startups and venture capital. This article offers some interesting stats to counter that narrative:

The SF Bay Area remains by far the largest share of all tech employees in the U.S., with 49% of all Big Tech engineers and 27% of startup engineers, data from SignalFire’s Beacon platform shows. SignalFire, which prides itself on big data-driven analysis, also sees that the Bay Area’s share of tech engineers has been increasing since 2022 (not declining) and its share of this talent pool is more than 4x those of runner-up Seattle. The area is home to 12% of all the biggest VC-backed founders and 52% of startup employees, more than any other region.

And then there are some interesting stories of founders. For instance, Daniel Lenton, the founder of Unify, who originally based in Berlin:

...he found himself returning to San Francisco after his YC (Y-Combinator) experience, and each time he met clients, potential clients, partners, and collaborators. The clincher for relocating was a month’s visit in June.

In just one week, every day that week, I was having lunch at different offices” of other larger AI tech startups, he says. “On the whiteboard, brainstorming together.”

And often, it's not just the formal meetings and networks. Because of the sheer density and diversity at SFO, it offers something more;

...every city has plenty of events, meetups, and hireable people. Both these founders, and the SignalFire data, point to something else that the Bay Area – especially in San Francisco offers: serendipitous connections.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, San Francisco could be saying, "The reports of my decline are greatly exaggerated".

b. 'Why Restaurants Fail' by Shashank Mehta

Shashank is the founder of 'The Whole Truth Foods' (try their chocolates and protein bars, if you haven't yet) and is a brilliant storyteller. (Follow him on LinkedIn!)

In this post, he analyses why restaurants are such a tough business to scale profitably.

...restaurants have the highest mortality rate of any industry in the world. 60% of restaurants shut in Year 1. 90% shut in <5 years. 9 out of 10! Why?

And yet, everyone wants to quit their job and invest their life’s earnings into opening a restaurant. Even in the face of such daunting odds. Why o why!

For scaling, restaurants that make unique, high-quality food (especially Indian) are not able to replicate the McDonalds model:

Restaurants don’t scale because the best ones are made with love. With soul. And soul doesn’t scale. It shouldn’t either.

Within restaurants, those serving Indian fare deserve a special mention. Unlike pizzas and burgers, Indian food isn’t modular. It isn’t one patty, one circular piece of tomato and onion, one slice of cheese and two squirts of our special sriracha mayo inside a factory made bun. It’s 10 different veggies and 20 different masalas stirred in a large pot and sautéed and simmered and brought to a boil and salt added ‘swaad anusar’.

For profitability and longevity, apart from high costs (which can still be passed on to customers), there are also two issues - limited catchment and the 'anti-loyalty' factor among many consumers:

...restaurants are a catchment businesses. Unless you’ve really created a Michelin star, one-of-a-kind experience, chances are 80% of your guests come to you from within a 5km radius. Which means that after being in this area for (say) 2 years, everyone who had to hear about you and try you, has already done so.

In FMCG terms, your penetration has maxed out. To grow penetration, you need to grow mental reach (more people know of you) and physical reach (more people have access to you). You’ve topped out on both in your catchment. The rate of acquiring new users will now be very, very slow. Which brings us to the real kick in the nuts.

Restaurants, by their very nature, are anti-loyalty. When you buy your tea, or biscuits to have with your tea, your mind goes ‘let’s get the one we’ve always been getting. We don’t want to take a chance’. But when you think of going out, your brain goes ‘aaj kuch naya khate hain’. Let’s try something new today.

🎧 1 long-form listen of the week

a. 'How to Save a Life' by Radiolab

With Radiolab, one thing you can be sure of - the storytelling will be top-notch. In this episode they speak with US based cardiologist, Dr. Avir Mitra and find out about the life-saving potential of learning basic CPR. (Cardio-pulmonary resuscitation - it's easier than you thought).

First up, they establish that cardiac ailments are still the biggest cause of death worldwide:

Avir: ...in our society we worry about so many things. You know, we wake up in the morning, start doom scrolling. And we worry about—you know, we're worried about climate change, we're worried about gun control, we're worried about terrorism. But, like, really the reality is the majority of human beings die because of heart problems. It's not sexy, but it's just true. Like, this is—across the world.

Latif (Radiolab): ...So, like, all—of all the deaths that happen on planet Earth, and number one is heart disease and heart failure. The number two is not even close.

The good news? If you are inside a hospital when you suffer a heart attack, they can quickly resuscitate you. The bad news: If you are outside, your survival chances are pretty slim:

Avir: Turns out that if you suffer cardiac arrest outside of a hospital, on average, your chance of surviving, of living, is eight percent.

By the way, Dr. Mitra then shares a very surprising answer to 'what is the best place to have a heart attack...!' I won't spoil the surprise. Listen to the episode to find out!

So, the survival chances are slim and heart attack incidents happen quite a lot:

Avir: ...just to put this in context, like, cardiac arrest in the US happens 1,000 times every day.

Latif: ...So this is, like, dismal to me, right? Like, you have a 92 percent chance of staying dead, it's happening a thousand times a day.

Apart from improving the response time of emergency services (which has a limit), the only way to increase the survival rate for such incidents is for the people around the patient to administer CPR:

Latif: ...the real problem is that when this happens outside of a hospital, there's just not enough time, right? The key is the person or people who are right there with them at that very moment on the sidewalk or in the house or the restaurant or whatever, the only way to nudge that number is for those people to do something.

Avir: We have to squeeze the heart. We have to compress that heart. So it's actually very simple—don't let anyone make this complicated. You have a heart sandwiched between two bones. You have a breast bone up top, and you have vertebrae below it. And all you're basically doing is just sandwiching the heart between those two bones and manually pumping it.

Avir's point is that by doing this, 'your survival goes down much more gently. You're buying yourself time for someone to come in and do something about it."

The episode then moves to a grippingly told story of an ophthalmologist being saved because of CPR - done by his untrained wife. Listen to the episode to find out!

The episode is great for the fun way it is narrated, but more importantly for its critical message. It might just be life-saving.

That's all from this week's edition.

Ravi

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Ravishankar Iyer

A life-saving CPR story (3-2-1 by Story Rules #79)

𝕏 3 Tweets of the week

📄 2 Articles of the week

🎧 1 long-form listen of the week

How to Build Lasting Memories with your Children (3-2-1 by Story Rules #88)

A Data Story on India's New Elites (3-2-1 by Story Rules #87)

Improve your Public Speaking Skills (3-2-1 by Story Rules #86)