Robbie Crabtree //
That’s the work I do.
Backed by a16z, Meritech, Insight, Khosla, NEA, Ribbit, Menlo, Redpoint. · $1.5B+ raised.
Founders I’ve worked with are backed by a16z, Meritech, Insight, Khosla, NEA, Ribbit, Menlo, Redpoint.
¹Across observed engagements through 2026.
²Dallas County District Attorney’s Office. Capital and major felony dockets.
³Includes academic research, pedagogy, and seven years in the courtroom.
Before working with founders, I spent seven years as a prosecutor trying 102 jury trials. Murder. Capital murder. Child abuse. Cases where my words decided whether someone walked free.
The courtroom taught me that facts don’t speak for themselves. Two lawyers, same evidence, same jury. One wins. The difference is never the evidence. It’s the architecture of the story the evidence gets built into.
That principle carried over when I moved into the startup world. Now I work with growth-stage founders on the narratives behind their fundraises. Clients have collectively raised more than $1.5 billion.
By Series B, every serious company in your category has strong metrics. The investor has already seen your dashboard. They’ve talked to your customers. They’ve mapped your competitive landscape.
What closes the round is the story those numbers live inside. The narrative that makes a growth-stage investor feel that your company’s trajectory demands their capital.
Most founders at this stage sound exactly like every other founder in their space. Same structure. Same analogies. Same deck template. Competent. Professional. Forgettable.
That’s what I fix.
Every engagement starts with one question: what is the most powerful version of this story, the version that changes how investors see the world?
Full narrative architecture for Series B and beyond. Story, deck, talk track, objection handling, and the conviction training to deliver it all under pressure.
Board narratives, strategic repositioning, category creation, and the full communication architecture a growth-stage CEO needs to lead at scale.
The advanced curriculum. Moving from competent to undeniable. The ability to command any room you walk into. Not performance. Conviction.
IC memos, one-pagers, summary documents, and every supporting artifact that needs to carry your story into the rooms you’ll never see.
I work with a small number of founders at a time.
Work with me →They show up again and again in the growth-stage rounds that close. A lens, not a template.
The Narrative Gap
The full report goes deeper into all seven, including why narrative is a company risk, not just a fundraising skill.
Not decoration. Not technique. Story is the fundamental operating system of human cognition. It’s how we decide who to trust, what to believe, and where to put our money.
Master that, and you master how human beings actually think, decide, and behave. Everything else is execution.
The best founders don’t perform a story. They inhabit it with such conviction that investors stop evaluating and start imagining being part of it.
I teach founders to move from performing to channeling. From proving they’re right about today to transporting investors to tomorrow. From answering questions to controlling frames.
For growth-stage founders preparing for their next raise. For investors thinking about a founder who needs this.
I’ll respond within 24 hours.