What's up, everybody? This is Cortland from EndiHackers.com, and you're listening to the

IndieHackers podcast. On this show, I talked to the founders of profitable internet businesses,

and I try to get a sense of what it's like to be in their shoes. How did they get to where they

are today? How did they make decisions, both of their companies and in their personal lives? And what exactly makes their businesses? And the goal here, as always, is so that the rest of us can learn from their examples and go on to build our own profitable internet businesses. And today's episode, I sat down with Tomas Pueyo. Tomas is the VP of Growth at a unicorn startup called

Course Hero. He's also an expert on the structure of storytelling, and he's written a series of

very interesting articles and a book on that subject. And finally, Tomas is the author of a

mega-viral series of articles about the coronavirus, how it works, how it spreads, and how all of us can respond to it effectively.

In fact, these articles are so viral that it's pretty likely, if you've read anything online about the coronavirus in the past few weeks, you've come across Tomasa's articles or at least something that referenced them.

They have been cited by business leaders and government leaders all over the world. We've

used what Tomas has shared to make arguably life and death decisions. They've been endorsed by

hundreds of scientists and epidemiologists. And my goal really with this episode is to sit down and

try to figure out how all three of these topics intertwine. How does Tomas think about the structure of stories?

How does he use storytelling to attract millions of users as a VP of growth at a startup?

And how does he use his storytelling skills and his startup growth skills to write such

influential and widely shared articles online? I hope you enjoy the discussion.

You are obsessed with storytelling. I think that's a fair claim for me to make. Yes. You've

given talks about storytelling. You've written books and articles about the structure stories,

and you've woven that into pretty much every area of your life. Why is storytelling so important?

I think I just love understanding things.

And the more complex something is, the harder it is, the more I want to understand it.

And I think that's a drive that explains a lot of the things.

It explains storytelling the way we're going to discuss about it in a second, but also the focus,

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