---

How can a company that has never turned a profit have a multibillion dollar valuation? Why do some start-ups attract large investments while others do not? Aswath Damodaran, finance professor and experienced investor, argues that the power of story drives corporate value, adding substance to numbers and persuading even cautious investors to take risks. In business, there are the storytellers who spin compelling narratives and the number-crunchers who construct meaningful models and accounts. Both are essential to success, but only by combining the two, Damodaran argues, can a business deliver and sustain value. Through a range of case studies, Narrative and Numbers describes how storytellers can better incorporate and narrate numbers and how number-crunchers can calculate more imaginative models that withstand scrutiny. Narrative and Numbers reveals the benefits, challenges, and pitfalls of weaving narratives around numbers and how one can best test a story´s plausibility

---

"This book is well-organized, well-written, and engaging, with the interplay of qualitative analysis (narrative) and quantitative analysis (numbers) vividly demonstrated. It is a lively discussion supported by case studies and considerable detail on implementation." - Stephen Penman, author, Accounting for Value

---

Aswath Damodaran is the Kerschner Family Chair in Finance Education and professor of finance at New York University´s Stern School of Business. He is the author of Applied Corporate Finance, Fourth Edition (2014), Investment Valuation: Tools and Techniques for Determining the Value of Any Asset, Third Edition (2012), The Little Book of Valuation: How to Value a Company, Pick and Stock and Profit (2011), and Damodaran on Valuation: Security Analysis for Investment and Corporate Finance, Second Edition (2006).

---