"One way to think of this is that storytelling is an attempt to hack investors' evaluation function."

Or maybe story telling is more useful than you think? Plot holes represent real business problems. Suspense of disbelief can allow you or investors to see the value just behind a hurdle. Giving employees a role to play keeps their focus, even if a plot twist is around the corner.

And remember that founders don't do most of the work. A good startup has lots of people who do real work. But a founder does need to tie it together into something coherent and show the endgame. And that does appear to work a lot of the time, so there seems to be lots of evidenxe that founders telling stories is valuable, and little evidence that it's not.