Maybe 255 characters is too long also. Let's just have a 10 character max:

"Got big" or "Succeeded"

In fact, we could represent it as a bit-field, and then get the story in one byte:

0x01: Made a key product/market connection

0x02: spent on advertising/marketing

0x04: connected to customers by investors

0x08: Fortuitous current event or market shift drove traffic

0x10: big media mention (TV, celebrity endorsement, ...)

0x20: focus on customer support

0x40: Long grind before today's success

0x80: Pivoted one or more times

Then... the story of Zapier: 0x62 :-)