my work philosophy
A few beliefs that are core to my working style, in no particular order:
[1] The founder/CEO should do a lot of comms, directly. This is not something that can or should be outsourced to a marketing team to handle on your behalf. I know it’s scary, or maybe completely unintuitive, especially if you’re super technical and don’t consider yourself a “social media person.” I can honestly help you overcome this, in most cases. It makes a big, real-world difference to build your profile as a founder, rather than just relying on brand channels for all your comms. Everyone is sick and tired of polished corpo-marketing shlock and they can see coming it a mile away. In the slop era we’re entering, going direct will only become more impactful as a strategy.
[2] Growth can’t be effectively owned fractionally. It’s very hard. Every success I’ve driven in a startup has come from an unreasonable level of hustle and dedication. To deliver that, it’s impossible to split yourself effectively between multiple projects without compromising something important. External people CAN accelerate your internal owners immensely, though. That’s what I try to do.
[3] It’s cliché, but taste is everything now, and there’s no shortcut to developing it. It’s harder and more important than ever to develop a strong narrative, a good visual brand, and a unique and sufficiently focused brand positioning. AI will only increase the pressure on you to get this right, because in many domains the barrier to entry for competitors is falling rapidly. Writing something as important as your website or pitch deck is not about being good with grammar. It’s about synthesizing everything – the market reality, the state of your technology, what’s unique about your team, the opportunity in front of you, the winning approach you plan to take, and a very compelling and unique ‘flavor’ that no one else has. If you’re a resource constrained startup, getting this right with an external team will be a huge power up. You can have a more junior (read: affordable) marketing team execute the basics afterward.
[4] Deep work capacity matters a lot. I don’t deliver low-IQ work at a high volume, I try to deliver high-quality, challenging work specific to a focused set of deliverables. I want to make next-level stuff that few other people can really do. To achieve this, I try to minimize the amount of distracting busywork on my plate. I am intentional with my use of email, Slack and messaging, and I’m especially careful about adding meetings to my calendar.