in the early days of a startup, it's common that you'll find the company in a "distribution by any means necessary" mindset. we've seen this a lot more in recent years. a prime example is cluely. what started as a company with a product that knew how to engineer views quickly turned into a company primarily known for viral media, not their product. i want to explain (from an algorithmic perspective) why avoiding this hit of dopamine matters so much: for this exercise, i want you to imagine that you're scrolling an instagram feed and you interact with a piece of content from the claude instagram page in 2023. the page has zero followers. it's a reel showing how to use claude for marketers. you like the video, and you follow the account. odds are, 3-4 scrolls later you'll be served another piece of media from the claude page. however, this time, it's a video about how a gorilla ran a marathon. the first video showing a claude workflow gets 50,000 views and 500 followers. the second video showing a gorilla gets 5m views and 5,000 followers. these followers are very different. one group wants to use your product, and one doesn't know anything about it. the next time you post a product-led video about another claude workflow, it's served to the group that followed from a gorilla video, gets no engagement (because they came for entertainment, not tactical workflows) and isn't pushed by the algorithm. this is a trap many startups fall into early on. you should do everything you can to avoid this.

may sound a bit dramatic, but every single elite content person i've met always shares the same trait: an innate understanding of the human condition if you understand your audience, you can make content for them

Great read Ryan is super talented - good follow for the marketing/content folks

This team structure can take you from 10->100M views/month with the right people

if you think of openai, anthropic, or spacex - who do you think of? probably sam, dario, and elon if you think of google, microsoft, or apple, it's more likely you think of a search bar, tools for knowledge workers, and phones these companies have crossed the chasm - this is, by far, the hardest phase for any organic media team it requires shedding your identity as a founder-led company, and turning to a brand one. when crossing the chasm, you have to let your products and brand accounts do the talking not easy, but existential to every company at some point

my colleague @hectorserrranoo had quite a viral weekend however, everything i'm reading is about how EGC is bad as it opens a company up for poaching while this can be true in a vacuum, i haven't seen a single tweet talking about the flip side of poaching: talent acquisition the fact of the matter is, great people want to work with great people if you use EGC to display that your company has top tier talent, others want to work there too ultimately you come out ahead if you take care of the employees that are making this content

the creative director on your social team literally only needs one trait: be elite at making product launch videos that means they need to be on the pulse of organic and culture, and know how to produce a media asset such that it gathers millions of views an example of why this is valuable is openai's astra launch video. a generic video would have gotten views simply because the model is exciting. instead, they pushed for something unique and captivating - they were rewarded with hundreds of millions of views hiring this person will be expensive, it's worth it

if you're a founder, a head of social, a head of content, or even a CMO, this is a tactical guide to navigate organic social and scale a company from 0-100M organic views per month

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Cool office, cool people :)

strong believer that if you don’t jump on a good idea, it will be given to someone else who will

the best thing about working in social is that you’re only as good as your last post have to stay in the arena

a twitter knowledge test could likely be used as a filter for elite talent in tech if you think about it tactically, things happen first on this platform, and staying tapped in to what’s happening means you are likely 1) aware of the tools available or 2) have some knowledge on how to use them ive not used twitter until june of this year - this was a mistake it’s clear that being on here is a huge advantage

team crushed this one

i joined @WisprFlow 2 months ago on my first day, @tankots and @SahajGarg6 both said something that completely changed how I view problems it’s a painfully simple mental model, and goes like this: before doing anything, we ask “if we needed to do this twice as fast, what would we do?” it exponentially increases the speed at which a company, and individuals, get things done great hack

the future is bright