Lulu Cheng Meservey on founder comms: consistency beats virality, and the highest-aura move is always to chill

Speaker 1: we have Lulu Masurvi from Rostra in the waiting room. Let's ask Lulu if she thinks this is a real company. Yeah. And the value of rage bait, the value of, like, fake fake launches. Alright. Lulu,

Speaker 2: please look at this product, this new robot company, and tell us give us your read. Is it real? Team, can we pull it up? Show her the the the Centaur robot that is absolutely I saw yeah. I saw I saw a glimpse of it.

Speaker 9: This is like the stuff from nightmares. Like, imagine that you're a natural disaster and this thing comes to you through, like, the smoke and the flames. I think you would probably die of a heart attack if we could save you. Don't worry, human.

Speaker 2: I will protect you. Yeah. Really fascinating. I think I think if they change the head,

Speaker 9: you know, maybe you could get it a little bit better, but it's still gonna be wrong. Demon head. Like, this looks like the canonical Satan head when he appears in in form on Earth.

Speaker 1: How did this originally hit the timeline? Like, where did this this just came out as if Well, the whole world gets their news from prediction markets or media accounts now. So. I guess. But, yeah, it it it did go out on, like, a PR newswire. I guess Satris robots, like, answer the question No. I'm I'm curious. I wanna have them on now. They say the horns are necessary because they place cameras there so they can see the position of all limbs and tools. It gives a layer of redundancy in case there's issues with encoders and on the actuators.

Speaker 9: That's what will make people like AI more, actually. It's that the horns don't have enough cameras. But once the horns are for surveillance, then people will come out. An open letter about this. The demon robot a chainsaw, and they say the horns are

Speaker 1: completely necessary. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What do you, yeah. What what what do you make of of the the current startup launch playbook? Because there there is a world like, there's all this, speculation that Nathan Fielder's working on a new, season of the audition with that, boy band called Boythrob. Have you heard this, Jordy? No. Boythrob? Boythrob. So it's this it's a real band boy band that has been, like like, detained and they have a whole they've been making news, but people have been suggesting that, like, Nathan Fielder is sort of puppeteering the behind the scenes. And I'm wondering how far off we are from a start up just launching something that's, like, intentionally rage bait or viral and then sort of, like, pulling off the mask and saying, oh, well, we're at we actually are doing a quadruped. It doesn't look as crazy as this. This was just to draw a bunch of attention. Here's the final design. It feels like that would probably be a rough go because you've sort of violated the trust of the, of the audience on day one. But do you think the right founder could pull it off?

Speaker 9: I think it's a really bad idea to just optimize for going viral. Okay. Why? Because viral comes and goes. What's that? Yeah. Yeah. Why? Why? It feels like it's such a bad viral. Comes and goes. Like, it's you're viral for, like, twenty four hours, thirty six hours, good or bad. You know? I think for Leopold, maybe we could get to that. Like, by next week, people could be saying he's the GOAT again. People are just very fickle, and everyone is at max intensity all the time.

Speaker 2: Five x. No. I I do think I do think people under people have this idea of, like, if I can just go viral once, then I'll have a big business. And I think back with just building our show. Mhmm. Like, we had so many we had some big, you know, moments, you know, you can think of like the the Soham Pariks and there were big guests and there were things like that. But the amount of times that we needed to go like moderately viral on X to build our audience was like 20 times more than I would have thought Yeah. That you needed to to build a media business. And so Yeah. Just trying to go doing something that will get you viral once in sort of a shortcut kind of like almost cheating, which Rage Bate is like wouldn't call it cheating, but but it's like, you know, it's kind of It's edge. It's it's kind of close to there. It's just short term and it doesn't actually get you the thing that you want, which is like, derp sustained attention.

Speaker 9: Yeah. I agree with you. But it's also not just about viral versus not viral. It's actually about consistency. So if you are consistent over the course of a year, there'll be times when you go more viral, less viral. There'll be times when there's, like, some Tuesday afternoon thing that you do that catches the attention of 50 people, but it happens to be that one of the exact right people is among them. You just have to keep doing the same thing kind of forever. It's like getting fit. You don't get fit by eating nothing for two days and and and then lifting for two days straight. It's like you just have to go to the gym kind of every day for the rest of your life in order to be fit. And the same thing is true of relevance. Consistency in just keep doing it. It's not a one time thing, but also consistent consistency in, like, what are you going viral for? It's like Ilya said, what are we scaling? What are you going viral for? Because if it's not going viral for the thing that you actually consider your true identity to be, now you've actually just gone in the wrong direction. Now you have to, like, overcorrect back. And so if you are consistent with the story and then with doing it over and over, that's a lot better than trying to put everything into one moment.

Speaker 1: Well said. Do you think we are at peak I forget what the word was. I gotta ask this recently. It was like, are we at peak, like, transparency in terms of CEO communications? Because we're certainly at peak volume in terms of Yeah. If I go back and I'm like, oh, I'd love to just, like, listen to twenty hours of podcasts from Jeff Bezos while he was in the middle of building Amazon, that's not really an option. There might be, like, a ten minute hit on Charlie Rose and then a four minute hit on

Speaker 2: Letterman or Imagine Steve Jobs on Joe Rogan.

Speaker 3: Yeah. That would be it.

Speaker 1: Imagine imagine, like like, Steve Jobs on Lex Friedman for the third time, and you're like, yeah, that one I didn't actually get through because it's like now Yeah. We're in hour nine. But I but do you think we're at, like, peak, like, maximum amount of just founder content and founder, like, interviews in terms of just the volume?

Speaker 9: It feels like this should be the peak, but I don't think it is. Yeah. I think people consider it to be an arms race, where now the peak is the new bench line benchmark and bench line. I did I for a fun fact, I learned English from a book called English. So sometimes I still do stumble into, like She read the book on English. I did. There's a book. It's called English. I read it, and then I knew English. Yeah. Like like Neo in the Matrix. So forgive. Benchmark is the the the new peak is the current benchmark, where it's like everybody is loud all the time. So if I'm launching and talking, I have to talk more and louder. But to your point, it's very different from actually learning new things. Mhmm. So I've seen the same CEO maybe go on 10 different podcasts Mhmm. And I still don't know what they're doing. Sure. Or, like, is the sixth podcast marginally useful compared to the fifth? There was one week when, Demis went on like a whole podcast tour. That's right. And this is no shade to sir Demis. This is like planned around he released a book or whatever, but it still was like, am I gonna get anything new from the six podcasts that I didn't get from the fourth podcast that I already listened to? And each one of these is, like, two hours. I'm really criticism

Speaker 2: there is, like, that podcast tour and the book launch and everything coincides with them, like, completely falling behind the frontier. So now in hindsight, it's like,

Speaker 1: maybe you should have been I thought you were saying he there was no Rogan or Theo involved. Because that was the real Yeah. Should have done Theo Vaughan. He's more Theo. Yeah. No. I but do do do you agree that, if you're if you're advising a founder and the choices between, 10 tech podcasts that are going to ask roughly the same questions or 10 varied podcasts where one might be cultural, one might be more political, one might be business, one might be finance focused, one might be technology focused, that having more of a breadth. Because there was a moment where the CEO started going on Rogan and Theo and I was like, oh, this is so fresh and different. It's just a very different conversation for them to have. It's not the same as a door cash or like a serious interview, but it just shows me a different side and I like to see how they interact. Not every CEO is set up for it, but how would you solve that problem? So

Speaker 9: I I would approach it from the obverse, like, almost the opposite of what you said, which is if you have five podcast opportunities in front of you or five whatever publicity opportunities, and they're all different, think about who do you actually need to reach? Like, what is the best use of your time? Mhmm. And if you don't need to reach the general population and if you don't need to show some fun side of your personality, then it's less about finding a way to show your range and it's more about focusing on what do you actually need Instead of doing five podcasts that are all different, just cut the other three. Mhmm. The three that are either duplicative or are reaching people that you don't need to, literally just don't do them. I I think, CEOs need to be thinking about what is, like, minimum viable effort where I can get my vision and persona and build trust with the people that I need to Yeah. Without actually going on a press tour. Because at a certain point, the same way that it wastes my time to listen to the fifth podcast, it wastes you, the CEO's, time to do the fifth podcast. Because the marginal value of one hour of your time there is, like, $30,000

Speaker 2: or more. I mean, what's an hour of a CEO's time worth? Right? The only the only thing that I would the only thing that I would push back is I think the reason that you see some CEOs once they just get on this podcast treadmill, and then it's like every week new episode is when you actually think of if if it's a virtual recording and they're using one hour of their time, and even if all that happens let's say the podcast is like decent size. Right? Yeah. Like top 25 tech podcasts in the world. Mhmm. If you have a 100 customers or potential customers that listen to that, I would argue and they'll listen to the whole episode, I would argue that it is like well worth the time to go on even if that's the only That's great. Yeah. It's basically 100%. That's why that's why you end up and it's like it's it's unless you're in a period where it's like you actually don't wanna share anything, then I think every incremental progress is like, is it a better use of is it a better use of time for the CEO to talk to like a warm lead, you know, that's just coming in, talk to your customers, or talk to a 100 customers and they listen to you talk for an hour in the sort of, like, passing sales,

Speaker 9: or passive sort of, like, sales motion. Right? Yeah. See, that's very true, and I agree with you there. And the difference is we're making the assumption that it is one of the top podcasts that your customers are listening to, and you're saying something that is gonna be worthwhile to them. That is an amazing use of time, because you use one hour, or maybe on TBPN, you use, like, twenty minutes if you're a busy CEO. And then you get clips and clips and clips out of it, and you just were able to amplify the equivalent of having a thousand meetings into this setting where someone is able to to pull better responses from you than you might have been able to give on the spot. That's true. Mhmm. But what a lot of CEOs also do and and founders in general is just try to maximize her volume at any cost. Mhmm. And that leads to going on a podcast that nobody listens to. Sure. Going on a show that is actively detrimental to your vibes. Mhmm. There are shows where it's net negative. It's not just a waste of time, but you literally leave with a worse reputation than if you hadn't gone on there. Or, just being boring, wasting people's time, or you're making people angry, and you're building a brand that you actually don't want, and now you have to put in extra effort to unwind the brand and walk it back versus if you had just been more focused in the first place. So I think that, optimizing for volume and sheer quantity leads you down the road to all of these perils, whereas if you're just focused from the beginning and say, are the things that matter to me, here are the podcasts and shows and venues that I actually respect and people listen to. I'm gonna focus on those. That's a better use of your time than just to go like hungry hungry hippos with it. Yeah. It's also sometimes cool when the CEOs are

Speaker 1: sort of like, I don't know, like almost king making a little bit where they they they jump onto a show that hasn't hit that inflection point, before it's obvious, and they take the risk of going on some small show. And then that show blows up and you're like, wow. That that CEO went on that show that early. That's crazy. They took a real risk. Yeah. I think Elon did this with Lex very early, and there were there there's a whole bunch of other examples. But You know who loves doing that? Brian Armstrong loves doing that. That's right. And he he went on p TBP on when you guys had already like, this wasn't No. No. I think he was our first public company CEO, first Fortune 500 CEO. He was very, very early. Anyway, it's huge. It was great for us. We had a we had it was probably not in the first, like, 100 or 200 guests. Yeah. It definitely

Speaker 9: I I think you're right that it was the first public company. For other public company CEOs to be going on there. A lot of public CEOs are so risk averse that they're like, show me. If Satya and Jensen have done it, I'll consider it. Otherwise, don't even bring it to me. Yep. Brian just never asked these questions. He just asked, do I like this thing? And so TPPN wasn't that early, still a nice milestone, but he went on this one podcast called Pod of Jake. Oh, yeah. I know pod of Jake. Guy called Jake. Yeah. Yeah. It's a great show. Great name. Listeners, and he just liked it. Yeah. No. No. No. No. That's so cool. And then Toby Luecky did that too with, like, some Starcraft podcast,

Speaker 1: which was, like, crazy. I was like, this is selection. This is taste. I know that, like, you know, he was involved in this. This wasn't something that came through a committee, which is just so refreshing. Did The opposite you of volume and and the spray and pray do every podcast is is, like, just being mysterious and having aura. Do we need to move to think of Jeff Bezos does it very well. Jack Dorsey does it very well. Ilya Sotskyber does it very well. Do we need to move from a world for certain CEOs where instead of media training, we're doing mystery training where we are coaching them to be mysterious and have high is that possible, or is it innate with those people?

Speaker 9: It's innate because people who are too thirsty for attention cannot help themselves. Like, you can tell them, I have coached founders to do less, and there are some people who just cannot be held back because they get excited, and that's okay. You can be a very respected, excited, public facing archetype. Yeah. But, like, what Ilya has cannot be taught. And in fact, if you tried to coach him to be the opposite, that wouldn't work. Yeah. And and Leopold is in the category too, where there are people who just are a certain way, and then that reputation gets out and it benefits them. But this is why it's such a mistake for CEOs to try to copy another. Because if you just say, I wanna copy Ilya, and I wanna be able to have a five word tweet that gets 10,000 likes and everyone has eyes on whatever. Well, you can't because you're not him. You have to make this new thing that suits you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's always funny when when really his tweets get completely taken out of taken out of context and people will be like, wow. Like, this is about ASI. It's like, actually, he's just happy about his family or something like that. Okay. Sorry. I'm sort of

Speaker 2: I'm sort of inclined to try to workshop some some ideas. Let's do it. If if we were doing comms for situational awareness Okay. What's the next move? It's interesting situation. Yes. Because he was very very quiet. Right? He basically had like a couple podcasts a Literally billion dollar just one. A billion dollar PDF and then went on the most insane run, all of his predictions coming true, you know, vindicated and then total annihilation Mhmm. In a very short period of time. I think that one, I think he's gotta start kinda shitposting a little bit.

Speaker 1: Like You're gonna advocate for the SPF, like, Parentheses? Think it worked for I think it worked.

Speaker 2: Well, one, SPF was different in that he was very he was always talking a lot. This is, like, wildly different because he's been effectively silent. And to come back, you know, maybe after the wedding and say, what did I miss? You know? No. I just, I think that he's clearly brilliant. Yeah. He, I think, is from everything I've seen, will probably be an incredible venture investor.

Speaker 1: He'll probably ask leverage. He's just correct. Like, minus leverage. His his whole thesis is correct, so, like Yeah. Everything went up. It was just the leverage thing. Yeah. When you're he should not do that now is

Speaker 9: start doing things differently. Because when people change how they operate, it shows that they're in a crisis. And, obviously, it wasn't a good day. Yep. But there's a difference between market movement, portfolio management Mhmm. Versus repudiating your underlying worldview and your underlying long term thesis. Mhmm. And so couple couple of thoughts on my end is, like, one, going direct doesn't mean you just have to tweet into the void or to the public. Going direct can mean picking up the phone and calling your LPs. Mhmm. And the people that matter to him most today and always are the LPs. So if he can call the LPs or if he already has Yeah. And make sure they understand two things. One, that day to day market movement and portfolio management, even in pretty extraordinary circumstances, don't change the underlying thesis and worldview, and that his vision for what happens in AI still stands. Yeah. That's one. And two is that he has this kind of hidden jewel of his portfolio in private companies. This is an unusual thing that he does that he has access to, and that what is happening in the public market is actually the peripheral padding around this really interesting core of his private investments. Now people know about Anthropic, but he has all these other private investments True. Yeah. That are super interesting that haven't even really hit their peak at all. And so if his if his employees and LPs know these two things, then I think it's like weather Twitter for a little bit Mhmm. And then come back, and two weeks later, some other thing will happen, and people will be like, he's the GOAT again.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And I also think that I I don't know about institutional LPs. I don't know about that whole world. But I think knowing a lot of the a lot of the, like, you know, founder types that are just allocating a very small amount of their portfolio to situational awareness, I think they give them another roll. Roll the dice Yeah. Personally. I think after that run I think after that run, a lot of them would be like, yeah, I'll I'll just whatever I got out, I'll I'll I'll let it I'll let it let it ride kind of Just because again, it's not like the underlying thesis has ever been wrong. It's a timing thing. If you're just thinking of it as like, yeah, basically like, you know, high stakes gambling Yeah. Then why not keep rolling the dice? Yes. You've been through this, I think, loosely. I mean, you've certainly seen

Speaker 1: Scott Wu Cognition come in as sort of the savior in a messy situation. And we were talking to Martin Scully about this where Ken Griffin is starting to play this nonbank role of of backstop lender of last resort. This was a a situation where the liquidity crisis could have bled into the big banks, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan. It did not. It stayed within the the the the shadow banking system of of Citadel. And it's interesting because it feels like what Martin was saying was that Ken Griffin is is beginning to position himself as, like, the next Warren Buffett. In a crisis, he can be the lender that brings stability to the market. The market is up. And I'm wondering about your advice for founders who are fortunate enough to be in the situation where they are rescuing another founder, another business, a market even in this case. What is the right communication strategy where you are reassuring the world, with Scott? It was the, you know, the the the the social contract in Silicon Valley, in King Griffins. One year ago. One year ago. Right? But at the same time, you don't wanna take too much of a victory lap and and and rub it in everyone's face, and you don't want everyone to believe, oh, well, like, you know, maybe I can actually go and, you know, screw over all sorts of founders because Scott Wu's always gonna be around to save the day. So how would you balance that?

Speaker 9: So the the highest aura move is always to just chill and not make a big deal out of it. You know? Like, when you when you see someone dance a little too much after getting a touch down, it's like, oh, this is someone who's not used to getting touchdowns. This is a big deal for them. Is this their first ever touchdown? Yeah. But for the people who kinda, like, do a little something and move on, then you realize that they're just this is just part of their day. Yeah. And so, I think one, just not getting overexcited as if this is the best thing to ever happen to you by sheer luck. Mhmm. Two is, I think a classy way to approach this is to stand up for principle or to stand up for the other party. So in the case of Cognition Windsurf, the Scott's instinct was to protect and stand up for Windsurf employees as opposed to, some big treatise about here's why I did this and I I I Yep. It was all about here's what windsurf employees deserve. And by the way, you're not appreciating how talented this group is. It was all about defending them and about the social contract. So I think for for Ken Griffin or anybody, the best move here is, like, defend the principal, defend the people that you're trying to help, and then just don't make a huge deal out of it and be chill. Yeah.

Speaker 1: And Well said. And I and loved that when Scott put that announcement video together, he was there alongside with the team. It was not all about him. Of course, that's his nature. He's a very humble person. But Yeah. The the it's it would have been very easy to just say, like, oh, yeah, like, can only schedule Scott for this video, and that's not what happened, and it was intentional very clearly, which was great. One thing I'll say, I've there's one thing that I've learned from Sheryl

Speaker 9: Sandberg. I've I don't know her. I've never met her. Yeah. I didn't read wait. Okay. Here's here's what it is. When I think that I'm gonna super duper hate a book, sometimes I'll read it so that I can hate on it with more credibility. Yeah. So like I thought I would really dislike white fragility and Between the World and Me, so I made sure to read them so that when I hate on them, nobody can rebut because nobody's read those books. Yeah. And so I thought I would super hate Lean In, so I read it. Mhmm. And it was okay. Mhmm. But there was one part of it that was actually really useful. And she was saying this in the context of women have to do this, but actually it's just anybody. Mhmm. And what she said was, if you are advocating for yourself and defending yourself, that gets totally discounted because it's just self interest. But if you are able to do that on behalf of someone else that represents what you want, represents what you believe in, or principles that represent how you want the world to work, just that small shift allows you to go really hard on being full throated about them in a way that doesn't get discounted for self interest. And so same for, like, any founder who's standing up for another person or for an idea or anything else. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Well, Jordan, anything else?

Speaker 2: There was a interesting comms crisis and and resolution that happened effectively in the last twenty four hours. I don't know if you guys saw it. The founder shared out a picture of someone getting a tattoo. That's a tattoo. We sold everyone that would get a tattoo of our logo. We got a company, not a big fan of logo tattoos Yes. In general. There's a few that I might consider myself, but I certainly wouldn't, you know, encourage other people to You have to Roman weave. I think like a Coca Coca Cola across the back. Thought

Speaker 1: you were gonna do a whole sleeve of the Bottega Veneta Roman weave on your Exactly. But

Speaker 2: that's less of a logo. Yeah. Roman weaves It's like if you know, you know tattoo. Yeah. Quiet luxury. Roman weaves. I I I just saw this and I was, like, absolutely shocked that someone said this out loud. Basically, a founder was telling anybody that got their, again, I think sub seed stage startup logo tattooed on them, got guaranteed an interview, which just felt like so so wrong. They posted it, everyone was like, wow, did you say this out loud? And then I saw the I think it got deleted, but I saw the correction of like, we're now paying for tattoo removal No. For anyone that

Speaker 9: Wait. No. There's another one. I didn't see the paying for tattoo removal, but he posted this like, mea tweet that was fully written by Claude. Did you see that? No. I didn't see that. But, I mean, the steel man here, I'm I'm not gonna give you the steel man helmet, but the steel man is that,

Speaker 1: there are people that just love tattoos. And if you offer certain people free tattoos, they will say yes because they just want as many tattoos as possible. Yeah. We don't know. Maybe it was at a tattoo convention. I was I I I've seen I've seen free tattoos given out before and people lining up and it's I don't it doesn't math for me. I'm not in the market, but there are certainly people who are just like, yes. I want more ink. I want more tattoos. If there's a tattoo artist here that I don't have to pay, sign me up even if they get something silly. But,

Speaker 9: but, what what will be There's, like, Cy Ann with her Anderil tattoo. But the the she's a shareholder. Anderil Anderil didn't say, like, we're not giving you the allocation unless you Exactly. We'll only give you allocation if you get the tattoo. That was the thing. It's like, you're you're are you maybe exploiting desperate job seekers? And also Yep. Do you not have a different and better bar for whom you want in the company as opposed to the people who make the most rash poor decisions in the moment? You're, like, optimizing for people who can't decision make to advance in your interview round. So I it it obviously wasn't great, but I think the real crime was the cover up, which was in this case Yeah. It'd be a slap. A slap. I don't know if if that's still up there, but it was a slapology.

Speaker 1: Rough. Well, good luck to them. Hopefully, live and learn and hopefully those folks who didn't want the tattoo can get it removed smoothly. And thank you so much for coming on the show. Always great see you later. Thanks, guys. Always great hanging out. Talk soon. Have a great week. Cheers. We'll talk to you soon. Let me tell you about CrowdStrike. Your business is AI. Their business is securing it. CrowdStrike secures AI and stops breaches. Up next, we have Michael Kim from Sundana Capital.