QWERTY: If Authenticity and Taste are ‘The Moat’ - Why Won’t More Lean Into It?

So I had the standard quip sent my way the other night - 3 times actually - that who I was talking to would love to know what I’m doing for work, but are thus far failing to grasp it. That is on me, I am the asshole in this equation, but I couldn’t resist smiling at the irony of how it came to be understood by each of the 3 eventually.

You see, it’s a broad mix of ‘marketing’ efforts I’ll use to ‘brand-build.’ I even wrote about it in the previous weeks send, as I explained that I also make merch for christs sake (just to make it feel deliciously complicated.)

No. For each of the 3, I simply explained that I am writing over on SEEDS, and scaling that up as we speak with a hefty range of interviews to roll out next week onwards. I’ll move SEEDS into a ‘Strategic Storytelling Studio’ model as was the plan this year (delayed by chronic pain issues) and will work with only a few clients on strategic storytelling stuff, while scaling my own publication and events stream.

That client work would be building their own editorial & newsletters, events & engagement in market, and some extra stuff related to PR, comms etc.

I’ve been elusive often on LinkedIn, even as recently as *right as I send this newsletter* in my post HERE.

But it won’t always be this way. I am determined to tell a good story about the importance of storytelling.

Seperately (newsletter & events building) the models work well worldwide. The newsletter and editorial side definitely needs to be understood more locally in APAC (let alone the combo of written and events). For me, it’s just not that interesting to pitch myself as a gun for hire fractional CMO. Your desktop just ends up looking like this (I do a cleanup after sending this)

It’s not interesting acting as a fractional CMO or whatever - a studio model ensures we work on specialised and strategic aspects of the business, and scale them, and I’ll do that for a few groups, rather than being ‘an employee’ for a few groups. And I definitely know who I want to join me on the team if it goes as well as I expect it to.

I don’t look at my industry of supposedly the best minds in the business, the self-appointed most innovative and pioneering people there are - the startup industry - and see much emphasis put on articulating the vision, the narrative, the reasoning behind why they invent such things, how they think about growth, what their purpose is, and more. Yes, in pitch deck, I guess, but afterwards, when not pitching for the $? Hardly.

Spoiler alert- your next investor, customer, partner, are always watching and listening. It’s on you to reach them at the moment they are compelled to engage.

For some reason, putting that message to paper on a consistent basis in email newsletter form is a foreign and extremely costly process on founders’ time, whereas spending an inordinate amount of time crafting the perfect milqueotoast linkedin post is viewed as “a net-positive use of time actually.”

To achieve what exactly? Outsized vanity metrics that keep you happy for the day?
This is what I like about newsletters. You build a (probably) niche audience, which might be made up of investors, customers, partners or even just superfans, and you write to them, as casual or off-the-cuff as you need to, or as focused, strategic and tactical.

Anyhoo, all 3 at the soirée were on-side by the end of my summary, as my hands wailed and flailed all over the place with passion for why businesses and their leaders should write their story - write newsletters - to connect with people, and show people the human behind.

To me, it is so much more interesting to see a founder who operates in a niche or who has developed something quite revolutionary or even novel then go on a storytelling journey, as opposed to seeing the most recently Series B funded founder(s ghost writer) begin a series of linkedin posts suddenly coz they have budget to burn.

Any founder can be authentic and genuine while communicating dense aspects of unit economics too. And what I like to remind people is that for everyone that mentions that ‘taste’ is the differentiator in an AI-era, lot’s of people have shit taste too, and more often than not it’s a venture capitalist saying that on a stage or in an interview.

Taste has long existed well before a startup industry, but we’re over-indexing into trying to prove we have taste via linkedin, pandering to venture capitalists, when by writing consistently and/or bringing people together IRL, you can articulate that and show them, rather than attempt to convince them when not doing those human things. I don’t know the real you when I see your obviously generated post, today.

ON WRITING

Ironically regarding writing, I will keep this incredibly pithy. I spoke to a founder at said networking event who was frustrated with a PR engagement recently. Being a past marketer/comms person, they can literally handle the PR themselves for main publications - it was the more niche and trade press they needed focussing on.

“Write a newsletter” I said.
“No Time” they said.
“500 words fortnightly? You so could” I said.
This, is what it’s like, to network, with me.

I saw this post go out yesterday by a16z, with cofounder Ben Horowitz advocating for founders writing. Some will lean into it purely by virtue of who is advocating for it, but every influential voice that can get in founders’ ears to say that writing and articulating - especially in this era - is critical, is a good thing.

TO SOLVE FOR

SEEDS is slowly building - I have launched a number of articles and introduced new streams, but that will really increase from next week onwards to the end of the year. Interviews with July founder Athan Didaskalou, Normal founder Lucy Wark, Golden Age Cinema founder Barrie Barton, recent cover star of the Broadsheet Innovators list Tash Menon-Verheul, and a bunch more.

But I also have quite a few brewing that are much more technical, and I’m looking forward to flexing more of my old technical, sci-comms writing side too.

Yes, I use Claude, but not exactly how you might think.
Hasn’t touched an iota of this article for example.

No, in the pursuit of scaling newsletter systems, it’s really building systems to be able to operationalise a lot of requirements, to essentially automate some things in an if-this-then-that range of scenarios, or post-event requirements (usually something like list moves to this database, automatically gets sent this message etc.

And on the research side, thats where some agents running is going to be particularly useful, but I’m still in decision-making mode. But once I nail down what it is, I’ll also share that openly. But again, no, ‘efficiencies’ are not Claude writing everything for me, nor would it be writing for clients.

My actual major piece of work to articulate out to the world however, is the unit economics behind running a newsletter, and how that can add value to a business. I am someway there, with some pretty good business-cases documented showing how X email list size translates into $Y of value.

But not quite there yet, and that is a main goal of mine this year. To not just rabbit on continuously that sToRyTeLlInG wItH nEwSlEtTeRs Is CoOl, but that “here’s the value to you from doing so” and then when you add in the brand building & trust aspects alongside that, you’ve got yourself a storytelling stew right there.

Anyway, that’s enough for today. NFL has just started.

I’ve also got to organise this event stream for 2027 which I am extremely excited about, so watch this space for that, but it sees me lean right into storytelling and creativity on the regular, once again.

Gaz

A Little Curation For Ya

Lot’s of people would have the extremely famous ‘Lo-Fi Girl’ as their study/writing playlist, but not I - I make my own, and this one I’ve put together is GROUPED Chill, which is a bunch of songs I genuinely enjoy having on in the background when writing predominantly. It’s mainly electronic or some relatively lo-fi alternative, but there’s little bursts of energy in there as well to not keep it too demure. But also, there’s no Converge in there, so it’s also not too frantic on the ol’ noggin.

I’ve actually really been enjoying writing mini-reviews of songs and movies of late, and really really enjoy when people discover a new tune or two that they like from the list as well, so here’s GROUPED Chill, which hopefully I can continue adding to and you’ll enjoy it as much as I have long enjoyed Brain Food or Braille Face’s Social Listancing released right as we went into lockdown!

A few words on a few of my favs:

Sugar and Vice by machinegum - Liked this one from the second I heard it - this rollicking bassline, muttered and barely audible vocals which brings this low-key vibe and this sort of driving beat which invokes more of a flow than an energy, I don’t know, I just really like it, and maybe plenty of Donny Benet fans would too in some parts. Pretty great instrumentation and song-writing on this one.

Mountain Time by Molly Nilsson - now this is some damn good synth-pop, and whilst upbeat, there’s more than enough chill in here to keep you chilled. Just this dreamy, hazy tune with synths rolling over you like waves with echoed vocals that don’t overstep their presence. A true feel-good tune.

Wurlitzer by Leifur James - I’m not much of a classical music style of person, which I guess is what you would assume this is from the first few bars, but it’s this minimalist journey with piano keys freely expressing themselves, and this humming, building buzz in the background rising and rising until it reaches this almighty crescendo as the beats kick in, which true to my word is also very chill. So it’s this sort of contradiction of vibes that I’ve always loved in this one, such a cool piece of music..

Shadow by Chromatics - if you want someone to be chill, you play Chromatics for them, it’s such a simple directive. One of the all-time greats, and it’s not hard to search through playlists and see Chromatics injected in a few times, as they’re easily one of the great pop/alternative groups. This is an incredible song, and sounds like a dream, and it’s always such a pleasure to recommend Chromatics to someone who hasn’t heard them before.

Prev Playlists:

GROUPED DARKNESS
GROUPED MOOD
GROUPED LUNACY