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Helping Founders Go Direct in a New Era of PR & Comms with Lulu Cheng Meservey | Ep. 25

(If you enjoyed this, please like and subscribe!) Lulu Cheng Meservey is the leading voice in the new age of PR and comms and is the founder of Rostra, an advisory firm helping founders go direct. Lulu has been a trusted voice for founders like Palmer Luckey at Anduril, Eric Glyman at Ramp, and Brian Armstrong at Coinbase. She previously ran corporate affairs and communications for Activision Blizzard and was the head of comms for Substack. Lulu writes an acclaimed newsletter called Flack, where she proposes her new playbook for communications and shares tactical advice for how to help win over the people who matter, without wasting time or inducing cringe. A few memorable moments: - Aura is code for good communicator - People like to have assumptions for the level of celebration you deserve - The correct version of this company has him in it - Words that mean the same thing aren’t perceived the same way - Comms is the last thing to be uniquely human Timestamps: (0:00) Intro (0:50) Comms having a moment (3:43) Breaking through the noise (6:30) What makes a great story (9:58) Creating story arcs (17:29) Flow and stock (20:29) All press is good press (23:25) Leaning into authenticity (28:10) Word choice (35:09) Impact on recruiting (42:48) The business of comms (45:48) Comms predictions (48:18) Tech & media relationship More on Lulu: https://x.com/lulumeservey https://www.getflack.com/ https://rostra.co/ More on Jack: https://www.altcap.com/ https://x.com/jaltma https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod Email: friends@uncappedpod.com

Lulu Cheng MeserveyguestJack Altmanhost
Sep 24, 202550mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 0:50

    Intro

    1. LM

      The thing that I have extremely high confidence in is that comms is the final bastion of human ability.

    2. JA

      Hmm.

    3. LM

      Where ten years from now, fifty years from now, the ability to persuade and win over and make other people fall in love for other humans will still be uniquely human. [upbeat music]

    4. JA

      I'm really happy to be here with Lulu today. Lulu, I was just asking you before, like, what's the right way to introduce you? The way I would describe you is, like, a startup whisperer for comms behind, like, you know, amazing companies, amazing investors. I don't actually know the full scope of how you do what you do and what it all is, but, um, it's really incredible, and, uh, you're one of the most thoughtful people on how people communicate, position things, and so I'm really excited to talk about this and learn from you today.

    5. LM

      Thank you. Yeah, stoked.

    6. JA

      Why

  2. 0:50 – 3:43

    Comms having a moment

    1. JA

      has comms been having, like, the moment that it's been having? And, um, I feel like in the last few years, people have started, like, understanding what it is better and dissecting it and applying it and being more thoughtful. I think comms people have started to get paid more, which is appropriate. I think you can really feel it online, the companies that have it nailed and the ones that don't. But, like, why has it become more of a thing in recent years, seemingly?

    2. LM

      I think we're all just pattern recognition machines, and when we're seeing that the companies where the founders have the most aura and the companies that have built these impressive cults and the companies that have the best reputations are getting the best people and are winning and are worth the most, then the founders coming up say, "I wanna do that, too."

    3. JA

      It feels like even though-- So, like, even that word, aura-

    4. LM

      Yeah.

    5. JA

      -I feel like there have been more of these lately, where I'm like, there's cracked kids and there's, like... We have a lot of aura-

    6. LM

      Hmm.

    7. JA

      -and there's, like, vibes. And it seems to me, may-maybe this was always happening, but it feels more lately that people are more attuned to these words and these positions, and what's the energy of the company and the thing. Is that-- Does it feel like that to you?

    8. LM

      Yeah, and it's actually, um, hand in hand with people caring more about comms and how they're perceived. Like, aura is code for how good of a communicator you are. You, you can't be bumbling your way through a sentence and not able to describe what your company does and then still have aura as a founder. That's very difficult. So I, I think that people are just seeing the pattern, that the people with stronger reputations, that other people think more highly of and are more impressed with, are the winners, and they're trying to figure out ways to recreate that. And so some are trying to do it with these cinematic videos, and some are trying to do it with various forms of aura farming.

    9. JA

      Mm-hmm.

    10. LM

      Some are hiring online influencers, which I'm a little bit-

    11. JA

      Yeah

    12. LM

      ... icked out by.

    13. JA

      Yeah.

    14. LM

      But everyone's trying to approach it in, in these different ways, but there actually is time-tested, grand strategy for how to curate a reputation. If you take a holistic approach, it is like you start with, "What are you trying to achieve?" And it, it's not-- What I want to try to achieve is: people love me and think I'm great. What I want to try to achieve is to, uh, save the US military innovation future by equipping them in the right way-

    15. JA

      Yeah

    16. LM

      -or to build the software engineer of the future or to, uh, build super intelligence, right?

    17. JA

      Yeah.

    18. LM

      And that's what I want to achieve, and as a means to that end, what do people need to know about me? Obviously, it has to be true, but out of the set of ten thousand things that could be true, what are the things that people care about and that are useful for this project?

    19. JA

      Yeah.

    20. LM

      And so thinking about it through those terms, sometimes it'll lead you to doing the standard checklist of, like, video, influencer, tweet a lot, whatever. But sometimes it'll lead you to launch a fellowship program, host a competition, turn down certain opportunities. You know, it, it might actually be, um, outside of distribution compared to what you m- you're seeing other people do.

  3. 3:43 – 6:30

    Breaking through the noise

    1. JA

      When you think about, like, the most successful comms, either just campaigns or chapters or people or companies, is it more about clarity in what they say, or is it more about, like, the way they say it and what the personality that they show as they do those things? 'Cause, you know, like, I think having a clear mission and clear articulation is really good, but we can all think of these examples where, like, many companies are all basically saying the same thing, but for some reason, everybody wants this one to win.

    2. LM

      Mm-hmm.

    3. JA

      And when people want this one to win, it becomes easier for them to win.

    4. LM

      Yeah.

    5. JA

      It's like, what is... Yeah, what's the balance here?

    6. LM

      Yeah. So two things, the what and the how are both more useful and important than the where. Uh, have you seen this comic of Waldo sitting at a bar, and he's looking sad, and he's got a drink, and the caption is, "Nobody ever asks, 'How is Waldo?'"

    7. JA

      Mm-hmm. I love that.

    8. LM

      You know, e-everybody is always saying, "Which podcast can we go on?" Nobody ever asks, "How do we get people interested once we're there?"

    9. JA

      Yeah.

    10. LM

      So the what and the how are both important. I will say one thing that people probably underrate is that if people just like you in their gut, they will figure out ways to try to help you be successful, and they will kinda retcon to themselves-

    11. JA

      Yeah

    12. LM

      -the thing that they heard and how compelling it was-

    13. JA

      Yes

    14. LM

      ... and they'll just, like, help you inside their own mind.

    15. JA

      Yeah, it's like one of the founder archetypes I think about a lot is not-- Like, you know, there's, there's many intersecting things that are very-

    16. LM

      Hmm

    17. JA

      ... valuable. Like, there can be visionaries, and there can be deeply technical people, but there's also this type or this characteristic that can overlay, where people are just so magnetic, so likable, so just pure seeming, whatever, where just the whole world wants to see them win.

    18. LM

      Mm-hmm.

    19. JA

      And I think, I don't know what that is, but that seems like a very important thing here.

    20. LM

      A lot of it is pure, honest conviction and confidence. This is what-- You know, you and I can't get through a conversation without talking about Napoleon, so we'll get to that. [chuckles] But some of it is, i-if you just have complete confidence that this thing that you're doing is right, and you're going to win, and it's inevitable, and you just simply share that with people, they will feel that emanating from you, and it's very hard to resist. And this is true in the past, when people have had to run into a storm of bullets in order to achieve this thing that you've told them must happen and will happen, or today, if people need to leave their jobs and come, you know, turn their lives upside down to work with you. So I, I think some of it is just, like, another human being telling you with complete confidence and conviction that this is the thing that's gonna happen, and that's-... the thing that AI will not be able to take away from us. Well, we'll see. But, but, you know, AI will be smarter and better than us in many ways, and people who deny that, they, are just-

    21. JA

      It's silly

    22. LM

      ... coping.

    23. JA

      Yeah.

    24. LM

      A lot of these, like, "AI can already do it better than me, but it needs me doing," it's like, no, you're just asking for a DI program for yourself as a human.

    25. JA

      Yeah.

    26. LM

      You know, like, l- it's like-

    27. JA

      It's true

    28. LM

      ... um, AI can do better. But for convincing other humans, I think we'll always take humans. I think that actually communication will be the skill that humans need.

  4. 6:30 – 9:58

    What makes a great story

    1. JA

      When you start work on helping a company position itself or get its brand right, and you think about stories-

    2. LM

      Yeah

    3. JA

      ... what goes into that for you? And so, like, you know, what I'm imagining is I got to, like, tour the, like, Pixar studio one time and, like, meet some of the people there, and it's like the thoughtfulness and the deconstruction of a great story is just such a science. And I'm wondering if you could break down what's the-- what are the lenses or the-

    4. LM

      Mm-hmm

    5. JA

      ... attributes of a great story in tech?

    6. LM

      Every great story has a problem and a resolution, and the way people think about where you're headed from here is, um, by thinking about where you are on that curve. You know, what goes up must come down, um, pride comes before the fall-

    7. JA

      Mm-hmm

    8. LM

      ... darkness before the dawn. We have all of these different phrases for things needing a resolution. It's the same way that supposedly Eskimos have so many words for snow. It's because we have this deep, deep attachment and commitment to seeing stories through.

    9. JA

      Hmm.

    10. LM

      So we assume in our heart that every story has to have a problem that then gets resolved somehow, and if someone flies too close to the sun, they have to come crashing down to Earth. And if it doesn't happen, if the story was, "Icarus then flew happily away" [chuckles]

    11. JA

      Yeah, yeah.

    12. LM

      It's not a story. Or if somebody crashes down and doesn't make their way back up, if we were to see a movie like that, we would not be able to sleep. People would hate that movie-

    13. JA

      Hmm

    14. LM

      ... and not know why.

    15. JA

      Mm-hmm.

    16. LM

      It's like this uncanny valley of a story that was kind of heading in the right direction but didn't quite get to the other side.

    17. JA

      Yeah.

    18. LM

      And so every story has that arc. Um, a narrative arc is literally an arc. It goes one direction, and then it comes back the other direction. The way this is relevant for founders is you need to help people understand where you are on that arc and where the arc is headed. You don't get to choose that there's an arc, and that people will think there's an up and a down and a start, and a beginning, a middle, and end-

    19. JA

      Yeah

    20. LM

      ... but you, you get some agency in where people think you are on the arc. And if people think that you have crested or you've already hit the apex-

    21. JA

      Yeah

    22. LM

      ... and your past days are behind you, then they assume that you must be coming back down. Or if people feel that you're actually just hitting the knee of the curve to go up, then they assume that some greatness awaits in the future. You-- so, so you get to choose, are you, um, on this kind of an arc, where you've already passed-

    23. JA

      Yeah

    24. LM

      ... the, the apex?

    25. JA

      But there's always an arc.

    26. LM

      Yes. Or do you get to choose whether you're on this part of an arc, and you've come through struggles, and you're destined for greatness?

    27. JA

      Hmm.

    28. LM

      So what is the arc? Where are you on the arc? And people will fill in the rest of where they assume you're gonna go and where you deserve to go.

    29. JA

      I guess also, companies need multiple arcs, of course. And so you think about the companies that have gone really far-

    30. LM

      Mm-hmm

  5. 9:58 – 17:29

    Creating story arcs

    1. LM

      headed up or down.

    2. JA

      So how do you create those arcs?

    3. LM

      Yeah.

    4. JA

      Like, if you're sitting there and you're running a-

    5. LM

      Yeah

    6. JA

      ... early-stage company, or maybe it's not so early stage, how do you make an arc?

    7. LM

      There's two things that you need people to believe. So first of all, imagine that people's opinion of you is like a living, is like a living thing, and, and the story that the, uh... Take a set group of people that's your audience. Like, let's say that, um, my company needs to hire software engineers, and I'm talking to, like, Bay Area software engineers, and that's the people that I care the most about.

    8. JA

      Mm-hmm.

    9. LM

      Among those people, my story will be kind of a living thing that has a homeostatic set point, like, um, your body temp-- Sorry, this is, like, such a long-

    10. JA

      No, it's great

    11. LM

      ... roundabout way to answer.

    12. JA

      It's an arc.

    13. LM

      I'm like [panting]

    14. JA

      Here we go.

    15. LM

      Unfortunately. [chuckles] I'm-- I'll, I'll lay out the ingredients, and then I'll put them together. Um, imagine that the, the story among those people is a living thing, and imagine that that living thing has a homeostatic set point, this, the way that your body temperature does. Your body temperature doesn't have really, like, a, a neutral-- You know, it, it's supposed to be at ninety-eight point six, let's say.

    16. JA

      Yeah.

    17. LM

      Is it still that? There's, like, some new science every day.

    18. JA

      I, I don't want to get into those.

    19. LM

      Let's, let's say-

    20. JA

      Well, let's call it that

    21. LM

      ... say it's that.

    22. JA

      Yeah.

    23. LM

      If it's above that, then the body will regulate to bring the temperature down.

    24. JA

      Mm-hmm.

    25. LM

      If it's below that, it'll regulate to bring it up. If it's far below that, it'll try really hard to heat up. The way this translates to the story is people have an assumption of the level of celebration you deserve.

    26. JA

      Interesting.

    27. LM

      Right? Like, how good you are and how, um, much reputation you deserve.

    28. JA

      How do people decide that?

    29. LM

      Let's get to that, 'cause you, you, you wanna try to engineer it.

    30. JA

      Yep.

  6. 17:29 – 20:29

    Flow and stock

    1. JA

      There's a whole other lens that you've spoken about that, you know, is, like, if what we just described is sort of like the flow of the up and down-

    2. LM

      Mm-hmm

    3. JA

      ... there's a- another lens you've talked about with, like, circles in storytelling-

    4. LM

      Yeah

    5. JA

      ... and that that's more like the stock of where you're at.

    6. LM

      Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    7. JA

      Can you talk about that?

    8. LM

      Yeah, yeah, I think about flow and stock. So like, um, flow is more like a trajectory of where are you going and, and drawing out the long arc for people and telling them what to expect, and stock is more like, at this moment in time, what do you say? Okay, a bad recipe for this is what sounds good, what's gonna get the most engagement? Um, good recipe for this is, based on what I'm trying to achieve-... what is the circle of things that are true? And then what is the circle of things that are relevant and interesting? And then what are the circle of things that are strategic or helpful to the business? So let's say, um, that we're starting a- what company should we start?

    9. JA

      An AI personal tutor.

    10. LM

      Okay, we're starting an AI personal tutor, and, uh, the circle of things that are true about us are that we have, um, we have discovered that one-on-one tutoring, uh, immediately puts you in the ninety-ninth percentile of student results, and that it's worked throughout history. There are military studies that confirm this, and that people want this for their children because, uh, there's so much controversy about schools being a mess. Um, and there, there's facts about Jack is a repeat founder, who you would be the CEO. [chuckles] I would be the chief of staff.

    11. JA

      Mm-hmm.

    12. LM

      And so, like, Jack is a repeat founder and, uh, has scaled and grown companies and, and has seen these before and, and has children of his own. He's a father. Then, the circle of things that are relevant to today are: everybody's excited about AI, looking for real use cases and, and solid business models, um, that the education system is in high controversy and tumult, and that this next cohort of kids who are now in K through twelve are gonna graduate into a world where AGI has made it very unpredictable how they're gonna make a living.

    13. JA

      Mm-hmm.

    14. LM

      And then the circle of things that are helpful to the business are, like, easy to use, we partner well with schools, we can layer on top of traditional schooling. You don't have to go full homeschooling in order to use us. In order for us to decide, like, uh, you're going on, uh, a podcast today, and how are you gonna describe the business? We would wanna look at the overlap between all three of these circles.

    15. JA

      Yeah.

    16. LM

      So there are things that might be true and relevant, um, but not helpful.

    17. JA

      Yeah.

    18. LM

      So maybe it is true that-

    19. JA

      Yeah

    20. LM

      ... you- what's your, what's one of your hobbies on here?

    21. JA

      Music.

    22. LM

      Yeah.

    23. JA

      I like music.

    24. LM

      Like, you're really into music, and, um, it is relevant because there's some study that music helps with neuroplasticity in, in young children and helps to form a stronger brain, but we're not ready to offer that product yet, and if we advertise it, it, it doesn't actually help us right now. So, like, that's not useful. And well, you could go through all of these examples. There are companies today that have left out the third circle of, is it useful and strategic?

  7. 20:29 – 23:25

    All press is good press

    1. JA

      There's this question of, like: Is all press good press?

    2. LM

      Mm-hmm.

    3. JA

      And, like, we could say something right now... If I said, "Say something to just try to make this next sixty-second clip-

    4. LM

      Mm-hmm

    5. JA

      ... do the rounds," don't worry about any other variable-

    6. LM

      Mm-hmm

    7. JA

      ... just do the rounds with the next sixty seconds. You could say something nuts-

    8. LM

      Mm-hmm

    9. JA

      ... and make sure that this clip went viral.

    10. LM

      Yeah.

    11. JA

      But that doesn't necessarily help, and I'm curious, actually, your take on this, specifically, of this, like, all press is good press-

    12. LM

      Mm-hmm

    13. JA

      ... thing because this is, like, you know, taking the circles analogy, this is basically saying, "If I'm just gonna go nuts on relevance-

    14. LM

      That's right

    15. JA

      ... I'm gonna drop the other stuff."

    16. LM

      Mm-hmm.

    17. JA

      There are a lot of people who think that's good.

    18. LM

      Yeah.

    19. JA

      I, I think based on your framework, you're actually kind of implying it's not.

    20. LM

      You could potentially super handicap yourself in the future. So imagine that you're saying something that is true about you, and it is relevant, but it is not useful to say. So, um, there's a lot of controversy about, is it useful for Clueded, Cluele to say, "Cheat on everything," and then they're explaining-

    21. JA

      Yeah

    22. LM

      ... well, cheating isn't technically cheating when we-

    23. JA

      Exactly.

    24. LM

      It's a very valid question to ask: Is that useful for the business? Because now you have distribution, and, and let's say you reach millions of people, and you've told those millions of people that your ethos is cheating, and you're building products really quickly.

    25. JA

      Yeah.

    26. LM

      And so now your question is gonna be, "Is that useful for the business we're trying to build?" Well, if the business is, um, figuring out a way to make a sizzly video, no matter what-

    27. JA

      Mm-hmm

    28. LM

      ... then it would be. If the business is, "Let us record your screen and trust us with your data"-

    29. JA

      Yeah

    30. LM

      ... then it might not necessarily be. So it's worth looking at all three of those.

  8. 23:25 – 28:10

    Leaning into authenticity

    1. LM

      wasn't true before.

    2. JA

      Here's an interesting question: Do you feel like who people are from a comms perspective is what it is, and you're basically just trying to expose the truth more, or are you more of the view that we can actually position somebody? Like, when you work with somebody-

    3. LM

      Mm-hmm

    4. JA

      ... are you, like, in your head, are you like, "You're actually this way, but we're gonna make you seem this way a little bit more?" Or are you like, "We're gonna expose true attributes about you, but we can only work within the confines of what's true about you?"

    5. LM

      I think more the latter. I think, uh, there are different archetypes of people, but, um, you gotta lean into the thing that you are. And it's like Charlie Munger said, "You can always invert." Like, everything has two sides.

    6. JA

      Hmm.

    7. LM

      And so if someone is more remote and more cold, um, and they're not, like, the warm and fuzzy type with people, to try to position them as that because you think people want a manager that has empathy is just hard. It's, it, it's gonna come across uncanny valley, where it's like-

    8. JA

      Yeah

    9. LM

      ... "I see what you're saying, but I don't feel it." Um, whereas, if you actually lean into, "This is a technical genius who is in the lab cooking up something amazing, and you can be part of this team," you'll attract people who want that, and that's actually the right thing long term. What you don't wanna do is bait and switch someone into joining the company, for example, because they think that they're working for this type of guy-

    10. JA

      Yeah

    11. LM

      ... and then that guy just doesn't actually show up to work.

    12. JA

      Yeah.

    13. LM

      He was only on the podcast.

    14. JA

      Yeah, you basically have to lean into authenticity, but you can choose which parts of somebody's overall shape to emphasize.

    15. LM

      Yeah. Most people don't-... know you as a founder personally, and they don't get to shape- so, so there's like a, there's like the, the, the true, authentic, platonic ideal of Jack, and that includes all the things that are true about you, properly weighted.

    16. JA

      Mm-hmm.

    17. LM

      You as a full person, and that's, you know-

    18. JA

      That's like what, like my-

    19. LM

      -between-

    20. JA

      ... hopefully, what, like, my wife would know or something.

    21. LM

      This is, like, between you and your wife and God.

    22. JA

      Yeah.

    23. LM

      Like, that-

    24. JA

      Mm-hmm

    25. LM

      ... exists.

    26. JA

      That complete picture.

    27. LM

      Yeah.

    28. JA

      Yeah.

    29. LM

      And then there's the people who know you personally, and for the sake of simplicity, let's include people who are very close to you, as well as people who are just, like, friends, and these are people who actually directly know you and, and form some opinion that's like a resembling Jack-ish homunculus-

    30. JA

      Yeah, mm-hmm

  9. 28:10 – 35:09

    Word choice

    1. LM

      fulfilled.

    2. JA

      Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about, um, maybe some of the, like, nuances around, like, choices of words and things like that? 'Cause I think, like, so many to that point- you know, like, "Think different," or, like, so many of the-

    3. LM

      Mm-hmm

    4. JA

      ... so many of these messages that get repeated are actually quite short.

    5. LM

      Yeah.

    6. JA

      Like, you don't get a lot of words. You don't get a lot of attention. Like, people-

    7. LM

      Yeah

    8. JA

      ... can read a tweet at most. They can read, like, half a tweet better.

    9. LM

      Yeah.

    10. JA

      The choice of words that sound very close but aren't very close, it, like, matters a lot, and people kinda, like, speak off the cuff, obviously-

    11. LM

      Yeah

    12. JA

      ... not you, but, like-

    13. LM

      Yeah.

    14. JA

      Yeah.

    15. LM

      English is one of the largest languages in the world because we've absorbed so many words from other languages. I heard someone make the joke, uh, they were dunking on France, and they were like: "Well, there's no word for entrepreneur in French." [chuckles]

    16. JA

      [chuckles] That's good. Yeah.

    17. LM

      You know? [chuckles]

    18. JA

      I like that.

    19. LM

      Like, so many of our word- double entendre.

    20. JA

      Yeah.

    21. LM

      Like, so many of our words come from other places that we've just absorbed-

    22. JA

      Yeah

    23. LM

      ... and then we've made a bunch up on our own. And so there's a vast array to choose from, and the words that you choose, actually, not to put pressure on people, but the each word that you chooses should be load-bearing. In practice, you can't do this with everything-

    24. JA

      Exactly

    25. LM

      ... all the time.

    26. JA

      Yeah.

    27. LM

      Like, when, whenever this comes out, assuming we don't say anything catastrophic in the rest of this interview, it comes out-

    28. JA

      Yeah

    29. LM

      ... I'm gonna watch it and listen to, like, eighty percent of my words and be like, "Oh, gosh, why?"

    30. JA

      Yeah, yeah.

  10. 35:09 – 42:48

    Impact on recruiting

    1. JA

      To tie all of this back to, like, what the impact is, um, and maybe going back to the opening of the conversation of, like, why people started to care so much, my sense is that one of the reasons that this comms, you know, focus has happened is-

    2. LM

      Mm-hmm

    3. JA

      ... because recruiting has gotten so hard, and people have realized that it's deeply connected with recruiting. And it seems to me, like, for a bunch of reasons, it's, like, harder than ever to hire great people, and the, uh, the gains that accrue to the companies that can are very high. So the stakes on recruiting are high. How does this actually manifest for companies?

    4. LM

      Mm-hmm.

    5. JA

      Like, what, how does the aura translate or not into the recruiting?

    6. LM

      This is where we get to talk about Napoleon.

    7. JA

      Ah, I need that.

    8. LM

      It was-

    9. JA

      Here we go.

    10. LM

      It was waiting to happen, and here- [chuckles] ... is the moment. One of the best recruiters of all time and one of the best builders of morale of all time, and there's a few things that go into this. So first of all, uh, we don't even need to spend a lot of time on why recruiting is so important. I think every founder gets it, and if you're not recruiting the best people, you're mortgaging your future. Like, you're just not gonna exist 'cause you, you can't build the best product. Um, okay, what made someone like Napoleon such a great recruiter is he gave his men a cause bigger than what it seemed like. It, it, it was a grander mission. It wasn't just, "Take this bridge," or it wasn't just, "Fight this one battle." Um, at the Battle of the Pyramids, which by the way, he rebranded to the Battle of the Pyramids because it sounds cooler to have said, "I fought at the Battle of the Pyramids."

    11. JA

      It sounds incredible.

    12. LM

      Yeah. And so he rebranded the battle, and then he said something like-- the, the men were gathered there for battle, and he said, "From the top of these pyramids, forty thousand years of history are looking down on you and what you're about to achieve." Some version of this. Like, you, you... I mean, you're just gonna perform better, and you're gonna w- wanna be part of that army. That army has the mandate of heaven.

    13. JA

      Mm.

    14. LM

      He would be branding his army all the time. So, for example-... Um, when they were trying to take Britain, or they wanted to, I think it, it would've been called the Army of Britain probably. 'Cause when they took Italy, it became the, uh, the Army of Italy. But they were clearly not gonna take Britain, so you don't wanna be the guy who was in the Army of Britain, and Britain's clearly not part of France now. [chuckles] It's, like, embarrassing. So that, that's when he started rebranding it into La Grande Armée, like the Grand Army-

    15. JA

      Mm.

    16. LM

      -which is so much cooler than Army of Place We Didn't Conquer.

    17. JA

      Yeah.

    18. LM

      And then there was a, a group of guys who were sent to hold a bridge, and the bridge was within firing range of the Austrians, and so that group of guys had a 100% casualty rate.

    19. JA

      Wow!

    20. LM

      It was like, "You are guaranteed to get shot if you go here." So he sends the guys, 100% of them get shot. He needs new volunteers, and he fills it with volunteers, and the way he did that was that he branded the group of guys. He called them Les hommes sans peur, which means the men without fear. And so, you know, which one's more attractive? Like, um, the guys who get shot? [laughing]

    21. JA

      Yeah.

    22. LM

      Do you wanna join the guys who get shot, or do you wanna join the men without fear? And part of it is you gotta go-

    23. JA

      Yeah

    24. LM

      ... You gotta go guard that bridge. Giving them, uh, this, this magnitude of what they're fighting for, and then giving them this kind of branding that would make it seem like even if they were shot for the cause, it would've been something worth it, and they would've been proud to be part of it, was a big part. He, um, also made himself part of the army as a soldier. You know, the little corporal is, is part of this-- I think, um, he started being called the little corporal because he was aiming the cannons himself, which is grunt work.

    25. JA

      Mm.

    26. LM

      And so to, to be there as a short, not five three-

    27. JA

      Yeah

    28. LM

      ... but, like, pretty short-

    29. JA

      Yeah

    30. LM

      -guy aiming the cannons, um, they called him the little corporal, and it was actually, like, a really affectionate nickname of, "He's in the trenches." He's-- It's like SSI. Ilya's in the lab.

  11. 42:48 – 45:48

    The business of comms

    1. JA

      Maybe to wrap up, I'm curious about, like, the way that you choose to sort of, like, practice your business-

    2. LM

      Mm-hmm

    3. JA

      ... at a high level. You can either be, like, internal and focused on only one place, or you can do what you do, which is where you work with, like, a wide breadth, and then I guess you're learning things from one experience, bringing it to another.

    4. LM

      Mm-hmm.

    5. JA

      Maybe you know a little bit less about any particular entity, but, like, you've got these other advantages in that way.

    6. LM

      Mm-hmm.

    7. JA

      I'm curious how you reflect on what's the difference, what's the collaboration maybe between you and internal comms when you're looking at these things. Like, how does it all play together?

    8. LM

      The way I learned to do comms was being just deep in one thing. So I, I co-founded a comms company, but, like, my main work there was Anduril. People sometimes will say, like...... I helped Anduril with comms, but actually Anduril helped me with comms. Like, working with Palmer and Trey and Brian and Matt and those guys, it's like necessity is the mother of invention. Like, they forced us to do things unconventionally, and so that's how I learned. And then through Substack, which is still, like, very near and dear to my heart, it was like live and breathe Substack all day long. I still work with Substack-

    9. JA

      Mm.

    10. LM

      -but, like, just live and breathe Substack twenty-five hours a day, and then same with Activision Blizzard. So I've gone very, very deep, and the thing that's super rewarding about this is that you get to fully own, um, something, and, and if you mess up, it's on you, right?

    11. JA

      Yeah.

    12. LM

      And, and if, and if it's great, then you learn from it, you can build on it. I'm trying to form a general theory of comms, and I'm, I'm still learning in the process.

    13. JA

      Yeah.

    14. LM

      But I don't wanna confine that to just one place because I actually wanna change how comms is done across the industry.

    15. JA

      It also seems like you probably couldn't even get to the general theory of comms if you only worked with one place.

    16. LM

      That might... Yeah, it might be-- Yeah, that's probably true.

    17. JA

      You probably need to see all of these different examples-

    18. LM

      Yeah

    19. JA

      ... to, like, get completeness on it, I would guess.

    20. LM

      Yeah. Like, I'm still in learning mode. Like, I'm still in kinda data-gathering iteration mode in, um, in my own head, and so, um, for, for inputs, I wanna see more broadly what is going on across, um, different pockets of the industry. And then externally, I really want the entire industry, all of us together, to get amazing at this because, well, what happens in the aggregate, right? Like, if, if each company gets better at making their case and gets more powerful-

    21. JA

      Yeah

    22. LM

      ... and hires and grows faster, then all of tech grows faster, and that's better for America and the world.

    23. JA

      Absolutely.

    24. LM

      It's hard to do that from within one company, but I still try to concentrate as much as possible. So instead of taking, like, thirty clients, uh, you know, I take less than half of that.

    25. JA

      Yeah.

    26. LM

      Instead of growing the firm to be eighty people with a roster of hundreds of clients, it's me and my apprentice, Gabby, and we have probably, yeah, fewer than half of the clients that we could have, even with just the two of us. And then out of those, there is a power law where there's, like, specific ones where we, like, really go deeper. So yes, number one, I, I, um-- Sorry, not to make this about me. I did the meme of, like-

    27. JA

      That's what you're here for

    28. LM

      ... we made it about me. Okay. I do wanna do the general relativity, like, theory for comms, like, general theory for comms, and that applies to the industry more broadly. Sometimes I see companies that I had nothing to do with, who will-- uh, the founders will write me, like, "I read your blog post and did this launch. What do you think?" That is magnificent to me. Do I, did I get dollars from it? No, I get deep satisfaction from seeing that people are using these practices, but within that, we do try to concentrate as

  12. 45:48 – 48:18

    Comms predictions

    1. LM

      much as we can.

    2. JA

      Let's imagine it's ten years from now, and you've learned a bunch, and things have gone great, and you're much smarter about comms than you are now. Looking back, what would you say is the thing that you're most likely to be super right about with comms, and what do you think is the thing that you currently are least confident in your own, you know, variable in the general relativity?

    3. LM

      The thing that I have extremely high confidence in is that comms is the final bastion of human ability.

    4. JA

      Hmm.

    5. LM

      Where ten years from now, fifty years from now, the ability to persuade and win over and make other people fall in love for other humans will still be uniquely human. And, and we have to get really, really good at that because AI can't. Um, so it's like, if not us, who? So, so I, I have very high conviction that this is the ultimate skill that everybody should practice. And I also have very high conviction that there's, like, this, um, immutable desire for narrative completion, uh, within humans. The thing that I have least confidence in is the form factor.

    6. JA

      Mm.

    7. LM

      Is it videos? Is it podcasts? What about the role of the media? Is that shifting? I do not recommend that people anchor to a specific form factor and be like, "We're the company that does great videos," or, "We're the company that tweets a lot." Uh, I think that people should be constantly experimenting. You need to be ready to outrun your good i-- your own ideas. I've had to outrun my own ideas. Like, if, if we do a launch together with a founder and it goes really well, people will dissect that and then copy it. You know, after the Cognition launch, I, I saw people who just copied Scott's thread, like, almost word for word, um, i- in the exact same format, and if everybody were to start doing that... Or, like, those hype sizzle reels, like the, the, um, techno-accelerationist montages-

    8. JA

      Yeah

    9. LM

      ... and now a lot of people are copying, like, the Cluley launch video. And once it reaches saturation, it's actually cringe to keep doing it, so you have to find, "Oh, great, it worked. Hooray! That means I need to find the next thing, because if I pushed the frontier here and it worked, everybody's racing towards me. If I don't get the heck out of here-

    10. JA

      Yeah

    11. LM

      ... and find some new frontier, now I've lost my alpha, and we're, like, in the exact same place."

    12. JA

      Yeah.

    13. LM

      So I would say the takeaways from here are: you need to find your narrative alpha. Um, you need to find the way that narrative makes your company even more valuable than the fundamentals would make it be. That's the job of the founder. That alpha can be positive or negative. People- that alpha is determined by the homeostatic set point that people think your company deserves and where you are now relative to that, and that this is the skill that every human should try to master as much as they can.

  13. 48:18 – 50:18

    Tech & media relationship

    1. JA

      I love it. I was gonna end there, but I have one more thing I gotta ask. You mentioned the media, and you obviously, you know, are big about going direct and how important that is. But if you had to guess, where is this dynamic gonna go with tech in the media and that relationship? 'Cause it used to be that all the announcements happened there. Now there's this-

    2. LM

      Uh-huh

    3. JA

      ... hybrid mix. There's a sort of love-hate relationship.

    4. LM

      Uh-huh.

    5. JA

      Where, where will this, where will this trend line go?

    6. LM

      I think we're, um, going back, uh, towards the media actually being more relevant.

    7. JA

      Hmm.

    8. LM

      And this is why I say not to be dogmatic. Even i- i- in my very depths of distrusting the media and being black-pilled about the media, even then, I had reporters that I knew and trusted, and it was mutual, and we could work together, and I would try to be helpful. And, and today-- like, last night, I was hanging out with a bunch of tech journalists, and, um, and they were saying that they appreciate my outlook, and I appreciate theirs. And, um, going direct does not mean that you have to boycott the media. It means that you can't, uh, be dependent on others. You need to create self-sufficiency, and then you can choose to collaborate with the media, but it's not that, "Oh, nobody wants to cover this story, so I'm just up the creek."

    9. JA

      Yeah.

    10. LM

      So where is this going? I think actually that media is becoming more relevant. There was sort of like a nadir in tech media relations, where it was, like, very combative, and now the relationship is better. The coverage is better. There's sort of also some fresh blood in tech journalism that is very curious and forward-leaning.

    11. JA

      That's definitely true.

    12. LM

      And now that people are getting more of their information from, say, ChatGPT or Claude or whatever, um, media can be very helpful for that, you know?

    13. JA

      Yeah.

    14. LM

      Claude is not necessarily going to tell you, "Well, three people tweeted about you favorably today, and some, like, anime profile picture-

    15. JA

      Yeah

    16. LM

      ... said this thing about you." But i- if there's, like, one article i- in an outlet, it can kinda solidify that for you online. We were overly reliant on the media, and then it became very combative, and, and I think we're reaching a new equi- equilibrium of collaboration.

    17. JA

      Going to a happy place sounds good to me.

    18. LM

      Yeah.

    19. JA

      That'd be great. Lulu, this was amazing. Thank you so much for your time doing this. I really enjoyed it.

    20. LM

      Thank you. [upbeat music]

Episode duration: 50:18

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