Learn Marketing in 80 Minutes — Lulu Cheng Meservey | Edited Transcript
A copyedited transcript of David Perell's conversation with Lulu Cheng Meservey.
This is a professionally copyedited transcript of Learn Marketing in 80 Minutes — Lulu Cheng Meservey. It has been edited for readability and lightly formatted while preserving the substance of the discussion.
Made with: The Transcript Desk Chrome Extension
Full video:
The old communications playbook is dead: Political and company narratives used to be controlled by publicists and journalists. But now, founders can Go Direct. The question is… how? How do you spread a message in this new world? Lulu Cheng Meservey has worked with companies like Substack, Anduril, and Activision Blizzard, and this is her tell-all about how to build your own platform, build your own audience, and shape your own narrative.
Reader Map
Use these maps as orientation, not instruction. The atlas shows the conversation as a route through intellectual terrain; the field map shows the tensions underneath the advice. The timestamp legend marks likely places to dive, skim, or save for later depending on what you came for
.Episode Guide
00:00:00 Intro
00:00:32 Go direct
00:05:01 Beware of “perfect” writing
00:10:06 Ship-to-Yap ratio
00:15:20 Shaping a comms strategy
00:17:51 How to craft your message
00:22:57 Should you write with AI?
00:27:01 You don’t need new ideas
00:32:13 Say what no one else will
00:35:20 The writing AI can’t do
00:41:23 The power of the right messenger
00:47:31 Borrowing tactics from elections
00:55:12 Apple vs. crypto cults
01:02:38 How to launch your product
01:07:06 Stop making narcissistic announcements
01:09:55 What slogans work?
01:14:29 How to write an apology
Transcript
00:00-00:05
Lulu Cheng Meservey: The old communications playbook is dead. Political and company narratives used to be tightly controlled by publicists and journalists. But now, things are different.
00:05-00:20
Lulu Cheng Meservey: Founders and politicians can go direct. So the question becomes: how do you spread a message in today’s world? I’ve worked with companies like Substack, Anduril, and Activision Blizzard, and I’m here to share how to build your own audience, create your own content, and shape your own narrative. Let’s dive in.
00:20-00:50
Lulu Cheng Meservey: I want to treat this conversation like a big onboarding session, bringing together everything you need to know about PR and communications in one place. And the key idea to start with: go direct. What does that mean, and why is it so important? First, let me clarify what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean you have to do everything yourself forever. Just like being a technical founder doesn’t mean you code every single line forever, going direct isn’t about handling every communication personally all the time.
00:50-01:20
Lulu Cheng Meservey: It also doesn’t mean alienating or boycotting the press, or refusing to speak to media while only broadcasting on Twitter. The essence of going direct is that the founder—or originator of the project—speaks directly to their audience without middlemen, without corporate PR filters. It’s about showing your real personality and motivations. You can still work with the press and have help, but if you’re completely absent from direct communication, people won’t know who you are, won’t trust you, and won’t be excited to join your company. Everything about your organization will feel flat.
01:20-01:55
Interviewer: So going direct doesn’t just mean tweeting or posting on social media, right? It’s got to mean something deeper than that.
01:55-02:40
Lulu Cheng Meservey: Exactly. Sure, posting on Twitter or social media can be part of it. But if you’re releasing a blog post, it has to clearly reflect your input and ideas. It can’t just be a generic statement that anyone could have put out, or something that looks like it was spit out by ChatGPT and pushed live without a personal voice. Going direct with events could mean hosting them yourself—some founders even host dinners at their homes. When dealing with government or regulators, it’s not just about handing off to lobbyists—you need to personally build and own those relationships. You want a direct line with people, maybe texting back and forth, rather than hoping a lobbyist will always get your message right.
02:40-03:15
Lulu Cheng Meservey: No matter what you’re doing—representing your company to the outside or talking to your own employees—some of it must come from you, in your own words and voice. The founder is the only person who can authentically talk about the company vision in the first person.
03:15-03:40
Interviewer: But wasn’t that always true? What changed to make ‘going direct’ so critical now?
03:40-04:09
Lulu Cheng Meservey: What changed is decentralization. We no longer have a handful of gatekeepers controlling opinions and information—those six TV channels, or a dozen news outlets. Now, a random anonymous account from some corner of the internet can create a meme that spreads faster and wider than CNN ever could. Because sources of opinion and perception are so decentralized, you can’t just rely on centralized media to get your message across. You have to directly communicate with your audience if you want to be heard.
04:09-04:36
Lulu Cheng Meservey: There’s also an energy to direct communication—a sort of vibration and heart behind it—that corporate-speak usually lacks. Corporate language is often watered down, overly polished, and careful to the point where it loses its soul. I’d rather see writing that’s imperfect but authentic, with personality and conviction, than something textbook-perfect but lifeless.
04:36-05:10
Lulu Cheng Meservey: You know Orwell’s rule about writing—it’s better to break all the rules than to do something barbaric. It’s also better to break the rules than to release something boring, stale, and stiff because that kind of writing just won’t cut through. If the writing’s bad but honest, that’s far more effective.
05:10-06:10
Lulu Cheng Meservey: It’s funny—I was a broadcasting major in college, and I was trained to be perfect on camera. But over time, I’ve had to unlearn many of those lessons because now, people don’t want perfection. They want to sense that the person they’re hearing from is the real deal—that who they are on camera aligns completely with who they are with their friends at the bar. Today, that gap is basically zero. That’s a fundamental shift brought on by the internet, and it applies not only to speaking but to writing as well.
06:10-07:20
Lulu Cheng Meservey: Think about it like this: when Michelle or Barack Obama give speeches, they don’t just wing it—they rehearse extensively and use teleprompters. But those little “ums” and vocal ticks that most try to remove actually make the speech feel authentic and off-the-cuff. Similarly, most TikToks are filmed in the car or while getting ready—a seemingly mundane moment that suddenly feels like an unguarded glimpse into someone’s life. Even when videos are edited polished, people sometimes leave in the shot of pressing the record button or catching those spontaneous moments because they add a layer of authenticity viewers crave.
07:20-08:20
Lulu Cheng Meservey: So people are literally engineering moments of spontaneity because they know how powerful it is to make viewers feel connected. You see Congress members now making TikTok-style videos trying to appeal to younger voters, often awkwardly mimicking younger creators. Even big names like Elon Musk are constantly going direct, despite the occasional misstep or foot-in-mouth moment. And honestly, when you weigh the scale of his platform and influence against those small flubs, it’s a deal any founder would take.
08:20-09:40
Interviewer: When you advise founders to go direct, how do you help them manage their time and involvement? Because being vocal, visible, and clearly engaged seems like a huge commitment.
09:48-10:48
Lulu Cheng Meservey: When I see founders who are openly vocal and genuinely putting their heart and soul into their company’s mission, that’s a huge signal for me. I mean, there’s no stronger sign of commitment than a founder who spends all day actively engaged on Twitter. But that brings up an interesting balance—how do you weigh that passion with actually delivering results?
There’s this idea of the “ship to yap” ratio. You have to look at how much someone is talking versus how much they’re shipping or producing. Take Elon, for example—he tweets like a hundred times an hour, but no one doubts that his companies are shipping product and seeing massive growth. Similarly, Palmer tweets a lot but you also see Andre just shipping, shipping, shipping.
Then there are founders who just put out words—blogs, tweets—but no tangible product seems to come out of it. That’s when you start seeing memes like, “Where’s the product?” Meanwhile, the founder is just tweeting away. If your ship-to-yap ratio is off, that’s a big red flag.
I love the term, “ship to yap ratio.” So what should we take away from Palmer?
I’m reminded of “The Three-Body Problem,” especially the second book, *The Dark Forest*. The Trisolarans observe humans to gauge deterrence levels. One character has very high deterrence because he’s borderline crazy—whatever threat he makes, he will follow through on. If he says he’ll push a button that means annihilation, it’s almost 90% likely he’ll do it. Another character has much lower deterrence.
Palmer has one of the highest deterrence scores of any human. There are many people who come after him, but when he decides to get something done or hold a grudge, he pursues it relentlessly to the ends of the earth. Whether it’s a goal or revenge, he’s locked in. It’s like the movie *Old Boy*, where a wronged childhood ends in decades-long revenge planning. Palmer is much the same; he doesn’t give up.
For founders, there’s huge value in people knowing that when you say something, you’ll actually make it happen—whether they agree or not.
Another thing I’ve learned from Andre is being very clear not only about who you want to work with but also who you don’t. There’s a certain power in saying, “Look, if you’re not part of our mission, get out of here.” It’s this unapologetic “FU” attitude. This conviction and clarity is something I see a lot with Palmer and with Substack when I was there.
And it’s not just talk. For example, Jeff Miller, who ran a campaign at Substack, took this concept to the next level. So many startups would crank out a video in a few days, drop it, get a bit of press, and the moment dies. But these folks spent months refining not only the video but a whole website, a recruiting campaign, and a complete pipeline.
They thought deeply about what happens after someone sees the content—how do they funnel that attention into recruits and hires? Because a lot of people don’t get that attention alone is worthless unless you turn it into something real. Attention feels good temporarily, but it fades unless you convert it into money, sales, hires, or investor interest.
So there was a clear strategic focus: turn viral attention into recruiting inbound. And that’s exactly what happened.
10:48-15:20
David Perell (Interviewer): It sounds like one of the ways the internet’s shifting is there are more one-off viral moments that feel big but are temporary. Your biggest pieces of content might be huge, but the consistent rhythm—the usual weekly newsletter cadence—doesn’t matter as much anymore. It used to be about showing up consistently, week after week.
But now, it feels like you can go quiet for a stretch and then come back with a bang. What I’m hearing from you is—yes, you can create a big viral moment, but you need a strong strategy to harvest that attention and funnel it somewhere that actually benefits you. It’s like converting potential energy into kinetic energy.
If you don’t, it’s just an ego trip—chasing dopamine hits from fleeting internet fame, which quickly fades and leaves you needing the next hit. But what can you actually turn that attention into that has substance?
Lulu Cheng Meservey: Exactly. Let’s get practical: talk about the medium, the message, and the messenger. I recently learned something from Doresh’s series with Sarah Payne, the historian, about Mao’s propaganda strategy. It blew my mind because Mao’s method was basically all about the message, the medium, and the messenger. The same three pillars apply to building a communication strategy today.
So the first question when you’re defining your comms strategy is—what do you actually want to achieve for your business? What does success look like that’s more than just ego points or a nice story to show your mom?
Because otherwise, it’s just a sugar high for the founder chasing dopamine while everyone else is left to build real enterprise value. So you have to ask—are you trying to recruit the best hires? For most companies, that should be top priority because the war for talent is what ultimately determines your success. Or maybe you’re gearing up for fundraising, or convincing regulators, or closing enterprise sales—whatever the goal, figure it out first.
Once you do, you think about what’s in your direct control versus what’s out of it. For example, if your goal is recruiting, you can control salary and work environment, but you can’t control if people even know you exist or want to work for you. For them to say “yes” to your job offer, especially if there’s a better-paying alternative, they need certain beliefs and information.
Your entire communication strategy is about shaping those beliefs—making the right people believe the things that will convince them to do what you want.
This is why it’s not surprising propaganda and comms strategy are so similar—they’re both about making people believe specific things.
And that brings us to the message, the medium, and the messenger.
The message is the highest-leverage part to get right. Too many founders waste time chasing downstream details—getting on podcasts, press hits, formatting tweets, making videos—without making sure the message itself is solid. If the message isn’t right, all that effort is wasted.
It’s like planning to sell encyclopedias, but the encyclopedias are bad or no one wants them. It’s about finding product-market fit with your messaging because the message *is* the product. You have to have a good product.
One thing I notice about founders like Peter Thiel and others is that they spend a lot of time hosting dinners, iterating their messaging, paying close attention to what other people say. It’s like how comedians develop jokes—they talk, get feedback, refine things.
I’m amazed at how often even the best founders have dialed in their message after years of iteration. Sometimes I can finish about 80% of the sentences of a founder I know well because of how practiced they are.
The message gets dialed in at the level of specific words. Once you find the right words, you’re off to the races. And the message doesn’t need to be totally novel or ground-breaking to work.
19:23-20:22
Lulu Cheng Meservey: The message doesn’t have to be something totally new or groundbreaking. It just needs to express what people have been feeling and couldn’t quite put into words. That feeling has been building inside them, and when you give them the right words, they grab onto them because those words are a release for what they’ve been holding onto. Take “founder mode,” for example. It went viral because it gave founders a name for a common experience and gave them permission to feel it. It validated the struggles they have and said, “Hey, there’s nothing wrong with you.”
The idea behind “founder mode” is that the things founders do, which people might call annoying or weird, are actually just part of managing, not micromanaging. Giving it a name gave founders a sense of catharsis—it legitimated their experience and gave them a way to talk about it. So the message doesn’t need to be unfamiliar; in fact, it should feel familiar. You’re just putting a shape and a name on something people already know at least a little.
Look at the phrase “go direct.” It captures the new media landscape where founders are bypassing old PR channels. Brian Armstrong deserves credit for that term—people used it before, but he helped popularize it by shaping it clearly. When I was working on Rostra, I considered inventing a new term but Brian’s advice was just to reshape existing terms and apply your own ideas to them rather than trying to coin something fresh.
20:22-21:05
Give the message First, then choose the Medium, then Messengers. The medium is how your message actually gets to the people you want to reach. I often talk about “intellectual erogenous zones” or “cultural erogenous zones”—these are hot-button issues or topics people are already thinking about and obsessed with. Instead of trying to get them interested in something totally new, tap into what’s already on their minds and shape your message so it resonates with their existing interests.
For example, if you’re a founder hiring talent, you want to reach people in places they already gather ideas or pay attention.
21:05-22:06
Let’s imagine you want to start a show about writing and AI—that’s already a hot topic many people are thinking about. Instead of pushing a new idea, you’re tapping into a current obsession. You’re doing the right thing by meeting people where they already are mentally.
22:06-22:57
If people want to know, “Should I use AI for writing? What’s it good for?”—this is their cultural erogenous zone. That’s the conversation already happening. You want to build on that. You want to say, “We just witnessed the fastest shift in written communication in history. You might be scared, but let’s talk about how to use AI for writing because it’s one of the most important skills in any context.” That’s your hook and your entry point.
22:57-25:10
The message has to attach to what people are already thinking about, and it has to show up where they get their information. For example, a lot of tech founders want to recruit machine-learning engineers. Instead of going for huge audiences like the New York Times or Joe Rogan’s podcast, the right move might be to appear on more niche channels like Doresh’s podcast or posts by Scott Alexander or Tyler Cowen, or even Hacker News. These smaller but more targeted audiences are where the right people are.
25:10-26:28
So the message itself needs to have a hook that makes people want to hear more, and you have to deliver it in the right place. Think of your message like medicine that people don’t always want to take. You have to wrap it in candy coating—some incentive or hook that makes it interesting enough that people will actually consume the message and then want to learn more. If you just say, “Here’s my thing, wanna listen?” people usually say no.
26:28-27:03
Several years ago, someone who owns a dog told me that to give a dog a pill, you can’t just give it straight—you have to hide it in cheese or peanut butter. It’s the same with people. We don’t always want to hear what’s best for us, but if you wrap it in something enticing—a gateway drug—they might actually stay interested.
27:03-29:13
Interviewer: What’s your approach to sensing these cultural erogenous zones? Do you just read Twitter, have conversations, and try to sense what’s in the zeitgeist that isn’t being named yet? How do you pick up on that?
Lulu Cheng Meservey: A few things. First, I consider who is talking about a topic—not just whether the topic is popular, but who exactly is discussing it. What’s their social status? What intellectual communities do they belong to? People tend to cluster in pockets, and if you saturate one pocket, you might get into their group chat and become part of the conversation there. But that doesn’t mean you’re in another group’s conversation.
Then I look at their vibe: Do they like the topic, are they passionate, or do they hate it? And, importantly, why do they hate it? Is it resentment or jealousy, or disgust? Resentment and jealousy tend to show up loudly and publicly, but cringe and embarrassment usually stay quiet.
Sometimes, you’ll see something that’s actually really cringy but the comments are all supportive. People don’t want to embarrass others, so they won’t speak up. But resentment and hate will come out openly. To read the room effectively, you also have to notice who’s not commenting, or if usual supporters are silent—that’s like reading what’s missing from the conversation.
So, I look at who, what they think, how strongly they feel it, and the trajectory of the conversation. For example, the term “founder mode” went from cool to cringe in—I think—
29:16-32:04
Lulu Cheng Meservey: I saw this trend go from cool to cringe in less than 36 hours. I’ve never seen something blow up and burn so fast and bright—and then just lose its coolness. I don’t mean it faded away; people still talk about it, but now it’s mostly ironic. For example, I was chatting with someone about this “founder mode” phrase. There was a spy sent inside Rippling, got caught, locked himself in the bathroom to evade authorities, and everyone’s like, “Founder mode? Yeah, nobody uses that seriously anymore.” It’s just not a term people say earnestly.
So, what’s the trajectory? How fast does something burn out? Is it a slow, steady burn or more like a fizz and sizzle? When you’re starting a new idea, is it just a big explosion, and then you ride that wave?
A big part of the job is really syncing with the zeitgeist. There are two ways to do that. The first is to watch the zeitgeist closely, read the signs, and try to predict where things are headed—kind of like predicting the stock market. Sometimes you get lucky, but some people are just better at timing it. You form a thesis about where things are going and always want to play towards the future, not where things are now. So, you imagine where we are now is here, and where things are headed is over there. If you say something along that path, you’ll be early but not so early that you’re irrelevant.
That means taking your time, preparing, and fully committing. People think it but don’t say it outright: you’re going to own that space before everyone else catches up. That’s one way—high conviction, doubling down, and claiming a piece of intellectual territory.
The other approach is not about timing the market. Instead, it’s about putting out content consistently, like dollar-cost averaging. You put lots of things out, many won’t hit, and that’s fine. You don’t invest heavily in each, but when something does get traction, you tune into it, take feedback, refine it, and keep going.
Steve Jobs didn’t just unveil the iPhone out of nowhere; there were countless iterations. We only remember the final hit. That’s how this approach works—lot of tries, and the successful ones stand out. The ones that don’t succeed are barely noticed anyway, so it’s actually less risky than people think. You might feel like a flop is visible, but honestly, nobody’s really paying attention.
One important question to ask yourself is: what’s the thing everyone in your field is thinking but nobody’s saying? It doesn’t have to be controversial. For instance, the idea of “Go Direct” is just shaping and naming a kind of energy that’s floating around without a home. Debating whether “Go Direct” is real is like shadow boxing or tilting at windmills—it’s already here; it’s just not evenly spread yet.
William Gibson said, “The future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed.” You want to find those pockets of truth that others aren’t seeing yet.
Where I’m betting my career in the next few years is on a huge change coming in communication. I see a lot of writers scared of AI, saying things like, “I don’t want to get near it,” or, “It’s not that good anyway,” based on limited trials with outdated models. But I’m using GPT-4 every day, and the future is here. It’s just not evenly distributed.
That’s why I’m thinking of doing a spin-off called “The Writing on the Wall,” because it captures this idea perfectly.
There’s no point in coping or convincing yourself that AI can’t replace you or that “Go Direct” isn’t real. It’s happening, whether you like it or not. It’s not just a fad—it’s a secular shift in how things are done, and it won’t be reversed.
Now, the next big challenge is figuring out how humans can stand out in a world flooded with AI-generated content. What can AI not do? One big thing is actual emotion. Sure, AI can mimic emotion, but it doesn’t feel it. Real emotion comes through in surprising, sometimes illogical ways. Emotion can make us write things that break grammar rules, are raw, imperfect, and not polished—things that remove some of the “wrongness” take away the point.
I’ve worked on manifestos with founders, and sometimes trying to “polish” the writing makes it worse because it kills the conviction and emotion. Sometimes you have to let that rawness be there because that’s what sharpens the writing and lets it cut through culture. AI can’t have conviction—the stubborn belief that you’re right even when everyone else, including models, say you’re wrong. That conviction is what makes writing powerful.
Imagine running James Joyce or EE Cummings through ChatGPT and asking it to clean up the writing. It would destroy what makes those writers unique. There are things AI cannot emulate yet, and we need to lean into that.
Emotion, empathy, and conviction are all things AI can’t truly replicate.
There’s also an interesting psychological effect: we connect more with a message if we relate to the messenger. Like with kids’ shows—Daniel Tiger and Bluey have great lessons, but a kid might not connect as deeply because they don’t see themselves in the character. If a boy sees another boy his age delivering the lesson, it sticks better.
So, when you read about a human experience clearly coming from a human voice, it resonates deeper and sticks with you more than a beautiful piece of writing from an unknown source.
38:29-39:32
Interviewer (David Perell): What makes writing from experience so powerful?
Lulu Cheng Meservey: It gives you a monopoly over something—it makes you the world’s leading expert on a very specific, small thing. Like Peter Thiel says, “Competition is for losers.” That applies to writing and speaking too. If you say what everyone else is saying, there’s no reason people should pay attention or give you their time. You’re selling a story or message—if lots of people could say the same thing, why buy from you?
But if you find something where you have a true monopoly—maybe your audience is smaller, but 100% of those people have to come to you because you’re the only source—that’s powerful.
Speaking from personal experience is super strong because it’s rare someone else has had exactly the same experience, reacted the same way, or tells the story with the same voice. When you write from personal experience, you create a monopoly.
39:34-41:18
Lulu Cheng Meservey: When you’re sharing something based on unique experience, you’re basically creating a monopoly because no one else can say the exact same thing with the same authority. But if you’re just sharing an opinion—like weighing in on a popular topic—there are probably millions of others with the same take. That kind of content leads to a lot of noise.
There was a study I saw about what gets popular on Hacker News. One of the most common formulas is: “I spent 487 hours learning this, and here’s what I discovered.” People get that if you’ve put in the time, you have knowledge others don’t. That naturally builds credibility.
But, here’s the problem: it’s turned into this content mill, engagement-farming machine that I really hate. Once these formats go viral, people start creating content just to ride the wave of engagement. It feels exploitative—like we’re pods in the Matrix, and someone’s just farming our attention to cash out. That disgusts me on a deep level.
Then, the templates go viral, people write guides on how to copy those templates, and everyone just repeats it. For example, “I spent 100 hours learning this so you don’t have to,” or “7 hacks with ChatGPT.” I can’t even bring myself to say those phrases without cringing—that’s how much this format bothers me.
Usually, the comments will be filled with phrases like “Great thread! I learned so much,” but I think 90% of those commenters are bots. And no one is calling out how lame this all is. So, let’s break this down.
We’ve talked about the message, the medium, now let’s talk about the messenger. The messenger is the person who actually has the authority to say the thing. Words on their own don’t mean much, but when someone speaks from real experience, their authority and credibility give the message weight.
Different messages need different messengers. If your message is about your vision and plans for the company, the founder should say that because they’re the only one who can speak about it authentically in the first person and carry it through.
But if the message is, “This is a great place to work and you’ll have awesome bosses,” having the boss say that can be counterproductive—it doesn’t land the same way. Even the lowest-ranking employee has more moral authority to say, “Yeah, the boss is great,” than the boss themselves.
You ever see those profiles where a CEO is praised by the janitor or security guard talking about how the CEO always takes the time to greet them or ask about their kids? That’s way more believable and impactful than the CEO saying, “I’m the kind of boss who says hello to everyone.” Yeah, right.
If the message is about the size of the market or how much money will be made, it actually makes more sense for investors or third-party commentators to talk about that, because if the founder does it, it can feel a bit distasteful or boastful.
And if it’s about how well the product works, get someone who’s actually used it to say that. Different messages require different messengers to carry the right weight and authority.
The biggest mistake companies make is letting spokespeople whose opinions nobody cares about speak on their behalf—like paid spokespeople or generic PR folks. Their opinions have zero credibility. Journalists especially hate getting PR pitches because they get bombarded by people paid to push agendas, and it comes off as insincere.
So letting someone with no authority speak for you neutralizes your impact. People know those spokespeople are just reading a script; they’re not genuinely excited or passionate.
This shift also reflects how the world has changed. Twenty-five years ago, paid spokespeople and celebrities might have worked, but now no one cares. We know they’re just shilling. Like, Matthew McConaughey is cool, but seeing him in a Lincoln commercial? It doesn’t make me want to buy a Lincoln.
On the other hand, when I see him at UT football games in Austin, cheering loudly because he genuinely loves it, suddenly I’m like, “Okay, that’s authentic. I want to watch ‘Dazed and Confused’ again.”
Same person, two completely different contexts—one feels like a hustle, the other feels genuine.
There’s also a trend of brands creating fake user-generated content by paying people or using avatars to simulate organic fan reactions. The problem is that once people realize it’s fake, the damage is done. You get one shot to fool people; after that, you lose all trust.
Like with Washington insiders—people don’t publish exposes on how things really work because if they do, their career is over; they’ll be blackballed. People aren’t willing to take that shot.
Here’s something less obvious about messengers: the most powerful person isn’t always the best messenger. Sometimes you have to go direct, like the founder leading the mission. Other times, it’s the janitor or the person on the street who’s the best voice.
Think about it: we trust Jane down the street—our neighbor—more than officials when she talks about changes in the neighborhood because she’s just an everyday person. That normality carries weight.
41:18-48:40
Lulu Cheng Meservey: This ties into tactics from election campaigns. If you want people to vote for you, you leverage their neighbors. You get neighbors to take some action that shows they’re voting for you, or you suggest that’s what everyone around them is doing. This social proof nudges people to do the same because they want to belong.
Let’s say we have a big launch tomorrow, and you ask me, “Hey, can you share this for me?” The intuitive thing is to ask people to amplify it directly. But that feels really forced and insincere—people get the “ick” immediately. So how do you change your approach so people want to help?
This is huge because I get asked about amplifying content like ten times a day: “Can you tweet? Can you reply?” You can always tell when someone’s doing it because their energy sounds like an Al-Qaeda hostage video—just joyless, lifeless, a robotic “LFG” (Let’s f***ing go) reply. You just sit there like, “No one wants to do this.”
Think about the act of pressing enter on that request. When you ask for a favor like this, a couple things happen.
First: favors aren’t endless resources. So, you just tapped into a pretty significant favor. Even if it feels small to you, people hate doing these kinds of favors, so you’ve actually used way more relationship capital than you realize.
Second: once you put that request out there, the person has three options:
One, pretend they didn’t see it, feel guilty for ignoring you, and then resent you for making them feel that way.
Two, go ahead and do the favor even though they don’t really want to, which leaves them feeling icky because they did something they didn’t want to do.
And, three, [The transcript cuts off here.]
49:36
Lulu Cheng Meservey: Honestly, I’d rather people just didn’t do it. But sometimes they want to, and you’ve given them the opportunity, so now they’re happily doing it. There are people who genuinely want to help you—they’re excited and they say, “Yes, let’s do it.” That would definitely be me when it comes to writing on the wall. But really, the only time you want this happening is with that third group: people who want to help because it aligns with their interests. For groups one and two, you actually don’t want them to share.
So, how do you frame a request that triggers only that third group? Just work backward from that. Let them know what you’re doing because it matches something they already care about or have been saying—that’s why you chose them. This isn’t a request to share or an obligation. It’s more like, “Hey, I thought this might interest you. If you have feedback, I’m open to it.” Now the information is in front of them. If they want to share and fall into that third category, they’ll do it voluntarily. If they fall into the second, they have a way out—they won’t do it begrudgingly. And if they’re in the first, they can ignore it without feeling bad because it’s not a demand; it’s just an FYI.
50:49
Lulu Cheng Meservey: There are two good communication tests I use. First, can you say what you want to say without immediately asking people for something, like their money? If yes, that means you can say something that’s not purely self-interested. Most companies and founders only speak when there’s direct self-interest involved—that’s when you get a lot of “buy this” or “use that.” But what really interests people is when you provide something novel, helpful, or educational—a fresh statement about the world. If people get interested, if they follow you and want to learn more, they’ll naturally come to your company eventually.
So, it’s like the candy coating on medicine. This candy coating is something interesting to them regardless of your agenda.
51:46
David Perell: What I’m hearing from you are a few key words that keep popping up. One is “be real,” like scratching off the word “fake” with red ink on a big poster, then writing “be real” underneath. The second is “useful” or “pragmatic.” And the third, which surprised me, is what I’d call “leveraged beta.” This ties back to what you said about cultural erogenous zones. Many people think if they want a mission for their company, it has to be totally original, made up from scratch. But you’re saying there are already existing cultural currents—Gulf Stream-like vectors of energy—and it’s about harnessing one of these, coining a term for it, making it concrete, and then shouting that out into the world with more clarity and shape than ever before.
People want to say what they already think. Providing them with the words and concepts helps them express it—but they won’t want to say something they didn’t already want to say. So, if there’s a current flowing one way, and you want to go a slightly different way, don’t swim straight against it or perpendicular. Instead, swim partly with the current in one direction and partly in the direction you want to go.
52:53
Lulu Cheng Meservey: Exactly. Don’t take this as swim advice—I’m not a certified swimming instructor—please consult your advisor for that! But seriously, if the opinion current is flowing one way and you want to go somewhere else, you can’t just force your way through. You need to go along with it at a diagonal.
Take something people already care about, something they’re invested in. Shape it, give it words, and then they’ll use those words to express themselves with real passion and authenticity. That is the opposite of people just repeating your corporate PR lines because you asked them to—it’s what real virality looks like. When you make people say something they didn’t want to say, it kills virality.
You might get one-time success because people comply out of obligation, but that’s depleting your relationship capital. It’s anti-viral, even anti-mimetic. By making them say things they don’t believe in, they’ll never want to say them again—they’ll be allergic to it because they don’t want to relive the embarrassment.
But if you give people something they already want to say, then you’re amplifying virality. You’re giving that existing desire a boost and a way to spread. Like a virus needs a host to latch onto and people willing to spread it, you want to design a “lab-made virus”—a gain-of-function virality that spreads maximally, instead of something that doesn’t spread at all.
55:08
David Perell: Yes, that’s perfect. That should be the title of the show.
55:18
David Perell: Here’s another good communications test: imagine your company doesn’t exist yet. What could you say that would make your target audience feel truly understood? This is a variation of the first test—putting aside your immediate commercial interests, what do you have in common with that audience? What pain do they have that you understand? What struggle can you articulate? What hopes and dreams do you share?
Basically, stop wanting to sell something or pitch for a moment. Just start by connecting with them, figuring out what they care about, what scares them, what they want. Speak to that honestly and honestly, with some authority. Then, later, you can bridge back to your company. If you start with the sales pitch first, you lose people immediately.
56:14
Lulu Cheng Meservey: Take Apple, for example. They’re getting a lot of criticism lately for seeming to lose their way. Many people think their golden era was the “Think Different” period—that underdog, cult-like subculture where users felt Apple really got them. They wanted to create something outside the mainstream, something different. It felt personal.
Now, it seems like Apple just pushes products and features they want you to buy or use—like the new Magic Photo Generator or GenAI stuff. I haven’t used it myself, but it feels like they’re trying to get me to use it just so they can boost numbers and make more money.
Just recently, folks got annoyed because Apple turned one of its settings screens into basically an ad for that feature. Like, settings are sacred, right? You don’t mess with the settings page. But now there’s a sidebar link that takes you to this ad for the feature. It feels really icky. It’s like Apple is using us to get more usage, not the other way around.
57:49
Lulu Cheng Meservey: On the other hand, take Rewind. They get it. They understand what we’re trying to do, what we’re building, who we aspire to be. They create tools that help us achieve that. It feels like they’re serving us, not the other way around. It’s an oversimplification, but it captures the shift in how people feel about Apple right now.
58:06
Lulu Cheng Meservey: Before, Apple didn’t alienate people; they stood for something. If you weren’t an Apple person, that was fine—you were just on a different team. But today, it feels like standing for something means being politically divisive and alienating. You’re either on our side or against us. It’s red state, blue state. You’re either with us or you’re against us.
So the question is: how can you stand for something without pushing your opposition away? Is it even worth trying?
58:38
Lulu Cheng Meservey: I think it absolutely is worth it. Companies should be opinionated. They should take risks. They should stand for something. But you don’t want to split your user base or your employees down the middle.
59:00
Lulu Cheng Meservey: For example, if you pick a political party to support, you risk creating a civil war among your employees. You can draw a line in the sand and you should—but that line should be drawn carefully to fit around your people. There will be folks outside of that line, but if they’re people you don’t need, that cost is low.
If you’re a crypto company, and your audience is regulators and crypto holders, you don’t want to take sides between different coins or exchanges because that will divide your community. What you want to do is pick the broader crypto vs. non-crypto fight or...
59:53-1:00:44
Speaker: If you frame it as economic freedom versus suppression and oppression, sure, there’s still going to be people outside that line. This isn’t a made-up tension, but you’ve pulled your people behind you, put them inside the line. There are different ways to draw that line. If you were to just draw a line as Republican versus Democrat, you might end up splitting your own base, which you don’t want. But if you say, “We are the people who believe in what we’re doing, and them are the people who don’t,” that costs you almost nothing.
For example, if you’re Palanteer or Anduril—companies unapologetically pro-American greatness—you can say, “We believe the West has superior values and should be dominant. Period.” If you don’t believe that, well, that costs us nothing because you were never going to help us, work for us, or contribute in any way. So why care if you get mad? Actually, you getting mad only convinces our people this is real and that we’re serious about our principles.
Whereas if you framed it as Coca-Cola versus Pepsi or Chick-fil-A versus Taco Bell, you’ve just created an unnecessary debate within your own base—it’s distracting. When I asked that question, you probably had a visceral reaction to it. Why is this so important? Because if you don’t stand for something, you’re just offering a fungible commodity. People can get different software for pretty much anything, or make their own. People have so many options, aside from maybe extremely rare hardware like ASML’s advanced lithography machines. Almost everything else is widely available.
The option people choose says a lot about who they want to be, how they want to be seen, what they tell themselves and others about their identity. What you stand for reflects that.
1:02:10-1:03:37
Interviewer: It seems like product launches are a kind of free lunch—you get one shot, kind of like playing an Uno card. You’re really great at launches; you nailed it with Rostra. I’ve seen many launches lately, so I’m feeling a bit of launch fatigue. What should a founder know when launching something?
Speaker: Okay, let’s break it down into three things. First, launches are happening constantly. Used to be every few months, now it’s every few weeks, sometimes multiple times a day, with huge launches stacking on top of each other. There’s so much noise, breaking through is really hard.
Second, launches aren’t everything. Some people point out you don’t remember the exact day Facebook or Airbnb launched—they grew over time. That’s okay, but in today’s tough attention environment, a launch is a moment where you have an outsized chance to get attention, so you should make the most of it.
Third, you need to turn that attention into something lasting. Don’t just let it evaporate. While you have attention, convert it into a hiring pipeline, sales leads, or investor interest—something that continues benefiting the company after the spotlight fades.
So remember: it’s noisy and breaking through is tough; it’s not the end of the world if you don’t, but treat your launch as an opportunity; and turn attention into meaningful, sustained impact.
1:03:37-1:05:08
Speaker: One big mistake people make is jumping on every trend. I remember a period when I was doing lots of manifestos, so suddenly it was manifesto overload everywhere, and I got manifestoed out. It’s tiring. Companies should still share what they’re doing, but “Here’s our manifesto and secret master plan” has gotten tiresome.
For a while, I was also doing a lot of sizzle reels and montages with an accelerationist vibe. Now every launch feels the same and fungible. You need to find the next thing.
Interviewer: What’s the difference between a trend and a cultural erogenous zone?
Speaker: They can be the same. A cultural erogenous zone is something people deeply care about or fixate on, maybe for six months, maybe longer, but you need their attention now. It’s what really zaps their attention—like the game Operation, where you try to extract pieces without setting off a buzzer.
Culturalism is about avoiding overdone ideas and constantly coming up with new things, which can be exhausting because you’re always trying to outrun what’s already popular. For example, after the cognition launch with Devon, several launches were almost word-for-word copies of that template. You can’t keep repeating it—you have to move on.
I compared this to the Tolkein-inspired naming craze—at one point, too many companies used Tolkein names, much like a year when everyone names their daughters Ava. No bad company implied, but trends come in waves. Like in school when there were a lot of Sarahs, so you had to add a letter to differentiate. These waves happen all at once.
1:07:10-1:07:41
Interviewer: Tell me about this method for writing: start with a brief summary of the news, explain the company, talk about the problem, share the solution, emphasize why it matters and why your team is the right one, then end with a call to action including contact info.
Speaker: Solid outline—can’t go wrong. Where people mess up is getting too caught up in self-praise: “We’re great, we’re smart,” and then forgetting to explain the problem, your solution, and why any of it matters to the reader.
A lot of announcements are narcissistic—they’re like personal stories gone wild: “I’ve always wanted to do this, now here it is, I’m excited, congrats to me.” But they forget to connect with the audience and explain why they should care.
You have to think about the reader.
1:08:14-1:09:55
Interviewer: To increase your pressure, reduce your surface area?
Speaker: Exactly. Pressure equals force over area—you can picture it. If you’ve got the same force but spread over two hands, no puncture. But if you concentrate it through a nail, it pierces. This applies to attention too.
I gave an example earlier with Ramp: tearing fabric is hard, but if you make a small cut, suddenly it rips apart. Concentrate your force in one specific area to create massive pressure.
So if you want to reach five people, don’t try to talk to 5,000 and hope those five catch it. Target those five specifically. And if there’s one thing they care about above all else, don’t distract them with ten topics—stick to one.
Like Steve Jobs’ famous Stanford commencement speech: “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.” How many people remember anything else from that talk? Most remember just that one line. If Steve Jobs, giving his best speech, only gets one takeaway across, what makes us think an average speech or blog or video can have people remember ten things? It won’t happen.
So you get to choose: do you want people to remember one thing, or nothing? Choose one.
Interviewer: How important do you think slogans are?
Speaker: Extremely important. Every great movement has had a slogan. Slogans make something feel ubiquitous, inevitable, echoing everywhere—like they’re just all around you. If you hear the same message a hundred times, it becomes ingrained.
1:10:22-1:11:09
Lulu Cheng Meservey: If you hear the same message a hundred times, it blends into background noise—like literal white noise. But if you hear one clear, distinct note repeated, it can drive you insane quickly. So with slogans, if you see the same phrase a hundred times, it’s just one thing pushing pressure over and over. But if the message shifts around a bit—different words here and there—it fades into the background.
Founders should be super intentional about repeating a few key words over and over, but not everything. Repeating an entire paragraph makes you robotic and scripted, like you’re just reading talking points. But repeating focus phrases, like “focus on the customer,” is okay. We all know the cliché “It’s always day one,” right? It’s like that Far Side cartoon where the dog hears humans as “blah blah blah Rex blah blah blah.” You choose that one word you want to cut through and drive home, but avoid repeating everything.
1:11:10-1:11:51
Lulu Cheng Meservey: It could be “Think Different,” or “Move Fast and Break Things,” or “Time to Build.” The key is that the words around it, the context, the stories, the examples all change—so your communication doesn’t just sound like one big repeated chunk.
1:11:52-1:13:02
Lulu Cheng Meservey: One big mistake people make is mistaking attention for meaningful progress. Attention feels good—it’s like a sugar high—and it can become a distraction, a dopamine treadmill that just sucks your effort, money, and time. It’s like playing the slots—you think something’s happening but nothing comes out. That’s when communication goes wrong: you get addicted to the feeling of engagement but don’t turn it into anything real.
Knowing your business goals is how you make it real. You have to convert that attention into recruits, revenue, fundraising—whatever you actually need. Attention’s just a means to an end. You can’t just sit on a can of gasoline hoping it’ll get you somewhere—you have to turn it into motion and know what direction you’re moving. It has to be fuel.
1:13:03-1:14:29
Lulu Cheng Meservey: Good communications isn’t just about eyeballs, but how you convert those eyeballs. When you draft a communications strategy, think about the funnel from “people find us” to what you want them to do. It has to line up with what they already want.
So which audiences, hearts, and minds do you want to target? And what do you want to convert that into? If it’s job applications, then you want to recruit them—and you have to offer what they want, when you can. For the things you can’t give on the spot—for example, if someone wants to restore Western military dominance—you have to convince them that by working here, they’ll help make that happen.
You convince through the founder’s personal authority, evidence of past successes, third-party endorsements, a mission statement that resonates, and by saying what your audience worries about in words they recognize, so it feels like you’re truly on the same page and the mission is inevitable.
1:14:30-1:15:51
Interviewer: Can we talk about the CrowdStrike rewrite you did?
Lulu Cheng Meservey: Sure. The original message said: “CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted.”
What’s wrong with this voice? It’s incredibly passive. Words like “actively” and “impacted by” feel like the company is trying to dodge responsibility. It’s like that meme with the goose—“Whose defect? What defect? Who put it there?” It’s the kind of language companies use when they don’t want to own up to an issue. It might not be intentional evasion, but that’s how it feels.
1:15:52-1:17:09
Lulu Cheng Meservey: That’s why, earlier, I said it’s powerful when a founder speaks in the first person. Passive third-person language is as far away as you can get from taking ownership. Usually, companies use that because they want to avoid the backlash.
So I rewrote it as: “I’m the CEO of CrowdStrike. I’m devastated to see the scale of today’s outage, and we’ll be personally working with our team until it’s fully fixed for every single user. I want to say sorry. People around the world rely on us, and incidents like this can’t happen. This came from an error that ultimately is my responsibility. Here’s what we know…”
1:17:10-1:17:59
Lulu Cheng Meservey: People want to see leaders who care and are on top of it. To their credit, a few hours after that rewrite, CrowdStrike did their own rewrite and apologized too, which was much better.
If you’re less bothered by an outage than your customers, you need to match their level of frustration or even bring yourself down to it—that’s how you connect. If you come across as unbothered, they’ll have to convince you why this matters, and that’s a tough place to start.
1:18:00-1:19:21
Lulu Cheng Meservey: I love this story about a coat shop with angry customers. Someone complains about a hole in their coat. The clerk says, “Let me get my boss.” The boss comes out furious, saying it’s completely unacceptable, demanding the coat. Suddenly, the customer softens and says, “It’s not that bad, I understand, just don’t be mad at the clerk.”
This is how it works emotionally. If you come out angry, matching their energy, suddenly the upset customer calms down because they feel understood.
If you come out with an apology right away, too meekly, the customer might try to pull you back up to their level, prolonging frustration. If you dismiss their complaint, then they have to convince you why it matters, which escalates the conflict.
It’s about meeting people where they are emotionally—not brushing off their feelings but showing you get it.
1:19:22-1:20:10
Lulu Cheng Meservey: I think message, medium, and messenger are fascinating to me. One big surprise is becoming sensitive to what people aren’t saying but feel is in the cultural air, and shaping that into words. Another is when you take a stand, make sure it aligns with your audience—it should rally your in-group, not divide them.
Drawing a line in the sand is good, but you have to gerrymander that line so it fits your people and doesn’t split your core group.
1:20:11-1:20:15
Interviewer: Sweet. Thank you, Lulu.
Lulu Cheng Meservey: Thank you.
Made with: The Transcript Desk Chrome Extension