You’re talking a lot but you’re not saying anything

Thoughts on the online presence of early-stage entrepreneurs. Plus, an introduction to the paid essays on Akhil’s a Stranger: meditations and lessons on growth.

I have a vision for the sort of mid-length essays I want to write. I think these essays could really add value to those who might want to read them – five dollars a month worth of value, in fact – if I spoke in an unfiltered way about growth (in the broadest sense of the word). Neither in the way stuffy books in the Business Resources section seem to reduce that complex question to a set of equations, nor in the way that podcasters and LinkedIn Top Voices and books in the Self Development section seem to reduce it to a set of banal platitudes. There is also value, I believe, in sharing ideas on a topic as interconnected as ‘growth’ real-time, as I'm experiencing and jostling with them: in the spirit of confessional poets and gonzo journalists. That's the spirit of the artist that's missing in those books and those online artifacts.

Remove the possibility that you may be wrong and you risk saying nothing useful.

The title is an allusion to one of my favourite parts of a Talking Heads song (it’s off of Psycho Killer). Years ago, in an act I can now recognise as the subconscious subterfuge it was, I wrote a 300-word essay about Talking Heads and Once in a Lifetime in a business school application for a degree I did not want. I will by grateful for all of eternity to the highly unpopular mid-2000s show, Rock Star: Supernova for introducing me to the song when somebody called Dilana sang it in an elimination round. Also thank you for introducing me to Blondie, Rock Star: Supernova.

As I wait for two deals to close over the course of this week, which will determine how I scale Milk Toast, the best thing for me to do this week, I concluded, is write. Some for myself, some for others, but just write. I'm so tempted – the moment I know these letters might go through other pupils – to frame this in a way I would never frame it for myself. I'm so tempted to say not: the best thing for me to do this week is write. But instead to say: the most useful thing I could do is define and execute against a strategy for my online presence. After all, as an early-stage entrepreneur, as I give myself three days to see how the chips fall before expanding work and resourcing, shouldn't I be 'doing something useful'? Is writing for writing’s sake inherently useless? Is writing only useful if it’s done in service of one's online presence – or one's career as a writer.

This is where what I find to be of value when I think about writing about growth starts to diverge from the fare that's on offer. At this inflection point, the WSJ-blurbed book from the successful West Coast type segues into an example of another successful West Coast type's approach followed by a framework. The LinkedIn Top Voice tells you that it's often useful to do nothing, to step back, to refocus. Rocket emoji.

Slack, LinkedIn, and corporate communication in Techistan have done the opposite of what the moon landings did in 1969. They’ve made rockets uncool.

But I already know that it's often useful to do nothing, to step back, to refocus. And while I can share a few approaches that have worked for me and others (peppered with examples of the unicorns they've gone on to helm) that have helped with pipeline management, resource planning, etc., I have a sinking suspicion. A lot of these frameworks are seen as useful not because they are inherently novel (most are evident when first-principles thinking is applied) but because of the names attached to the approach. The reader trades off useability for social proof. That's the benefit of documenting in real-time the experiments I'm undertaking to answer questions of growth about which I'm curious. The reader has skin in the game and is in for the journey. The journey, in turn, is where the reader learns something new. To return to the sausage analogy I seem to often employ: the only way to learn how to make a sausage is to see how it's made (by someone who has a firm view on how a good sausage is made, no doubt) rather than to have it presented by someone who goes on to describe the conditions of the kitchen in which it was made.