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KP Unpacked
KP Unpacked explores the biggest ideas in AEC, AI, and innovation, unpacking the trends, technology, discussions, and strategies shaping the built environment and beyond.
KP Unpacked
“Up in Smoke” and Other Ways B2B Got Interesting
KP Unpacked, the #1 number podcast in AEC breaks down how early-stage teams actually win attention and revenue in 2025.
KP and Nick go deep on founder-led distribution, “signature marketing” vs checklist B2B tactics, and why authenticity beats AI-generated slop. You’ll hear concrete examples from guerrilla stunts at conferences, product-led marketing, event strategy (sponsor vs booth), and running tight experiments you can pivot from fast.
We also cover brand risk, mission-first messaging, and hyper-legibility: publishing the “exhaust” of your work at a useful cadence. If you build, sell, or invest in AEC or construction tech, this is your field guide to differentiation in the AI era.
From Shadow’s portfolio lessons to classics like “1,000 True Fans,” this episode gives you practical moves you can ship this week.
The #1 podcast in AEC. KP and Nick. No fluff. Real tactics you can use.
Key topics for search
- AEC marketing, construction technology marketing, B2B growth
- Founder-led go-to-market, distribution, demand gen, ABM
- “AI slop” vs human creativity, signature marketing, guerrilla marketing
- Product-led marketing, brand risk, mission-driven storytelling
- Event strategy: sponsorship vs booths, trade show timelines
- Experiments, attribution limits, small-batch campaigns, “1,000 True Fans”
Sounds like you? Join the waitlist at https://kpreddy.co/
Check out one of our Catalyst conversation starters, AEC Needs More High-Agency Thinkers
Hope to see you there!
All right. We have a question for you.
SPEAKER_02:My raspy voice.
SPEAKER_04:You ready?
SPEAKER_02:With your uh raspy, sexy voice, I have a question for you.
SPEAKER_04:Me first, I go first.
SPEAKER_01:Very afraid. Very afraid.
SPEAKER_04:What is the what's the best marketing that you've seen recently from a company, not an individual? Anything come to mind? It's working? Yeah, like when you think of a company that's executing marketing well, that's not an individual or a media concept, not like an expert at doing it who is who's doing it well.
SPEAKER_02:You know, it's funny. I love some of the like, if you if you if you Google this, right? Go go into the Amazon and Google guerrilla marketing. Not like the animal, but like the military, right? Gorilla marketing. I'm just seeing some really fun stuff that's really effective. I don't know if you know like our friend Marty at agree.com. He shows up to these big conferences and they literally plaster flyers on polls about their product. And it's like wildly effective. So good. Love it. You know, and so I think this like any marketing that involves getting stuck behind your computer doing things just doesn't feel like it's I mean, yeah, clearly digital, like we all use the internet, it's part of the equation. But I think you really got to get back to it's digital, it's maybe physical mailing, right? Mailing things of dimension, um, in-person field marketing. It's I think this is where people get really stuck on you do one thing. Oh, we're doing email campaigns, right? It's like, no, that's not that's one thing, right? So I think you really have to look at how all these things work together versus just getting stuck on like, oh, we do we do podcasts, that's our marketing. I saw this great thing. Uh it was like some cybersecurity, you know, it says SF Tech Week. These guys were giving out branded packs of cigarettes.
SPEAKER_04:Love it, love it. And it was how do you think my how do you think my voice got so raspy?
SPEAKER_02:Not from Lucy. Um, I think um, but they they were handing out these like branded packs of cigarettes, and it was something like um, you know, is your cybersecurity plan up in smoke or something? I mean, and just so anti-everything cigar lounge after the event.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, love it.
SPEAKER_02:Right, just like so anti-everything we're talking about. Wellness, like I'm handing out cigarettes as our marketing.
SPEAKER_04:I mean, here's yeah, here's the thing that I think you're getting at that I I think um is actually a pretty good driver of this conversation is um it's that you're doing something different. Like you just have you have to be different. Like the like the I think the the universal rule in marketing is that you have to figure out what is different that is gonna connect with your audience. Yeah. Like you can't, you can't just like uh I don't think it's that effective. So one example publicly is um in the tech world is this guy, the guy Roy Lee. Um, who's like you know the world's famous marketer right now, and Dreessen's invested in his company. His company's Cluey. He had a vi he had a viral uh launch video um about how um essentially his company helps people people cheat. Yeah. And all facets of life, cheating and and dating, like impressing your girlfriend with the answers, yeah. Um cheating on the tests, cheating through school, cheating.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, apparently his his story is he got clicked out of club kicked out of Columbia, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, yeah, yeah. He was on TV PN early, early.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's like, I mean, he's universally known right now in tech as the best marketer, yeah, but also the most controversial. Um, he does stuff. So he did a but he did like a six hundred thousand dollar bill billboard in New York City, and he got a lot of flack for it because um back to my my point on connecting with the audience, he has an AI product that like is for a specific ICP, and yet he's like doing this broad, generalized marketing, and everyone's like, and and and you know, he has this kind of this negative, somewhat of a negative reputation. He's like lighting money on fire with these these campaigns he's running that you know, like, yeah, they're getting a lot of impressions and eyeballs, but are they actually converting to their their bottom line? But his main thing is like attention is the only thing that matters in this economy, yep. And I'm gonna do anything that that captures captures people's attention.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it was kind of funny. Uh, when he got on the TV PN, he had like 25 interns behind him on the broadcast. And he was like, I'm hiring more interns than any startup. It's just like this whole thing, you know. But no, I I think I think there is something to that, right? And I think um um, you know, I think in the B2B world we tend to default boring everything. Yeah, I will tell you, um, I think in in the B2B world, we should be thinking much more about uh how consumers think, consumer marketing thin, because we can do highly personalized, targeted campaigning, whatever that is, right? And I love giving the example back in early 2000s when I had a startup, we did a campaign where we identified like 25 executives, we figured out where they went to college, we bought a deck of playing cards with their alma mater on it, FedExed it to them with a handwritten note from me saying, Is your next deal gonna be a luck of the draw? That was it, right? Because we're doing like web development stuff or whatever, and um a hundred percent response rate, right? I'm not sure how much how much we closed from it, right? I'm not sure how much business we got, you know. We got some referrals, it was from it was interesting, right? But I think that's the whole point, right? We've gotten so linearly focused on lead nurturing, ABM, like all these strategies that are highly digitized, right? You spin up some product, you spin up demand based. Now I'm doing ABM, right? You spin up MailChimp, now I'm doing email marketing. But what that connective tissue looks like that drives results, you know, in many ways, honestly, I think some of the best marketing strategies, you don't actually you can't actually attribute the lead, right? In a world of like we're so focused on lead attribution, where are we getting our business from? You might actually the counterfactual might be like the best marketing idea, the best marketing programs, you actually can't do lead attribution because you're doing different things. You're doing a podcast, you're giving away cigarettes, you're taking out billboards, and it's that cumulative net effect that drives a customer than maybe any one of those. And you you can't actually know. Those might be, you know, I don't know, those might be the most effecting effective marketing strategies.
SPEAKER_04:All right. So we we just went for it here. That was not my my opening question was not intended to intending to get uh half halfway into the the uh the subject matter for this this pod, but as you can tell, um loyal ge loyal guests, we are talking about marketing today. And I think um, you know, I think the reason it's it's uh it's it's worth talking about today is because I actually think it's gotten a lot harder in the world of AI. Um there's a lot of noise, a lot of content. The one, you know, a commonly referred to adjective to describe the type of marketing you see today is slop. People copying and pasting GPT messages and and you know, GPT when you think about the data set they're operating off of, the foundation models, like they're operating off of traditional corporate marketing when they're giving you marketing recommendations, right? Right. And so you've you've actually, I think you've seen, um, I think you've seen a a class of corporate company startup marketing that has really leaned into the AI forward, um, the AI enablement of more content, more frequency, more cadence, um, and tried to capture more attention just by just through pure speed and and pure volume. And uh you you actually and then the the other side that you're seeing is all the stuff that you you're talking about KP, which is like differentiated marketing, stuff doing stuff that goes against the grain that AI can't do, right? Like you're like think thinking about a clever campaign like your your friend Marty at agree, you know, he's doing that at a at a at a trade show. Um, it's just like that's just like creative. That's human creativity. And like sure, you could maybe leverage GBT to come up with an idea, but like you still have to execute it. And really at the end of the day, like that's not going to be an AI-driven thing. Like, you're gonna have to really instruct any foundation model like on what is different and what is what is good, what is good mean for differentiation. Um and so I, you know, I I think like I look at a a lot of our our startups and I think they're kind of caught in the middle. They don't really know what to do. And like I so yeah, I really, I really think it's worth diving in. And you know, just to set the stage even more, I think um you're obviously someone who spends a lot of time thinking and thinking about marketing and doing marketing, given um the volume of content that you produce. I think everyone, every everyone listening would would agree with that. Um, so there's there's like a few concepts I I I want to get your want to get your opinion on. I think we maybe we can help set a direction for people that are caught in the middle and not really quite sure how to market and what to do today.
SPEAKER_02:By the way, Nick, just to reframe a little bit, I know we we we're just close to founders, right? It's just like close to the game. I think this applies to any company. Like some of the stuff we want to talk about, I think applies to any company. I think we our frame of reference is obviously startups, but I do I do think some of this stuff applies to any size company.
SPEAKER_04:Sure. I think that's totally right. I mean, even like per personal branding, if you're looking into doing that, since you're talking about KP ready. Um this is actually so part of part of this conversation stems from a LinkedIn post, a Substack, a tweet, whatever platform you're using these days that you sent out. You said we talk a lot about technical debt. We don't talk as much about marketing debt. You know of those experiments you ran that you can now learn from, right? Yeah. Right. Right. Um Yeah, I think we we collectively know that no one's actually like doing any real reconnaissance on what worked and what didn't when it comes to marketing. And a little bit of the point you were making earlier, like lead attribute like if you're focused solely on lead attribution, you might be missing the point. So I think that maybe is sometimes why there's not like massive retrospectives that happen in marketing, is like you do throw a bunch of stuff at the wall, and if something sticks, it's great. Um, and if something doesn't stick, then like it's you know, it's a problem. You got to figure out your cost of customer acquisition and and um figure out how to efficiently spend capital to get people that you want looking at your product. But um yeah, so like I mean, just high high level, I think you follow your personal methodology, and my guess is like as a result, all the companies you're working with, you'd recommend this strategy is one that I would label as uh hyper-legibility. Basically, like post the exhaust fumes of your work in a really unique and authentic way. Like if anyone's following you on social media, they know that you're gonna post frequently, you're gonna post the exhaust from fumes from throughout the day throughout the day, conversations you've had, um, thought experiments you've had, you know, um troubleshooting with founders, troubleshooting with corporates, a random thought that pops into your brain, like hyper legible, like you're constantly communicating what you're going through and thinking. And in a world of you know, um AI, AI slop that you're competing with, that authenticity, um no one can compete with because no one's inside of your brain, right? And like the more the more you communicate like what you as a human are are thinking and doing, like the more unique uniqueness you're gonna, you know, create for your brand and your in you know your in your company. And so that's my interpretation of what you're doing. Is that on point? Is that fair?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I I think there's a direct correlation between the frequency and the type of content I post if you mapped it against my calendar. Right. If if I'm having a bunch of startup calls, like you know, this week I'm meeting with my, I mean, I think I met with like 75 startups just last night. Like it was insane, right? Like just so many people. So, of course, a lot of my content starts to get generated. It's all you know startup y focused, and these are all like super early folks. So I think, yeah, it's definitely like what I have going on. I don't think I sit here and ponder quietly in a room, like what should I write? I think um it's just more, hey, here's what's going on, and you know, and how can I reframe it to make it useful to other people?
SPEAKER_04:The um when you started getting more active on on social media and and um and becoming more my more hyper legible, like what was the what was your main goal? Is your goal, you know, new business? Is it is it leads, is it, you know, visibility, like like deconstruct why you did it and what you were thinking.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's interesting. So um I think I've talked about this fairly openly, like my um transition from ADHD as a crutch to ADHD as a superpower. Um I think what started to happen was, especially during the pandemic, I started writing every day. Like we weren't having a lot of the social interactions, et cetera. And I just started writing, you know, I think at the at that point I was probably doing 250 words a day just to get stuff out of my brain every day. Now I do about a thousand words a day. Um, kind of 5 to 5:30 a.m. is kind of my I don't get to get my second cup of coffee until I've written my words, so to speak. Now, some of my words have nothing to do with anything, right? They're just words. Um, but but through that, it it's my way of like uh emptying out all the random thoughts in my brain. Um, and that's how it started, quite honestly. Um, I think the other thing that I started to realize was um the scale of writing and publishing content. You you and I know this, we can have four calls with our portfolio companies this week and four calls with potential, and we're saying the same three things over and over and over. So part of my thing was hey, this will cut down on my workload if I just tell everyone this idea. And I'll tell you, like the most effective startups that pitch me have read. I mean, I'm fairly transparent. Like, here's what I think, right? They've read up on, they've listened to, they show up fairly well prepared. Um, I actually had a founder the other day cancel a meeting because, in preparation for our call, realized that he wasn't a good fit for us. He opted out. He was like, I'm not gonna waste everyone waste my time or yours, right? Um, so I think that's kind of where it started with me just like writing to get stuff out of my brain. But then I think I started to realize that there was an and I'm still an engineer, right? So efficiency, there was an efficient, efficient publishing content was an efficient way for me to advise not just our startups, but the startup community in general. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, yeah, super cool. Mind if I share um personal story too?
SPEAKER_02:Sure, sure. Is it about me?
SPEAKER_04:It's not it's actually not about you. It might it might transition about to be about you at some point. Okay. So my for I I assume most people who are listening actually don't know me, you know, other than like my guest appearances here recently.
SPEAKER_02:Now you're famous now.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Um, so I actually started my career in tech and marketing. And I somehow now, you know, I'm in in in a V VC seat, but I broke through. Um I so yeah, I I was my background before marketing was um my dad's a home builder, worked for the family family business for a while, uh, studied finance in school, worked in banking, did the did the analyst route, realized it was not going to be the world's best spreadsheet jockey. And then when I went back to work for my family construction business, I was like, this also isn't what I'm meant to do. Like I'm I'm you know, my my my brain works a little bit differently. And so I I kind of found my way into tech just being generally interested in business. I mean, I that's the one common thread through all my early experiences, like working in finance and and working from the for the family company. It was um, you know, wanting to start and you know, accelerate and grow, um, grow businesses. And so my fascination became actually growth and distribution and like how do we take something that's not really working, a system that's not working, and accelerate it. And I found that I was like fairly decent at it. Like I I just understood that stuff better than uh than other people. And um so yeah, I I started a coaching business. This was like my first foray into marketing, um, where I was coaching shy and introverted people with communication skills. And like this was a journey I had gone through um in my early the early days of my career where I was not great speaking in public, um, very terrified of it, and realized it was like gonna be a critical skill. So I was like, all right, I gotta work on this. Um and I just started documenting all of my lessons. I was taking acting classes, I was doing public speaking workshops and um all this stuff, and just yeah, basically just said, hey, here's what works for me. And I, you know, went from very bad to like maybe decent. I you know, I don't think I'm the world's best speaker, but I I can I can do it from time to time, which was significant progress um from where I started. And uh I and I I started generating uh I started writing writing content and like I got I got coaching clients um helping people you know go through a similar uh journey as as I did to you know try to get them better in front of groups and um and you know more more personable at work, right? So uh and and and funny enough, I actually found like the people I was working with were technology people, right? I my first big speaking gig was at MIT. And everyone, you know, everyone in the room is like the type of people we work with today on the on the founder side, which was like they're great tech technologists, they're brilliant, they don't know how to communicate their idea, their vision. And it's like holding them back. It's like maybe the biggest thing that is preventing them from realizing their vision, having success, going, going forward and moving on their entrepreneur journey. Um, and so then I, you know, I I started as like, okay, the the the this idea of like personal coaching, like how do I, you know, and and the idea of bringing bringing someone along that journey and helping them scale, help helping them scale themselves. It's like the same idea as as marketing. So I just started working for a ton of tech companies on the side and helping them communicate their vision better and helping them become more confident in doing that. And uh, so yeah, and that led me to a company called called Built Worlds, and I ended up never heard of them.
SPEAKER_00:Never heard of yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Uh random media company um in the in the built environment and uh ended up running marketing for them and you know, basically after three months on the job, um was promoted to that position. And uh, you know, kind of the rest is history, but um, I see the world now, you know, like you know, most of our our our deals that we look at, like I come through the deals through a distribution lens. And and I think it actually is, you know, it's it's a non-traditional path, but I think it's it's really valuable um to me because potentially the biggest risk we face as investors investing in startups is the the company not getting adopted. They're not communicating the idea well. Um, obviously there's like it's like the technical side and the distribution side, but if the technical side is is boxes checked, really all that matters is that they're communicating exactly what they're doing and understanding their customers really well and getting the product in front of them. So like I end up interfacing with all of our companies doing that. And so um this conversation, this topic is near and dear to my heart because just like more people need help with it. And uh, I mean, pretty much every one of the companies we meet, like they do not have their marketing engine figured out. Um, when they do, it's like I mean, I've noticed I I ri my eyes are like wide open in terms of wanting to learn more about the deal because it's pretty rare that they can figure out distribution at such an early phase, and it's a massive advantage when they do. So, like, you know, another reason to do it is not just for customers, but like your cat your capital gets de-risked when they figure out you're good at marketing.
SPEAKER_00:Yep.
SPEAKER_04:Um, so yeah, I mean that's the that was kind of my journey. And you know, just to close that soliloquy, um, I wanted to read a quote from Don Valentine, who I think you know, I've been reading his biography recently. You can share your story after I read this. So early on at Sylvan at Sylvania, I learned I was not going to be a great scientist. So, what else is there to do in a great company? Where is the decision making in a great company? And the answer is it's in marketing. In a well-run company, the marketing department, in conjunction with the science department, decides based based on what their capabilities are, what problems they can solve, and what sequence they should solve them in, and how much money they can spend on developing that product and how big is the market. Who's going to buy this stuff? I chose marketing because I thought that was the best place for me to be on the West Coast and new ideas and new companies. Um, and so again, like, you know, the like Don Valentine came, the founder of Sequoia came from a marketing background and he found his way like in a similar way that I did and and figured out how integral it is to uh go from zero to one to figure out that distribution piece. Um so all that to say, like, this is why you should pay attention to marketing conversations, you should care about it. It really, really matters if you do want to take something from nothing to you know become a known entity.
SPEAKER_02:No, and I I think also, Nick, to your point, it changes so much, right? I mean, you gotta you gotta be on on you gotta be like really locked into like what's happening in marketing because I think I think there's a constant change. Um and and I've I've shared my story with my Don Valentine's story when I was on sabbatical and trying to figure out what to what to do next. Uh I said the words out loud, like I might want to be a VC. And so one of my lawyer friends was like, Hey, like let me set up a coffee for you with Don Valentine. I'm like, what? He's like, trust me, you'll you'll love it, right? And and the the best advice I got from him was that he was like, KP, if you want to be, if you want to own sports teams and fly around on a private jet, go stay an entrepreneur. If you're intellectually curious and want to make a good living, go into venture capital. Now, I do think there's a few VCs that have some sports teams in private jets, so I can still do that. That's still open. But uh it was a great piece of advice because I think a lot of people, especially in VC, I think generally gets misunderstood, mostly because VCs kind of just make stuff up and they kind of uh throw a lot of red herrings out there about what the business actually is. So I think it was great advice for me and helped me really decide how I wanted to kind of live the rest of my life, quite honestly.
SPEAKER_03:That's cool. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:But but I think the to the point about marketing, right? And I think in in distribution, I mean, I think that's what we've built with the firm is we have massive distribution, right? We just have massive, massive distribution. Um, and I think that that's a huge differentiator when it's when distribution is tough. But I think to step back a little bit with founders, I really this is where the like founder-led revenue for the first million is like so critical that founders try to run these experiments themselves. And the reason being is if you hire a marketer, you're hiring somebody that has some baggage, right? If they were great at SEO marketing at their last company and were very successful there, the answer for your company is SEO marketing. If they were really good at field marketing at their last firm, field marketing is the answer. So, so but here's what happens, right? You hire them because you think SEO marketing is super important. Like you might think that's your first experiment. They run it, it fails. But you hired this person, you might have some loyalty, they might be your friend now. Maybe nine uh six months ago, you plucked them from a very safe job to come join this journey. Well, you need to get rid of this person. So what you're gonna get rid of that person, like, okay, now we're gonna do podcasts. So you hire someone that knows how to do podcasts, and that doesn't work out. So I think some of the growth as an entrepreneur and really understanding marketing. I mean, hell, I'm a civil engineer, haven't had a single marketing class, none of it, right? Um, it's it's been my own self-experiments and trying to learn things and being curious. So I think um it's so that's why it's so important that the first million that the it needs to be founder led, is because you're you shouldn't be that attached around what works and what doesn't work. If you try it, SEO, oh that didn't work, you know, hire a consultant to help you with the details, maybe, you know, but um, but you can pivot quickly without a deep attachment to the person, right? I I think I I say the same thing about salespeople. You can't tell an enterprise salespeople to salesperson, like, oh, that's not working, jump on the phone and make a hundred calls a day. They're not they're not gonna do it. And if they do, they're not gonna do it well.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, two things uh jump out at me from those comments. One founder marketing fit is a thing.
SPEAKER_01:Yep.
SPEAKER_04:So if you're a founder and you're thinking about how to market your company at you know the earliest phases with a limited budget, you have to pick the thing that you're good at, right? If it's video, if you're good at great at video editing, you're you know, you have a video background, like do video. If you're you know a writer, Substack's great. Um, blog, do long form. If you're a tweeter, if you're just like great at you know, distilling ideas down and you like quick hits and you like you know frequency and high cadence, like tweet tweeting is is outstanding. And you know, in the the ad brain world, like tweeting and you know, quick LinkedIn posts, uh it works. Um, but you have to you have to find what is aligned with the thing that you're good at and the thing that you're actually going to do. And um, I think a lot of people try to do everything and that's where they fail. Nope.
SPEAKER_02:And and I do think, you know, back to kind of our with our venture hat on, I would like to see more founders presenting the experiments that they tried and failed at.
SPEAKER_04:We see too many like that's your tech, your technical debt versus marketing debt thing.
SPEAKER_02:Right. Like I think for some reason we're more open about talking about technical debt. Oh, we tried this and that didn't work. We went this way and that didn't work, and you know, we had to pay down a bunch of technical debt because we built a bunch of stuff that we had to get rid of or refactor or whatever. But you know, when founders come to us, especially Seed Stage, and they talk about their go to market like it's been proven. It's kind of like they're not leaving space to say, hey, we're gonna run these few experiments. Here's the experiments we ran that didn't work. Uh, I was giving this talk, you know, last night in Palo Alto, and where I was telling someone that my first startup, I went to a trade show, a construction trade show, and a guy came by my booth and I said, he said, he's like, Listen, kid, I'm really interested in what you're doing, and I'll do business with you when. You're here three years from now. So see you next year and see you the year after that. And then it might give you some business, right? And it occurred to me like I think a lot of the construction industry thinks that way, right? Come come to the conference and keep coming back. And if I see around the hoop long enough, that means you're committed, you're here, you're surviving, right? You're you're getting by. Then I'll think about doing business. So if that's really becomes one of those truisms that takes three years, like you need to kind of know that. Like, hey, we went to a trade show, there was a lot of interest and nothing converted. Like, what did you learn from that? Did you learn never go to trade shows? Or did you learn that, hey, we went to a trade show and that was people's first opportunity to learn about us, but not to do business with us. And so it's interesting. Like, you know, a good friend of mine, it's a CMO of a large firm. And he used to always tell me, like, when they look at sponsoring events, they're more likely just to provide a logo and spend money on that. Because for them to actually have a booth and have people fly in, it's very expensive. It's logistically very difficult. And he's like, I remember him telling me, he's like, you should really talk to your startups about not going to events. Just being a sponsor. If you're really early, just be a sponsor and say, hey, this year we just want brand awareness. We're not going to spend the money to fly people in and have a booth. We're just going to sponsor the hotel key or the lanyard, you know, something high visibility. The next year, then we do a booth. Right. So I think some of that like strategy around thinking about like why you do marketing is sometimes lost on founders because they're just so focused on like, well, we need to get build a pipeline. Trying to build a pipeline.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, it's very single through single threaded and short term. And yeah, I agree. Um, I've actually late so in my head when I talk to a portfolio company that is struggling with that or trying to figure that question out of like what should what should I do early, like tactically? Um there's what I see is a path of checklist marketing, which is your standard B2B activities, which is like I need to go to these events because someone told me I need to go. I need to post on social media for my company page and just you know, whatever it is, like I'll I'll get some posts out. Um, I need to do some demand gen. I need to like get a list and email spam email people. Um, all the standard playbook for you know what's worked in B2B, and frankly in B2B SaaS, but has zero, has zero taste, frankly, and is not concerned with differentiation at all and brand positioning at all. And so what you find is like people burn through their lists, they don't have any pickup with customers when they do you know cold demand gen outreach, they look like everyone else at trade shows, it's highly mimetic. You're in a you're literally on the floor with your competitors, and you all look ex exactly the same because you're without knowing it, you actually are trying to look the same. And you run into like this checklist of activities that you're doing, and it's like, yeah, you're doing okay. It's maybe moderate to soft demand that's getting generated, but it's not like it's not good. And if you have a good product, you're like, what the hell? Like, why aren't people like like my product's amazing? Like, how are people not seeing it? And so then, and what you're missing is the second is this the second frame of activities, call it signat signature marketing. Like, all about differentiation, it's all about brand positioning, it's it's it's it's you know taking risk with your brand and the things that you're doing, like the agree, the agree.com example. Um, and just one example I've seen is it so what's what Stripe is doing. So Stripe, the financial infrastructure company, like when any anytime you're using a, you know, you're paying on the internet, you're using Stripe like 90% of the time. Um, they've created a publishing arm of their company. It's called Stripe Press. Publish books, books that haven't existed yet, right? And um it's like why why would a financial why would a fintech company do that? Yeah. And it's because like they're they're just showcasing the taste of the founders and the taste of the people, the high volume customers that are using their products, like and it's the tech world. And if they can position themselves at the highest p firm, you know, the highest point of authority in the tech world, and every tech influencer who's you know, who's intellectual is is promoting Stripe through the purchase of their books and their beautiful, you know, packaged books that they create, they're creating this top of the line brand. And with you know, in indirectly without knowing it, they're not spamming you with demand outreach there. They might be doing some demand here and there, but like the the the brand marketing, this like back to the signature um column, like that is very unique. No one else in the world is doing that. And so the question is for like for your company, if you have limited resources, you can't start a publishing arm. What are small ways that you can like really start to create your own signature marketing activities that maybe to people outside of your customer base, or it's like it doesn't make any sense, but to inside the customer base, like people are like, whoa, that's really neat, or like that's super weird, quirky, indifferent. Um like someone who's great at this is like is uh is Jack Dorsey. Like he, you know, with uh with um Square and with Twitter back in the day, but but primarily with Square, all of his decisions, like marketing-wise, like they were always not obvious. And he let the product market itself, right? Like the the marketing, the core marketing engine, the organic marketing engine was the product. I think a lot of successful companies in our portfolio that have not had a tough time marketing, um, icon, lumina, they both come to mind. It's the product that that allows to be great at marketing. And so product is another way to like product design is another way to have a signature um market, you know, to do signature marketing. And it's almost like maybe the core underpinning of that being successful, but that that signature column, it's like, how can you do more of that in a world of AI and find really obvious great differentiation that when a customer sees your stuff, they're like, oh yeah, that's that's shadow, you know, that's that's Shadow doing that again. That's KP, that's Nick. It's just obvious that it's us because it's so different.
SPEAKER_02:It's it's funny because you know, I go through a lot of that. You know, we have our my summit coming up, and of course everybody's like, oh, are we are we gonna do some swag? And I'm like, I don't want to, like what a water bottle, a notebook, like I just don't, you know, I just don't feel it, you know.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And and I think that's one of those things that you have, you know, like I mean, one of the ideas I've been playing around with is publishing a a children's book, right? And um, why would you do that? I'm like, I don't know, because a lot of founders have kids. And if I could create a series of like entrepreneurial children's book, because I used to tell my kids when they were little stories, they're all kind of like entrepreneurial stories, right? Like um, what they didn't realize is you know that I was teaching them economics, right? I was teaching them um, you know, various aspects of entrepreneurship, but I was through like storytelling kids stuff, right? And then so but my point was like I've always had these ideas of creating children's books around entrepreneurship. I was like, oh, that's like then I have to hire a publisher and an illustrator, but then I realized like I could probably use AI and self-publishing and probably do something pretty easy, like do something like low lift, right? So I think to your point, is you can have some interesting ideas and then like have AI help you like get it done versus expecting AI to come up with the idea. But I do I do agree with you. I mean, I think it's just like everything looks the same on any given day. Like you go to a conference, here's a here's a water bottle, and here's this thing, and it's like, guys, you're just like you're not trying hard enough.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, it's super hard. And for what it's worth, most marketing people in the room are gonna steer you in that direction because they're protecting their job and they're doing what they've done in the past.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And that's you brought up some you brought up something that I think is interesting. I think I struggle with, I mean, I do and I don't, right? Which is taking brand risk.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. You know, we operate very you don't you don't care about that, but go ahead.
SPEAKER_02:Look, I mean I I do take risks, right? I I mean whether I care about it or not, you know, uh, I don't know. But it it is funny though, like there are times where um the inner monologue says, don't say that, don't say that, don't say that, and then I say it anyway, right? And it's kind of interesting because um been doing a lot of speaking this week, and you know, um, you know, am I saying it to get a reaction? Maybe, but mostly I'm getting it because I'm I get frustrated. Like I'm on panels and people say like things that are just wrong or less interesting, quite honestly, right? It's like, why are you, you know, I I think I told you I went to this founder panel and it was like three unicorns. And it's like, what advice would you give to a founder? Oh, like you need to understand your ICP. And I'm like, I just sat here for this. Like, like, what the hell? Like, this is not helpful, right? Of like, of course, you need you know, you need to know your ICP. Like, that's that's not a that's not helpful. Um, and the entire panel became this whole thing of like all the stuff we talk about. And fortunately, I wasn't on that panel. I would have probably steered some things a different direction. But I do find that like um I do question brand risk. And I I always feel like for founders, they almost get too worried about that. Yeah. Like, what do you think that balancing act looks like for around taking brand risk?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I think it's um I think it's highly different depending on your level of traction. I think you could argue at when you're not a known quantity, you should take as much risk as possible. Assume, you know, and and the and the the guideline always should be is this um is this harmful to my reputation? Like saying this? Like am I am I saying something unlike untruthful and is it harmful to my to my personal reputation? Yeah and and and here and here's an example, like you know, talking about politics.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Um I think this comes up a lot. Like you can like, you know, should should founders come up, should founders, you know, comment, comment on politics. I mean, my personal opinion is like I don't think it's really that accretive. Like I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't recommend it.
SPEAKER_02:But um I just I just think it's all terrible and I'm highly disinterested in all the nine and like yeah, you show up on X in a given day, and it's mostly like VC's commentant commentary on commentating on politics, and like, you know, but but the the question is like are is what you're what you're trying to say, is it a truth that you deeply believe and you know to be true?
SPEAKER_04:And if it's controversial, I think it's okay. Like like controversial is good, harmful, harmful to people is generally bad. Um, that would be like the the line, the line that I walk. I I think like seeking out controversy in the name of sharing your unique belief system that also correlates and relates to your product, great. I'm all for that. And I don't think that's actually that risky, especially if you're starting from nothing. Um, but when you have, you know, when you have a little bit, you know, like your your Stripe, for instance, like Stripe's not, you know, they're not taking too much risk in terms of uncovering deep truths about the world, other than like, you know, publishing, you know, um publishing different opinions through their their publishing arm and maybe being a free speech advocate. But you know, they're not taking like brand risk there. Um, and I think that's probably a good guideline. So yeah, it's like see like be a true be a truth-seeking individual and don't be afraid to to you know to to speak your mind. Um politics and other you know, hot hot button topics are like probably not that it's probably not worth you know going going super deep on and like it maybe has some harmful uh aspects to it.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I think the problem with politics, quite honestly, I think it's okay to talk about politics if it's relevant. Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_04:Like for instance, if you're in housing and you're talking about permitting laws, right?
SPEAKER_02:Right. I think like right now, we've been having a lot of conversations about disadvantaged businesses in construction, right? There's a program if you're a disadvantaged business to get to acquire customers and all. And um, you know, I think today the today is one of the diversity inclusion weeks or something for the government. And the DOT, like, I think can't federal DOT, I think canceled the DBE program, right? And so it's like, I think that's like a uh because I've met several founders that are like focused on like, oh, we're a small business, we're ready to get government business. And I go, like, well, I'm not sure, right? Climate's another good one. I I tell founders, like, I'm not sure this is the right time to be talking about climate tech, right? Um, I I I agree with what your premise is, but in from a sheer like zeitgeist policy, doesn't seem like that's something anyone's interested in right now, right? So I think those are all like relevant, but like, I mean, generally most politicians, I mean all politicians are generally terrible. Um, and you know, like you kind of have to ignore it all.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, yeah. So back back to your question on on brand risk, like what's an what's an example of something you would like debate? That I think that I risk that I would like what's out of where would you yeah, where would you like question yourself? I'm like, oh man, should I should I do this? Should I publish this?
SPEAKER_02:I think it's mostly on Twitter when people do dumbass things. I feel like I'm if I comment like, hey, this is wrong in the way that I do, um, I feel like then I'm like trolling them, and that feels like I don't want to be that guy either. So it's like just stay silent. But you know, there's this thing that um you know, I tell people all the time, like I try to be critical and kind, yeah. Kind of working on kind. Like I'll admit that sometimes it doesn't come across as kind, but I'm letting you know, like I'm I'm trying, right? But um, yeah, there are things you know that I say that I think um it's just through sheer frustration, like I can't help it sometimes. But um, I wish I was more dil, you know, the funniest thing about my brand stuff, I've I spoke at I think four events this week. Literally, everyone comes up to me and say, Hey, you don't have a Metallica shirt on.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Which is just kind of you take a picture one day in one of your favorite shirts and put it on your LinkedIn profile, and now that defines everything. Of course, I I I do have this today, too.
SPEAKER_04:So he's closet is really just full of Metallica shirts.
SPEAKER_02:Don't let him wore a SoundGarden shirt the other day. It threw everyone off.
SPEAKER_03:It's the Steve Jobs uniform at this point. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I I think um, well, I mean, I I honestly would separate like what you're referring to in terms of c commenting on you know, dump dump posts that you see. I don't think it's like uh I think like you know, look at commenting on social media apps as you know, participating in the global town square, not necessarily like you know, it's like not really brand marketing, you're just participating in the conversation. And yeah, um anytime it's like any to anytime you're like ad homieum going after someone and like doing personal attacks, it's like you're probably you've overstepped like no no need to do that. Could it you know could could uh have bad consequences, but from a brand risk perspective, like to bring the conversation back to that, like I just think it's worth it's worth deeply exploring what is a what is aligned with what your vision is and what you're trying to do that is like just vastly different than what everyone else is doing, like like branding wise.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I'll give you an example last night. I said something and it it didn't feel controversial when I said it. When people played it back to me, they were like, I was like, oh, I guess it did come off that way. And what I said was um there were a couple like Indian founders in the room from India, right? And like, oh, how do we break into the US market? And I was like, You're selling into construction, right? And they're like, Yep. I'm like, don't hire an Indian, it's you're probably best off hiring a white guy, preferably an older white guy, which I still stand by.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, you believe you believe, yeah, you believe that.
SPEAKER_02:I believe that, right? I believe that. And I grew up in the business, I believe that, right? I go by KP and not my legal name because it was too hard on job sites to try to explain to people how to say my name, right? And so, uh, which is the same reason why my dad went by his initials. Um, so I do believe it, but then um I had someone come up to me afterwards and say, Well, I guess I can't work for a construction tech company. And I was like, Well, I mean, you can. I'm not saying I'm just saying like first hire, right? First hire in market because you might start to overcome, you know, someone goes to your website and there's like 10 Indian faces, like they may not be excited about that.
SPEAKER_03:And you know, there's a hidden bias there, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. So I don't think I was like trying to be mean or anything. I think I think I'll like I feel like that's the right advice.
SPEAKER_04:I think it's pretty pretty practical. Um, I think that you know, you uh there are like some yeah, rules of the row when you participate in a specific industry, and I think that um it's yeah, I mean that's your lived experience. Like I think you have a a fair um vantage point into commenting on that topic.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Probably sounds differently if you gave that advice. Probably. Yeah, it'd be a little bit uh borderline risky for me to comment on that. Trying to trying to tiptoe right now as we speak.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. If it ever comes up, just say, hey, just go talk to KP about that. I'm not I'm not equipped to answer that question. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Trying to think of like what's just some other um tactical things that are that are good. Yeah, I mean, like my you know, my my my my major takeaways from you know the the big conversation around what should I do marketing-wise, it's like founder, it has to be founder market fit or team team market fit. Do things that you know you can do, like the team can do marketing-wise that they're great at. Like, you know, when it comes to podcasts, are you are do you actually enjoy talking? Right? Like, if you if you're gonna launch a podcast and you're gonna be great at it, you probably should enjoy talking. Um same with video. Like, do you like being on video? Do you like editing video? If you don't, you're not gonna be great at it, you're not you're gonna give up. So finding stuff that's really aligned with your skill set, aligned with you know how you interact with the world, and that actually is gonna like like you can go build a real um following and stand out on like that. I think that's a that's a core component.
SPEAKER_02:And I I think one thing that um I think is super important, like people have heard me talk, I talk a lot. Um, I rarely am out there pitching, I'm a VC, send me your deal. Like, I rarely talk about those things. You know, it's not, it's not, and I think a I I think what I do talk about is like the gravity of the industry we're in and how we affect society and why we all want to do better, right? And our role in the this industry doing better is if we can build more schools, better schools, better hospitals, like that that's what we care about. Um, my method, you know, our method to our madness is by deploying capital behind founders that we think will drive change, right? And I think sometimes founders get caught up in marketing being just so much around features benefits. Like, aren't you tired of change orders? Like, I mean, yeah, I mean, who, yeah, no one everyone's super happy with all the change. Like, that's not the point, right? And so always try to like help founders say, like, hey, why did you get into this in the first place? Right. Try to stay, I think try to get back to your mission and get re-centered and double down on your mission. It can change, right? But double down that that becomes the best narrative for marketing more than anything. It becomes the authentic thing, it becomes the root, but that that's what you start to really iterate to and saying, how is my mission affecting others? How do I get people to come along for the ride? And I think, especially in the early days, that um for some reason, you know, they raise a couple, you know, you raise a couple bucks, and all of a sudden, marketing, like, oh, let me spin up Apollo so I can do cold outreach, right? That that becomes the the the um North Star of marketing is lead generation. But I do think there is uh a really good opportunity along the way to pause, reflect, and say, why am I doing this? Why am I actually doing this? And um, and I think a lot of the founders in our industry are very passionate, are very mission-oriented, but all of a sudden they start getting focused on, you know.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, yeah. But and by the way, back back to why does your marketing feels feel stale? Why do you like uh most founders get to a place where they they hate talking about or doing marketing because it feels transactional and anti-ther mission, right? Right. You start setting up the Apollo cadences and that becomes the only focus of the business from a marketing standpoint, it's gonna start to suck because you're you've lost you've lost the ethos of the mission. And so to me, again, like it can't like yeah. Should you be doing outbound and demand gen? Probably if you're a B2B business, it just can't be the backbone of your entire marketing engine. And even when you're doing that, you gotta have fun, you gotta have a signature way of reaching people and connecting with people through writing, through video, through audio. Like, there's different ways to reach people through these mediums. And I think, you know, um, the last layer I'd put on it is what I just said. Like, I would have fun with it. If you're not having fun with it, it's gonna come through. Yeah, and maybe having maybe like you know, starting, you know, fresh with the question of like, what is fun marketing that I can do with my my company that I actually like think is great, hilarious, humorous. Um I would laugh if I saw this. Like those are those are like really good starting places, I think, to you know, just to jump jump start things.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I would agree. And not everything has to be at scale, you know, not everything has to be at scale. And probably some of the better things you can do creatively, you don't do at scale, you do it in small, small cohorts, really bespoke, small batches. Yeah, yeah. So I think it's a great go ahead.
SPEAKER_04:There's a there's a great classic blog post on this topic. It's called A Thousand True Fans by Kevin Kelly, the former founder of Wired. Reference for anyone who wants to understand like that small, like do like the do things that don't scale approach when it comes to marketing. It's that idea.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. We talked about it last night at this event. I said, you know, go go look up um Airbnb founders. I think there's a couple interviews where they were like, hey, we're just trying to get 10 customers passionate about the idea of sleeping on a stranger's sofa and letting a stranger sleep on your sofa, right? Like that, like it wasn't simple, right? We just had to get enough people 10 at a time, like 10 at a time is what we cared about.
SPEAKER_03:Love it. Cool.
SPEAKER_02:All right, that's all, folks. Another great pod on the books.
SPEAKER_04:See, see you back, see you back next week. I'll try not to bring my raspy voice back.
SPEAKER_02:It's very sexy.
SPEAKER_04:See ya.
SPEAKER_01:See ya.