00:23:22 · Paige Finn Doherty, Molly O'Shea
[00:23:22] S0: You're like, I'm writing a newsletter for my friends who have curated companies. Yeah. [00:23:25] S2: It's a resource for work. Yeah. And so I was using it as a utility. I wasn't using it to like, you know, create, not like garbage, but like, you know, clickbait and whatever, even though, like I will make stuff that is funny because I think it is funny clickbait, but it's still valuable information. That's kind of like the irony. So anyway, so like I had started doing a little bit of like marketing and brand building, this was probably when I was at upfront and like putting it on, and I had never done this before. I was putting it on LinkedIn. Turns out if you put something on LinkedIn, people see [00:23:56] S0: it. People
00:23:57 · Molly O'Shea
[00:23:57] S2: do They subscribe. See Yes. It grows. Like most of my newsletter subscribers had come from LinkedIn. Yeah. And I'm like made it a little icon and everything, but anyways, huge fan of Elon. I've obviously been watching Elon's companies throughout the history of time and see how just purely relentless he is as a operator and as like an inventor and as like a technologist. And so, I had read like the books on him, the Walter Isaacson book, like, you know, either you just study someone for a period amount of time. It's like, distinctively places and like uses a playbook for all of his companies. It's like, I don't have any money to buy a Tesla, but I'm sure like, if I had a Tesla, like I would understand like how he built it, like vertical integration and all that stuff. Like he really like will be maniacal about creating processes and then like deleting things that are inefficient. So I was like, okay. There's definitely some game theory there. Once he took over X, I was like, game on, like, is going be a game. It's going to be some sort of like game of words or whatever. Like, you know, I hadn't studied any of the other stuff. I don't care about social media. Like I'm really not like a social media person. I'm sure like I had gotten like into it just through like Instagram and stuff, but like, it's not like I'm like addicted. I just don't have that kind of connection to it. And, once he took over X, it was like, oh, this is obviously going to be a game. And I'm like a really great writer and a creative and whatever. And I was working at a fund at the time that was an RIA. Like, couldn't post anything. Can't
00:25:36 · Paige Finn Doherty, Molly O'Shea
[00:25:36] S0: post anything. [00:25:37] S2: Yeah. Like that could have been anything related to our portfolio or companies or whatever. So it had to be PC. Like, I don't wanna get canceled. Like it was all professional and like made sure it was on the mark. And so I used that as a playbook to game Twitter and grow. So I had some ideas. Yeah, tell [00:25:55] S0: me more about that. I'm so interested. This is the first time hearing about the, like the reason for your transition is super interesting. So I'm interested. Yeah. [00:26:04] S2: See how you're And like Twitter has been a huge part of my growth. So like I love it, like X now, sorry. But no, like this was a really important part. They open source the algorithms, I'd study that and I'd use it. [00:26:20] S0: You would go into the developer docs and study it? [00:26:22] S2: No, I would read the summaries like a normal person. I'm not reading developer docs. [00:26:28] S0: I'm just imagining you in there like really studying now. [00:26:33] S2: Okay, press command. No, I don't even know what the terms are, but like, you know, like it would show like how they weight certain things. Like, you know, I'm a good writer, so I can understand like what is a good psychological hook. Obviously, like these aren't, I'm not like trying to like, you know, like get you or like [00:26:54] S0: that kind
00:26:54 · Paige Finn Doherty, Molly O'Shea, S1
[00:26:54] S0: that kind [00:26:54] S2: of thing, but I'm like crafting good stories. Like it's all about storytelling, which is the same with startups, which is the same with fundraising, which is the same with anything in life, sales. And so like, I just started to learn how to like tell really good stories in 140 characters or two eighty characters and more specifically in the first line. [00:27:12] S0: Yeah. Where did where did breaking come from? [00:27:17] S1: I don't know, but I've [00:27:18] S2: obviously abused that. And like, I think I get I think I get penalized every now and again for the... Because, like, they specifically said [00:27:25] S1: that they would, like, ban. [00:27:27] S0: Like we're banning breaking. And they're like, [00:27:30] S2: if you use it too much, we're gonna down rank your content. Wow. What? Well, okay. So I'll just use that for funding announcements and stuff. But sometimes I'm just breaking, Paige like, interviews Molly. No, can't wait to post I [00:27:47] S0: guess my, maybe one of my questions there is kind of like the balance of breaking news versus like a more thematic or like timeless content that isn't as grounded on milestones? Like how do you think about in your interviews, a balance of the two? Because I feel like you do a great job of that.
00:27:47 · Paige Finn Doherty, Molly O'Shea
[00:27:47] S0: guess my, maybe one of my questions there is kind of like the balance of breaking news versus like a more thematic or like timeless content that isn't as grounded on milestones? Like how do you think about in your interviews, a balance of the two? Because I feel like you do a great job of that. [00:28:07] S2: Great question. And this is a constant battle, whether it's like with scheduling or just like anything. So what I saw very early on with the podcast and what broke it out was timing it with announcements, which goes back to the newsletter. It goes back to all the deals, the funding announcements, which was like a complete obvious. Right? It was like, I overlooked this. But then once I started, like, posting when a company raised funding [00:28:38] S0: put all their resources towards highlighting that interview of yours and be like, everyone, please go watch the Sourcery episode. Yes. But there's also a media storm around it. Oh yeah. Then why like, oh, how do we cover it? And it's like, oh, Molly's interview, like according to sorcery. Exactly. And [00:28:54] S2: like, I'll have all these different outlets to put it out, but like also this is like my hot take. It's like people who do exclusives or like set a day for exclusives for media around an announcement are shooting themselves in the foot. Internet does Guys, not [00:29:09] S0: would take.
00:29:09 · Paige Finn Doherty, Molly O'Shea
[00:29:09] S0: would take. [00:29:09] S2: The internet doesn't work like that. Yeah. The internet, you have to post as much as possible, like to some capacity, obviously with quality at hand, like, because there's so many different things going on at all times. It's like every day there's another Anthropic or OpenAI kind of thing that like breaks the internet or a model release or whatever. And so now it's like funding announcements don't really, like you have to give a reason for people to care and sometimes you have to brute force will yourself into the world. Yeah. And so like people have obviously learned this on Twitter and like people are sorry, X and like have gotten in trouble with it or just don't do it well because like the paid partnerships, spam posts, know, it has Like to your team should be reposting it. By the way, like, yeah. So like early on, like I found that this announcement format worked really well because you time it well, it's timely. It's like news, people pay attention. It's novel. It's like, it's something that people haven't seen before and it's important and people love numbers and they love, you know, excitement and FOMO too. Like FOMO plays a big part of this, especially Like, for big that's why people are reading the newsletter and watching these, like what deals are going on, what they missed out on, who raised a round without like, you know, letting them know. So like, that's a big part of it. And so like we started to time in around these things. And so one of the big, like, I would say the best practices for funding announcements,