The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
00:23:26 · Luke Harries, Harry Stebbings
[00:23:26] S1: Every time we ship a major product or feature, we run into a checklist. And so we have three tiers of launches. We have tier one. This is the big new model or the massive new product line. We have tier two, which is like major feature that customers will care about. And we have tier three, which is basically just put on the change log. Tier one is where we put the majority of our attention for the launches, and this is led by normally the growth lead for that particular product. The first thing they need to work out is, like, what are we actually launching for who? Why did they really care? And we distill this down into audience, KPIs, the core value props you want to get across, and then we turn that into, like, what's the consistent messaging? What are those short lines we want to get across? So choose an example. We launched speech to text, which is the world's best transcription model. So you can say stuff like this, and then they'll transcribe it super accurately. And the key messaging we wanted to get across is it's the most accurate speech to text model. It's feature complete, so it does diarization. It does character level time stamps. It supports 99 languages. That's what we spend a lot of time on is really nailing that messaging. [00:24:33] S0: How many messages can we have? So... If we if we want most accurate, fastest, and cheapest, is that too much?
00:24:33 · Harry Stebbings, Luke Harries
[00:24:33] S0: How many messages can we have? So... If we if we want most accurate, fastest, and cheapest, is that too much? [00:24:40] S1: So we always have a primary one. So the primary one which you'll hear me, Matti, the entire team, and all our messaging time and time again, is the most accurate speech to text model. And then there's secondary ones, so the three that I've said. We then take these core messaging, and we turn those into the core assets. We always start with the tweet thread. What's the tweet thread? What's that core hook? That's what we make sure we nail first. And then we make the video as well, which corresponds with the messaging, with the tweet threads. Sometimes there's multiple videos, but particularly for tier one, we want a fantastic motion design video. We take normally that tweet thread. We also create a blog post, particularly for the more technical launches. And then the next thing we think about is distribution. The way that we see it is we like to cross post absolutely everywhere. So we post on x. We post on LinkedIn. We post on Bluesky. We post on threads. Every single channel, Product Hunt, Reddit, Hacker News. Be real. I mean, [00:25:36] S0: at that at that rate, you're fucking going into the crowds.
00:25:36 · Harry Stebbings, Luke Harries
[00:25:36] S0: at that at that rate, you're fucking going into the crowds. [00:25:39] S1: Mean You have to... The biggest advice I give to, like, growth people is, like, you need to be loud. You need to, like, get it across every single channel, and then we actually have an amplified channel in our Slack where the entire team's in. And when we do a launch, we post all the different links for the different tweet thread, the LinkedIn, and everyone else will then share their like, their comment, they'll do them their own threads. And the idea is we want to surround sound for that day, getting that core messaging across. [00:26:05] S0: And then I'm pretty certain the social algorithm see 30, 40 likes [00:26:09] S1: Yes. [00:26:09] S0: In the first five minutes [00:26:11] S1: Yes. [00:26:11] S0: And go like, wow. This must be good content. We'll promote it to our larger audience.
00:26:11 · Harry Stebbings, Luke Harries
[00:26:11] S0: And go like, wow. This must be good content. We'll promote it to our larger audience. [00:26:15] S1: 100%. And what's interesting is when I speak to new founders, they're like, oh, Luke, but this is easy for you. You have a 200 person team. You have top investors. You have Harry as a mate who will share your stuff. And what I'd put back to them is like, okay. Chances are if you're, like, getting to launch a product, you've raised a bit of money, you have some friends, you know a few people in the industry, you should be shameless. I ran this through with someone recently, and we were like, let's take your Gmail. Let's literally get every single person you have sent an email to in the last five years. Great. You've now got 3,000 people. Then who's following you on Twitter? Who are you connected with on LinkedIn? Let's just manually go through and DM all of them to boost your launch, and you need to give your launch a big boost for these algorithms to actually care about it. [00:27:01] S0: I'm amazed by how nervous people are to ask, number one. I'm amazed by how nervous people are to do things that won't scale. For the first 50,000 Twitter followers I got, I personally DMed everyone, and I suggested that they follow our newsletter as well. Wow. But I was cross advertising channels [00:27:17] S1: Yeah. 100%. For 50,000. Wow. I'm going to do that after. On... No. Seriously, like, at the
00:27:17 · Luke Harries, Harry Stebbings
[00:27:17] S1: Yeah. 100%. For 50,000. Wow. I'm going to do that after. On... No. Seriously, like, at the [00:27:22] S0: end of every day, fifteen minutes, you just continuously cross promote other channels. Honestly, it's how we got to several 100,000 on news. For founders that are maybe not as versed, what makes a good tweet, Trev? What should they not do? How would you advise me? [00:27:36] S1: Yeah. So it's pretty simple. The first thing is, like, get the first word right. If you're doing a launch, use the word introducing or we're excited to launch. Make it really clear that you're launching a new product, introducing the world's best speech to text model. That's the first line. Make it simple. One line gets across exactly what you're launching with that keyword which flags it. Then have a space and then do either a bullet point list or a paragraph going into a bit more detail, maybe some of these secondary value props you want to get across, and then attach the launch video, which you spent lots of time working on. [00:28:10] S0: To the first one.
00:28:10 · Harry Stebbings, Luke Harries
[00:28:10] S0: To the first one. [00:28:11] S1: To the first one. Yeah. So that's then your first tweet. Then you could do a thread going into more information, maybe adding supplementary videos. And then the way that Twitter works is when you do a tweet, what will go out there and other people will see on their feeds will be the first tweet, then the others will actually be minimized, and then the last two. So you should put the call to action and the link in the very last tweet. And, actually, you should make that second last tweet great too. Don't put the link in the first tweet because Elon Musk has even said they actively down rank people when they do that. [00:28:43] S0: We do them for every show. Yes. And it's a real science in that respect. On the blog post side, people are going, hey. No one reads blogs. There's still a point to blog posts. [00:28:52] S1: Yeah. 100%. So two main points. The first one is for technical audiences. You need to go into the details. You need to show the benchmarks. You need to give a little bit the secret sauce of how you put it together. Go into those technical details. And the second one is SEO. Lots of people think SEO is dead, but it's really not. And so every time you do a launch, you want to have a key blog post or landing page that you push, and you get all the backlinks too, whether that's cross press, whether other people linking to it, whether from socials. SEO is not dead.