Create once and sell forever
You can create a video one time, and it will continue to educate and sell, without you. This is ultimate leverage.
Founders can build media assets that turn into a media-clone of their human self. The goal of what I call “founders media” is to create authentic copies of founders, and engineer this creation into modern leverage through code and media. This media should focus on what values the founder can provide with their products or services.
I follow each step of founding through a set of principles. Inspired by Ray Dalio, I am building FND to become a systematically driven machine that execute the mission above with precision every time.
In this post, I want to share two key insights I think is helpful for founders learning about media leverage:
I. Media & Creativity Leverage
If we look at the great communicators of business and art, there is a reccuring pattern of simplicity and clarity. This could be distilled down into two principles: Be clear and explain your value. These two principles alone is half of the work.
"Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains." – Steve Jobs
People do not have a short attention span, they just have a sky high expectation of the quality of the content they are served.
The goal with the core media leverage is to instantly create common ground on how your value works.
Master communicators clarify with rigor what they want other humans to focus on when they are introduced to the masters offer.
This mastery can be encapsulated into a video, created and perfected one time. Then the master can continue with leverage to educate and sell, through infinite space and time. This is ultimate leverage.
Example of this is Steve Jobs keynote presentations. The videos are still studied, and books are written about his communication.
To attract humans to our products and services, we can leverage timeless video assets to instantly explain a process and educate our audience.
Create a media once, share it forever.
“Code and media are permissionless leverage. You can create software and media that works for you while you sleep.” – Naval Ravikant
Studying Naval has been helpful for me while building FND. Naval’s principles are built on top of science, maths and engineering, and add a little philosophy in there as well. Synthesized, his world view is useful when navigating and understanding the world around us and how to operate it effectively as founders.
Specifically, Naval is a masterful marketer. What few people consider is his role as a “super-ambassador” for his two tech companies, Airchat and AngelList. Consider the infinite clips of wisdom consumed by the very founders who AngelList is built for. And the well engineered app of Airchat for voice podcasts, following Naval’s favourite format.
All of this reach is generated through the time and effort inputs of Naval, that converts into forever lasting infinite leverage videos and audio content.
Naval Ravikant demonstrates this principle perfectly:
The Naval Leverage Model
Handful of podcast episodes → Millions of views
Single recordings → Years of compound impact
Core ideas → Endless derivative content
Growth catalyst for ventures like AngelList and Airchat
Media Leverage Mathematics
Understanding the leverage metrics:
Create for 4-8 hours (when founder created)
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Distribution potential is infinite
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Unlimited audience reach
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Zero maintenance required
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Automate hundreds of explanations
II. Engineering Attraction
The most potent tool for attraction is to leverage the human tendency towards following herds. Of choosing the one option with high status. A goal of mine, and of all funders I help, is to increase the “social status” of our value. The single most powerful lever to push is to get other people to use, talk and share our product through positive distribution.
Perception: Social proof creates extraordinary leverage:
Real testimonials from satisfied customers
Expert endorsements that build credibility
Concrete data points showing popularity
Authenticity as the foundation of trust
When the baseline of social proof is set, a ripple effect is felt through all other distribution channels. Leverage like media, videos and advertising will increase in effect 10X, on the foundation of social proof.
Empathy: Recognize emotions and perspectives. Go a step deeper. What does your customer need? What are their pain points? How can we actively listen and reverse engineer?
Benefit: Focus on value power - your expertise, unique products, interesting ideas you can apply leverage to (media like audio, video, code). Combine finding niche solutions with clear promises of positive impact on individual, collective level.
Simplicity: Remove complexity. Keep your message simple. Test and iterate on the fly. Focus on promising clear evergreen benefits like: more life and freedom, increased confidence in self, greater results with less effort.
Example: Mind Visuals “Create more, edit faster” + “Stay in your creator zone…” + “drag and drop” - in seconds, a video editor will pay attention. They desire efficient workflows, flow state focus and quick editing hours.
Strip away unnecessary features. Focus on core functionalities that matter and create an instant impact to the humans you’ve created value for. Refine ideas, message and design until they’ve met their simplest, most intuitive form.
People do not have a short attention span, they just have a sky high expectation of quality of content.
FND principle 7.
Join hundreds of founders building media systems: Arm yourself with media, code and leverage.