Waddup y'all!
I’ve been chewing on this one for a few weeks and I gotta get it out.
Everyone's selling "founder-led content" right now. Every agency, every fractional, every LinkedIn thread guy. And most of what's being produced under that label isn't founder-led content. It's content with the founder in it.
Not the same thing. Not even close.
THE SCRIPT PROBLEM (…sheesh)
Here's what most founder content actually looks like.
A founder gets briefed by their content team. The team writes a script that has the "core" of the founder's story, maybe pulled from a Zoom interview, maybe stitched together from a brand doc. The founder reads it. The team edits it tight. It goes live.
Checks the box. The founder is on camera. The story is "theirs."
Except the audience can feel it. There's a flatness to it. A polished, slightly-off energy. The founder is performing their own story instead of telling it.
And here's the part that kills it. All the stuff that would actually make someone stop scrolling? Gone. Edited out. Sanitized.
The "I almost quit" part. The "I thought everyone would love this and they hated it" part. The "I had to redo this thirty times before it worked" part. The "I was on my deathbed and decided to bet everything on this" part.
That's the part that makes content founder-led. Not the founder being in it. The founder being honest in it.
A FOUNDER DOING IT RIGHT
I work with a brand called Graymatter. Their founder is Jim Phillips, and his story is wild. Heart infection. Deathbed. Open heart surgery. Survived, and then went all in on building Graymatter.
Jim's ad explaining the product carried the business to scale. For a long stretch, it was the best performing creative they had by a lot. And it wasn't because of the production. It wasn't because of the script. It was because Jim sat down and talked about why he started the company, why he believes in the product, and didn't dodge the ugly parts of how he got there.
He's not performing his story. He's telling it. When you watch it, you feel like you're in the room with him.
Here's the kicker. None of the polished, scripted, "founder-style" content the team has produced since touches the performance of that one piece where Jim was just being Jim.
That's not a coincidence. That's the whole point.
QUICK SIDEBAR ON THE PRODUCT
Real quick while Graymatter is on the table. I'm diagnosed ADHD and used to take Adderall daily. A lot of us founders do, even the ones who won't say it out loud. It works, but it comes with the comedown, the dependency, the sleep stuff, the "who am I without this" question.
Graymatter is the first thing I've taken that gives me the focus without any of that. I'm not foggy, I'm not crashing in the afternoon, I'm not white-knuckling through the day. I just feel like the version of me that can actually do the work.
Here's my link if you want a discount on your first order.
If you're not a founder who's quietly wondering if there's a better way than Adderall, ignore this section entirely. Back to the content stuff.
WHAT FOUNDER-LED ACTUALLY MEANS
Founder-led content isn't a format. It's not a type of shot or a posting cadence or a content pillar. It's a posture.
It means the founder shows up as the actual person who built the thing. Awkward pauses. Self-corrections. The stories they'd tell their friend over a beer, not the ones they'd put in a pitch deck.
It means you're not protecting them from looking dumb. You're protecting the audience from feeling like they're being marketed to.
If your founder content is highly produced, perfectly lit, and reads like a brand manifesto, you're doing content with the founder in it. Which is fine. It just doesn't do the thing founder-led content does.
The thing founder-led content does is trust. And trust doesn't come from polish. It comes from "oh, this person is real."
THE HARD PART
I get why most teams don't do this. It's vulnerable. It requires the founder to actually be on the hook for the story instead of hiding behind a script. It requires whoever is leading content to push back on the founder when they default to safe. It requires editing for honesty instead of editing for polish.
Most teams can't or won't do that work. Which is exactly why the brands that do, win.
ONE LAST THING
I've had a bunch of conversations with founders recently that ended with some version of "honestly I'd pay you for this." So okay. I'm doing it.
I'm opening up 5 strategy sessions per month. 1 hour, $750. You walk away with a content framework built for your brand and direct recommendations on what to fix, what to double down on, and where you're leaving money on the table.
5 per month because I have retainer clients and that's where the bulk of my time goes. If you want one, book here.
If you're not ready for that but this hit, just reply. I read every email.
Chase