Friends of Roble: July 2024

A few weeks ago, we gathered our top marketing experts and future of work founders to discuss brand building for early-stage startups.

Greg gave an overview of the importance of brand:

• Brand extends far beyond marketing and communications, encompassing the entire business model and customer experience, with the brand promise serving as the foundation for building strong, emotional relationships with customers across all touchpoints.
• A winning brand strategy involves deeply understanding your target customers (including demographics, psychographics, and media habits) and crafting a clear brand promise, which can be developed relatively simply and cost-effectively.
• A brand strategy is internally focused and needs to be translated into external messaging and marketing efforts. It's not static, especially for early-stage companies, and should be reviewed and adapted quarterly to ensure it remains relevant and effective.

The #1 mistake that young companies make with their brand:
“Often folks don't go through this [brand] exercise. They assume that what's in the minds of the founders translates down to the team, and it doesn't always, so it starts to fall apart over time. The other thing is developing the document and then not activating it. It just sits on a hard drive. You really need to be obsessed with activating this on an ongoing basis.”

While early-stage companies often experience a number of adjustments and pivots, it’s important to have a North Star or longer-term vision to strive towards, even if there are a number of other things that demand the team’s attention.

‍See the full deck here.

Our other guests, Hyperbound cofounders Sriharsha and Atul, are still deciding on brand specifics like taglines — but their viral success on LinkedIn over the past few months is due to understanding their target audience (the sales community), what they enjoy (social proof), and then giving it to them:

“[Social proof] is the one thing that the sales community really enjoys. Not what you have to say about your product, what do others have to say about your product?

When people saw their favorite sales influencers talking about Hyperbound and the fact that they could go and try the platform out for themselves, they started recording videos of themselves using it and posting that to LinkedIn, to Instagram, to TikTok.

In days, we just had thousands of people talking about us organically with no interference from us, and we paid no one for anything at this point.”

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Achieving organic virality wasn’t an overnight success; it was the result of two months of research.

“We had done hundreds and hundreds of user interviews before we even put out our first MVP of the product, much less even made our first LinkedIn post.”

The theme of the day was to get out of your own head and get to know your audience (customers and potential customers) because they’ll help you see things in a totally new light that a founding team can’t always find on its own.

As Sriharsha put it, “The more customers you talk to, the more you'll hear that messaging over and over again. That's how you know you're onto something.”

This fireside chat was a dense one; watch the full recording (Passcode: B07&ViAB) to hear us discuss

• The steps to build your own brand strategy (33:30)
• B2B vs B2C marketing (38:20)
• How marketing has evolved (41:38)
• How to be strategic around early adopters (47:08)
• When to call it quits on a channel (using marketing math) (49:41)
• Where generative AI tools fit in the equation (53:31)

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You can also find the full list of recommended tools and readings under the resources section of this newsletter, or access Greg's customer interview script here.

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Lens Into a Human-Enabled Future

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP HIGHLIGHTS

Sergio reacted to the WWDC24 unveiling of Apple Intelligence: “Wall Street seemed unimpressed, yet I think the market is grossly underestimating this revolutionary announcement and its impact.”

He was also featured on the Spanish-language Fundadores podcast.

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The Latest From Our Founders

PORTFOLIO NEWS AND UPDATES

Team performance platform Rising Team raised an $8M Series A! This industry-leading tool builds high-performing teams amidst challenges that managers face in hybrid and distributed workplaces. This round will allow Rising Team to enhance its platform with AI, hire new team members, and expand its market presence. Congratulations to Jen and the rest of her team!

This summer, Rising Team will also be introducing aRTi, an AI leadership coach that will provide personalized recommendations using unique insights from team members combined with research-based leadership best practices.

‍Dragonboat founder & CEO Becky Flint went on the Product Thinking with Melissa Perri podcast to discuss the importance of empowering CPOs to take charge of portfolio management.

‍Slang was featured in Positive Ventures’ 2023 Impact Report, which included 9.1M completed lessons and 22k average monthly students.

‍Hyperbound celebrated their Q2 milestones, including >3M total LLM calls, 3,000 hours of roleplays, and their first enterprise deal:

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What Keeps Us Up at Night

KEY RISK FACTORS

By Sergio Monsalve

In June, there were three major announcements that seemed unrelated, but really highlighted the urgency we need to have around privacy as AI matures:

1. Microsoft delayed the launch of its AI Recall tool due to security concerns.
2. Apple Intelligence was announced at the Worldwide Developers Conference; Apple's AI approach leads and designs with privacy and security in mind, going as far as etching security features directly into its server chips.
3. Elon Musk’s xAI raised $6B in funding as it seeks to build an AI supercomputer and combat OpenAI's perceived security laxity.

In the rapidly evolving AI landscape, bad actors pose a significant threat to market trust in data privacy and security. We can’t always rely on policymakers to proactively address these challenges, but it's crucial to follow the precedents established by these major tech companies, and approach AI development with a clear understanding of the risks involved.

For founders, prioritizing data privacy from the outset is essential. When establishing partnerships, ask your legal team to draft comprehensive data sharing agreements within your contracts. These agreements should explicitly outline how client data can be used, which can safeguard your company's reputation and distance it from potential controversies in the rest of the market.

While public and market perceptions of AI may fluctuate beyond your control, taking proactive measures to protect your data and its sharing practices can do a lot to mitigate risks.

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What Caught Our Attention

NEWS AND RESOURCES

Brand Webinar Tools:

• The Mom Test (Rob Fitzpatrick) – how to talk to customers
• Warmly – de-anonymizes website traffic
• RB2B – identifies anonymous website visitors and pushes LinkedIn info to Slack
• Lemlist – cold outreach at scale
• Apollo.io – GTM platform with B2B data
• Clay – outbound sales prospecting with enriched data
• GoCharlie – GenAI for marketing content
• Rubbrband – GenAI image generating in brand style (early access)
• User Interviews – source and interview customers based on selected attributes
• Readyset.co – full-service digital agency with a self-service AI image-to-video solution
• Poplar – self-service direct mail solution

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Accelerating cloud transformation with Google Cloud and Oracle (Google)

‍State of the Cloud 2024 (Substack) – Awesome overview of Cloud:SaaS and how AI is impacting the space. They’re bullish on the new wave of voice AI applications, autonomous AI agents that cans specialize in executing workflows, and more specialized vertical SaaS ~David

‍Accounting Startup Klarity Books $70M Series B (Crunchbase News) – Good space to follow ~David

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Are you a founder currently raising in the future of work space, or know someone who is? Pitch us here.