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LATEST POSTS 📚

If you’re new, not yet a subscriber, or just plain missed it, here are some of our recent editions.

🌐 Remote Work Is Eating The World. The pros, cons and pros of building out a global team.
🤯 How Companies Are Owning Emojis. How to transform your brand by claiming your own emoji.
🧠 Getting To Know Me, Again. A deeper dive into the mind of the author, me.

PARTNERS 💫

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HOUSEKEEPING 📨

Man, this post is late today and the main reason is I just could not get out of bed this morning. The one thing I have not been doing well is taking time off and I think it’s starting to show. My main personal goal for this year was to use all my leave, and use it in fun and adventurous ways.

I actually set the dates of my leave at the start of the year. We have 30 days of leave at Athyna so I booked more or less 5-10 days at the end of every quarter. But I have started skipping them due to general overall busyness.

If you like me, are reading this and are on the edge of burnout, then we probably owe it to ourselves to make whatever change it is to get back on an even keel. I will be spending the rest of my Sunday figuring out how I can get a week of leave in mid August. Anyway, stay well!

TL;DR ME 🙄

• Cutting through with a founder letter. Founder letters can create emotional connections and stand out in a crowded market.

• Galvanising words. From the founding of a company to the founding a new nation state, there is power in the written word.

• The sales led landing page. Founder are using long form letters to sell products, by highlighting powerful problem-solution narratives.

• Annual letters to shareholders. Annual shareholder letters build trust and attract, or retain, investment.

• And a version we prepared earlier. And finally, we share a founder letter we build that we will be testing this week onwards.

THE CURRICULUM 📚

Mastering The Founder Letter

Marketing is hard. And cutting through the noise in today’s business environment is harder than at any time in the past. Hundreds of thousands of brand, millions even, are vying for the same slim piece of eyeball space from the consumer. That tiny little slither of attention that might open up that new opportunity, close that big-ticket deal.

So how do you stand? One way is the founder letter tactic. A long form, well written narrative from the leader of your organisation. The long form letter is a rarely sighted case in business circles today. It's as uncommon as finding a white lion or an albino alligator in the wild.

But they exist, and they are coming for your market share. Today will we take a walk down founder letter lane, to see who is using the strategy, how they are using it, and what we can learn from them. Let’s do this.

Powerful words & the most famous of founder letters

The power of words well written really is something else. Take Ernest Hemingway’s famous six-word story: “For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.” Powerful. Let’s read it one more time together: “For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.”

Six short words, that likely pulled you out of whatever it was that was on your mind, and broke your heart a tiny little bit. Again, words are powerful.

There is one founder founding letter that is cited more than any other on the planet. That is the Constitution of the United States of America. Penned by the founding fathers this letter outlined the building blocks of what would become the constitutional republic we know as the United States of America. The leading superpower in the world today.

But nation galvanizing documents are not the only type of letter we will explore. There is a range of founder led communication happening across the world today. Next up, driving lead generation and excitement with a founder letter sales page.

Sales letter legend, Jason Fried

The father of the founder sales letter, is founder and CEO of 37 Signals, Jason Fried. 37 Signals might not ring a bell but they are the makers of Basecamp, HEY, and most recently, ONCE. Jason is also author Rework, Remote, It Doesn’t Have To be Crazy At Work and other incredible books.

I have read every one of Jason’s books he penned alongside his partner David Heinemeier Hansson, and highly recommend them. They are unique. Not the typical Silicon Valley thinking. Business done from first principles.

Jason is also the Godfather of the founder sales letter. Found letter landing pages. One example is his HEY landing page that starts with the line; “Hey everyone … It’s 2020, we need to talk about email.”

_{*Note: The landing page of HEY has changed since the original founder letter, but you can still see a founder letter section towards the end.}

In a sea of sameness, the founder letter stands out because it’s different, but also because it also allows the reader to go on a narrative journey. Sam Parr calls this the ‘slippery slope.’ The idea that each sentence builds on the next and before you know it you are totally bought in. Take a look at my favorite example below with the ONCE landing page.

Incredible marketing right? Let’s take a look at both examples and break down what it is that they did here.

• Identifying the problem. Both letters start by highlighting issues with the current solutions. The first discusses how email has become overwhelming and lost its joy. The second, how business software has shifted from ownership to rental models.

• Nostalgia. They both remind readers of how things used to be better. Email was once a treasured form of communication, and software was something you bought once and owned forever.

• Establishing the enemy. The use of emotive language connects with readers' frustrations and sets up an enemy. It describes email as a "chore" and SaaS as a "perpetual landlord-tenant agreement."

• Introducing the solution. Each presents a product as the answer to these issues. HEY is introduced as a "renovation" of email, while ONCE is presented as a return to software ownership.

• Unique selling proposition. The letters outline what makes their offerings different. HEY is described as a "simplified, potent reintroduction of email," while ONCE emphasizes one-time payment and full ownership.

• Call to action. Both end with clear next steps for interested readers, either to see how the product works or to stay tuned for more information.

If you’d like to hear Jason talk at length about his strategy around the founder letter and business writing more broadly he did two great podcasts recently with My First Million and How I Write. Highly recommended.

💡 Note: Two other examples I found around the internet that are using the founder letter are Coho and Rehance.

Bezos, Buffet and Howard Marks

Another famous form of business writing is the annual shareholder letter. This is something made famous by Jeff Bezos, during his tenure at Amazon and the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway. Another great but much less storied example is Howard Marks.

Howard is co-chairman of Oaktree Capital Management, the largest investor in distressed securities worldwide. He also authored the popular book; The Most Important Thing.

These three leaders were not in the business of conversion rate optimisation on a landing page, but instead, convincing deep pocketed, high net worth investors that their name should be the one on the front of their cheques.

Jeff for example began with his famous 1997 letter. The letter included some framing that Amazon would still be known for to this day: long-term focus, customer obsession, risk taking and the general marketing opportunity.

But it also highlighted one thing: that it is “day 1 for the internet,” a line he would echo in every annual shareholder letter until he stepped away from the role of CEO in 2021. The chance to reinforce your strengths, your strategies and particularly the growth you have left is an incredibly important lever to be able to pull to: a) retain your current shareholder base and b) convince new shareholders to invest. It always being day 1, is Jeff saying we are still a growth company, and investing with us will get you a good return.

In my recent post about the job description of a CEO, I wrote about the important of communication—internal and external—as one of the five key elements to the role. This is a key element that Bezos, Buffett and Marks have truly mastered as leaders.

And one we launched yesterday

And here is my dedication to the art of the founder letter. We launched this letter version of our landing page this week at Athyna. I think it has a lot of the same elements from the great letters Jason wrote, tweaked to suit the remote work and global team building environment.

It starts with the alluding to a change that is coming, talking about the problem and doubles down on the pain point of losing a candidate, before highlighting a solution, our solution. And finally, I tried to use numbers and social proof towards the end of the piece, highlight the 70% savings and the strength of our team.

Will it work? I don’t know. But I am happy to share any learnings I do have in a month or two once we start seeing some results come through. Wish us luck!

How you can apply this

• Identify your narrative. Find the strongest the story you want to tell about your product, company, or vision. Sell it passionately.

• Highlight pain points. Clearly target audience faces the problems your target audience faces. Choose an enemy if you can.

• Present your solution. Show how your offering addresses these issues in a unique and/or better way.

• Use emotion. Incorporate nostalgia or other emotions to create a connection with readers. Get them to yearn for your solution.

• Be authentic. Write in your own voice to build trust and credibility.

• Test and iterate. Try different versions of your founder letter to see what resonates best with your audience.

• Include social proof. Where you can, add numbers, testimonials, or other evidence of your success.

• Call to action. Always end with a clear next step for the reader, whether it's trying your product or staying updated.

Further study

• Mark Zuckerberg, the Hacker Way and the Art of the Founder's Letter, WIRED - February , 2012

• A letter from Larry and Sergey, Google - December, 2019

• The 7 Things that Should Be in Every Founder Letter - September, 2021

BRAIN FOOD 🧠 

This week I read the Coinbase Decision Making Framework by Brian Armstrong. This framework is tailored for making complex decisions efficiently, from hiring to strategic acquisitions. It's laid out in a clear, three-step process that’s easy to follow.

If you've ever found yourself stuck in endless meetings or second-guessing decisions, this technique might be exactly what you need. Read the piece here and here is the link to the sheet.

TWEETS OF THE WEEK 🐣 

TOOLS WE USE 🛠️

Every week we highlight tools we actually use inside of our business and give them an honest review. Today we are highlighting Attio—powerful, flexible and data-driven, the exact CRM your business needs.

See the full set of tools we use inside of Athyna & Open Source CEO here.

HOW I CAN HELP 🥳

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