Lulu Cheng Meservey: evaluation

Transcript context

…Is there an example that comes to mind of someone that did this really well? I don't know. I know it's hard to think of just an example off the top of your head, but does anything come to mind? Balaji did this really well with his book The Network State, that book was super successful. He didn't do a lot of the traditional book tour New York Times stuff. He went his own route, and I think that was really smart if you're going to put it in the setting of this framework, it's he created his own distribution channels. He didn't try to compete with the roster of Harper Collins on their turf, and when he created his own distribution channels he focuses on who are the diehards and the truth fans, and these are people that he fosters. He goes on podcasts that reach these people. He doesn't deviate from messaging to try to appeal to everybody. There are people who just will never like that guy and he is totally fine with it. So he's not watering down who he is to appeal to people who will never like him, which it's tempting for companies to do. You hate when people are mad at you, so you try to appeal to them and then your true fans lose their passion because the thing that made you so special has now gone milk toast. So Balaji fosters his true fans and then when the book launched they propelled him to the top of the Amazon list, because they were out there evangelizing, proselytizing. You probably saw all these tweets about his book. He didn't pay anybody as far as I know. He didn't pay anybody to do that. He just shared it with the people and they wanted to show that they were into this. That's a great example. I know that founders often worry focusing too narrowly limits their market, and it's never going to grow into anything large. In your experience do you find that that's just often not true, that there's often a much bigger opportunity than they think? Or is that just a good way to start and then you expand from there?…

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