This week I asked myself, what can I do - actually do - to help startups and startup founders succeed. To grow their horns and not just make it, but to become true unicorns?

Every resource I could find said that “Building out Loud,” something I first heard about from Arnau Ayerbe at Throxy, is one of the best strategies for founders right now:

Be seen. Stand out. Be heard.

It gives you credibility, as Todd Dickerson of ClickFunnels outlined in this truly excellent post. It gets you in front of your ideal customers as quickly as possible, and as andreas jonsson of Shield frequently says is the best way to just start (or, go from “zero to ramen”).

Not only that - it creates a library of who you are, and what you’re doing. A trail of breadcrumbs that not only leads people to you, but guarantees (or at least, helps) make sure that when people do find you, they already know your pitch.

Now, not all founders are great at doing this. Some want to be sneaky and build in stealth. Others haven’t perfected their messaging yet. Others still are worried about being perceived as anything less than perfect.

Truth be told, every founder is a mix of all of those - and more.

So I’m here to talk up these folks, give them a platform, highlight the incredible projects they’re working on, and start laying down some delicious (gingerbread, obviously!) scented crumbs to start leading people to these folks so we can get them launched!

Clean. Messaging.

Maybe you have a website. An Instagram. TikTok - maybe it’s flyers in a college dorm. Somewhere, somehow, you’re starting to share out the message of who you are, and what you do.

If you’re at that stage, maybe you’re approaching big customers with that messaging, as part of your pitch. Maybe you’re even sitting down with big-name venture capitalists and angel investors.

No matter the audience, big or small, high profile or your grandmother, the goal is the same: Present who you are in a quick, clean way.

A founder I’ve been working with openly shared their struggles on this point - how their website had let them down, and how they were looking for advice on how to better present themselves. It opened with “A billionaire just told us our website sucks”*

Later, it was followed with some extra feedback, prompting people to add their favorite SaaS websites, “Let’s build a library of the best sites on the internet.”

And finally, “We just shipped the new site”!

Now, this is a solid gold example of the power of building in public. Being able to publicly ask for feedback on your side does expose the messy part of the project/product. It also gives you a ton of visibility, it shows that you care and are humble enough to ask for (and take) feedback, and it’s a very public example of process improvement.

You never know who will see this kind of thing, and visibility is (almost) always good.

So! Aside from building in public, we can pull out some key lessons from the conversation so far. Now all of this has been about messaging on a website, but the rules still apply to any platform you're putting your pitch on -

Between the lines of points 1 and 3 is a key design philosophy to keep whenever crafting your messaging:

Make something that you can change, quickly, cleanly, and easily.

A website can also serve as a pitch deck

An intro video can also be a sales (even light onboarding) step

The more places and different platforms/styles you have, the harder it is to pivot without inconsistency popping up. And the longer each iteration takes.

Repurpose as you can, multipurpose as you can. Especially when you’re getting ramped up, you want laser-focused messaging that you can use in multiple places, and cross-post to get extra visibility!

Both Clarity Inbox and IntentPost are ideal to look at right now - because they're still so new. CI is running directly out of Gary's personal LinkedIn, and for all that IntentPost has improved, there's still a whole lot of dialing in and refining of the website that I’ll be reaching out to Faiz about, and covering as it goes.

This is the Messy Middle. The place where real lessons are learned!

Iterating your messaging also helps make really good social media/marketing posts, like this one Faiz made the day I wrote this. He nailed clarity, value proposition, really highlighted how in-demand the product is, for what, by who, and that it's unique.

Exactly the things you want your messaging to present, right away. Bonus that the post included actual technical chops from IntentPost’s co-founder, and showed some real product!

*If you want to see the original website, I did a whole video walkthrough of the old site (and company) here

I want to showcase and shout-out the folks doing really, really hard work. Who are very early stage, but with something special - and I want shout them out while they’re going through major growth:

Startup News Spotlight

Sweden-based vibe-coding platform Lovable, is my personal favorite platform for building no-code apps, and it’s not close. The UI, the functionality, the quality of project it puts out, is just extraordinary.

Rumbles around the World

“Europe must be ready when the AI bubble bursts”

Look, we have to go in to 2026 with both eyes open:

AI, as it stands right now, is an investment bubble. That is, the dollars invested in AI companies FAR outweigh the money it’s bringing back, and there is no (big) AI company in the market right now with a road to profitability. Plus, the infrastructure needed to sustain this level of growth and processing power is causing active damage in communities all over the world. Debt. Lawsuits. Hallucinations. Overcrowded market in an economic time that is otherwise under intense pressure.

Like a real bubble, once the bubble gets big enough that the surface tension on its edges isn’t strong enough to hold the internal pressure… pop.

That’s going to come at a big cost, and it’s not at all clear which companies or industries are going to come out of it cleanly. And that matters, because we’ve seen enough of the LLM AI boom that there is inarguably serious potential there. And someone is going to figure out how to capitalize on it.

Now, if AI is a bubble, why am I hyping two AI startups?

As said above, there's obvious potential in AI tech. Clarity Inbox is lean, functional, and works with Email - tech that isn't going anywhere.

IntentPost is even stronger here, because it's all about reinventing physical mail marketing. That's in demand, again, high-dollar, and something I haven't seen anyone else doing.

Both are companies with value, a clear focus, and potential to make it regardless of AI’s broader fortunes. IF they can nail their messaging ;)

Neither one is in Europe though. Why am I talking this up as Europe’s tech moment… ?

There’s a lot to unpack there, we’ll be continuing the conversation next week!

Ready for more? Here’s the link to sign up and subscribe

Want to support my work? Share this article of course, and/or come say hello on LinkedIn!

Also, this newsletter is lovingly, joyfully, crafted on beehiiv.

Whew! You made it to the end!

See you next week ;)