I'm baaaaack
With two posts
In this edition
What I’ve been up to
Your brand is more than your marketing [repost from LinkedIn]
Online dating as a sales funnel [repost from LinkedIn]
What I’ve been up to
It’s been almost 3 months since I last published a Substack post. The hiatus was partly because of personal travel — during that time, I went to SoCal for 1.5 weeks, then Italy for 2 weeks, and Bangkok for a few days.
And when I’ve been in Singapore, I’ve been quite busy helping some of my portfolio founders, across a variety of different things: a potential acquisition, a possible shutdown, a major partnership, a co-founder departure, a product launch, geo expansion, and also of course fundraising.
So between all these different things, it was frankly just a bit hard to get started writing again. But now that I have started again, it feels so natural.
I rarely if ever post personal stuff, but as a mea culpa here are some pics from my trips.
I went with a couple of buddies (my primary school friends!!) to SoCal to catch Neil Young, who was touring for the first time in a long while with his legendary backing band Crazy Horse. Truth be said, the guy is 79 years old, so who knows if he would ever tour again? We caught the first 2 nights of the tour in San Diego (with different set lists) and he was absolutely amazing — and just as well we did, because he cancelled the tour halfway through… I went to Joshua Tree before that, because I’ve always wanted to, and then we also caught a Lakers playoff game which was super entertaining (they won the game but lost the series).
We did 2 weeks in Italy. I couldn’t find any photo that truly does justice to the beauty of Lake Como and Tuscany. We had a ton of fun tooling around Tuscan backroads in a vintage 60s Fiat — you’ve really got to have a sense of humour about it, like when you look for a seatbelt (there’s none). It’s been ~15 years since I drove a manual car but it came back quickly. I also did the legendary nonna pasta-making Airbnb Experience (unfortunately the original nonna Nerina has passed away), but sadly it had become a big business and didn’t have the personality or soul that I was expecting.
Your brand is more than your marketing
[repost from LinkedIn]
Ever wonder what makes for a powerful brand? It’s not just about slick marketing — it’s about authentic experiences. 🌟
I recently asked a founder about the brand they wanted for their startup. They are preparing to launch, and we were discussing their GTM plan and marketing copy.
I think of a brand as the aggregated emotions and perceptions of customers, about a company or business or product. The brand is built — and expressed — through various customer touch-points and channels, such as the store experience, customer support, online presence, etc. 📲💬🏬
Importantly, many people confuse marketing with branding. Marketing can express and shape a brand, but it is only one component (albeit an important one). The actual product experience frequently has more durable impact in shaping a brand. And so Amazon is my default choice for fast and reliable shipping, because it’s consistently fast and reliable. 🚚💨
A business or product will always have a brand. A founder can intentionally design and shape it, or they can passively allow customers to form their own perceptions based on their own interactions. Spoiler alert: it’s better to be intentional. 🏆
And the brand has to be authentic to be sustainable. If you want a “fun” brand (think Duolingo), then whoever is working on it has to be fun; otherwise it won’t work. For example, the startup I’m helping is targeting GenZ, but the founder doesn’t talk like GenZ, so I advised them against sprinkling GenZ slang in their copy.
The most striking brand in my recent memory is MONA, the Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania which I visited in March. 🎨 It is clearly edgy, irreverent and fun from the get-go, from the camo-painted ferries from Hobart harbour, to the staff who cracked jokes as she wrangled the crowd into organized queues, to the modern art on the ferries — and all before we had even gotten to the world-class art museum set in a beautiful location!
I cannot recommend this experience highly enough to any visitor to Hobart, even if you don’t enjoy visiting art museums.
Online dating as a sales funnel
[repost from LinkedIn]
I’m always tickled when I can apply business concepts in ordinary life!
An old friend shared her escapades in online dating 👉 over drinks the other night (it sounds rough out there!). She complained about how (at least in her experience) her criteria yielded very few hits, whereas men seemed prepared to cast a very wide net.
I thought it sounded like a sales funnel, and that they were simply different strategies.
⏳ My friend was basically limiting herself to qualified leads, and saving time not looking at leads that were probably false-positives.
🎯 Having said that, one key learning from Airbnb is to avoid over-filtering when supply is constrained. I know it’s hard, but finding the Goldlocks balance between broad and narrow targeting can be so powerful.
🕵️♂️ On the other hand, casting a wide net was like spray-and-pray, to maximise the leads entering the funnel and letting the leads (women) qualify and screen the man.
Not necessarily better or worse, just different strategies resulting in different experiences.
But I half-suspect she could not decide whether to be annoyed or amused 😛
Curious if you have any examples of applying business concepts in unlikely contexts!