The best advice I got when starting Equals
Most startup advice isn’t useful. But sometimes you're given a nugget of gold.
Your business is usually too nuanced to take on general, one-size-fits-all startup advice (kind of like ARR reporting). And believe me, as a first-time founder, I’ve been given loads. 😅
Here’s the thing. Advice needs context. It’s why a piece of advice I got back in the earliest days of Equals is the best piece of advice I’ve ever received. I committed to it. And now, looking back three years on, it’s been one of the most impactful things we’ve done.
It was to write.
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Back in 2021, I went out to raise our seed round. I talked to various angel investors, including
, one of Intercom’s co-founders. We knew each other well from building Intercom, and he was happy to support and me on this journey. But it came with one condition.I had to commit to writing.
Something he learned firsthand as a founder and continues to see as an angel investor.
Left to my own volition, writing regularly isn’t something I would do.
Here’s Des on 20VC responding to
’ question:Why did you make Bobby at Equals write a blog post a week?
That all turned out to be correct.
Writing as an exercise in speaking to the world
We didn't have a product in the world for the first year and a half of Equals. We had an obscure landing page and didn’t share much about what we were building.
So, as the team built, I wrote.
Because we didn’t have a product in the market, my writing couldn’t be about Equals the product. I couldn’t do the generic, boilerplate content that most others do: “Here’s a problem that exists, and here’s how my product solves it.”
Instead, I wrote letters to myself from ten years ago, when I started as Intercom’s first finance hire. There were stories on things that failed and worked exceptionally well, opinions about broken teams, “how-tos,” and technical pieces on things we built.
Some posts did well.
Some nobody read.
But the exercise wasn’t about building pipeline, SEO, or a subscriber base. It was about getting practice in telling our story and sharing who we are.
You see, it’s really hard to press send on anything you want to say to the world.
If you’re anything like me, the first few times you hit publish on an article, product announcement, or post - you’re filled with doubt and anxiety. “Who am I to talk about the topic?” “Surely someone’s said this before.” “Somebody’s going to poke holes in this.” Or worse, this will finally prove how stupid your ideas are.
As a founder, this is a huge fear to overcome – critical, if you’re going to be the face of the company and if you’re going to “launch” as Des describes.
So, I spent a year and a half launching myself, getting comfortable articulating my ideas and sharing them with the world.
My worst fear even happened! I went viral. Many folks disagreed with my take, and I ended up on the front page of Reddit for three days as the enemy of the anti-work Reddit community. And guess what? It wasn’t that bad! I got a few hateful messages, and a stupid YouTube video made about me, and life went on.
How to start
A few things that really worked for me, and I know worked for Des as well, when he was writing in the early Intercom days.
Build the habit.
Pick a day you always post and stick to it. For me, it was every Thursday. I had to ship a blog post. For Des, it was weekly, too. It’s a forcing function. Don’t miss it. If you let yourself skip a week, you’ll skip many. You’ll second-guess a post. You’ll get lazy. You’ll find an excuse. If you’re posting on social, define a cadence. I suggest daily. Again, don’t get lazy. You’ll regret it later.Be yourself.
I'm sorry, I hate to break it to you, but there’s no outsourcing this. You can't have a ghostwriter if you want to write something worthwhile, genuine, and authentic. We tried. Your best ideas will emerge in the process of writing. It won't be your best idea if you don’t grapple with it yourself.Keep an idea bank.
For me, it’s a Notion doc I leave open and have readily available ready whenever an idea strikes. Ideas can strike at the most random times—on a call with a prospect, while taking a shower, cleaning the house, cooking dinner, you name it. Capture ideas as they come to you, as they tend to quickly disappear.Block time to write.
If it’s a blog post, make sure you set aside a few hours to get deep into writing. For short-form social content, I block an hour to write all my weekly posts.Schedule posts.
There’s something magical about this. It helps me avoid second-guessing myself. If I had to hit Post every morning, I can guarantee half the time, I’d talk myself out of it. But when I schedule a post to publish later, I care a lot less.
Writing works
What started off for me as an exercise in communicating to the world (and securing Des’s cheque 😅) has turned into our biggest customer acquisition channel.
Our first, roughly 20 users, came to us via the early posts we wrote. They didn’t come because of Equals, the product. They came because they resonated with my writing. We built a relationship from there, and Equals inevitably entered their company.
To this day, we ask every lead how they found out about Equals, and they always cite our blog or our posts on LinkedIn. It’s powerful and validating.
Just Write It.
In many ways, this post is a reminder to myself. I’ve recently been a bit inconsistent with my writing habits, but I won’t stop because I don’t want to regret it like Des does.
Even after three years of writing and shipping, I still don’t know which pieces will be hits and which will flop. But then again, that’s not the right mindset to have.
Write to help yourself. Write to help others. Write to be yourself. Like any artist, create things you’re proud of, and the rest will take care of itself.
Now, go forth and lay it all out there. I look forward to reading what you write.