Founder led content inspiration

11 B2B founders who are winning on organic social

Author

Tommy Clark
June 03, 2024

Hey!

Welcome to Social Files—your no-BS guide to generating demand for your B2B product using social & content.

Hope you had a great weekend. I spent a lot of time on my couch. Also caught the Champion’s League final (congratulations if you're a Real Madrid fan).

Now. Getting into social strategy stuff. Today I compiled a list of XX B2B startup founders who are winning on organic social. You should add all these folks to your inspiration folder.

Shall we?

🔎 DEEP DIVE

Founder-led content inspiration

11 B2B founders who are winning on organic social…

There’s one habit I recommend to all the founders and marketing leaders who ask me how to win on organic social.

Build your swipe file.

A ‘swipe file’ is a bank of inspiration. Email marketers save click-worthy subject lines to theirs. Conversion copywriters save high-converting headlines to theirs. I save standout social content to mine—and if you want to use social as a lead gen channel for your startup, you should do the same.

I’ve compiled a list of 11 startup founders who are doing this whole “founder-led content” thing quite well. I’ll also share a quick rundown of what you should take away from their approach.

Cool? Cool.

Adam has been on an insane run over on LinkedIn over the past 12-18 months. He’s gone from ~0 → 80,000+ followers on the platform and taken a SaaS from 0 → $20M+ in ARR. He was actually a client of Compound during that first 0-25K sprint—awesome to see him continue to crush. If you want to see “building in public” taken to the extreme, he’s a great founder to study.

Dave is a founder-led content OG. He actually published a book on the topic, Founder Brand. Great read. And now he’s running the playbook with his B2B media company, Exit Five.

Also, I recommend reading Dave’s LinkedIn post on why LinkedIn is the best PR channel for your B2B startup in 2024 (very much aligned).

Rishabh and the FERMAT crew are taking over the ecomm SaaS niche on social right now. Both him and his co-founder, Shreyas Kumar, are pumping out founder content consistently.

FERMAT is also a great example of what building a ‘content ecosystem’ looks like. Their founders are posting—but so is their team, and so is the brand account. No surprise here though, as there are a handful of my former Triple Whale teammates running the show on marketing 🙂

One aspect I love about Andrew’s approach to social is his consistency. The man’s got his content cadence dialed. He’s also not afraid to replay his hits. So many founders are afraid to post to often and afraid to post about similar topics “too close together.” As Andrew’s shown, that fear is often unfounded.

[Read the full deep dive on Acquire.com’s social strategy right here]

Whenever someone asks me which SaaS company is doing well with social right now, the first that comes to mind is Beehiiv.

They are everywhere on social. You literally cannot escape. Try mentioning the word “beehiiv” on social and see what happens in your replies.

Tyler’s founder content is a major pillar of that strategy. Check out the full case study I wrote on Beehii’vs genius approach to social right here.

6. Todd Busler / Champify

Todd’s account is one I’ve come across more recently. He’s executing the fundamentals of founder-led content quite well.

One thing I notice reading all of Todd’s posts is how dialed in the hooks are. He does a great job of being just polarizing enough, but not too far. He also uses specific numbers and listicles in hooks to perfection. Great account to add to your inspiration folder.

Austin’s done a fantastic job using Linkedin to generate hype for his company, Unify (SaaS company in the B2B GTM niche). Their fundraising announcement generated 500+ inbound demos. Insane numbers.

And now, organic social content accounts for 90%+ of their inbound leads.

I think Austin does a great job parlaying his previous experience and connections at a unicorn like Ramp into content for his newco. There’s also clear Founder-Content-Market fit, as Austin was his own ICP at one point. Great account to study.

Sorry. Had to. But actually though, organic social has been a major reason why Compound has been at or near capacity in the 14 months since we launched.

We eat our own cooking. Drink our own Kool Aid. Whatever cliche you wanna use.

I post religiously to LinkedIn and X, 5-7x per week. No excuses. I drive that traffic to this newsletter you're reading now. And I wouldn’t be shocked if this newsletter edition drove 2-3+ waitlist sign-ups.

Another OG in the founder-led content space. Chris launched his agency, Refine Labs, back in 2019. He’s scaled it and since exited the operations to focus on his newco, Passetto. That was done largely on the back of LinkedIn and podcast content—with Chris as the figurehead.

When studying Chris’ account, notice how he repurposes podcast content for maximum engagement. He picks the best clip from his most recent episode. He makes sure the copy is fleshed out, and the audience can either read OR watch. He’s not afraid to get into polarizing topics but has the data to back it up. Masterclass.

Peep runs a B2B marketer research platform called Wynter. He also has a LinkedIn audience of 66K+ followers.

I love how heavily he leans on Wynter’s own research in his social content. Check out this example. He also keeps his content hyper-focused on his niche: B2B messaging and positioning. This has helped him become the go-to resource for his ICP.

Jimmy has been running the ‘David vs Goliath’ playbook on social to perfection, positioning Sendlane firmly against Klaviyo (the ecomm ESP incumbent). Great example of going after a much larger company in your category, in an intentional way.

This ‘beef marketing’ has allowed Sendlane to pick up a ton of traction in the Shopify ecosystem on LinkedIn and X.

Compound worked with Jimmy in the early days of his founder-led content motion to help stand it up—great to see him continue to run with it.

A few themes.

If you look across these examples, and most of the founder-led content folks who are winning, you’ll notice a few common strategies:

  1. LinkedIn and X are the main platforms for B2B founders like you.

  2. Relentless focus on consistency. Founder-led content should hit the timeline ~5x per week. No, it’s not to often. Look at Adam. Look at Andrew. Look at Jimmy. Look at anyone on this list. Frequency is a tool.

  3. The best founders also reuse winning angles. Again, “being repetitive” is a myth. Why would you not lean into a topic that your know works. Silly.

  4. Don’t be afraid to be polarizing. You don’t need to take Adam’s playbook and come at 6Sense or Jimmy’s and come at Klaviyo. But you should have a point of view you believe in. If your content is for everyone, it’s for nobody.

  5. ‘Building in public’ and documenting your journey can work, when done well. Check out this guide I wrote on ‘building in public.’

  6. Some of these founders write their own stuff. Some have a team behind them to support content output. Pros and cons to each approach.

A one sentence summary: Consistently publish your unique, potentially polarizing ideas relevant to your ICP on LinkedIn and X in formats that are favored by the algorithms on those platforms.

That’s all I’ve got. The above isn’t an exhaustive list, so I’ll be doing more round ups like this to give you inspiration for your social content.

If this was mildly helpful, I’d appreciate you sharing this in your marketing team’s Slack channel.

Also, if you want to learn how to launch a founder-led content strategy on LinkedIn, check out this 62-minute masterclass I recorded on the topic. It’s free and ungated. Enjoy!

🗃 FILE CABINET

Here’s my favorite marketing and business content I bookmarked this week.

Check these out.

BEFORE YOU GO…

As always, appreciate you allowing me into you inbox every week.

Also. While you’re here. I dropped a 1hr 2min masterclass on how to launch a founder-led LinkedIn strategy. Pretty much revealed our full playbook.

Talk soon,

Tommy Clark

PS: If you want Compound to run a founder-led content motion for you… save a spot on our waitlist here. We’re at capacity right now, but looking to partner with some SaaS startups in May or June.