Social Files by Tommy Clark
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Founder-led content is simple, actually.

Founder-led content is simple, actually.

What it really takes to publish consistently, build an audience, and get customers with your social content (without driving yourself crazy).

Tommy Clark
July 15, 2025

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. Spent some time catching up on sleep and reading after a busy week of travel in NYC.

Today, I want to address a common concern founders have about posting content. They see a lot of the people winning online and think they need to be controversial or live like an influencer to make founder-led content work.

Not only is this not true, it’s also actively keeping so many founders from building a meaningful audience of buyers. I'd like to clarify what actually works and put your mind at ease.

Shall we?

🔎 DEEP DIVE

Founder-led content is simple, actually.

What it really takes to publish consistently, build an audience, and get customers with your social content (without driving yourself crazy).

Before I pivoted into content marketing, I spent a few years working in the health and fitness industry.

And let me tell you, there’s no shortage of batshit insane diet and exercise advice. Everyone constantly looks for a quick fix. What’s the one food, one supplement, one workout routine that’s going to get me the beach-body physique of my dreams without the pain of lifting weights and eating well?

There’s always a new trend.

One year, it’s the keto diet. Then it’s intermittent fasting. Celery juice detoxes. Carnivore diet. Hell, someone out there actually popularized the “Potato Diet.” Yes. It’s exactly what you think—a weight loss diet where you eat only potatoes.

The dangerous part about this is that all these kind of work, and it’s easy to fool an uninformed dieter into thinking they’ve found a magic solution to their problems. But the driver of the results wasn’t the ridiculous rules. No. It was the fact that the rules make it simple to adhere to other timeless fundamentals.

Take the Potato Diet, for example. As ridiculous as it seems—and it is ridiculous—the reason a diet like this works is that if you only eat potatoes, you're probably gonna end up eating fewer calories than when you were eating fast food on the daily.

(Stick with me here … promise there’s a marketing takeaway)

Most people who eventually figure out how to do diet and exercise the right way come to understand all these flashy trends are bullshit. Fugazi. What actually works is quite simple.

Pick an exercise modality you enjoy doing. Probably, strength training if your goal is to build a solid physique.
If you want to gain muscle, eat more calories than you burn. If you want to lose fat, do the opposite.
Eat enough protein to support muscle growth. Probably 1g per pound of body weight.
Stick to mostly whole foods versus ultra-processed stuff.
Follow a diet and exercise plan you enjoy, because that makes nailing these other principles far easier.

If you complete these habits consistently, you’ll end up in pretty damn good shape without driving yourself crazy. Simple. Effective. But also quite boring and monotonous.

Now, you're probably thinking, “Tommy, I signed up for this newsletter for marketing insights, not dieting advice. What’s the point?”

Well, content marketing follows a similar pattern.

There’s so much terrible advice—and false examples—on the timeline. Everyone is looking for the ‘go-viral-now’ button that unlocks distribution without the effort.

Sometimes, it even seems like someone has found the elusive button. Cluely, for example, has been going viral nonstop on tech Twitter for their controversial “cheat on everything” messaging, and recently closed a round led by a16z. The marketing strategy leans super heavy into controversy and attention at all costs.

Then you’ve got the legions of 19-year-old founder clones who all do ‘day-in-the-life’ vlog content about their experience in YC or scaling an AI wrapper to $20K MRR. It’s just another variant of the Miami info guru lifestyle content, but for slightly awkward SF tech bros. Sorry not sorry.

Oh, and don’t get me started on people who pay for LinkedIn engagement pods. Do better.

All this to say, it’s easy to become disillusioned and overwhelmed with the state of content marketing in 2025. The loudest companies on the timeline can make it seem that there’s only one, icky way to play the game.

If you look at ‘vanity metrics’ in the short-term, you might consider these successes.

It can be easy to feel like you have to play the game if you want any chance of getting customers with content. Unfortunately, this makes a lot of founders check out of marketing entirely for fear of being cringe.

But I have good news. The unhinged marketing and manufactured controversy are all flash.

And look, for a few companies, this approach can work. This tends to be the case when the founder enjoys being controversial. Cluely is an example of this. From what I can tell, Roy Lee enjoys this approach. He launched the company off the back of getting kicked out from Columbia.

As crazy as the playbook is, it seems to be authentic to the founder. So it works! For him.

But…if a more cerebral, introverted founder tried to adopt Cluely’s approach to content, I think they would end up in an insane asylum by the end of the quarter. I know I would.

Again, you don’t need to opt in to this specific brand of marketing. Like fitness, once you’ve been in content marketing for long enough, you realize that there are a handful of timeless fundamentals that just work for the vast majority of companies.

Pick a platform where your target buyer hangs out and commit to a regular posting cadence to get in front of your target audience often (if you're in B2B tech, I’d recommend 5x per week on LinkedIn).
Make it your goal to become the go-to resource for your ICP through thoughtful content with a unique point of view.
Focus most of your time on the topic selection and hooks. Plenty of content gets buried under a bad hook.
Create content in formats that you enjoy. If you are a writer, then write! If you are good on camera, then lean into video!
Similarly, create in a tone that is authentic to you. If you actually are more abrasive and controversial, do it! This is why Cluely is actually working. But if you're more introverted and cerebral, create pieces that show that. You’ll never stay consistent if there is a dissonance between your content persona and your true self.
Spend some time each day engaging with others on the platform. Not hours…just enough to get in front of other people in your niche without relying on an algorithm.

This is the “just lift heavy and eat the right amount of whole foods” version of content marketing. It takes a little longer. It’s not as flashy—boring, even. But it works. And it lasts.

I kid you not, if you do this consistently, you'll be ahead of 95% of companies on social.

Controversy can be a part of this. Lifestyle content can be, too, if that’s your thing. But neither has to be. Far more important is the authenticity of the content to the founder.

Your goal with a founder-led content strategy: nail the fundamental principles of content marketing in a way that is authentic and enjoyable to you as the founder.

Hope this helps.

And if you want a roadmap for how to nail the fundamentals of founder-led marketing for startups, check out this essay next.

🗃 FILE CABINET

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

Copy This LinkedIn Strategy, It'll Blow Up Your Business by Tommy Clark 🎥
Gonna be real, I just haven’t been consuming as much ‘marketing’ content lately. If you need a great book to read, check out The Sun Eater series by Christopher Ruocchio. I’m on Book 4, Kingdom of Death.

Check these out.

BEFORE YOU GO…

As always, thanks for allowing me into your email inbox every week.