David Sacks demonstrates how the best startup founders talk about causes much bigger than themselves or the companies they're building. Google was about organizing the world's information. Tesla was about moving the world to sustainability, not just selling cars. These startup leaders saw a world that they wanted to create and built a movement around their visions. Sacks shows us how great startup products aren't just selling a product that solves an immediate problem; they are selling a vision of a better world that people can buy into. By doing this, they create MOVEMENTS; not just businesses.
David Sacks:
To make your startup interesting to the world, it has to be a movement for change. And I think the best startups are movements for change. They diagnose something that's wrong with the world, as it stands today, and they want to move the world to a better place. And so they're constantly evangelizing for the change they want to make.
Speaker 2:
David Sacks makes a key point that is a vital lesson of greatness. If you want to build a great startup, you need to build a movement. Let's talk about why. Hi, welcome to Starting Greatness, podcast dedicated to ambitious founders who want to go from nothing to awesome, super fast. When you're a startup founder, you have to channel your inner James Bond, your MacGyver, your Wonder Woman. I'm going to help you win by curating the lessons of the super performers, but before they were successful. So without further ado.
Speaker 3:
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Speaker 2:
Let's get started. In my interview with David Sacks, he shared that the best startup founders always talk about causes much larger than themselves or even the companies they're building. Google was about organizing the world's information. Salesforce was about replacing outdated on-prem software with a move to the cloud. Tesla was about moving the world to sustainability, not just selling cars. These startup leaders saw a world that they wanted to create and built a movement around their visions. They understood they weren't just selling a product that solved an immediate problem, they were selling a vision of a better world that people could buy into. Before we go further, I want to reiterate something we've talked about on Starting Greatness before. A startup is not a company, it's a team of founders with an insight and a breakthrough idea that can change the rules as well as the future.
But it's not enough to create a future breakthrough product, you have to move people to that different future long before you become a company. The key is for founders to discover who believes their secret and enlist them on a call to adventure to help them start a movement. Early on, it will be challenging. Whether they're customers, employees, or investors, most people will disagree with your secret if it is truly a breakthrough insight. But you have to push until you find early true believers to move with you. These people will evangelize your vision, helping you grow your following. They will co-create the future with you long before you have a fully mature product. They need to be so captivated by the vision behind the movement that you are starting, they will buy in before you can completely connect all the dots for them. And as you start to succeed, your movement will become a groundswell that begins to spread at an accelerating rate.
Gradually, your non-consensus view of the future becomes the conventional wisdom. Your startup becomes a company, and you are the dominant category king in a market that is now finally well understood. So what does this mean for you? First, the best startup founders don't just pitch a product, they embody a cause that is bigger than themselves and the startups they are building. In my discussion with David, he points out that when you up-level your point of view this way, you engage people much more powerfully. Ultimately, people join movements because they have a dream about a better future that they want to be part of, not just because they care about the features and benefits of your product. Ideas that move people spread faster, and ideas that spread win. Second, in order to move people, you have to be clear about who's ready to move with you.
This is true of early customers, employees, investors, and anyone you want to enlist as an early true believer. It turns out that founders alone don't create the future, they co-create it with early movers who join their cause. Third and as a related point, it's okay if lots of people don't like your idea at first. Most people should not want to move with you. Why is this? Well, human beings are conditioned to like things. And if everyone likes your idea, it doesn't break far enough away from the present and what they're used to, which means the idea is likely too incremental. Incremental ideas favor incumbents. Startups win when they have a powerful secret about the future that is non-consensus and right, and can deliver that future in a breakthrough new product. I've talked about this in the past with Andy Radcliffe, which I encourage you to go back and listen to if you haven't heard already.
The reality is that a breakthrough product will only first appeal to a subset of people who believe in your secret. This is counterintuitive and hard for many founders to fully internalize. When someone doesn't like your idea, it's tempting to try to sell around their objections or fill in the gaps of what's missing. But this is the wrong path. The better path is to find the subset of people who say, "Where have you been all my life?" And lean into their specific needs while turning them into passionate early true believers. Finally, having the right idea or product or vision about the future is powerful and necessary for starting greatness, but it's not enough. Only ideas that spread organically can win. And for your idea to spread, you must move people to the different future of your design. That's why all great startups are movements.
David Sacks emphasize this frequently in our interview. Every startup can engage in paid marketing, which typically is buying distribution with Google and Facebook ads and the like. But a word of caution, be extra careful when using paid marketing until you've substantiated that you're building a movement organically. Because if you're wrong and you don't have an organic movement building, you'll quickly burn through your runway. To validate if you've got the right product and vision, you should rely on earned marketing. Earned marketing is not a math problem, it's a people problem. It involves knowing what change you want to bring to the world and knowing how to enlist fellow co-conspirators to make your point of view a reality and evangelize your story.
Movements can transform business in almost any field, whether your movement is about helping people share rides in minutes, collaborating to find cures to the biggest diseases, exploring the human brain, or even playing games together. And for listeners who are not business people, you can start greatness too, with the movement to your different future. Elvis Presley started the movement to rock and roll with his songs. Einstein started a movement to better understand how the world works with his theories. And Rosa Parks moved the world on a much needed different path with her courageous stand on a bus in Birmingham, Alabama 65 years ago. So the thought I will leave you is this. How would you describe your startup if you thought of it as a movement and not just a company?
Thanks for listening to this lesson of greatness. If you found this episode insightful, you might also enjoy my interview with Nancy Duarte whose work on storytelling is instrumental for founders who want to start movements. Here's a preview of Nancy's insights.
Nancy Duarte:
Your customer or your audience is always the hero of the story. And so often as an entrepreneur, we're so focused on pushing everything forward, we forget that we're not the central figure. Our customers, our audiences, those are the central figures. And if we don't get them to buy off, we lose.
Speaker 2:
You can find a link to that interview in the notes for this episode, or find it in our archives at greatness.floodgate.com. I appreciate you listening, and I'd love to have you subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, so you don't miss an episode. And if you liked the show, I'd be grateful if you could leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. And until we catch up again, I hope you never let go of your inner power to do great things in whatever matters to you. Thank you for listening.