Don’t "go direct”

If you're a startup founder thinking about how to tell your company's story, you've heard the same advice from people you respect: "go direct."

The very-online tech community's consensus when it comes to comms is to ignore legacy media, build your own audience, and be 100% authentic (no intermediaries).

This worked for Trump, Elon, and VCs who already had massive audiences (usually built via legacy media) that gave them a platform.

It won’t work for you because:

• Building a massive audience on X is a full time job. Until you have at least >10K+ followers, X is low leverage. Building a large X following when you’re a relative unknown is a full-time practice requiring an intentional approach / 3-6hrs a day dedicated to posting.
• LinkedIn is a closed loop. Founders who don’t have a big X audience defer to LinkedIn, where the problem becomes that your content only spreads within your existing personal / professional networks → i.e. not the people you need to convert.
• You’re more likely to develop brain rot. Always online, opinions shifting with "the current thing” you’re more likely to make erratic business choices or lose conviction in your mission.
• You expose yourself to risk. One wrong take creates legal exposure in regulated spaces. It comes back in due diligence, regulatory scrutiny, enterprise procurement. This works in B2C, but not in highly regulated spaces like fintech / AI (and more mature parts of crypto).

Most importantly: When you tell your own story, you're asking people to trust your claims about yourself. When an external institution validates you, you become part of a larger narrative that exists independently of your self-interest. The burden of proof shifts from you to them.

If you apply to YC, you do so for similar reasons. Their brand opens doors your posts never will.

Besides that, the gatekeepers never go away, they just change.

• Old establishment: TechCrunch, Code Conference, legacy outlets.
• New establishment: TBPN, All-In Summit, VC media platforms

In fact, it’s harder to reach the new gatekeepers because they have their own set of economic incentives… like pumping their own bags. Why would a16z have you on their podcast if you’re competing against one of their portcos?

Don’t let the perverted incentives of billionaires determine whether your startup gets the right kind of visibility.

The loudest proponents of "going direct" already have generational wealth. They're not optimizing for economic outcomes, they're optimizing for winning status games. When the culture stopped celebrating them, their egos got bruised and they decided to support Trump and build their own media and political institutions. Their advice serves their psychological needs, not your business.

Key question to ask yourself:

Do you want to build a generational company or do you want to be a foot soldier in someone else’s culture war?

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