We read to know we are not alone.
—C.S. Lewis
A word after a word after a word is power.
—Margaret Atwood
Above: There is more worth in words than you know.
Every great company begins as a story.
Before it sells anything, it has to explain what it does, why it matters, and how individuals can get involved. Like most things, this is simple but not easy.
When Palantir Technologies‘ Alex Karp writes The Technological Republic or Shyam Sankar titles his next book Mobilize they’re not launching books, but pulling the world into their unique gravitational orbit.
Alex Danco once said the real work of a founder is to build a world people want to live in and then build the company that makes it possible.
In his words:
It’s not enough to tell one good story; you have to create an entire world that people can step into, familiarize themselves with, and spend time getting to know. Initially you’ll have to walk them around and show them what’s in your world, but your goal is to familiarize them with your world sufficiently, and motivate them to participate, to the point that they can spend time in your world and build stuff in it without you having to be there all the time.
The world will include many things, but it needs one in particular: purpose. Inside the world, it needs to be really obvious what our goals are, and why we want our push our system into a new state. You fill your world with familiar storylines and tension and characters, highlighted or re-framed compared to the real world, that give everyone a really clear purpose. That’s the main difference between the world you’re going to construct through storytelling, versus the “regular” world it’s based on: your principal job is highlighting the specific storylines and characters that illuminate a coherent purpose.
A book creates the purpose that drives a business’ profit.
A book is the long game in a world that refreshes every three seconds.
It doesn’t beg for attention. It builds authority in silence, compounds in darkness, and (if done well) gets better with age.
Don’t take my word for it, just ask Eric Jorgenson, Sophia Amoruso, Danielle Strachman, Michael Patrick Gibson, Sahil Bloom, James Clear, Ryan Holiday, Luke Burgis, Sahil Lavingia, et cetera.
The difference between a tweet and a tome is the difference between a spark and a star. This explains the success of newer, more innovative publishing houses like Infinite Books and Scribe Media.
The right book shows you are serious and lends both credence and heft by cementing your thoughts. It gives shape to an idea so people can gather around it. It creates the terms and wins the argument before the argument begins.
It earns its keep the old way: slowly, then all at once. Like compound interest. Like trust. Like the acorn that cracks concrete or water that erodes the stone.
Even better, they help you avoid what James Murray calls the “Ad Tax“ — the $$ paid to the internet toll roads of Google, Meta, Amazon, and even your friendly local marketing agency.
Ads evaporate the moment you stop paying. Books just get started when their ink dries.
Every founder thinks they need more reach. One more frictionless funnel or frenzied launch to ramp up AOV and decrease CAC.
What they really need is gravity and there’s nothing more wonderfully dense than a good book.
They work while you sleep.
They speak for you in rooms you’ll never enter.
They turn strangers into believers, believers into advocates, advocates into the infrastructure of your ideas.
The man who does not write has no advantage over the man who cannot write.
Write so that you can outlive not only your campaign, but also your life.
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n.b. I’ve helped founders, F500s, and VCs turn philosophy into strategy, belief into brand, documents into dogma, vapor into something you can set on a shelf. I (ghost)write and edit to put food on my table and a roof above my head. If this prompted an idea or sparked something inside of you, send me a note.
Per my about page, White Noise is a work of experimentation. I view it as a sort of thinking aloud, a stress testing of my nascent ideas. Through it, I hope to sharpen my opinions against the whetstone of other people’s feedback, commentary, and input.
If you want to discuss any of the ideas or musings mentioned above or have any books, papers, or links that you think would be interesting to share on a future edition of White Noise, please reach out to me by replying to this email or following me on Twitter X.
With sincere gratitude,
Tom