Compounding Communications

Good communications compound.

Compounding means creating and accumulating things that make your future announcements even stronger. It happens when a company keeps strengthening its position, expanding the audience, and giving people more reasons to support it.

I saw this through our work with Flipper Zero. Its growing social media following and media coverage reinforced each other, opening doors to outlets such as WIRED, The Verge, and Fast Company. Each new story reached people who might then try the device, share what they did with it, or pay attention to our next announcement.

That accumulated reputation helped us defend Flipper when the Canadian government wanted to ban it in 2024. We had the audience, warm media relationships, and coverage showing what people actually used the device for, which allowed the experts to become our allies.

You can think of three pillars:

• Accumulated understanding. It’s easier when people already know what the company is trying to accomplish. Then each announcement can advance that story forward without explaining it again.
• Accumulated credibility. The things you delivered in the past make the future promises more believable. Customers, investors, journalists, and prospective employees can see the proof and are more willing to lend you their attention.
• Accumulated distribution. Your earlier work creates subscribers, advocates, and relationships with people who will help push your future announcements forward.

All your communications choices should improve the conditions for future communications. Even if any standalone launch can produce little to no coverage, on a large scale it can help you create a body of work and establish the credibility.

How do you do this?

Each announcement must work towards the mission

Choose something you want people to believe about the company as your mission, then provide successive reasons to believe it. The majority of the things you announce have to be tailored to this. Nothing is just a feature; everything is part of the mission.

You must show progress against your earlier promises. Growing product, more users, business customers, more revenue, accelerated pace. Even if small at first, the progress itself is what helps people cheer.

The more ambitious the mission is, the better. SpaceX is (or was) about colonizing Mars. Boom is bringing back the supersonic airplane. Not all companies are building cool hardware, but look at Linear: their mission was to make software development feel like a craft again. So every product feature, campaign or manifesto they made was about the quality of software. Great customers and revenue were proof that reinforced the mission.

Eventually, you no longer have to explain the idea because people know. Just like everyone knows Stripe is all about growing the GDP of the internet: they even have a tracker on their website that currently shows that 1.715% of the global GDP runs through them.

When working on a media announcement, ask yourself: what part of your mission does this announcement prove? And if it doesn’t you might have to rethink it.

A continuing story and somewhere people can follow it

Create occasions to communicate between the obvious milestones. You must make progress visible so that people can develop expectations and remember you.

Linear’s weekly changelogs helped early users believe that missing features would arrive. They also supplied screenshots and videos for people following the company before its public launch. beehiiv repeatedly announced features that addressed its early shortcomings. Prospective customers who had previously dismissed it had reasons to reconsider.

Any successful story should create opportunities for continued contact. Sometimes you’re blessed with unexpected attention. Turn that temporary attention into an ongoing relationship.

You should give those interested people a way to stay connected: a newsletter, a founder account with substantive updates, a community, or a product they can try.

Plan where interested people can go next and why they would stay. Even if it’s just the founder’s X account. The relationship needs to remain useful between announcements.

Convert disciples and create allies

Give people beliefs they want to spread and a way to benefit from joining your cause.

Obsidian CEO Steph Ango’s “File over app” argues that digital work should survive the software used to create it. The principle applies to photographs and design files as readily as notes. Someone can agree with it, share it, or write a response without using Obsidian. Its import tools and open formats give supporters concrete evidence that the company acts on that belief. Obsidian also gives people practical reasons to support it. Educators can sell courses, plugin developers can build a reputation, and community awards give their work exposure.

Ask what people might believe strongly enough to advocate for, and what they could gain by helping your product succeed. Give them material to share and recognition for their work. Over time, the company gains people who introduce it to others on their own initiative.

Is it compounding?

Publishing more doesn’t automatically make future work more effective. Look for signs that your earlier work helps:

1. New announcements build on what people already know about the company.
2. Relevant people return because earlier work gave them a reason to follow.
3. Older work keeps generating references, recommendations, and introductions.
4. People respond more readily because previous interactions were useful.
5. Each new piece draws attention back to related work in the archive.

Compounding works both ways. Repeated negative coverage of your company will create an adverse perception that will be almost impossible to shed away (just look at Meta or Flock). The only way to break this cycle even a little is by connecting your company with a specific cause. Palantir or Anduril have many enemies but also a lot of friends who support their vision. The problem with Meta is their public mission of “connecting everyone” is way too abstract to cheer for. I’d be curious to see them adopting something more specific. Shopify’s public messaging is about supporting entrepreneurs; this is exactly what Meta does with targeted ads but they’ve always shied away from this.

Compounding also shows why provocative attention-first marketing is a negative in the long term. Stirring up the controversy means you get the audience that loves the controversy instead of your product. Your company becomes intertwined with controversy. Just look at Cluely with their “cheat at everything” message and where they are right now. Their TikToks are truly funny but I’m not sure the company is successful.

A viral campaign can beat every target and leave you with an audience that will never care about your product. If you judge communications only by what happens during the campaign, you can end up optimizing for the wrong thing. Focus on what will make next launches better.