#1252 Lulu Meservey | Top CEO Advisor Reveals How To Handle Mainstream Media

Lulu Cheng Meservey is the Executive Vice President of Corporate Affairs and Chief Communications Officer at Activision Blizzard. This conversation was recorded at the BUILD Summit in New York. In this conversation, Lulu breaks down how you can cut through the noise and make people care about what you're doing, how to tailor your message to people externally & internally, tactics you can use, how to prepare for a crisis way before it comes, and Lulu breaks down why there is no peace time. ======================= Auradine, a leader in web infrastructure solutions including blockchain, AI, and privacy, has unveiled the world's first 4nm Bitcoin mining systems, featuring breakthrough EnergyTune™ technology, setting new standards in performance and energy efficiency. The Teraflux™ product line from Auradine offers best-in-class performance, efficiency, and total cost of ownership (TCO), positioning it as the optimal choice for Bitcoin mining needs. With EnergyTune™, a patent-pending technology, Auradine's Teraflux™ systems enable rapid demand response and optimal energy usage, fostering a symbiotic relationship with electrical grids, and contributing to sustainable energy practices. Designed and manufactured in the US, Auradine's Teraflux™ product line not only ensures cutting-edge technology but also mitigates supply chain risks and provides increased supply chain resiliency. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.auradine.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for more information the Teraflux bitcoin mining systems. ======================= Get Better Crypto Data: Do you want faster, easier crypto data? Sign up for Velo Data, a new product that we have been working on to solve this problem: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠velowaitlist.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 250,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. The following episode is with Lulu Chang Meservi. She is the Executive Vice President of Corporate Affairs and the Chief Communications Officer at Activision Blizzard. In this conversation, which was recorded during the Build Summit that we held in New York City for 700 founders,

• 0:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Lulu breaks down how you can cut through the noise and make people care about what you're doing, how to tailor your message to people internal or external of your organization, what tactics you can put into practice tomorrow so that you can actually get better at comms and PR, and how to prepare for crisis and edge cases way before they come. One of my favorite comments from Lulu in this episode is that there is no peacetime or wartime. She simply says that there is pre-war and post-war. This conversation is filled with nuggets of how you can become a better communicator and how you can leverage PR to better suit what your mission is and how you can incorporate it into both your corporation and your startup. Here is my conversation with Lulu Chang Meservi.

• 1:30Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 1:55Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:38Anthony Pompliano?

  They have superior uptime, and they leverage a brand-new innovation called Energy Tune that allows miners to dynamically adjust the energy consumption and Bitcoin hash rate based on demand response needs of the electrical grids. Auradine is an ambitious company working on hard problems. I'm really impressed with them, and if you want to check out more, you can go to Auradine.com. That's A-U-R-A-D-I-N-E.com. Go check them out at Auradine.com today. Before we get into this episode, I also want to tell you about a brand-new product called Velo. Velo is faster, easier crypto data. Everyone in the industry is always looking for, what's the price? What's going on in the exchanges? Where are assets flowing or not flowing?

• 3:22Anthony Pompliano?

  How is things like open interest and derivatives actually playing out in the market? Well, that's where Velo comes in. It's faster and easier crypto data. You can go to velowaitlist.com today. Myself and a couple of friends, we invested in the business, we're advising the founder, and we think it's pretty cool. This one is something that keeps me informed on a daily basis, so you should check them out at velowaitlist.com. That's V-E-L-O waitlist.com.

• 3:50Anthony Pompliano?

  So our next guest, Lulu is probably the single greatest person that I know when it comes to communications, whether it is for a startup or a large company. You're gonna have to tell them, what is your official role at Activision Blizzard now?

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, so current day job, I lead corporate affairs and I'm the chief comms officer for Activision Blizzard, the gaming company. Nice to meet you all.

• 4:17Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. So when I talk about comms, everyone starts to fall asleep. I promise you that you are gonna wanna listen because she is going to save your business at some point with what she's about to tell you. We live in this modern age. Why is it important that people take a different approach to communications versus what their PR firm tells them or kind of the traditional path?

• 4:42Speaker 02

  Okay. First of all, thank you for having me here. I got like two or three hours of sleep last night. You guys are like human Red Bulls, so this is good. It's helping. I will start with why you should give a shit about comms at all. Like, why bother with comms? You have a lot of other stuff to do. You have things to build. Don't think of comms as like stale PR, put out a press release, the stuff that you sprinkle on top as a luxury. Think of it as you are incepting the ideas that are going to generate the beliefs in people that are gonna cause them to give you money. Okay, this is, I assume this is a safe space for capitalists. The reason your business exists is to make as much money as you can so that you can go do the things you wanna do. And when people believe certain things, they'll give you money. So, that's, that's how I think about it.

• 5:25Speaker 02

  It's a little bit knuckle draggy, but it's, it's simple. So, the way that comms used to work in the past, some differences. Very centralized, so there was like a group of kinda gatekeeper, tastemaker people who told everybody else what to think. I'm oversimplifying, but there was that. You were usually pretty cozy with media. There was like less media, less chaotic, and you had these longstanding relationships, really favored incumbents. So you would have your PR team, who has been doing this their whole life and been calling the same 10 reporters. And you would usually not be doing something too disruptive. Like, you're announcing a new product or you're acquiring a company, but it's not something that is going against the grain of society's dominant belief right now. And lastly, you're probably working with big budgets and you're spending a lot of money on it.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  Today, totally chaotic landscape, very decentralized. One of the things that we've talked about is that Bitcoin never had a chief comms officer. Like, people just form beliefs seemingly out of the ether. And you will listen to some anonymous schizo on Twitter before you'll listen to the New York Times for a lot of the things that influence your buying behavior, depending on who you are, right? So, very decentralized, coming from a lot of different directions. Press can be very hostile. I'm not like a Balaji, they're always hostile. We've debated this and he wore me out from exhaustion, but I continue to disagree. I don't think it's categorically no press all the time. It is be selective, but press can be very hostile, especially if you're doing something that is threatening to incumbents and to the status quo.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  If you're like, challenging a sacred cow. And then the last thing is, you can't just be throwing away money everywhere. You gotta be really lean and disciplined. Now you have investors who care much more about your financial discipline. And so, just a totally different way to do things. And I'll say one last thing. Comms now is 360, 24/7. So 360 surrounds sound. It's not just what you say. It's not like you make an announcement and then somebody amplifies the announcement. It is the atmospheric perception of you at Homonym and your company. And then the 24/7 is, it's not nine to five business days. So one of the things that I thought Silicon Valley Bank didn't do right was,

• 7:38Speaker 02

  everybody was freaking out, bank runs, sprinting out the door. And they waited until like the next business day. And overnight, the thing, like the wheels came off. So, that's probably the spark notes.

• 7:49Anthony Pompliano?

  So, most people that are in here, they run a startup and everything is, drink the other way. Unless that's yours. Alright, okay. Whatever happens, happens. They're outgunned with the incumbents have more resources, they have full teams. The reporters trust them, etc. From a startup's perspective, how do you cut through the noise? Right? How do you get attention and make people care about what you're doing?

• 8:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, to get people... So, you should think about yourself as sort of an insurgent, right? You don't, you can't rely on the narrative being on your side, the media being on your side, established institutions being on your side. It's all this stuff that pumps in. I think the simplest way to think about this is what I call the Chipotle model. It's not a perfect analogy, so bear with me, but it will help you to remember this. You start with your base. And is it a burrito? Is it a bowl? Like, what is this thing? So for you, it is the facts about your company. What is it you actually want to say? So the mistake is starting with some PR nonsense of like, what is it that I would like to say? And it comes out as empty words. It's like, we are disrupting the cloud-connected future of the block. Like, we've all seen this stuff. Start with the actual substance and the facts.

• 8:57Speaker 02

  Like, what are we talking about here? Is this thing a burrito or a bowl? Or is it Mexican food? What is it? So, OK, we've decided it's a burrito. Here's the facts. Then, choose your protein. And what that means is, the burrito you want, and the burrito you want. You might want a chicken burrito. You might be vegetarian. You both want a burrito, but you want to have one that appeals to you. And so what that looks like for your company narrative is when you're talking to employees, or if you're talking to investors, or if you're talking to customers, or maybe down the road, regulators, you're tailoring it to the stuff that they care about and that is palatable to them. It still has to be a burrito. You can't just make up this whole totally new thing, but it has to be the thing they care about. And then the last thing is the toppings. Do you want the extra guacamole? Like, the thing that makes it interesting.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  So what is it that makes something interesting? Just because it's substantive, factual, and relevant to them doesn't mean that they'll pay attention. The thing that makes it interesting will be if it relates to a news hook, like something that's being talked about in current events, or if it relates to a problem that they have, or if it's coming from somebody that they listen to and trust. So I'll give an example. And I don't think that the Endo guys will mind me using them as a case study. But in the early days, I remember one epic evening of like, five of us on the phone and just type. I think Matt Grimm was like typing the website in real time. And coming up with the narrative looked something like this, which is, what are we? OK, we're a defense technology company. Not we, I'm not there now. What is Endo?

• 10:26Speaker 02

  It's a defense technology company. Because we had toyed with different ways of describing it. So you could describe it as... I remember one draft was, we bring together the best talent. It was like, well, no. What are you, an HR consultancy? No, we're a defense technology company. That's the form factor. That's the burrito, the base of it. Then, the protein, in this case, one of the most important audiences is hiring. So then, the protein is, we're building AI, we're building drones, we're building situational awareness, and you can be part of this because this is going to help make national security stronger. Then, the topping would be the current events, and in that case, it was a bunch of stuff in the news. Google had just had a walkout of employees not wanting to work with the military. People were starting

• 11:11Speaker 02

  to be much more sensitive about US-China AI race. And so, our news hooks were at a time of US and China competition, at a time when national security is more difficult and more important than ever. A lot of people in Silicon Valley are not doing it, and so we are doing it. When you layer those things together, you have, here's the thing you need to know, here's why you should care, and this is the thing that will grab your attention. So, that's the Chipotle model.

• 11:36Anthony Pompliano?

  I forgot to mention one part of Lulu's past roles slash her hobbies. She is, I call her the CEO whisperer. She advises many of the top CEOs in Silicon Valley when good times are starting and when shit goes sideways. She's one of the first phone calls because she doesn't take people's shit and is pretty effective. Personal brand versus company brand. There's a lot of founders that I would talk to, and of course, they come to me and I have to remind them that I don't know what I'm doing. But they'll say, hey, how do I do things on the internet? How do I build an audience on Twitter? How do I get an email list? How do I convince my investors or future investors that I know what I'm talking about because I have expertise in this industry? How much time and energy should be focused

• 12:20Anthony Pompliano?

  on the personal brand versus the company brand? And what does that look like if somebody's starting out today and you're advising them in terms of how do they build the personal brand versus the company brand?

• 12:29Speaker 02

  In the early days, you have to pay a lot of attention to your personal brand because that's the only thing that is a known quantity out in the world. If you just come up with, here's a technology you've never heard of before, and a use case you haven't thought about it before, and a company you've never heard about before, it's hard to get anybody to care, and it's really hard to build credibility. So what will tend to happen is if you're building a tech startup, a lot of times what you're building is pretty sophisticated or esoteric, sometimes it's even confidential, where customers or whoever you're talking to, they cannot trust but verify. They can't verify. There might be forty people in the world that understand what you do. So instead of verifying, they're either going to just ignore and move on with their day, or they're gonna look at you, the founder, as the human mascot of what's happening and

• 13:13Speaker 02

  decide, do they trust you or not? And if they trust you, and if you're credible, then it's like, okay, the company's probably fine. Pom says it's fine, and I know him, so it's fine. I knew nothing about this conference. You're like, hey, you wanna do a conference? I never do conferences, but I know you're doing it. I was like, yeah, it's gonna be great.

• 13:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Fifty-fifty.

• 13:31Speaker 02

  It was a coin toss. I'm still deciding it was good. But you have to be the human embodiment of the company. So if the company is serious, you're going to personally show that you're a serious person. If the company is whimsical, you're whimsical. If the company is really advanced, you have to show your technical credentials. So I would not skimp on this, because it feels like I have a lot of other stuff I could be doing, I could be building a team, I'm building a product. Well, you could also be building the credibility of your company. And just as much as you can run into technical debt, you can run into reputational debt, where you have six months of nobody caring about you, or no track record, and then you suddenly need it, and then you're really behind. So I would not shortchange that.

• 14:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Is there one platform you think is more powerful than the rest?

• 14:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. It depends on the type of company. I think for a lot of startups, Twitter slash X is a good platform, because a lot of VCs are on there, a lot of other founders are on there. But if you're more consumer-y, you probably want an Instagram, you might want a TikTok. If you're really focused on hiring, you wanna be very active on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is super underutilized, because people spend a ton of time on there, their MAUs are really high, but...

• 14:44Speaker 02

  I'm sorry to LinkedIn, 99% of the content is like so and so has a work anniversary and congratulated blah. And so it's actually pretty easy to stand out on LinkedIn, whereas Twitter is more of a gladiatorial fight. And so I would choose where do these people reside intellectually that you're trying to reach. So if you're trying to reach recruits, you know the types of recruits you're trying to reach. Let's say you're looking for like aerospace engineers, you know where they hang out intellectually. So you go to that platform. And then the other consideration is what is the form that shows you off the best? Like I said, in the early days, people are going to look to you, the founder, more than they look to the entity. And so if you are good, so like you are, you pump are good at speaking on the spot, you're engaging, you're high energy, you're funny.

• 15:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Talking shit.

• 15:30Speaker 02

  Talking shit, super useful skill, podcast, Twitter, these are your platforms. Brian Armstrong is very good at clarifying ideas that, you know, he does really good blog posts. Some people are very good on videos. Some people are, you know, Elon was born for Twitter. He would not write probably a very good blog post, but he's very good in the short form. And so figure out the thing that actually shows off your strength.

• 15:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Should you be honest? And what I mean by that is a lot of founders will come to me and say, hey, I don't know what to tweet. I don't know what to post. Should I just say the things I'm actually thinking? Will I get canceled? Or should I like be thoughtful and have somebody write my tweets for me and then I'll just push those ones out?

• 16:10Speaker 02

  If this is, if the topic is mission critical to your company, it is worth dying on that hill. So if you're gonna get canceled, then so be it because someone out there is not gonna cancel you and they're gonna kind of want to come work for you. Like we've seen examples of companies doing something unpopular. Endrill did this, Coinbase did this, where it actually attracted exactly the right kind of talent. We did this at Substack too. So if it actually matters to your company, you absolutely want to put it out there because you want to send a signal to the wrong type of talent, please do not come inside this building. But if it's something that is not mission critical, it's wasted motion. Like you're gonna go out there and spend five hours and like $2,000 of billable hours

• 16:54Speaker 02

  this morning over breakfast arguing with some random over like an issue that doesn't matter to your company? Why? So, so I would say it's either total waste of time or go all the way and don't back down.

• 17:08Anthony Pompliano?

  I know a lot of founders who have either comms teams or they work with PR teams externally. Those folks are usually not very big fans of the insurgent approach. Who runs comms when you have internal teams or external teams?

• 17:26Speaker 02

  Founder runs comms. Founder runs comms. The people in this room, you are the head of comms. It doesn't matter what your title is, you are gonna be the head of comms because you're going to be the human embodiment of the company. You're gonna set the spiritual direction of how much risk to take and what is worth, like the thing from our last exchange on when is it worth dying on a hill? You decide when it's worth dying on a hill. And then you set that doctrine for everyone on your team and they will help you execute. But you can't outsource vision, you can't outsource standing up for your company. Like, everybody should be helping you do it, but you have to be there. And so founder always runs comms. When you become a public company that's run by a professional CEO, you'll have, so like United Airlines has Josh Ernest and he goes on TV just as much as their CEO does or maybe even more.

• 18:11Speaker 02

  He's like their guy. You see other companies, big companies doing the same. But before that, no, it's you.

• 18:16Anthony Pompliano?

  When you're doing this, what are you telling your comms team? Like, how does a founder work with an internal comms team and how should a founder be working with an external PR team? Are you dictating everything they do? Or when do you know to trust their work, their advice, and kind of what their direction is?

• 18:34Speaker 02

  So this is, this is hard. It all depends on finding the right person who matches your judgment. It doesn't mean they have to be perfect. It means they have to match you. And so if your risk aversion is a two out of 10, you don't want to get someone who's an eight out of 10 because you're gonna have to micromanage. You don't want to have to micromanage. So a couple of things to think about when hiring. You want someone in-house who wears the jersey and lives with you full-time and is able to find the opportunities and be full-time watching. This is a full-time job. This is not something that you outsource, especially in the early days. You want your person. And you also want to solve the principal agent problem where someone might be looking out for their own Rolodex

• 19:19Speaker 02

  and their own relationships over your interest. Whereas if they are ride or die part of your company, they're much more likely to burn a bridge if they need to burn a bridge or tap that relationship. Whereas I have found that outside people, they have 20 clients. They're gonna, they're not gonna burn a relationship for you when they have 19 other clients where they need to use that. So start in-house. You don't need to spend a lot. I would start with a more junior person that you can mold. And like, we got someone at Substack who was incredible. She got red-pilled into the culture really fast. I did that and we did that. You can do this, right? You get somebody who has the right hunger and creativity and judgment. And then you can mold them into what you want them to be

• 20:03Speaker 02

  as opposed to finding someone with 15 years of experience. You're paying them three times as much. And then their experience encumbers them with all of the wrong lessons and they start trying to do stuff they did 15 years ago at GE. So junior person, hire early, full-time in-house.

• 20:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Earlier, Keith Raboy talked about every startup is a cult. And what you're basically talking about is indoctrinating people to the cult. How do you talk internally with your employees versus externally to stakeholders?

• 20:31Speaker 02

  Employees always have to come first for two reasons. One is if you've seen startups fail for non like Theranos reasons, it's not because the New York Times wrote a mean article. It is because they crumbled from the inside. It's the same thing like, um, Tocqueville said this about America. Uh, Lincoln has said this about America. That's a better quote, which is that all of the armies and hordes of the world could not come and take a drop of, uh, take a drink from the Mississippi by force. If we're gonna be destroyed, we're gonna destroy ourselves. That's the same of startups. An external problem is inconvenient and internal problem is existential. People who join could be getting a steady salary somewhere else. And they're here with you because they buy into this vision.

• 21:14Speaker 02

  And once that thing is lost, you're in trouble. And what happens with startups?

• 21:21Anthony Pompliano?

  You can just say fucked.

• 21:22Speaker 02

  Thank you. What happens with startups? You might have like a 13 year old founder in this room. I don't know.

• 21:30Anthony Pompliano?

  They've heard the word.

• 21:32Speaker 02

  Fair, yes.

• 21:33Anthony Pompliano?

  There's YouTube.

• 21:34Speaker 02

  When you're going along as a startup, you're much more likely to be turning and pivoting. And so it's actually easier for someone to fall off the wagon at one of these turns, right? If you're, if you are a GE, sorry to pick on it, but you know what you are. Whereas in the early days, there's a lot more volatility. So one, it's important to keep your employees on board and in the tent. Two is external people will want to know what your employees are saying. VCs will want to know what your employees have to say about you. Your customers will want to know what your employees have to say about you. And it can be a really powerful shield fortress and ambassadorial core to have your employees out there advocating, especially for new hires who will go on LinkedIn and Twitter and see what they're saying.

• 22:13Anthony Pompliano?

  What you're basically saying is there's a need to match expectation in reality. The people that you're hiring actually in the, in the hiring process will drastically determine the way you communicate with those people because it's whether you can be honest with them or not, whether you can actually use them to go and spread the message or you're going to have to be convincing them all the time.

• 22:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's why the thing earlier about the beliefs that matter to your mission, you want to be public about that, even if it's unpopular, because it's going to bring the people to you that want that as opposed to they join, they sign up. There's a switcheroo, surprise, we're actually doing this thing that's unpopular and that you hate. And now you're inside the company feeling frustrated. And so you want to align the expectations to attract the right type of people as opposed to ever making them feel like there was a switcheroo.

• 22:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Peace time versus wartime. In the peace time, everyone's chill. Everyone's got a lot of cool things to say. You've been in some of the real amazing.

• 23:09Speaker 02

  I'm sick like you.

• 23:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Calm wars over the last like three or four years, whether either directly or you've been advising people who are facing the mob.

• 23:19Speaker 02

  We went through this together at Substack. We were in that same chapter, Bob.

• 23:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Maybe, I don't know how much you can share, but like maybe pick one of the examples of during a wartime, kind of the thought process, like, when do you realize, oh shit, the mob is coming for us, or we've made a mistake, or like, you know, we're transitioning from peacetime to wartime? And then what is that process?

• 23:42Speaker 02

  So one thing that everybody in this room needs to know, and like, put down your phone and then etch this into your brain and then go about your day. But this is the one thing you need to know. There is no peacetime. There is no peacetime. There's a great book called Once an Eagle that is recommended by a lot of high-ranking military officers. And at the beginning of the book, before the book starts, it says, "There is no peacetime. There is pre-war or post-war." And we don't have to live on edge all the time. But what it means is, just like a country has to maintain combat readiness, you have to maintain combat readiness. And so for a country, what that looks like is, you have your intelligence networks,

• 24:25Speaker 02

  you have a clear chain of command, you have to have your equipment and materials up to date and well-maintained, and people have to be trained. And you can't, you know, Pearl Harbor happens, you can't pull these things together fast enough to respond effectively. For a company, what that means is, your intelligence networks are your monitoring, are your tracking, you should always be listening, you should have someone, whoever's doing this for you should be full-time, monitoring, tracking what people are saying. They should feel the atmospheric pressure going up or down and be able to tell you if trouble's on the way. They should be reading the room constantly. So with Substack, for example, with a lot of the free speech debates accelerating, we saw that coming because we were tracking it very, very closely.

• 25:10Speaker 02

  It wasn't like the New York Times calls and then you suddenly scramble to respond. So that's one thing. It's like your intelligence networks are your tracking and monitoring. Your chain of command is going to be, what is your approval? What are your approval settings? Who has what prerogatives and permissions? And when do you have to wake the CEO? If you don't know that, it's going to be a total cluster when something actually hits. Your materials are going to be your website, your social media. These things can't be just having, you know, cobwebs and dust all over them. And then suddenly you pop up and start talking. People are going to be like, what are you? Are you in a crisis? Why are you doing this? You have to keep that stuff warm. Your readiness for your people, like your training readiness, means that you should probably

• 25:54Speaker 02

  run tabletop exercises. You should probably do crisis simulations. I used to do this stuff all the time and it just keeps you sharp. But also your people need to know who they can call and how you do things quickly and when to escalate. And then the last thing is you need alliances. So like as a nation state, you would know, okay, 9/11 hits, NATO Article 5. We're part of NATO. We know whom to call. We know whom to count on. If you are a company and something really serious happens, who are your allies? You're not going to start with a blank sheet of paper. You have to have, and I would, I do this in a Google Sheets, like it's not complex. Have your allies on there and then keep them warm on an ongoing basis. A lot of that is going to be, again, you as the founder.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  But if you have all of this in place, then you can, okay, suddenly it's DEFCON 1. You can push the button and go.

• 26:43Anthony Pompliano?

  So you feel that atmospheric pressure rising, shit's on the way. Front run it or let the hit piece, let the pressure come and then deal with it?

• 26:54Speaker 02

  There's two ways you can do this. One is if you know it's going to be bad. And again, your intelligence networks will tell you, your allies might tip you off. You'll know already what issues are mission critical to you, right? So you should be able to know how bad this could be, especially if you've done a mapping exercise of who's actually influential in your space and we talk about that. But you need to gauge how bad it's going to be. If it's going to be really, really bad. You should front run it. You should get ahead of it. You should put out the first version of what happened. And it doesn't have to be glossing over everything. It can be, "We messed up and here's how." But it should be your version of the story, and it should

• 27:37Speaker 02

  be true. In international treaties, whoever drafts the first treaty is in a position of enormous power because you're setting the expectations. So you can do that. You can also, sorry, I'm like taking a medicine that's making me cough. You can also start calling your allies and giving them a heads up so that they hear it from you and that they're not seeing it from somewhere else and getting really shocked. And then, of course, again, keeping your employees under the tent. You have to let your employees know what's going on. Sometimes there's legal reasons why there's limits to what you can say and you have to respect that. But employees should not be finding out major news about their own company and this mission they've signed on to and this cult that they've joined

• 28:19Speaker 02

  through the press. So if it's serious, you got to front run. If it's either not that serious or you're not sure it might pass, you could just wait for it to pass. Founder called Gina and I were talking about this, where we think people are looking, staring at us all the time. In fact, the reality is that people do not give a shit about you. Like, they're thinking about other things. They're not paying attention most of the time. We have the illusion of transparency, which is like, "The thing that I'm thinking about is what everybody's thinking about." No. And so, most of the time, or a lot of the time, they're just thinking about other stuff. They're not even going to pay attention to this thing that you consider crisis. And then the last thing you can do is, if it's

• 28:56Speaker 02

  really not serious, take it and use it to recruit. "We're being attacked for this thing that is unpopular and people are mad at us for it, but we think it's right. We're the underdogs here. Join us. We need help. This thing that is right is being attacked. Come and join the mission."

• 29:15Anthony Pompliano?

  So you invented a response to a reporter that I would love for every single founder in this audience to make it popular. A reporter called you and asked you for a comment while you were at Substack, and you responded with what?

• 29:30Speaker 02

  We were on the phone. The reporter called, and the article was not going to be flattering, and they asked for a comment. And it'll be tempting to say no comment because it's scary and negative. And my comment was www.substack.com/jobs.

• 29:46Speaker 02

  And

• 29:47Anthony Pompliano?

  And they printed it.

• 29:48Speaker 02

  And I had to like, I had to like, spell it out word for word. I was like, I want, I want my comment to be a link. He's like, it's against our policy. We can't do that. And I was like, okay, here's my comment. Are you right? W? W? And then he went to his editors and was verbatim what I had said, so they, so they ran it. But they very spitefully did not hyperlink.

• 30:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, of course. But to your point, there was a negative thing coming and part of the story coming out of that as people read it, it went viral online and everyone was like, are you fucking kidding me? The comms person literally put their job link as their comment and a bunch of people went and checked out the job link.

• 30:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:24Anthony Pompliano?

  When you're dealing with the reporters, what are best practices? And I think that it's important to call out, the reporters, as you said, are not always bad. They're not always coming for you. They can be incredibly helpful.

• 30:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:34Anthony Pompliano?

  If you kind of do the right work, talk to the right person.

• 30:37Speaker 02

  Or they're bad.

• 30:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Or they're bad, yeah.

• 30:40Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you go into a conversation, maybe where you don't know, is this reporter going to be helpful? Or could they potentially, you know, be fishing for information they're going to use against us? And what are some of the best practices there?

• 30:50Speaker 02

  Okay, so a healthy relationship with the press is like a healthy relationship with a person. It's healthy if you don't need that person and depend on that person to be whole, right? It's healthy if you are in a good place and in a healthy place and they are, you know, they make you happy and you have a good time together, but it's not that you need them, otherwise you're incomplete. It's my view. That's how it is with the press. If you are dependent on them and you need them, it's not going to go well. One, they're going to have you over a barrel. You're not going to have leverage. But two, that desperation will come through and you're not going to be able to maneuver as much as you need to. So the first thing is have your own channels.

• 31:33Speaker 02

  You should have direct relationships with all the people you're talking to. You should have very close relationships with all your allies. The press should be a nice to have, not a must have. So now you have more room to maneuver. You can burn a bridge if you need to. You can pitch them if you need to. And so when you're dealing with them, the first thing is to think about, when do I need it? And then who do I need? There are times when you don't need press. It's wasted motion. You're wasting their time, you're wasting your time. For example, if you just need to get to recruits, put out a call for recruits. You may or may not need to find the people who are reading Wired that day. Uh, the second thing is you have to be really judicious about whom you're approaching,

• 32:16Speaker 02

  not just to spare your time, but because anybody can be a writer now, like anybody can be a member of the media now. There's no, it's kind of like comms, actually. There's no real barrier to entry. There's no real quality control. You don't have to pass the bar. And so you have to take your time, not just look at, oh, they work for X publication and this is their beat. In the olden days, it would be they work for X publication and this is their beat, therefore they're relevant. In the now times, it is, I'm gonna scroll through six months of their history to see what they've said about these topics, if they're gonna be hostile, or if they're friendly, or if they're just neutral and we're not looking for a puff piece, we just care about the facts and so do they. So, okay, so vet

• 32:57Speaker 02

  them and then reach out to them when you don't need anything. If it's for a pitch, your pitch will be more effective if you have had some exchanges with them before you go asking for something. Or if it's for defense or active defense and you're in trouble, then you're, uh, same thing, like you're standing up for yourself is gonna be a lot more effective if you are not reaching out to them for the first time.

• 33:21Anthony Pompliano?

  The only other thing I would add is you're on the record 100% of the time.

• 33:24Speaker 02

  Always. Your, everything is on the record. Um, what you order for lunch is on the record, what your face looks like, you're hemming and hawing, the inside of your house, like everything is on the record all the time. And if you want it not to be, you have to, you have to get affirmative consent. You have to get them to say, this is off the record and it has to come before. So this is like how Anthony Scaramucci topped off his, what, 10th day in office or 11th day in office, was he called a New Yorker reporter, vented, and he was like, by the way, that was all off the record. The guy was like, no, it's actually not. No, thank you. And so, always on the record.

• 34:02Anthony Pompliano?

  So, in these situations, um, you and I have talked many times before, but he just put on probably one of the all-star displays of, uh, understanding of the internet and, uh, comms defenses, Dave Portnoy.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Some people don't like him, some people love him, whatever your feelings are. Uh, he sniffed out that the Washington Post was about to write a hit piece on him. And he took it to the extreme where he got the cell phone number for the reporter, called them, turned on the video camera, and recorded the conversation, told them, I'm recording this conversation. And then pretty much like out-interneted the reporter.

• 34:39Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't expect founders to turn on the video camera, call the reporter and be like, "Hey, scumbag," right? Which basically what he did. But what can they do, right? How do you... because he was front-running the story, he was kind of taking a defensive situation, turning it into an offensive situation. He was able to take the air out of that story and almost portray himself as a victim. Like, he played it very well. But in the average story, like, what is that playbook for a founder when they get winded this and they're approaching a reporter?

• 35:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. Two ways in which most of us are not Dave Portnoy. He makes content for a living. So in a situation like this, he kind of wins either way. And then also, he has been accused of all sorts of things many times before, and he's come through it and it's been defanged. And it's sort of like, if you've been... it's like getting an inoculating shot, right? You get a little bit of the virus so that when you get the real virus, or like, you get a little bit of snake venom and then it doesn't hurt you as much the next time you're bitten by the same snake. He has had that. So, for him, this really worked. I would not try to, like, go and pull a Dave Portnoy if you're not in that situation. But there are some people in that situation, you know, like, Rogan could do a Dave Portnoy. But if you are facing an accusation that has not been aired before,

• 35:53Speaker 02

  and you are not always in the public eye, it will feel and look artificial to suddenly insert yourself in the public eye with something way more aggressive than you've ever done before, on some accusation that no one's ever heard about. It's just gonna be like, what? And you will Barbra Streisand- effect yourself really, really badly. And so, for most people, what active defense looks like, like your version of this, will be that you front-run all the people that they would hear about this from, and then you give the... give your side of the story, but not in a directly confrontational manner with them. Like, you don't need to give airtime to this reporter. You either explain publicly, or you just explain it a targeted way to the people who would actually care.

• 36:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Everyone's parents in here, hopefully, taught them to apologize at some point?

• 36:42Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 36:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Should you ever apologize publicly?

• 36:46Speaker 02

  I think you should. If it's insincere, don't do it. If it's like you said something that is unpopular and you actually mean it and you believe in, you're trying to get canceled, don't, because then you're being fake. It's not about whether you're apologizing or whether you're not apologizing. It's about whether you're being real or fake. And if you are real, you can be really apologizing, or you can be really standing by your guns, or you could be fake apologizing or fake standing by your guns. So I would think about it like, is this authentic, or is it not? You can apologize or not apologize. I don't have a rule for it.

• 37:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Memes. I always say that memes run the world now. Memes are the message.

• 37:24Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 37:25Anthony Pompliano?

  What is a good meme from a comms strategy standpoint, and how do you employ them?

• 37:31Speaker 02

  Timing matters a lot. Like, you miss the window by eight hours and the whole thing could just be irrelevant. So if you're gonna do it, do it. The thing that makes for a really good meme, in my opinion, is you let, it has to be a template for the other person to project their views and their opinions. Nobody is interested in free marketing for brand. Like, nobody is interested in spending time making content for you to promote your company. Even your friends are not interested in doing that. People are interested in promoting themselves, or their views, or signaling something about themselves. And so a good

• 38:11Speaker 02

  meme is where you give them a template and then let it be about them. And also, ideally, it's like a very eye-catching visual. People are scrolling and they actually see it. You get boosted in the algo. Picture is better than video. So eye-catching, picture that maybe has emotional resonance, or is just really funny, or is absurd, and then invites people to use that as a vehicle for their opinion or view or standpoint.

• 38:40Anthony Pompliano?

  The last thing is conversating with regulators. Obviously, you have a lot of experience with that right now. For those that don't know, Activision Blizzard is taking it to regulators, trying to get things approved. So far, so good. It appears from the outside. How does comms change when you're talking to a regulator, whether it's a local regulator, a national regulator, or things that just involve the law more generally?

• 39:07Speaker 02

  Well, there's more rules. So you actually have to know like where the red lines are. So if you're dealing with quiet periods, if you're dealing with all the rules around an IPO, for example, if you're going through earnings, there are certain things that you absolutely have to do. So you start there. But then it's kind of the same thing is what do they care about? What do they want to be able to represent to their bosses and their constituents? What is it that's really at stake? So kind of the same principles. I would say, though, that now, again, talking about modern comms, you're able to galvanize and shape public opinion in a way, more directly, in a way that can influence the environment

• 39:51Speaker 02

  for debate more than you could before. So there's like the closed-door strategy, but then there's also the movement-building strategy, which is a lot more long-term.

• 40:02Anthony Pompliano?

  My actual last question. When I was at Facebook, there was a reporter who will go unnamed, who used to get exclusives. And this specific reporter would be invited down to Menlo Park, and we would set them up in a really nice conference room, and there would be food and drinks and anything that they wanted. And then we would come in, and people on the team who were launching a product would do like a whole whiz-bang presentation. And somehow the reports from this reporter were always really positive. Shocker. And that person kept getting lots of scoops and exclusives and all of this.

• 40:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Facebook can do that. Facebook can call up a reporter and say, hey, we're Facebook. We would like to work with you. How does a startup, specifically a pre-seed, seed, maybe even a Series A company that is starting to grow, is starting to think about this stuff, but doesn't have the cachet of a Facebook, how do they get the equivalent and start to build a relationship with the reporter and even get them to come visit and really kind of try to win friends when it comes to mainstream media?

• 41:07Speaker 02

  I would look for startup reporters. There's a lot of scrappy, young reporters who are at the same stage of their career as you are in the stage of your company, and you can kind of come up together. So it's somebody who does not have a 10-year relationship with Facebook that they keep going back to. It's somebody who is more...

• 41:30Speaker 02

  In a position of needing to develop their own sources and uncover new stories. And so if they write on this platform, they're getting the same benefit of the platform as someone who's been there longer. Sometimes if they're younger, they might even have a bigger social following. And you can approach them in a couple of different ways. One is you can just offer them a briefing on some topic, like make them smart about something and give them a reason to be interested in the relationship. If you say, "I'm a person you've never heard of talking about a business, you've never heard of a company, you've never heard of..." Not interesting, especially if it's "And I have a pitch for you." But if it is "You are covering this topic, I have some insider information about this

• 42:10Speaker 02

  topic that is going to help your career by making your coverage better, smarter, and faster than your competitors," then they're more likely to be incented to take the call. And if you start out that way, then you can develop the trust and the credibility. And then over time, when you have something to announce, you can announce it. But the one thing that is a common theme through a lot of what we've been talking about is people don't care. People just don't care. And it is not build it and they will come. It is you have to build the API. You have to give them my...I don't know if this is a good analogy, but I use it a lot.

• 42:51Speaker 02

  You have to give them the gateway drug to make them care. And so, an example that I think is really good of this is Kamala Harris, who is running for Senate. Put aside like whether you agree with anybody's views, it's just this is good comms. When Kamala Harris was running for Senate, she said this thing that was like, "If you care about national defense, you should care about middle school education." It's really hard in this country to get people to care about K-12 education if they're not moms or something. And a lot of people care about security. Well, did you know that if you don't have a 10th grade reading level, you can't join the Army because you can't read the Army manual? And so anybody who cares about national security should care about middle school reading

• 43:36Speaker 02

  standards. And that's the thing that you have to do with everybody all the time. It's for a long time, assume that they do not care what you're doing, they don't care that you just raised a mat around, you have more money in the bank, congratulations. They don't care. What they care about is the thing that is in the news, or the problem that's afflicting them, or the thing that really has them worked up. And it's your job constantly to find the bridge or the gateway drug that's going to tie the thing they already care about to your thing. So it's the same thing if you're talking to a young reporter. They care about their career, and they care about getting scoops, and they care about credibility and introductions. So that's what you go and offer them. And then your story and your pitch is kind of the thing that you sneak in on the side.

• 44:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Don't get mad at me, but Lulu's gonna leave shortly after this. I highly suggest you guys talk to her, get the get out of jail free card from her so that when shit hits the fan, you can call her. I've seen her do it multiple times. She's incredibly effective at it. So I appreciate you coming.

• 44:35Speaker 02

  Thank you. Pom, can we do one thing?

• 44:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh oh, yeah.

• 44:38Speaker 02

  We talk a lot about comms, and we picture it as like writing a blog post or tweeting or doing a video or something. It, comms is your facial expression, your body language, how you look, how you dress. It's every, I mean, we can, anybody who wants to talk about this, we can talk about this. But when you're wearing a lower cut suit, it has a different psychological message from where, when you're wearing a higher button suit. You have more ventral display, ventral display. You're telling someone if you can be trusted, whether you're wearing blue or white, pattern or solid. There's even, I won't do this as a demo because Polino will get mad. But you can, the way you do eye contact, if you're looking here versus here versus here, it can signal friendship versus professionalism versus romantic interest. I mean, all of this is your communications

• 45:23Speaker 02

  as you go through life. So I'm sorry to say it, but you are always on as the founder in everything that you do, from how you dress, how you talk, and even where you look at people. So that, that is comms. It's not just the blog post.

• 45:35Anthony Pompliano?

  I appreciate you taking the time to do this. Lulu Mesvernia, everyone.

• 45:39Speaker 02

  Thank you. Thank you, Pom.