Name: ThoughtLDR
Date: Oct 24, 2023
Moderated by TechCrunch Editor-at-large Mike Butcher, this year's Cambridge Tech Week, we hosted an event in partnership with The Europas Awards on 'The Power of Thought Leadership', with an incredible line-up of tech visionaries:
Ben Williams, CEO & Co-founder, Loopin
Nick Fellingham, CEO & Co-founder, Condense
Miles Kirby, CEO, Deeptech Labs
Tamara Sword, Founder, ThoughtLDR
The panel discussion uncovered the differences between marketing, PR and "the new kid on the marketing block" thought leadership.
Over 60 founders, tech execs and investors attended our event and heard our panelists share the impact thought leadership has had on their business, why a founder's backstory is their start-up's secret weapon - and what the rise of Generative AI means for marketing, PR and thought leadership.
Summing up the event Mike Butcher said, "Thought leadership is a much bigger subject than I thought to begin with. Selling isn't the same as having ideas and having leadership opinions about something. And I think that's actually really important. It's going to help with {founders} getting into the media and the press, and it's probably a lot more inspiring than a lot of the other approaches they might try. Just selling, just marketing isn't enough and usually I just cut all that stuff out. They've got to have substance, they've got to have authenticity and it's much more likely that will make it into a piece than the alternative."
Watch the full video below for our experts' insights.
Transcript:
Mike Butcher:
It is great to be here at this ThoughtLDR event in partnership with The Europas Awards because these smaller, intimate events are kind of when the magic happens, you get founders and investors and experts in their field like ThoughtLDR, to be able to tease out the subjects that founders and startups face at the moment, especially this year in this era when things have changed so radically.
Topic: What's your definition of Thought Leadership?
Mike Butcher:
I'm going to ask Tamara, first of all, because we were sort of brainstorming the idea for this session. What's your definition of thought leadership?
Tamara Sword:
Thought leadership is really the new kid on the marketing block, right? So many marketers are trying to figure out what is thought leadership? What does it mean for my marketing plan? What does it mean for my business? So let's break it down.
Marketing is your company talking about itself. So you're talking about your technology, your product, your team, your business. PR is slightly different, right? With PR you're trying to get other people to talk about your business and that's fantastic. It gives you great reach and it gives you a sort of independent third party validation for what you do. Super important when you're early stage especially. And then we have thought leadership and thought leadership is different because with thought leadership, you as in you, not your company, talk about the things that your customer cares about, which is their business, their industry, the challenges, the trends, the threats they face in the work that they do. And it's really important because what you're able to do is, you're able to prioritise the problem that you solve in your customer's mind.
Topic: Why Thought Leadership Matters For Investors
Mike Butcher:
Investors as well I think often now, need to get out there and prove their worth, do they not? Miles, from the perspective of an investor.
Miles Kirby:
We've got great founders that are academic engineers and they're excited about the technology, but that doesn't really solve a problem for a customer. I think thought leadership is about really connecting, telling stories and connecting with your customers and showing how you actually solve that problem.
Topic: Thought Leadership Hacks For Technical Founders
Mike Butcher:
I think the founder can get in a very kind of tunnel as it were, about the product, and they're insanely obsessed with the product and kind of forget about how to communicate it.
Nick Fellingham:
When we started this company, obviously it's complex and my background's in engineering and so I have a tendency to steer into talking about the tech side of things. And actually by focusing on storytelling and storytelling to people who are non-technical, I found that not only were customers far more interested, most of them don't care that you have the highest speed algorithms and that you use these neural networks and this infrastructure to power it. We got a lot more interest both from investors but also from customers as well.
So by telling stories in a sort of a non-promotional way and in a way that more talks about where we think the world is going and where we think the industry is going, we're able to attract a lot more interest. Also because you're not being a pushy salesman.
Topic: The Power of your Journey
Mike Butcher:
The storytelling obviously becomes a big feature when you do have a story and a backstory. Ben Williams with Loopin, you've got quite a unique story, haven't you? You're a former Navy commando. So, special forces, you've been in the field, shall we say, and your company, Loopin is very much about leadership, isn't it? So not just thought leadership, but it's leadership inside companies. So if anybody's going to talk about a backstory and a hinterland about a company, you pretty much have.
Ben Williams:
Talking about morale is a big passion of mine. When it's low, it's low. When it's up, it's up. And there's quite negative and positive consequences to both. And not long ago we were in the wrong field with our company and we were looking at the wrong market and concentrating on the wrong thing and none of us felt passionate about the subject.
So when the team at ThoughtLDR started really bringing it out of us, we could express ourselves differently. We could inspire our own team, let alone our customers differently, and it was really impactful and effective for our business.
Topic: How do U.S. and European Pitches Compare?
Mike Butcher:
As someone who's been to the states a lot. I think a lot of North American founders pitch at a very high level and their storytelling can be quite rehearsed, shall we say. And in Europe and the UK, the rehearsal is better than it was 10, 15 years ago and the pitch is better, but there's a few jagged edges here.
Miles Kirby:
I definitely see that difference. And I think a lot of this comes back to storytelling as well, where you go back to the US and I think the level of ambition is often higher. And It's also with any culture as well, it's the filters that someone applies their inner thoughts. And I think with U.S. entrepreneurs, they often are very bullish. They've got a great story, they're going to change the world and I think Europeans generally are a little more conservative and a little more kind of 'oh, we might do something interesting' versus the U.S. who are kind of like 'we're going to change the world'.
Mike Butcher:
I've never heard that. That's a new one on me actually.
Miles Kirby:
That's right.
Topic: Taking the Leap from Marketing to Thought Leadership
Mike Butcher:
Tamara, is there a temptation when you talk to clients and people you interact with in terms of getting them over this hurdle of flipping between PR and marketing and into this kind of more leadership role? Is there a temptation to tell them to diss the opposition?
Tamara Sword:
One of the challenges that we have is that just speaking really frankly, working with early stage particularly, but also with the enterprise clients we have, is moving the needle from marketing to thought leadership because they're just not clear about what that is. So with marketing, people have got their messaging structures and it's all been thought out. With thought leadership, you have to think it out, but you also have to say something different and you have to say it in your own voice as a founder or as a senior executive. And that is a big step for a lot of companies, they really struggle with saying anything that actually has real meaning.
That they're very disruptive technologies that they're offering, but they don't want to say anything disruptive. And that's the hurdle, getting our founders and our senior leadership teams that we work with to get comfortable with being a little bit uncomfortable.
Topic: Thought Leadership & Talent
Mike Butcher:
Getting out in the market and telling your stories. It can punch above perhaps normal marketing, shall we put it that way. But is it any use for attracting talent?
Nick Fellingham:
Customers definitely care, especially if it's an innovative product. We are trying to plot a direction of travel rather than a, here's a thing that we're selling. And understanding the way that the world's going is really important for them. And so, customers definitely care for employees. One of the things that's really hard at any startup is focusing, it's because you can do whatever you want. You can do absolutely anything. You have all roads available to you. And personally, what I've found is that writing more, putting my writing out there, having people online that I don't know that are in the industry critiquing it, is really valuable. And also it helps to focus the company because people understand the reason that we're doing things.
Ben Williams:
Yeah, people buy people and I think when you look at thought leadership as whether it's a customer or attracting talent, people buy into that story of we are here to fix a problem and we're passionate about our problem and we really want to make a difference in the world and we love talking about our problem. Whereas if you're telling them a story and trying to bring them on that story with you, You get a completely different investment from the customer, but equally from those that you lead.
Topic: Thought Leadership & Hot Takes
Mike Butcher:
There must be a temptation to have hot takes on breaking news. So is your advice to go in for the hot take or is that thought leadership or is there something else going on?
Tamara Sword:
Founders are like the Greek heroes of our time, Odysseus and Achilles, right? Everyone is fascinated. Technology's so much part of our lives, we’re fascinated by the people who make it happen, these outliers in our society. And so they have a tremendous power, but they have to use it super wisely. And that takes structure and expertise, advice and support. It's not wise to post too spontaneously, I think with thought leadership because it could go super well, but if you get it wrong, you can literally destroy your company. And I think just this is the big thing that stops people doing it more than anything else is they have an awareness of that.
They know when they post and say something interesting or disruptive that there could be an effect. And it's scary so they're sort of caught in inertia and they don't do anything, which is a shame because thought leadership can be managed and can be done.
Topic: Thought Leadership & Generative AI
Mike Butcher:
Final point, I wanted to tease out before we do a little bit of Q&A is, do we have a view on Generative AI? I mean, really what's going to happen is there is going to be a lot of stuff. Someone says, oh, dear ChatGPT, please write me a 500-word thought leadership piece on SaaS for accounting packages or God knows what and oh, thank you very much, here it comes and there's going to be a lot of this, Isn't there. Any views on this?
Tamara Sword:
ChatGPT and other tools are amazing, fascinating, terrifying, awesome, potentially moving faster than anyone, but at the end of the day, who here really wants to read stuff that's been churned out by a chatbot? I don't want to be that chump, do you? I mean, there's a tsunami of pedestrian takes out there. Companies that would do one crap blog a month are now turning out 10. They're all over LinkedIn. And actually weirdly just that over surplus of nonsense and dry stuff and boring turgid blurb enhances the value of true thought leadership.
Mike's Takeaways
Mike Butcher:
I think the takeaways that I've had from this evening are that actually thought leadership is a much bigger subject than I thought to begin with. I mean, as a journalist, you get pitched things all the time, and I'm looking for founders who have something to say and it's clear that a lot of them don't really think about the kinds of messaging they want to get across. They kind of sell, do a lot of selling. And selling isn't really the same as having ideas and having leadership opinions about something. And I think that's actually really important. It's going to help with them getting into the media and the press, and it's probably a lot more inspiring than a lot of the other approaches that they might try. Just selling. Just marketing isn't enough, and usually, I just cut all that stuff out. They've got to have substance, they've got to have authenticity, and it's much more likely that will make it into a piece than the alternative.