Earned exposure, SEO & AI search
What should founder-led content be about?
Short answer
What actually happened: what you're building, what broke, what worked, what a customer did this week, and what you learned. Founder-led content is your real thinking turned into good writing. It doubles as dated proof of work, which is exactly what search engines, AI assistants and future customers trust.
I was embarrassingly quiet on content for a long time, and it was self-imposed. I didn't want to promote my own products publicly until I knew they worked.
The morning both of them were working, I committed to posting at least one piece of content a day.
What should you actually post about?
Real activity. My list:
- What I'm building right now
- What happened this week
- Customer outcomes
- Things that broke, and things that worked
- Experiments and what they showed
- Mistakes
- Useful work my AI agents did
The goal is my thinking expressed through excellent writing. Copying how I used to write isn't the goal. AI can help with the writing. It can't supply what happened. See the 10-80-10 rule.
Why does building in public work?
Because it's proof of work, and proof of work is dated.
"In two or three years when everybody claims they're good at this, you can say, well, look at what I was talking about in 2026."
It also brings in business before you ask for it. Two inbound leads found me through content I'd already posted, before the YouTube channel I'd planned even launched. To me that's the content-to-clients flywheel working.
Does a founder need a personal website?
I think so, and I'm rebuilding mine as the first test case. My goal is a site that works for humans and, almost more importantly, for AI. It connects to my business pages and my regional media brand, so the proof of the local-media work sits under one umbrella.
The reasoning is simple: before I'd sell this kind of system to anyone, I should be my own case study. This site's public shipping log, built from real git history, and this answer library are part of that.
Why don't small businesses do this already?
Historically they've done very little of it. That gap is the opportunity. For a local insurance agent, estate planner or roofer, the business is built on a person, and that person's real expertise is what's worth showing. Bringing founder-led content to them is a big part of what I mean by earned exposure, and my own company, 8th Replay, uses it on itself first.
What should you avoid?
- Posting about things that don't work yet as if they do. That's why I waited.
- Generic advice anyone could have written.
- Invented results. Real numbers, labeled honestly, or nothing.
Answered by TJ Larkin. From TJ Larkin's notes on his personal and company context and team calls in 2026. Last updated .