Pitch Your Fellow Founder
How Imagine AI leveraged founder-created media to build brand awareness
When I first moved to San Francisco, I regularly attended startup launch parties. It was the golden era of startup growth. A time when investors said things like, “Don’t worry about how you’ll monetize,” and “Spending $50,000 on a launch party is worth it.”
One of these parties was on the roof of an office building to celebrate the launch of MinoMonsters, a now-defunct startup.
Minutes after I arrived, a woman ran up to me, opened her phone, and showed me her notes app that read: Find Lindsay Wiese.
(That was my pre-marriage identity.)
It felt like fate.
She and her boyfriend had both gone to Ohio State and learned two other Ohio Staters—Lindsay Wiese and Ryan Amos—had just moved to San Francisco.
Her boyfriend (now husband) was Jacob Eiting. Today, he’s the cofounder and CEO of RevenueCat.
That year, we spent a lot of time together, and I came to know Jacob as gregarious, deeply curious, and genuinely energized by talking to people. Which is why it’s no surprise that RevenueCat now runs Sub Club, a podcast Jacob hosts with David Barnard.
I reference Sub Club often in office hours with founders when we discuss founder-led marketing—the idea that a founder’s voice, perspective, and curiosity is the most credible distribution channel for a startup.
Founders are constantly tempted to copy what’s working for someone else. A podcast. A newsletter. A TikTok strategy. But not every channel plays to every founder’s strengths, and choosing the wrong one leads to burnout.
Jacob is my go-to example of what does work.
The subject matter focuses on growth and monetization, which is relevant to RevenueCat’s target audience; and the channel, a podcast, lends itself to Jacob’s personality, making it sustainable.
And it’s because of founders like Jacob that there are more earned opportunities available to founders today. Take this episode of Sub Club:
Ajay Mehta, the cofounder of Tolan, came on the pod to discuss monetization and character-driven storytelling that cuts through the AI hype. Insight into both subjects benefits Sub Club’s audience, while the appearance builds both Ajay’s personal brand and Tolan’s company brand.
Your fellow founder is the reporter
A masterclass in founder-led marketing comes from David Phillips, the founder and CEO of Fondo. Fondo sells accounting software to startups, and all of its channels publish content that’s relevant to startup founders.
One of those channels is a livestream—called START—on LinkedIn and X every Friday. David goes live from Fondo’s San Francisco office to capture what’s actually happening in the startup ecosystem that week—straight from early-stage founders themselves.
START gives founders a platform to tell their stories: to launch products, announce new features, share funding news, or simply talk through the endlessly interesting (and often chaotic) reality of building a company right now.
For the audience—also founders—it works because it’s useful. It keeps them current on new technology, surfaces tactical lessons from peers building in the same environment, and creates a sense of camaraderie with others who are very much in the middle of it.
There’s a growing number of tech-positive media outlets. But nothing is more tech-positive than a channel created by a founder…
Which is why you should pitch your fellow founders to appear on their digital platforms.
No one is more tech positive than David. (I mean, he once had a founder on START who wanted to steal the moon. I would’ve had probing questions; David had awe.)
Think of your fellow founder as a reporter, but they’re more generous with airtime, optimize for usefulness, and don’t need massive scale to justify coverage.
The story
If you’re a founder launching for the first time or announcing a seed round, there aren’t many traditional media outlets that will cover your news.
Founder-led startup channels are different.
These platforms often care less about scale and more about perspective. They’ll hand over the figurative (and sometimes literal) microphone to early-stage founders who have something interesting to say.
It’s a new iteration of a hype squad, but you still need to bring value.
That usually means one of a few things:
A clear news hook (launching out of stealth, a funding announcement, or early traction that’s genuinely surprising—like a three-month demo waitlist).
A distinct point of view on something happening in the ecosystem (for example: why being a solo founder isn’t the death of a startup).
Or deep expertise that other founders can learn from and apply to their own companies.
Most guests on START fall into one of three buckets.
I suspect David sources many of these guests the same way founders source sales leads: skimming Product Hunt, Launch YC, or Bookface. David is a YC founder himself, so he has access to YC’s private ecosystem Bookface and a constant feed of what’s new.
It was through START that I first heard about Imagine AI, founded by Sky Yang and Neo Lee.
Imagine AI builds AI “clones” for B2B content, and then handles posts, comments, and blogs to drive pipeline.
When they appeared on START, they had:
Just launched on YC channels and already had a three-month waitlist for demos
And were promoting a yacht party for select founders
How to find your angle
Before pitching a founder-led channel, ask yourself:
What’s the news hook?
What cultural shift does this reflect?
What trending story can you plug into?
What’s unique about your founder background?
Do you have a recognizable partner or customer?
Do you have surprising growth or usage data?
Do you have investors with strong name recognition?
Why Imagine AI was coverage-worthy
News hooks: The launch mattered to founders. Founder-led marketing is overwhelming but essential—and a tool that meaningfully accelerates it is worth airtime.
Cultural shift: Founders need to prioritize founder-led marketing. By bringing on two founders who were actively experimenting—and openly sharing what worked—David delivered real education to his audience.
Trending story: The YC yacht party was genuinely buzzy at the time. Hundreds of founders were on the waitlist, which made it culturally relevant (and fun).
Founder background: Sky was the youngest-ever UCSD Student Body President—an uncommon leadership credential for an early-stage founder.
Partnerships: Not applicable here.
Data: Traction was already public on Launch YC (which David likely follows closely):
We launched in mid-July and now serve 30+ paying customers, including 16 YC companies, plus VCs, global franchises, and ghostwriting agencies. We’re seeing 30–70% week-over-week growth.
Investors: Y Combinator
Study founder-led marketing
Since discovering Imagine AI, I’ve added the company to my mental list of founder-led marketing done right. (A list I often reference in office hours with founders.)
The founders take risks with big ideas, but nothing feels outlandish or misaligned with their audience. There’s no rage bait.
Instead, they’ve:
Hosted a Christmas Gala
Run a hackathon with MongoDB
Locked five founders in a cabin with no cell service to build agenticsanta.com
Created a behind-the-scenes video of Rippling’s YC Demo Day experience
If you want to get better at founder-led marketing, study it. Study RevenueCat, Fondo, Imagine AI, and I’ll also throw in Athena AI.
If there are others you love, message me. I’m always studying and adding to my list.
The pitch
When you’re pitching a founder, be more casual than if you’re pitching press. You’re peers—both in the trenches of building a startup.
So, if I were the founder of Imagine AI pitching David to come on START, I’d probably DM him on X with something simple like this:
hey david — in the current YC batch building imagine ai.
we’re making content marketing way easier for founders.we just launched + ended up renting a yacht for founders as part of it lol.
doing our YC launch next week and thought it could be fun to talk through what’s working.any chance this friday works for START?
Founder-led channels won’t replace traditional media, but they have changed the game for early-stage founders.
You don’t need a reporter to tell your story anymore. You just need the right angle, the right peer, and a reason for someone else to care.
And sometimes, that starts with a DM.