---
name: founder-post-triggers-24
title: Founder post triggers
description: |
  Use this skill when a founder has no results to point at and needs something to publish — "I have
  nothing to post about", "what do I write when we haven't launched", "who would even listen to me",
  "should I build a personal brand", "our CAC is climbing and we have no budget". Twenty-four things
  that already happened this week and are publishable, in five categories, plus the play selector,
  copy-paste opening lines, and the pre-publish check.
category: Influencers
tags: [Marketing, Leadership]
---

# 24 Founder Post Triggers

Credibility before traction comes from the specificity of the problem you work on, not the size of your wins. Every trigger below already happened — pick one and publish it.

## Customer Evidence (6)

1. **The surprising sentence** — a customer line that changed your view. Verbatim.
2. **The real no** — the actual reason a prospect declined, not the polite one.
3. **The exit reason** — why someone churned, plus your read.
4. **The recurring question** — asked three times in support. Answer it publicly.
5. **Their words, not yours** — how a customer described you to someone else.
6. **The unintended use** — someone using it for something you never designed.

## Numbers You Can Stand Behind (5)

7. **Before and after** — one conversion rate, one change, both figures.
8. **The retention read** — a churn number plus your honest diagnosis.
9. **Channel cost direction** — what a channel costs, and whether that is rising.
10. **The failed experiment** — what you tried, what it returned, what you concluded.
11. **The expectation gap** — forecast versus what landed.

## Decisions and Reversals (5)

12. **What you cut** — a feature removed, and what removing it cost.
13. **The reversal** — a decision your team argued you out of.
14. **The thing nobody used** — built, shipped, ignored.
15. **The pricing change** — what moved, and why.
16. **The deliberate no** — a customer, segment, or feature you turned down.

## Product as Demonstration (4)

17. **Raw output** — what it just produced, unedited.
18. **Before and after artifact** — the same task with and without it.
19. **The hard part** — a genuinely difficult problem, and your solution.
20. **What it refuses to do** — a constraint you built on purpose.

## Position and Category (4)

21. **The real comparison set** — who buyers actually weigh you against.
22. **The disagreed belief** — category orthodoxy you think is wrong.
23. **The loose term, defined** — a vague word, made precise.
24. **The unpriced change** — a market shift most have not adjusted to.

## Play Selector

Pick one and hold it — they train different expectations and combine badly. Cases: [references/plays.md](references/plays.md).

| Play | Run when | Triggers |
|---|---|---|
| Publish real numbers | You have data and tolerate exposure | 7–11 |
| Content on audience pain | You serve a specific, badly-served group | 1–6, 24 |
| Speaking is showing | The product's output is visible | 17–20 |
| Position alignment | The company's claim is already clear | 21–23 |

## Opening Lines (Lowest-Effort Tier)

Share something already circulating, add one sentence of real judgment:

- "This matches what we see with our own users: …"
- "Most people read this as X. The more useful takeaway is Y."
- "The part everyone skips: …"
- "We tried this. It worked / it didn't, because …"
- "I believed this a quarter ago. What changed my mind: …"

Ramp and cadence: [references/first-four-weeks.md](references/first-four-weeks.md).

## Pre-Publish Check

- [ ] Contains one first-hand fact — a quote, a number, a reversal
- [ ] Could NOT have been written by someone who read the same articles
- [ ] Inside your one chosen topic (hold ~70% of output there)
- [ ] States a process, not an opinion
- [ ] Any number in it, you can stand behind unedited

## What good looks like

- Strong founders write from one specific thing that happened; weak ones write from a general position. A draft with no first-hand fact is noise wearing the costume of insight.
- The common mistake is waiting for results. The second is posting announcements — they answer "what shipped" instead of "what this means for you".
- It is working when strangers engage and what they say back names your topic. Scattered replies mean the topic has not landed.
- Track inbound that names your specific problem. Better signal than follower count, and earlier.

## Rules

- MUST anchor every post in a first-hand event from the work.
- MUST hold ~70% of output inside one topic.
- NEVER publish a number you cannot stand behind, or dress up a bad one.
- NEVER wait for results to start.

## Example prompts

```
Give me 3 post triggers I can write today from this week's customer calls.
```

```
Which play fits a product whose output is a generated document?
```

```
Turn trigger #8 into a draft — our 90-day retention is 22%.
```