The First Principles Approach
Apologies in advance to Sam Jones
Once upon a time, there was an industry called PR, and its queen regent was Samantha Jones. “Good PR” was a goal unto itself, achieved via glitzy parties replete with sloshing Cosmopolitans. A win was a winking Vanity Fair mention, or perhaps that immeasurable idea of “buzz.”
PR, in this model, is about nonsense metrics like being seen, “telling your story,” or improving “share of voice.”
Unless your goal in life is to be vaguely famous in the TechCrunch comments section, however, attention for attention’s sake is meaningless. Communications only works if it solves real business problems. Share of voice is not a business problem; hiring the right people, landing the right customers, securing funding, or expanding into new markets are.
This insight is the idea behind First Principles Communications. You have to start with actual business goals, then work backward to who needs to believe what to achieve those goals.
START WITH GOALS
Here’s the First Principles Approach in its simplest terms:
Define the business goal. What’s the thing that actually moves the needle? Do you need to attract top-tier technical talent? Do you need to land your next Fortune 500 customer? Are you trying to build credibility in a crowded market?
Identify the audience. Not in the vague “B2B decision-makers” sense, but the actual people who need to believe something new for your business to succeed. If you’re hiring AI engineers, that audience isn’t the Wall Street Journal readership—it’s the people lurking on Hacker News. If you’re selling enterprise software, your audience isn’t just “tech buyers,” it’s the one executive who will personally champion your deal to the CFO.
Figure out what they need to believe. Maybe they don’t know you exist. Maybe they know you exist but assume you’re vaporware. Maybe they’ve heard of you, but don’t trust that you can deliver. Your communications strategy should be reverse-engineered from their misconceptions and help fill that gap.
GO TO YOUR AUDIENCE
Once you know who you’re trying to reach and why they need to believe, figure out how to reach them.
Hiring top technical talent? A front-page Hacker News discussion about your engineering culture is 10x more valuable than a Fortune profile. A single mention in a niche newsletter from a well-known tech operator might get you more applicants than a $100k recruitment campaign.
Selling to Fortune 500s? You need credibility. That might mean landing in The Information or Fortune, speaking at an executive-only conference, or getting a respected industry analyst to validate your tech.
Raising capital? Your investors are reading Stratechery, watching what Sequoia partners post on LinkedIn, or getting recommendations from their network. Your brand is built in the DMs, which is why sometimes you have to do comms that don’t scale.
NO WASTED MOTION
There shouldn’t be any daylight between your business strategy and your comms strategy. Any comms that don’t ladder up to business goals are wasted motion. If you start with the real business problem, everything else—who to talk to, where to reach them, what to say—follows naturally.