"99% of startups fail". Want to be among the 1% that succeed?

Then you need to master branding, and I’ll tell you how ↓

By aligning everything and everyone behind a strategy that puts your brand at the heart of your startup and ensure all decisions are guided by it.

When you do this, you can:

→ Manifest your differentiated position
→ Inspire and engage the right customers
→ Influence a higher perceived value (and gain pricing power)
→ Improve your bottom line exponentially
→ Enhance your team's focus and motivation
→ Strengthen creativity and innovation across the board

As a consultant, I have the freedom to question your assumptions, discover hidden truths, and identify overlooked challenges and opportunities.

Through a human-centered methodology and my 5-step framework called Epicenter✷, I get to the core of your business to understand, address, and reframe these insights, providing the direction needed to establish an indisputable position in your market.

I've successfully implemented the framework with dozens of startup teams worldwide who were able to raise millions in funding, make millions in revenue, and reach millions of people.

Here's what leaders like you said:

Dimo Yanchev, CEO & Co-founder, Almacena ↘
“We had a vague, confusing idea of our direction but now we understand our goals and actions for both the short and long term. Ezequiel’s a brilliant strategist and an amazing person.”

Juan Esteban Zuleta, CEO at Kin Analytics ↘
"Ezequiel goes beyond just knowing about branding. It was a breakthrough experience that led to transformative discussions that changed how we see our company and our brand's essence."

Guido Stefani, CEO & Co-founder, Extendeal ↘
“Ezequiel excels at interpreting situations to optimize them effectively. He guided us to think long-term and to question everything with intelligence.”

All of my work is rooted in my experience as a Disney executive for over 22 years, where I led award-winning teams in Latin America and Europe, and played a key role in shaping iconic brands like Disney, Marvel, and Star Wars for the digital age.

If you want to get serious about your brand and fixing your narrative, send me a DM!

See you soon!

Ezequiel Abramzon

All startups are BORN TO LOSE.

Right? Well…

If the famous statistics are true, 95% of startups will fail.

And a big chunk of the 5% survivors will suffer a long, slow agony.

That means your chances of success are brutally small.

Here’s what those stats don’t tell you:

You don’t fail because of a bad product.

You fail because nobody cares enough to give you their money.

Purchases happen because of emotion.

People buy when something feels right.

When it reflects how they see themselves solving a problem.

So if people feel nothing, they won’t choose you.

A bad brand narrative creates your worst problem:

Irrelevance ☠️ 

Your job as a founder is to make people care.

To influence how they feel in a way that motivates action.

And the most powerful way to do that is through a clear, intentional, and attractive brand narrative grounded in real differentiation, with a point of view that shows you understand your customers better than they do.

That’s how influence and persuasion work.

Look...

You and I know you’re not here just to be BORN TO LOSE.

You’re here to LIVE TO WIN.

That means you have to take responsibility for the sh*tty brand narrative you’re putting into the market and fix:

→ How you look
→ What you say
→ What you do
→ How you behave

If you want to avoid digging a hole for your business, you need to be strategic about how you want to be perceived.

You must create, experiment, improve, and sustain a solid brand narrative.

Not as a one-off project, but as an ongoing leadership discipline.

Trust me, eventually it pays off:

→ More, better clients
→ Pricing power
→ Better talent
→ Cost efficiencies
→ A premium ticket to your exit

The market is full of great ideas buried by bad narratives.

Don’t let yours be the next.

Or…

Let us know where your tombstone will be.

We’ll bring the flowers 🌹

- - -

If you found this post helpful:

❤️ → Give it a like 
💬 → Share your thoughts in the comments
♻️ → Repost it to help others
🔔 → Follow me for more insights on brands and strategy
📩 → DM me and let’s fix your brand narrative

Ezequiel Abramzon ✷

Fix your startup’s sh*tty brand narrative and get ready for your Series A | Own a solid market position, win better clients, convince investors, and attract top talent | Strategy consultant | Ex-Disney

Strategy isn’t the hard part. Letting go of the operator mindset is.

Here’s why I’m saying this…

Let me share with you something I see all the time, and it came up again this week in a client session.

We are at that moment where almost everything is ready.

The brand strategy is defined, the narrative direction is clear, and it’s time to activate it, talking through all the things we needed to do, write, gather, and align.

And then, someone said:

“We can’t focus on this now, we have lots of client work to deliver.”

I lost it  🤯 
(I wish you could’ve seen my face in that moment)

Because that sentence has nothing to do with priorities, it has to do with mindset.

You can have a great strategy.

You can have the resources to execute.

You can even know what needs to be done.

But if the mindset is still operational, the strategy will never stand a chance.

Look… I get it.

Of course shipping what you promised your clients matters.

Especially early on, that’s what keeps a startup alive.

But there’s a moment in every growing company where that logic stops being safe and starts being the thing that keeps you small.

Delivery is the job of the operation.

Growth is the job of leadership.

When the leaders who should be thinking about what’s next for the business are stuck making sure everything runs today, nobody is actually building tomorrow.

The company ends up very busy, very tired, and eventually…

Very stuck.

This is the point where many teams hit a wall right before growth.

It’s the shift from an operative mindset to an executive one.

Especially at the founder level.

From working IN the business to working ON the business.

As a startup grows, leadership creates value by building clarity, direction, and demand, not by doing more delivery.

Don’t be the best operator in the room.

Be the person who makes everyone else’s work matter.

Brand isn’t something you postpone until things slow down.

It’s what makes the work worth doing in the first place.

- - -

✴️ → If you’re curious, I built a quick Brand Narrative Score you can use to check yourself on strategy, execution, and mindset. It’s free, takes a couple of minutes, and you get a personalized report right away. Link in the comments.

Fix your brand narrative and stop sounding like every other startup | Clarify your market position, win clients, convince investors, and attract top talent | Strategy consultant | Ex-Disney

This is the secret power of strategy.

It’s a very practical but uncomfortable one for startups…

Focus.

If only I could see your face right now 😅 

Yes, focus.

The opposite of what happens to most founders scaling.

Since you can’t do everything you wish, you end up doing a lot of tiny things that feel productive but don’t move the needle.

A tactic here, a tactic there, tactics all over the place.

Your team’s calendar is full of busy days with little impact, and you slowly become the bottleneck because no one is clear on where you’re going.

And I know exactly why this happens to you:

→ Fear of leaving money on the table
→ Fear of missing future audiences
→ Fear of closing doors you might want later
→ Fear of investors thinking you’re not pushing hard enough

My friend…

You have to say no more often than you say yes.

And that’s when a brand strategy comes in handy.

Because it forces you to sacrifice.

To decide and prioritize what you will do and say, and more importantly…

What you won’t do.
What you won’t say.
Who you are not trying to win.

Those NOs define you.

Say one thing, say it well, and say it often.

In practice:

→ One brand narrative repeated everywhere
→ One primary customer now, not 3 personas “just in case”
→ One core platform to master the craft of engagement

Great strategy gives founders something rare:

Relief.

Also known as…

JOMO, the joy of missing out.

Like a weight lifted off your shoulders.

That’s the beauty of clarity.

And that’s the power of strategy.

I remember this like it was last night.

Jetlagged, anxious, and unable to sleep.

I was at a beautiful Airbnb a client rented for a 3-day retreat.

Yes, under the same roof for three days, Big Brother style.

Hours before, we had a long, intense, and productive discussion about their brand narrative and how the pitch should flow.

I wasn’t worried about slides or copy, just the thinking underneath.

Everyone was asleep, but I wasn’t.

My head was spinning.

So I opened my laptop and started downloading everything.

The problem we were facing.
The things we weren’t really saying.
The personal ambition behind our company's ambition.
The tensions, tradeoffs, hard choices ahead.
The real hero of the story… etc.

I drafted a couple of narratives to test first thing the next morning.

As soon as it was out of my head and on paper, I felt relieved.

This is something founders often underestimate.

“Unloading” thoughts and ideas.

A startup starts becoming a serious business when the strategy is written and understood, and processes and goals are documented and communicated.

Telepathy is bad management.

If everything lives in your mind, you become the bottleneck.

And bottlenecks don’t sleep well.

If you don’t write it down, don’t clarify it, don’t make it explicit...

Get ready for long nights like mine.

- - -
PS: What’s still in your head that should be written down instead?

Congrats! Your positioning made it to…

LUBRICANTS!

In most cases, ’All-in-one’ is the worst positioning for a startup.

I’ve been saying this for years.

It usually means:

✗ For no-one
✗ Good at nothing
✗ Hard to remember
✗ Harder to explain

‘All-in-one’ often ends up being just a ‘3 in 1’.

Like this lubricant I found at Decathlon:

“Unblocks. Degreases. Lubricates.”

If your startup positions as ‘All-in-one’…

Then…

It’s probably your brand narrative that needs lubricant.

- - -

PS: Have you ever bought a product for ALL its features?

Your startup might be so boring it’s putting people to sleep.

Cold. Forgettable. Replaceable.

Let me guess:

✗ Your landing page is blue
✗ No photos of real people, just screens and icons
✗ You only talk about features, specs, and “how it works”
✗ There’s no warmth, no story, no emotional hook
✗ It reads like it was written for engineers... by engineers
✗ If you swapped logos with a competitor, nobody would notice
✗ Your ad campaigns look like product manuals
✗ Your pitch starts with “Hi, we are X, and we…”

Boring, boring, boring 😴 💤 

If your startup is forgettable, everything you do becomes less effective because you have to overcompensate with more marketing $ just to be seen.

Boring is bad business.

You know what actually prints money?

Emotion.

If you want to move people into buying mode, you need a brand narrative that makes your company feel like the right choice for the right people.

Yes, feel.

Because buying is emotional.

We then justify it with logic.

A good brand narrative does 3 things:

1) It makes your business instantly more attractive
2) It gives meaning to what you sell, beyond how it works
3) If done well, it’s creates intent and action

We are wired to understand the world through stories.

So don’t obsess over informing about what your product does.

Obsess over how that makes people feel.

How? With small details:

→ Choose an emotional lane and let color reinforce it
→ Replace some product shots with people using it
→ Name the before and after your customer actually cares about
→ Translate every feature into a benefit and value
→ Remove friction and uncertainty at every touchpoint
→ Identify memorable wow moments and overdeliver there

If your startup is attractive, people will remember it.

If they remember it, they will trust it.

If they trust it, they might buy it.

If they buy it, they might talk about it.

If they talk about it, more people will buy.

And when more people buy… you grow!

Simple.

Emotion drives revenue.

Boring does not.

- - -

📋 → Take the Brand Narrative Score (link in comments) to assess your startup and discover if your brand is ready to scale

Everyone talks about customer centricity, but very few do it well.

Here are 6 simple, but great examples…

Customer centricity is a business strategy and mindset.

It means designing decisions around your customers, their needs, their context, and their experience.

Every successful brand does this.

They empower teams to choose what’s right for the customer, even if it feels weird, uncomfortable, or difficult.

I saw this firsthand for more than 20 years working at Disney.

Here’s a PRO tip:

You can tell if a company is customer-centric by what it does, not by what it says:

Apple ↓

You can pay wherever you’re standing, no checkout, no waiting, a clear signal that they respect your time.

Starbucks ↓

They put your name on the cup, a simple gesture that makes the experience personal. It’s not a coffee, it’s your coffee.

Netflix ↓

They created House of Cards, learning from their users’ behavior, and it was a global hit. If I give you my time, you'd better do something worthy of it.

Disney ↓

They hired regular people as bloggers to answer guests’ questions, creating a more community-driven way to plan vacations, because we trust people like us more than sales reps.

Amazon ↓

They learn from user behavior to deliver personalized recommendations, so over time, you see more offers that are actually relevant to you. (My bank account knows this very well, unfortunately)

Zappos ↓

Zappos is known for having no call time limits, even helping customers with things far beyond the order, with a verified record of a 10-hour-43-minute call in 2012.

See?

As a customer, you always demand more from brands.

So, as a founder, you should act accordingly and deliver more.

→ Do you have a clear understanding of your customers?
→ What should they feel when they experience your product?
→ Who represents or embodies customers in your boardroom?
→ Is your business customer-centric enough?

If you don’t have a clear, confident answer to these questions…

Get to work!

Despite all the advice marketing gurus give about homepages…

Remember this:

You have less than 3 seconds to make an impression.

After that, they’re gone.

And that’s not a metaphor.

Research shows that users form a first impression in milliseconds, and most homepage bounces happen in the first seconds.

Most visitors don’t read.

They scan, judge, and decide.

Fast.

They quickly answer three subconscious questions:

→ Am I in the right place?
→ Is this for someone like me?
→ Is this worth my attention right now?

Nothing matters if your homepage can’t answer those instantly.

This is where most startups get it wrong.

They treat the homepage like an explanation or a product spec.

But your homepage is there to create a wow moment, where story and style work together to deliver a solid brand narrative.

Connection is more important than attention.

Purchase decisions are emotional first, rational second.

You already have their attention.

Now what you need is emotion.

Make them feel something.

In less than 3 seconds.

(No pressure)

Have you noticed how similar most startup brand narratives feel?

Yeah. Me too.

“Feature, feature, feature, demo, demo, demo…”

Only a handful escape mediocrity.

If you want genuine connection with customers, you need good storytelling, and it needs to be attractive.

This has become essential in a world overwhelmed by screens, content feeds, and multiplying competition.

Everyone’s publishing, everyone’s explaining, everyone’s demoing.

But almost no one is telling stories.

Very few are building emotional bridges.

And it’s not about better words on the same slides or website.

It’s about changing what you choose to talk about and how.

Here are 3 ways a brand narrative helps you be chosen:

- - 

1) Go beyond transactional conversations.

Don’t just try to sell stuff.

Sell the dream.

Share what your brand stands for and why you do what you do.

So when people buy from you, they get more than a product.

They buy a story to make it part of their own.

Someone asked me once: “Are you a Notion person?”

That right there, a tool becoming part of someone’s identity.

- - 

2) Humanize your brand

Yeah, I know. Cheesy.

But you know what? Technology often feels abstract and distant.

Stories, however, put a little bit of heart in Startupland.

Empathize.

Share your customers’ struggles and wins.

Provide a backstage pass to your innovations.

Show your passionate team doing their magic. 

Did you notice?

“Share, Provide, Show”

- - 

3) Be authentic, consistently.

Trust is a byproduct of predictability. 

It comes when people know what to expect from you.

Every touch point: web, campaigns, events, posts, onboarding should align with your core narrative.

Always tell your story in the same genuine way.

Keep it real.

- - 

There you go!

Storytelling is more than just a romantic concept.

It's a strategic imperative.

There’s no better way to build trust than with a great story.

Because you will not only capture their attention.

You’ll win their hearts!

PS: I created a quick test to help you spot the gaps holding your brand narrative back.

Link in the comments.

Asking whether it’s time to rebrand is the wrong question.

The real question is whether you’re ready for one.

And most startups aren’t.

I came to that conclusion after thousands of conversations with hundreds of founders, asking them dozens of recurring questions.

It’s not that startups don’t want to be ready.

They don’t really know why, when, what, or how to do things right with their brand.

As a result, they waste time, money, and energy until they vanish into the fog of their industries.

Over the years, I’ve identified 3 big foundational problems that lead a startup to fail when it comes to building and establishing their brand:

→ Lack of strategy
→ Weak execution
→ Poor mindset

In every interview I conduct and onboarding process I complete, I ask special questions that allow me to assess how they stand on these 3 pillars and provide a reality check that sets the stage for what needs to be done.

I’ve now translated those questions into a short self-assessment called Brand Narrative Score, to evaluate you on Strategy, Execution, and Mindset.

It’s quick, free, and once you’re done, you’ll receive a customized report with a clear reality check on where your brand stands today and what to do next.

If you take it seriously and answer honestly, it will give you something founders rarely make time for:

Perspective.

Here’s the link to the test:

https://lnkd.in/db4Fbz7y

Look, it’s fine not to know everything as a founder.

But knowing and still doing nothing is self-sabotage.

What happens next is entirely on you.

- - -

If you found this post helpful:

❤️ → Give it a like 
💬 → Share your thoughts in the comments
♻️ → Repost it to help others
🔔 → Follow me for more insights on brands and strategy
📩 → DM me and let’s fix your brand narrative

Great brand experiences are not linear.

They happen in moments.

We don't remember our life like a timeline.

We remember it in flashes, through moments.

And brand experiences work the same way.

You experience them through moments.

Those moments are where the brand narrative comes alive.

I call those “Wow Moments.”

I've been an Apple customer for over 30 years, and I've seen these moments evolve in with culture and technology.

→ Ads that make you feel you can change the world
→ Elegant websites that answer every question
→ Beautiful stores you walk into just to play with the ‘toys’
→ Staff who greet you by name and know your last purchase
→ “Pay right here” checkout, no waiting at all
→ Receipt in your inbox before get out
→ The unboxing… Uf… that air compression, the smell…
→ The setup that restores your life while you enjoy your coffee

For us, is an experience that feels like magic.

For Apple, it’s a nonstop experiment.

All surgically engineered, consistently iterated.

If you want to be remembered, loved, recommended, and irreplaceable, you must master your own Wow Moments.

But…

Do you even know where yours are in your customer journey?

- - -

If you found this post helpful:

❤️ → Give it a like 
💬 → Share your thoughts in the comments
♻️ → Repost it to help others
🔔 → Follow me for more insights on brands and strategy
📩 → DM me and let’s fix your brand narrative

If I told you your brand could make up to 80% of your startup’s valuation… would you procrastinate it?

Most founders obsess over the tangibles:

Product features, marketing tactics, roadmaps and launches.

But they ignore the intangible asset that will be worth millions:

Brand.

These 4 examples will blow your mind:

1) When Amazon bought Whole Foods for $13.7B, about $9B of that was goodwill, meaning most of what they paid wasn’t real estate or inventory, it was brand equity and future value potential.

2) When Apple acquired Beats for $2.6B, about $2.2B was allocated to goodwill, meaning that they were buying more than hardware, they were getting a cultural movement, relevancy and resonance.

3) When Microsoft bought Skype for $8.5B in 2011, about $8.4B of that was recorded as goodwill, virtually the entire purchase. They weren't buying servers and code, for sure.

4) When Oracle acquired PeopleSoft for $10.3B, around $7.7B was recognized as goodwill, 3/4 of what they paid.

Accountants call it goodwill.
Investors call it a premium.
I call it brand.

If you’re the pragmatic type:
The better the intangibles, the bigger the check.

If you’re the romantic type, like me:
The better the intangibles, the bigger your legacy.

But those intangibles don’t appear by accident or overnight.

The most powerful vehicle a business has to build them is its brand narrative.

The story you tell.
The style you own.
The wow moments you engineer.

And that only works when strategy, execution, and mindset are aligned.

The good news is, I built the Brand Narrative Score to help you assess exactly that. 

Link in the comments.

It’s time.

Leaving brand for later was a monumental mistake.

One of your first business decisions was a branding one:

Naming your company.

Then, you’ve made a logo and put it on your site and your pitch.

And that was the last time you thought about your brand.

Most founders think about brand strategy like this:

“Let’s wait until we have product-market fit.”
“Once we raise the first round, then we’ll do brand.”
“Maybe when things calm down a bit.” (yeah, you wish...)
“We’ll fix our branding later.”

And that’s a massive mistake because later often means too late.

The way I see it:

Early on in your journey, you prioritize speed over precision.

You’re figuring things out.

Brand strategy gives you clarity, so you can make quick, confident decisions without the guesswork.

→ Focus on one clear direction and priorities
→ Focus on the right market battles
→ Focus on a specific target you can truly serve and learn from
→ Focus on investing in what drives real traction
→ Focus on one narrative your team can deliver consistently

F o c u s .
 
Eventually, that equation flips.

You prioritize precision over speed.

You start optimizing for growth.

You hire leaders, launch new products and features, and professionalize your marketing and ops.

Now, brand strategy helps you scale without losing momentum.

→ Staying aligned as the team grows
→ Keeping your narrative clear across roles and functions
→ Expanding your reach without diluting who you are
→ Making bigger, more informed marketing bets
→ Building credibility and recognition

At the start, brand strategy is your booster →

Later, brand strategy is your beacon ↗

It balances short-term agility with long-term perspective.

The sooner you understand this, the better:

Brand strategy is not something you grow into.

It’s how you grow.

$480 million seed round at a $4.5 billion valuation!

This anomaly will confuse a lot of founders… 🤯

The global average in 2025 was around $3M for a seed round.

humans& must be insanely promising...

Or investors are insane 😅 

Either way, we’re still in the AI bubble.

Be careful.

Matt Lerner

Startup growth strategist, Ex PayPal, 500 Startups VC, Founder @ SYSTM

I founded SYSTM to help startups find their big growth levers - the small actions that can have the biggest impact on their growth. We’ve worked with over 200 companies and earned a 96% founder “likely to recommend” score.

Before founding SYSTM, I was the London-based Partner of 500 Startups, an early-stage VC fund, where I built and ran an accelerator seed-stage growth program for our portfolio companies.

Prior to joining 500 Startups, I worked for many years building and managing growth teams for three  startups (two disasters, one exit), and later at PayPal. 

I approach my work first as a general manager and then as a marketer, product manager or both, as needed. My lens is quantitative, but rooted in deep customer insights and testing, and based on fast iteration. I’m always learning, and I really enjoy teaching and helping those around me to learn and improve. Skip to the references below, you'll see that I'm regarded as a thought leader in many areas of business, and an inspiring people manager who reliably delivers ahead of expectations.

Founder & CEO

At SYSTM (formerly Startup Core Strengths), our mission is to help early-stage startups find their big growth levers (and pull them). We've noticed that great startups don't waste time on small stuff, so we  focus everyone on the most impactful work.

Magnus Carlsen has a coach.

So does Serena Williams.

And Lewis Hamilton.

Taylor Swift, Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods – all had coaches.

Asking for coaching doesn’t signal weakness.

It signals a hunger.

Founder @ SYSTM, Ex PayPal, 500 Startups VC

What your founder secretly wants from you.
I climbed from doing marketing scut work to running an $800 million business when I figured out one thing…

Founders desperately want to promote you.

They'd love nothing more than for you to run part of their business, if they believed you could do it well.

𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲 𝘀𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗮𝘀 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗰

Early in my career, I started working for a guy we’ll call Alex. He was 28 years old, and running the largest division of a publicly traded tech company. (I was 27) 

I kept asking myself, "Why is he the VP, and I'm just a marketer?" I studied his every move.

In C-level meetings, he spoke like he owned the business. He talked about the work I was doing, but took it 10% further – connecting it to shareholder outcomes – revenue and growth.

Nothing esoteric. He just drew a line from my work to revenue, growth and profit.

So I did some digging to find out where this wunderkind got his MBA.

Turns out he didn't have one. Just a Bachelor of Arts. In theater. 

That's when it clicked: Alex wasn't running a business because of some credential, he was running a business because he played the part – he thought and spoke like a business owner.

𝗦𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸, 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲
All I did was shift to an owner’s perspective. For example:

• Instead of "We increased engagement by 20%," I'd say: "We're retaining 20% more customers in month 2 – if it holds, that's $2M ARR over 24 months."

• Instead of test results, I'd share insights: "We learned that customers aren't price sensitive if they understand our value."

• Instead of optimizing channels, I'd think in systems: "Meta users have better retention than affiliates, so we’ll shift affiliate spend to Meta."

That’s all.

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗻𝗲𝘅𝘁
It worked. Within six months, I was getting invited to strategy meetings. Finance people started asking for my input, and defending my work when I wasn't in the room. 

Promotions came. Eventually I worked my way up to that GM role – running a nine-figure business at PayPal.

𝗡𝗼𝘄, 𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂'𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗘𝗢
Imagine your CEO's point of view – Busy and overwhelmed. They don't want to micromanage you! They’d love to hand you more responsibility. They pay recruiters massive fees to find people who think like owners.

You could be that person.

Just do that last 10%: Think like an owner. Talk like an owner. Become an owner.

Helpful? Re-post to pay it forward to your network.

This is weird... 

Products make up only 16% of GDP, but 47% of stock market earnings.

And services are 72% of GDP but only 53% of stock market earnings.

Why is that?

I have a theory... 

Product companies only work at scale – logistics, sourcing, volume discounts, mass production, distribution deals, expensive to develop new products.

They're just not viable below a certain size. That's why most D2C startups end up getting acquired by big companies. When they do IPO, it usually fails (e.g. GoPro, FitBit, Peloton, Sonos)

But services businesses can be viable, even profitable, at micro-scale: Law firms, ad agencies, nail salons, medical practices, consultants and accountants – don't need money from public markets.

But services don't IPO, because they can't scale revenue independent of headcount. A law firm rents out lawyers, a radiology practice rents out radiologists.

Until now.

AI breaks the fixed relationship between revenue and headcount in services businesses – profits can scale far ahead of salaries and other fixed costs.

That's why VC and Private equity are snapping up small local medical practices. And boutique law firms, agencies, tax preparers... will all get rolled up, or rolled over, soon.

There's a lot at stake – 72% of GDP!

Are you working in a services firm? Because AI adoption is a matter of life and death.

They didn't forget; they objected.

Instead of "activation" or "abandonment" emails, try this...

People don't abandon checkouts and free trials because they 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘨𝘦𝘵, they abandon because they 𝘰𝘣𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵. 

Instead of sending “reminders,” figure out 𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘣𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘥 and address the 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭 𝘰𝘣𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 – Not just in your emails, but at the root cause, before they abandon.

𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗼𝗯𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀
If you ask ChatGPT, it'll tell you to offer free shipping and enable guest checkout – but you know it’s not that simple. Fixing “process friction” will only get you so far – most abandonment is caused by 𝘱𝘴𝘺𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, like an unanswered question or a nagging doubt.

𝟲 𝗠𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗦𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗣𝘀𝘆𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗙𝗿𝗶𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 (𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝘅 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺)

1. 𝗠𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 – Is it compatible with…? Does it do X thing? 
   𝗙𝗶𝘅: Live chat & detailed Q&A
   
2. 𝗪𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗶𝘁 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗽 𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗼 [𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿’𝘀 𝗴𝗼𝗮𝗹]?  
   𝗙𝗶𝘅: Show the main use cases, testimonials with specific results
   
3. 𝗪𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗜 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝗶𝘁? Or forget it but keep getting billed? 
   𝗙𝗶𝘅: Generous cancellation / return policies
   
4. 𝗦𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗙𝗿𝗶𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 – What will my boss / team / spouse think?  
   𝗙𝗶𝘅: Give them a story to justify the purchase to themselves (e.g. “it's cheaper in the long-run” or “you only live once.”)
   
5. 𝗜𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝗺𝗲? (e.g. Coders, non-native speakers, gen Z women?)
   𝗙𝗶𝘅: Say & show who it’s for
   
6. 𝗢𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗯𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗻 – They are switching from their last product for a reason, so they need to believe your product won't have that flaw.
   𝗙𝗶𝘅: Position against your competitor’s flaw (e.g. “99.999% availability,” or “24/7 live support.”)

𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝗽𝘀𝘆𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗳𝗿𝗶𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻:

Don't speculate. Ask your 𝘴𝘢𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘰𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘤𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘴: 
1. 𝗦𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 – “What are the main objections you hear from prospects?”
2. 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀 – “What made you almost not buy?”

Prospects who abandoned probably had 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘴 as the ones who bought.

𝗢𝗻𝗲 𝗳𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗼𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗼𝗿𝗲
Many people will say they’ve “been too busy.” That’s bullsh*t. Reality: either they don’t understand how it helps, your product or site confused them, or they don’t actually need it.

Helpful? Re-post to help others in your network.

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Matt Lerner

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Ezequiel Abramzon's LinkedIn Performance

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