Project 33

Project 33 helps established B2B tech companies create thought leadership content for their founders, CEO & executives on LinkedIn. We interview them to create interesting content, and turn their authority and expertise into your competitive advantage -> project33.io

Founder

The Founder-Led Marketing Show

The #1 podcast on Founder Brand and Executive/CEO Comms. Interviews with Jason Fried, Henry Schuck, Godard Abel, James Hawkins, Dave Gerhardt, Alina Vandenberghe, Guillaume Moubeche, Josh Braun, Todd Busler, Peter Caputa, Chris Walker, Greg Head, Adam Robinson, Gal Aga, Meghan Barr, Alec Paul, Melissa Kwan and many more. https://www.project33.io/podcast

Host

Reminders App

An app I built for myself to write reminders to myself and help me never forget who I am and who I want to be. https://kllx7.glideapp.io/

Finn's Book Club

A Discord community where books, ideas, and complex issues can be openly debated. Put it on hold when I became a dad. https://finnthormeier.gumroad.com/l/book-club

Finn Thormeier

Helped artists and entrepreneurs grow on Instagram. Grew @iamsloth from 70k to 200k followers in 6 months with a budget of $4,000 using an underpriced Instagram Story Ads format. Also used to turn a bunch of books into automated Instagram accounts, eg for The Art of War: https://www.instagram.com/theartofwar_suntzu/

Freelancer

Save The Children Deutschland

Fundraised $40,000+ in 10 weeks, got 1 person close to breaking the record of most donors gained by a fundraiser in single day on my second day, traveled to 12 different cities across Germany.

Fundraiser

Heidelberg University

Dropped out after 3 semesters. Studied Physics and Philosophy. Realized I was doing college for other people's expectations, not for myself.

Dropout

Jacques'​ Wein-Depot Wein-Einzelhandel GmbH

Salesman

New Zealand

After high school, a friend and I decided to pack our bags, fly from Germany to New Zealand and spend 8 months backpacking NZ. Half of the time was spent living in hostels and working 3 different jobs, 15h shifts, 6 days a week: Picking grapes on a vineyard, extracting pollen at a pollen mill, washing crates at a production line facility. The other half went into traveling, sleeping in a camper van and creating content: Tongariro Northern Circuit, Milford Track, Routeburn Track, Whanganui Journey.

Work & Travel

Founder, P33 | Founder Brand & CEO/Executive Comms for LinkedIn

Helped 50+ B2B tech companies build their Founder/CEO Brand and implement Executive Thought Leadership Programs for LinkedIn. Customers, results & process: project33.io

About me:

I'm Finn, 29, grew up in Bremen, Germany, studied Physics & Philosophy in Heidelberg for 3 semesters, dropped out of college in 2017 because I was doing it for other people, flew to New York with no plans, documented the journey on Linkedin, Instagram and Youtube, and started my first company (Project 33) on the back of having grown a small audience. We're a small remote agency that helps B2B founders & execs create thought leadership content for Linkedin.

In my free time, which I try to have as much as possible of, I read (fav author: Nassim N. Taleb), write, run, lift, code (currently building an app), cook, make Youtube videos, turn books into Instagram accounts, grapple (BJJ), and travel (lived in NYC, Cape Town, Bali, Minsk, CMDX, Lima & Antalya so far). In December 2020 I married the most beautiful woman in the world. In January 2023, I became dad to the most beautiful baby girl. We currently live in Berlin, Germany.

If you're building a dev tool startup, you should be studying Adam Frankl. He scaled 3 different developer-facing companies to $1B+ unicorn status as their VP Marketing (JFrog, Neo4j, Sourcegraph). 

Besides an incredible career, 20 years marketing technical products to developers, and making every mistake in the book, Adam wrote THE book on developer marketing.

And last week, he joined me for an interview.

What we covered:

- How to validate if you're solving a "great" problem
- How to recruit & run a Technical Advisory Board (50-200 customer interviews)
- The magic wand question that gets you to what users ACTUALLY want
- Why you need a recognized expert in your company (and how to become one)
- When to hire your first marketing leader
- What your first dev-focused marketer should actually do
- How to develop & communicate a unique POV
- And much more

Listen here:
YouTube: https://lnkd.in/eczJd-uX
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eaCCuqdB
Apple: https://lnkd.in/eqvUARsW

Some of my favorite takeaways:

1. Build a Technical Advisory Board
It's a group of potential users who agree to a 30min call once a month for six months. Don't pay people for it. It’s a relationship you're building. If you can't recruit people, it's a sign that the problem you're solving isn't big enough. It's 30min because Adam says he's never learned anything interesting in the second half of an hour-long call.

2. The founder must be the researcher
At some point, Adam ran the Technical Advisory Board for companies. He stopped offering it because he realized the insights are useless unless the founder hears them firsthand. His system involves 50-200 interviews, asking every single person the same six questions to identify patterns. Only once stop learning new things on calls, you've done enough interviews.

3. Authority, not content
Adam hates the word "content." Instead of hiring a writer to churn out 80 blog posts, one of the founders needs to become a world-class expert on the problem, which comes from having hundreds of conversations with users other experts. And then publishing original research and ideas on that problem, for example on Linkedin. If you do that, people will find you.

4. Founder POV vs Founder Brand
Adam defines a strong point of view as 3-5 short, declarative sentences that you know to be true, but at least one competitor acts as if they are not. It's the thing that makes you interesting and different. At the early stage, it's the only thing you have. You can't afford ads or conferences, but you can afford to have a point of view.

PS. Fun fact, Adam’s grandfather’s cousin was THE Viktor Frankl, holocaust survivor and author of “Man’s Search for Meaning” (one of my favorite books!!)

Founder, P33 | Founder Brand & Exec Comms for LinkedIn

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