The Competitive Advantage of Being Interesting

One of the most consistent skills I’ve seen in the best early-stage founders and executives that helps them recruit and retain the best talent is simple: they’re intresting and they say interesting things. Leaders who do this are able to create a kind of ambient gravity around them that engages and pulls the best people in.

Let me say a bit more about what I mean by being interesting.

Pulling people in by being interesting isn't about creating hype or having charisma. It's more of a quiet but exciting set of perspectives that are generated by clearly stated, non-consensus, firm points of view that ask employees to think at a higher level. There's something about being interesting like this that creates a spark in the best people. This manifests itself in a leader having a clear view of some aspect of the current state of the world and how that world is going to be different. This can happen in an industry, company, team, or even a workflow context. At a company level, this could be the Airbnb founders seeing a world where a platform of trust and community could overcome the unsafe feeling of staying in a stranger's home. At a team level, this could be about focusing on which customers to fire or avoid as much as which customers to win.

Being interesting is about showing employees that something important is happening. It has to be sincere and be right for the current context and situation. It has to show employees that something unique is happening here, and they have a rare career opportunity to lean in. 

This has always been an important aspect for founders in recruiting and acquiring early customers. But now we’re beginning to see it as a core driver of a company’s marketing strategy. Increasingly, marketing is less about scripted and polished content designed not to offend anybody and more about founders or senior executives having interesting perspectives. It’s becoming less about what the company is saying to the world and more about what the founder or other leaders are saying about the world. People are much less interested in corporate communications from Nvidia, Microsoft, or OpenAI. That stuff is boring. But people are very interested in what Jensen Huang, Satya Nadella, or Sam Altman are saying in a social media feed or on a podcast. You can’t be boring anymore. There are too many companies and too much content out there that will drown out the old school, uninteresting, scripted marketing content.

One of the best ways to attract the best talent — and now, even customers — is to be interesting by having a unique perspective on something and saying it with clarity and authenticity.