Founder profiling is a 90-day sprint with three parallel workstreams: positioning (decide the category you are credible in), publishing (one op-ed in CoinDesk, Decrypt, or Cointelegraph plus weekly LinkedIn and X reps), and amplification (2 to 3 podcast appearances, 1 conference panel). Four hand-offs gate the sprint. The output: a CTO who becomes the category voice reporters call when the news breaks.
Founders ask me how to "do thought leadership." They mean: how do I become the person reporters call when this category breaks?
Last reviewed and updated 29 July 2026.
That outcome is engineerable. It takes 90 days, three coordinated workstreams, and a willingness to be wrong in public. Here’s the sprint structure I run.
Days 1–30: positioning & thesis
You can’t be the voice for a category until you’ve picked one. In month one, the entire job is reducing the founder’s worldview into a single defensible thesis statement - ideally one sentence, definitely fewer than three.
For Tom Trowbridge at Fluence, the thesis was "DePIN works only when there’s revenue." For Matt Wright at Gaia, it was "AI agents need their own internet, not API access." For Mantra, it was "RWA is the bridge tradfi will actually walk across." Notice that each thesis is contestable. That’s the point. A thesis nobody can argue with isn’t a thesis - it’s a tagline.
Workstream output by day 30:
- One-sentence thesis, stress-tested with three skeptics.
- Five proof points the founder can recite in their sleep.
- Three sample headlines the founder would be willing to defend on a podcast.
Days 31–60: surface area
Month two is volume. The founder posts - daily on X, weekly on LinkedIn, twice a month long-form. Every piece of content is in service of the thesis. Not unrelated takes, not memes, not "here’s what I’m reading." The thesis, refracted through different lenses: news commentary, response to critics, walked-through case studies, tactical breakdowns.
This is the phase where founders push back hardest. "I don’t have time." Yes you do. "I don’t want to be repetitive." Repetition is the job. The category voice is the person who said the same thing seventy times until the press started borrowing the framing.
Workstream output by day 60:
- 40–50 thesis-aligned posts, with at least 5 that gained organic reach.
- 2 long-form essays - one on the company blog, one syndicated to Hackernoon or Mirror.
- 3 podcast appearances on category-adjacent shows (not your friends’ shows).
Days 61–90: the press conversion
Month three is when months 1–2 pay off. By now, the founder has a documented worldview, a body of public work, and a few podcast clips that prove they can talk on camera without ums. That’s the briefing pack. We send it to a tightly-scoped list of journalists with one ask: "Would a column-length op-ed on [specific contested take] fit your section?"
The conversion rate on a cold pitch from an unknown founder is roughly zero. The conversion rate on a warm pitch from a founder with 60 days of receipts is closer to 30%. That’s the entire arbitrage, and it’s the same mechanic that took Tom Trowbridge from unknown DePIN operator to a CoinDesk Opinion byline: sixty days of receipts before the pitch ever went out.
Workstream output by day 90:
- 1–2 op-eds placed in tier-1 crypto press.
- 1 expert-comment relationship with a tradfi journalist for breaking news.
- A self-sustaining content cadence the founder can run without me.
Why most founders skip the first 60 days
Because months 1 and 2 don’t produce visible deliverables. There’s no press release, no headline, no screenshot to send the board. They’re infrastructural. And without them, month 3 is just another founder cold-pitching Forbes.
The work compounds. By month six, the founder is the one being pitched. By month twelve, journalists open with "I’m writing about [category] - can you walk me through your read?" I’ve watched that arc play out through mid-2026 across DePIN, RWA, and AI-agent founders. That’s the position. That’s the goal. Ninety focused days is the cheapest way there.