Icon
Sahil Bloom on Content Strategy, Brand Voice, and Audience Growth

Sahil Bloom on Content Strategy, Brand Voice, and Audience Growth

Adrian Alfieri
Adrian Alfieri
CEO, Verbatim

Sahil Bloom on Content Strategy, Brand Voice, and Audience Growth

Sahil Bloom is an advisor at Altamont Capital Partners, a serial angel investor in over 30 tech startups, and a board member for several consumer brands in his portfolio. His angel portfolio spans category-defining companies like Mercury, Alpaca, Pallet, Metafy, and UserGems.

But, you’re more likely to recognize Sahil from Twitter. With 280K+ followers, he writes distilled educational threads as well as a popular newsletter that demystifies finance and economics.

We sat down with Sahil to get a piece of that expertise, diving deep into constructing zero-to-one acquisition funnels and designing growth tactics that compound with each repetition.

“To put it as bluntly as I can, you can’t fake content based on what you think the market wants from you. Authenticity is at the core of any successful strategy.”


Distilling Your Authentic Voice

The first step to building your audience is defining your voice. Maintaining consistency in your brand’s editorial style, and thus broader identity is a critical part of breeding genuine loyalty.

To find your brand voice, Sahil emphasizes the role of authenticity in driving results, rather than a false persona you assume the market wants to see. In this vein, the founder-market fit is crucial because the source of your company voice should resonate within your market niche and for your vertical’s users.

When this occurs, take it as a sign that you’re building in the right space.

In terms of defining channels to amplify your voice, Sahil comes back to written content. A basic Twitter account and newsletter can be high leverage tools for early acquisition if you can stand out against the landscape due to the fundamental quality of your ideas, not their flashiness.

“The sign of a great brand personality is when it doesn’t feel like a brand speaking to you at all. It feels like there’s a person behind it: someone who relates to you.”


Network Amplification Tactics

A common refrain for founders might be that they can’t find time to build an audience because they’re busy perfecting the product or assembling a team. Sahil insists that one doesn’t have to come before the other. Rather, they should be developed in tandem.

Sahil points out that one way to scale an audience while your company is still young is to hone in on precisely that fact. Put simply, share insights on what you’re learning as you build it.

Building in public is a powerful amplification driver, or doing and learning interesting things than sharing them for your audience’s benefit. He notes that you can attract an audience just by reporting what you’re learning in real-time. Though, of course, the reality is that someone who lives and breathes their product likely won’t have time to share well-crafted tweets all day.

To this end, Sahil emphasizes the importance of designing tight-knit networks, or groups of people who support each other by boosting one another’s content in their respective niches and pockets of the market. As a result, each node in the network can scale their audience together.

“A great network of creators doesn’t just drive retweets. Rather, it forms tight connections between nodes in a collective, in turn shifting attention back and forth to each other’s content. This was massively important for my own growth.”


Zero-to-One Acquisition Funnels

To Sahil, Twitter will always serve as the ideal top-of-funnel channel because it serves as your company’s largest, easiest discovery mechanism. In his words, you’ll be able to capture the most people you would never have encountered in traditional social acquisition channels.

You should then drive Twitter followers through to an email base. Emails can be collected through a landing page, organic SEO, or any other entry point for this stage of the funnel. You’re now developing an owned audience but without the typically associated platform risk.

Eventually, that email base responds to direct calls to action, whether that’s purchasing, generating organic noise about your brand, improving event attendance, or otherwise.

In terms of common mistakes to avoid, while building out your funnel, Sahil advises that teams should be wary of an ineffective platform push, or failing to drive people from one platform to another.

For instance, turning Twitter followers into email subscribers requires more than tweeting a link to your newsletter.

After all, Twitter’s algorithm works to keep users on the platform, so linking to an off-platform site will mean even fewer eyes on your post. Instead, Sahil recommends embedding an off-platform link deeper within a piece of content that could go viral, since that’ll guarantee far more views than an algorithm-unfriendly tweet.

“To unlock channels like Twitter, you need to deeply understand how the platform works at its most intimate level, rather than just blasting content on repeat.”


The Unbundling of Acquisition

As someone with access to various parts of the ecosystem — audience development, creation, and investment — Sahil shares his unique view on what trends are emerging in full force.

Founders and investors alike are realizing there are novel ways to scale a business to new users that don’t involve spending money on paid ads or other traditional customer acquisition efforts.

In fact, the practice of customer acquisition as a whole has essentially been deconstructed.

According to Sahil, creative audience development tactics enable access to new ecosystems, verticals, and user bases for effectively zero dollars. Or, with the rapid ascent of party rounds, entirely untapped networks can be now accessed in the form of minor dilution to your cap table.

“The speed at which acquisition is getting completely unbundled is one of the most fascinating trends. It’s happening in real-time, right before our eyes.”


Founder-First Investing Criteria

Given his extensive record as an angel investor, we asked Sahil how he evaluates early-stage startups and founders. In his words, while he’s enough of a data nerd to understand what good metrics look like for a young company, he hones his focus on the people behind the numbers.

After all, early businesses will always run into growing pains, so the question is whether the founding team is capable of working through them. That degree of grit — the ability to be resilient and succeed regardless of past failure — is the trait that draws Sahil to a founder.

“I tend to focus more on people because I have a good eye for people. What I’m looking for is grit, and that’s hard to teach. You either have it or you don’t.”

Adrian Alfieri
Adrian Alfieri
CEO, Verbatim
ObviRidgeBackboneHiyaMilaKitsch
missbotez
bloomnu
missbotez x bloomnu
4.7M followers
Problem

Coming up with 100 unique, 30-second scripts is painful.

Manually matching 3-second clips (from your 10,000-video library) for every shot of your 100 scripts is even more painful.

Creating 3 permutations of each of the 100 ads (for A/B testing) is maximum pain.

Now imagine voiceovers, captions, music, & manually uploading all 300 ads to Meta & TikTok on top of this. Also imagine you're an agency doing this for 10 brands (now we're at 3K ads).

Products for scriptwriting, competitor research, creative storage, video editing, creative analytics, & UGC exist, but they're not built for admaking (or just built badly).

Capcut
Capcut
Video editing
$7.99/month
Adobe Premiere
Adobe Premiere
Video editing
$54.99/month
ChatGPT
ChatGPT
Scriptwriting
$20/month
Foreplay
Foreplay
Competitor ads
$99/month
AdSpy
AdSpy
Competitor ads
$149/month
Recharm
Recharm
Creative storage
$500-$3k/month
Motion
Motion
Creative analytics
$1K-$10K/month
Billo
Billo
UGC
$99/video
Air
Air
Creative storage
$250-$2k/month
Solution

Icon solves this with the first AI Admaker. Think CapCut, but for making winning ads with AI in minutes (vs. a general video editor).

Icon connects to your video library and turns everything into small, reusable clips. From there, you can type whatever script you want (or upload a competitor's winning ad) and we'll create an ad with the perfect matching 3-second clip for every scene.

From there, we'll help with permutations, voiceovers, captions, music, and even auto-upload your ads.

We're built to augment marketers, not give you unuseable AI creatives. Our AI gets your ads 80-99% of the way there, leaving you to add your final touches to get them to the finish line.

Solution

How it works

Bring a script

Save time by using Icon to find matching videos for your script.

We'll split your script into shots and pick matching videos (to get you 80-99% of the way there). From there, take it to the finish line with the Admaker Editor.

Bring a script
B-roll cutting

Save time by using Icon to cut in B-roll on your talking head videos.

We'll pick matching videos to cut in on your talking head videos (to get you 80-99% of the way there). From there, take it to the finish line with the Admaker Editor.

B-roll cutting
Ad cloning

Save time by using Icon to clone ads from top brands.

We'll clone an ad using your videos (to get you 80-99% of the way there). From there, take it to the finish line with the Admaker Editor.

Ad cloning
Make me an ad

Save time by using Icon to make you ads (with the click of a button).

We'll make ads using your videos (to get you 80-99% of the way there). From there, take it to the finish line with the Admaker Editor.

Make me an ad
Describe an ad

Save time by using Icon to get an ad from a short prompt (e.g. creative brief).

We'll make an ad using your prompt (to get you 80-99% of the way there). From there, take it to the finish line with the Admaker Editor.

Describe an ad
Ad from voiceover

Save time by using Icon to create an ad from a voiceover.

We'll pick matching videos for your voiceover (to get you 80-99% of the way there). From there, take it to the finish line with the Admaker Editor.

Ad from voiceover

What they're saying

Obvi
"We went from spending hours making each ad to building entire campaigns in minutes. Icon's AI helps us shape perfect creatives at incredible speed."
Ron Shah

Ron Shah

CEO, Obvi

Products

Admaker(replaces CapCut, Adobe Premiere)

Create winning ads in minutes.

Helps with scriptwriting, competitor ad cloning, script-to-video matching (for every shot), B-roll cutting, video creation, permutations, voiceovers, captions, music, analytics, ad auto-uploading, & more.

Replaces CapCut ($7.99/month), Adobe Premiere ($54.99/month)

Admaker
Adspy
(replaces AdSpy, Foreplay)

Save time with AI-powered ad cloning.

Replaces Foreplay ($49-$99/month + $20/user), AdSpy ($149/month)

Adspy
Ads Manager
(replaces Ad Managers)

Save time with ad manager auto-upload.

Replaces Meta Ads Manager (direct use)

Ads Manager
Creative Library
(replaces Recharm, Air)

Save time by storing, tagging, creating, & splitting videos with AI.

Videos are used as building blocks for AI-generated ads in Admaker.

Replaces Recharm ($500-3K/month), Air ($250-$2K/month)

Creative Library
Creative Analytics
(replaces Motion)

Save money with built-in creative analytics.

Replaces Motion ($1K-$10K/month)

Creative Analytics
UGC Creators
(replaces Billo)

Save time & money with AI-generated UGC.

Replaces Billo ($99/video)

UGC Creators

Story

Kennan Davison

Kennan Davison

CEO, Founder
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
CPO, Chairman, Founder at Skio (CEO 2021-2024, $10M+ ARR in 3 years, profitable).
Previously: Pinterest, Hulu, Wieden+Kennedy (ad agency), League of Legends Challenger (Top 200 North America, 100M+ players globally), Y Combinator S20 (solo founder), Columbia (transfer, dropout).
Hi, I'm Kennan!
Growing up, my dream was to be a pro gamer: this felt within reach in high school once I ranked top 200 North America in League of Legends (out of 100M+ players globally).
Despite this, I needed to support myself so I went to college and started learning to code. Coding came naturally (especially with 100 hour weeks) and I was soon skipping class to work at places like Hulu and Wieden+Kennedy (ad agency). Realizing that being paid to work full-time (vs. paying to go to school) sounded quite nice, I dropped out after 1 year to join Pinterest.
After Pinterest, I started a company called Skio which does subscription management software for brands on Shopify. In just 3 years, we've partnered with 1000+ brands (Liquid I.V., Milk Bar, Polaroid, Barstool, Unilever, KraveBeauty, Boba Tea Protein), reached $10M+ ARR (+profitable), and built an amazing team of 50.
With advancements in generative AI (video specifically), I saw an opportunity to help brands bring their stories to life exponentially faster and make marketing much better (hence Icon & building the first AI Admaker).
I love learning how we can help better. Feel free to reach out any time at kennan@icon.me.
Founders Fund

Founders Fund

Icon Investor
Founders Fund
Founders Fund
Founders Fund
Founders Fund
Founders Fund
Founders Fund
Founders Fund
Peter Thiel's Founders Fund is a venture capital firm. Its partners have founded and funded companies including PayPal, Palantir, SpaceX, Anduril, Flexport, Airbnb and Stripe.
Kennan Davison

Kennan Davison

CEO, Founder
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
Kennan Davison
CPO, Chairman, Founder at Skio (CEO 2021-2024, $10M+ ARR in 3 years, profitable).
Previously: Pinterest, Hulu, Wieden+Kennedy (ad agency), League of Legends Challenger (Top 200 North America, 100M+ players globally), Y Combinator S20 (solo founder), Columbia (transfer, dropout).

Products
Icon

Others

Admaker
(replaces CapCut, Adobe Premiere)
Create winning ads in minutes.
Replaces CapCut ($7.99/month), Adobe Premiere ($54.99/month)
check
x
Adspy
(replaces Foreplay, AdSpy)
Save time with AI-powered ad cloning.
Replaces Foreplay ($49-$99/month + $20/user), AdSpy ($149/month)
check
x
Ads Manager
(replaces Ad Managers)
Save time with ad manager auto-upload.
Replaces Meta Ads Manager (direct use)
check
x
Creative Library
(replaces Recharm, Air)
Save time by storing, tagging, creating, & splitting videos with AI.
Replaces Recharm ($500-3K/month), Air ($250-$2K/month)
check
x
Creative Analytics
(replaces Motion)
Save money with built-in creative analytics.
Replaces Motion ($1K-$10K/month)
check
x
UGC Creators
(replaces Billo)
Save time & money with AI-generated UGC.
Replaces Billo ($99/video)
check
x

Explore more

Ready to create winning ads in minutes?