Tailoring content to resonate with early-stage founders is crucial for audience growth.
Building genuine connections and friendships with fellow creators on platforms like Twitter can help to grow an audience.
Balancing short-term monetization with long-term investment goals is essential for success as a venture capitalist and content creator.
Deep dives
Promoting Early-Stage Founders' Journey
The speaker emphasizes the importance of connecting with founders in the early stages of their company's development and tailoring content to meet their needs. The goal is to engage with founders who want to build successful companies and establish relationships with them. By creating content that resonates with this target audience, the speaker aims to provide valuable insights and information.
Starting Banana Capital and Content Strategy
Turner discusses the origin of Banana Capital, a venture capital fund he started after facing challenges securing a job in VC. He highlights the importance of proving his expertise and intelligence through online content, which led to opportunities in the field. Turner shares his content strategy, focusing on authentically engaging with founders and other investors through platforms like Twitter. He emphasizes the value of building connections and friendships with peers in the industry. He also mentions the potential benefits of cross-promoting and elevating others in order to grow an audience.
Balancing Monetization and Long-Term Payoff
Turner acknowledges the challenge of balancing short-term monetization with long-term investment goals. As a venture capitalist, he focuses on making long-term investments that will provide fruitful returns in the future. While he finds ways to monetize his content, such as running ads in his newsletter to support his portfolio companies, he recognizes that the true value lies in developing relationships with founders and attracting limited partners to invest in his fund. Turner emphasizes the importance of building an authentic brand and maintaining a patient approach to content creation and investment strategies.
Strategy for Growing Twitter Followers
Turner shares insights for growing Twitter followers, including engaging with peers and like-minded creators. He suggests forming genuine connections and friendships, rather than approaching it as a transactional process. Supporting fellow creators, retweeting their content, and participating in conversations help foster a sense of community and attract more followers. Turner emphasizes the significance of being authentic and relatable to the audience, while also staying true to one's own interests and content focus.
Creating Good Content and Building an Audience
Turner discusses his approach to content creation, which involves posting content that amuses him or sparks his interest. He focuses on making content that engages founders and aligns with their needs and interests. Turner participates in jokes and inside references within the entrepreneurial and investment community, fostering connections with other founders and investors. He acknowledges the impact Twitter's algorithm has on content visibility and engagement and emphasizes the importance of creating content that resonates with a broad audience while remaining true to oneself.
The podcast is back! Today I’m talking with Turner Novak. Turner is someone I’ve followed for a long time. He has an amazing Twitter account where he drops hilarious memes, talks about life as an investor, and makes fun of venture capitalists and founders.
He also posts deep dives on companies like Snapchat about how their earnings work, what’s going on in TikTok ads, and a lot more. It’s an interesting balance, and he does all this while investing in early-stage companies as a venture capitalist.
In today’s episode Turner and I talk about how he creates content. We get into how he uses his funnel to raise capital, and how to generate the highest return on investment (ROI) for your audience. We also talk about how he grew to 130,000 followers on Twitter, why he failed to get a job in venture capital and had to start his own firm, and how to create a successful newsletter.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
Easy ways to grow your newsletter audience
How Turner varies his content to get more engagement
Why getting to know your audience is so important
How Turner used writing to expand his venture capital network
