Ellis Hamburger - Storytelling for today’s top startups

if you don't have a why or a story you don't have product I felt like I just would show up with no agenda and then you would ask all of the hardest questions and it would force you to just

think deeply and get really at the core of like why are we even working on this I have the reporter's background so I don't have a big appetite for [ __ ] I'm like why does that matter and they're like well you don't have to

switch apps all the time I'm like why does that matter and they're like you're not getting distracted it's like why does that matter you almost have to like unlearn everything that you've been taught in school because then of it

actually translates a feature big or small is an opportunity to bond people to you as a company and as a product what are some of the things that you

notice that would make you say like yeah that that is good writing if you look at Tik Tok shop that's how all those videos go they show you the problem and then they solve it it really should be that simple and that's why all my work is not

trying to make the feature sound good but first communicate that I understand you and your problem welcome to Dive Club my name is rid and this is where designers never stop learning this

week's episode is with Ellis hamburger who's the writer in story teller behind so many of today's top startups like raycast visual electric Mainframe so

this episode's going to be a little bit different we're going to depart from the pixels for just a little bit and go deep into how you can tell a compelling

marketing and product story we're going to tap into Ellis's experience as a writer at the verge leading the language team at Snapchat storytelling at the browser company and working with a ton

of different startups where he's just going to share his experiences and get into the weeds of specific copy details and things that he's asking and trying to figure out to get at the heart of why

a product matters there's so much in this episode that you can pull from so let's go ahead and Dive Right In you know I I think of myself as a designer at heart this is my favorite stuff to

talk about and to me words and I ASR design right they bring you through an ideal flow or an ideal process if it's just features and there's no handholding

of any kind I think it's kind of like if you think about a movie without the trailer right it's all about priming somebody to think about what they can do what they can achieve and I think a lot of times those ideas are just as

valuable and provocative as the products themselves and I think going hand inand is really the way of the future it's funny because there's almost like an investigative element to me discovering

you cuz I'm interviewing some of these Founders and I think it was Colin at visual electric that was talking about he's like yeah this guy Ellis but he didn't give your last name and so I'm kind of like figuring out I'm like okay

I think there's this guy that's doing a lot of writing for the startups that I look up to and then I I saw hamburger on Twitter and I'm like there's no way this is him and sure enough and the next thing you know we're like working

together and so I'm excited to kind of shine a light on what you've been doing behind the scenes with all these companies and I want to talk a bit about your time at The Verge actually what was that like and what were some of the ways

that that laid the foundation that you're now building on top of and and making a career working directly with these startups yeah uh another very lucky moment of being in the right place

at the right time I was pretty much at The Verge from about a month or two after it launched and I've been following Josh dulski and the gadget team for a very long time and it was

really my dream uh to work at Engadget or eventually what became the Verge that was kind of when I got my exposure to the world of software design and this was the App Store boom of 2010 2011

there was just so much to write about every website was being turned into an app and apple was saying there's an app for that the word app was probably not in the average person's lexon until then

and so every idea was being tried the industry was flush with VC money and you know a lot of our favorites from history were really from back then whether it's

uh paper for iPad by 53 or 4 Square path Instagram there were so many great examples at that time of companies that were really designed forward and and

setting the path on top of iOS I think which was back iPhone OS maybe at that point for what software could really feel like and how it could affect our lives and in some ways I really missed

that period of skor ism because it just had so much more personality and I think that's a story as much as words is right I think in today's day and age of these hyper minimal products though I think we're starting to see a swing back in

the pendulum uh there's a lot less story in the product itself it's more just about bringing people in and providing some value I think when you look back on path that was the story the product was as much as you know anything else and so

it was just so fun to write about and I think what I learned and I as I think back on that time is that every headline is a positioning and in a lot of ways when you write a headline you're writing

a tweet as it is today how often can you get the chance to practice a thousand times trying to turn every company into one sentence and I think that sometimes

can be a little frustrating for Founders to take their pride and joy their baby turned it into one sentence but you as a Creator know you have a hook or you don't and so when I look back on my time at The Verge I really appreciate that

constraint having to write a headline and a hero image every day if not multiple times a day and that's really to a lot of extents what I still do uh though obviously I can't build just on

writing headlines I would have to have a a million clients a year but really that's still what it is at its core what is most interesting about a company it may be the product it may be the founder it may be their methodology and trying

to bridge that gap between uh consumers in the world and and that company and I think if anything it's just become ever more important as things have gotten so algorithmic and cluttered uh you really

don't stand a chance unless you are doing everything you can to stand out I think that was like the Tipping Point in my writing career was just taking Twitter seriously you almost have to like unlearn everything that you've been

taught in school because none of it actually translates totally and I think on the one hand it might feel a little Bleak or cynical but really I mean as a creative constraint it's still a lot of

fun I think the unfortunate thing is when you feel that you have to be Sensational but to me there's still so much Headroom above all the companies in Tech just to lead with their opinions

and ideas uh doesn't have to be something crazy Sensational and hyper IC it just needs to be idea Centric ideas are more viral than products to me and and the cool thing about ideas too is

that every founder ideally has three to five ideas that they really can own and feel unique to them whereas they only have one product you know you can only tweet about your feature so many times a day and I think ideas really give you

the opportunity to participate in culture and stand out and bring people to your product even when you're not tweeting about your feature set real quick message and then we can jump back into it one of my favorite parts of the

recent episode with Smith addiction was hearing about Mike's experience generating brand imagery using visual electric I was already in visual electric cuz it looks like figma it feels like figma it operates like figma

and that to me I was just like I was comfortable I felt like I was like I can move around in here with confidence I think that's exactly why I love the product so much too I mean sure it's the most photorealistic image generator out

there but it's also so clearly built specifically for designers and every single part of the ux is Elite so this is a a reminder that you can get your

first month for free using the code Dive Club just head to dive. club/ Electric

to get started look you know how big of a Jitter fan I am but their latest release is hands down the best one yet now Jitter has an infinite canvas for animation design and I mean within 30

seconds of using it I knew that this was always the way that it should be for motion design it makes iteration 10 times easier collaborating with team members makes way more sense and you can

scale content across formats using multiple artboards in a single file Jitter is crazy like this product is so incredibly good now you got to try it

out just head to dive. club/ Jitter to get started that's jit t t r okay now on to the episode I definitely want to go

deep into how teams and products can position themselves focus on ideas but first I kind of want to zoom into your time at Snapchat because you you join as

a part of this new language team I would imagine there probably even wasn't that much precedent for what the heck ux writing even was at that time so what was that like it's funny I was certainly

wrestling with what to call it because I certainly felt like I was saying kinship with the design team at snap which was heavily guarded and all I wanted was

access to that team and ux writing was really the way in as a reporter who joined snap without much guidance I think EV was one of those Founders like so many others who just kind of collect

people that they like uh Evan may have also been try trying to get me to not go to Facebook at the time which was the company I was covering uh the most heavily and was really my number one

candidate after I left reporting so anyway uh I joined snap and really I just started writing thing by thing I worked with Evan on blog posts I did the release notes I did the App Store

description I worked on product packaging for things like spectacles and I think as the company grew you know I think as you probably agree a lot of the best designers can express themselves

well across mediums and can write I think a lot of the best designers I know can write and at the very least write in an interesting way which I really think is one of the goals of a lot of these

art forms is just to be interesting and expressive and uh that led me to everything from writing every string as we called them I don't know if designers still call them strings in the product

and so my way of trying to elevate what I did I created what I call the language design team which I think was more a butt of jokes than anything else but uh fortunately I'm I have a uh the Jewish

self-deprecating sense of humor so uh that was fine with me as long as people were talking about us right uh and so language design really grew from being

kind of on the pr side to writing pretty much everything across B2B and B Toc from our S1 before the IPO to our first TV commercial to our sales narratives to

the the receipt that popped out of the spectacles vending machine when I reflect on my own Journey over the last couple years and getting into podcasting it's almost created this lens where it's

easier for me to tease apart the types of questions that people ask even in everyday life and I would imagine that your time in the weeds of app copy at

Snapchat has probably helped you establish a lens that most people listening to this don't necessarily have and they might not even feel reliant on

a copy team so what are some of the things that you notice or pay attention to in the products that you use every day that would make you say like yeah

that that is good writing I think it has to be evocative I always think I have all these little mantras in my mind like evocation over

information and whether it's a movie script or an app script I think the idea really is to make somebody feel something and I think this is something that I really uh was aligned with Josh

Miller from the browser company on and made that partnership fruitful is that every moment in the product was the opportunity to make somebody feel something and so even before I got there

uh meet the internet again was part of the browser company onboarding for Arc and how different is that than welcome to a new kind of browser and obviously

they had a whole a24 cinematic inspired app opening moment that I think other companies are just starting to copy now but I think what defines great

copy for me is that it it does make you feel something and it is incredibly complimentary to the visuals a lot of times when I'm writing for companies these days I will actually just mock up

a website in framer because I think it's so hard to evaluate copy just in a Google doc and I think that goes with company names as well it's very hard to

understand if it's working with without some type of logo treatment feeling it in just position to the product and I think if you look at one everyday example I'm super expired by cpg

products if you look at like where Chobani was and where it is now I think that's probably one of the more successful rebrands of all time a name

that was bad literally made good because as it turns out the word Chobani before almost looked like a Star Trek font it was all caps it was not very pretty you're like what is this is this

someone's last name and then I don't know who they worked with on the Rebrand but um now the word Chobani is as puffy and juicy As You Wish yogurt could be

and they kind of have these watercolor art on the on the labels that complement it in such a perfect way and I'm sure their sales have just gone Gang Busters since that redesigned because you know

really that was that was what brand was invented to do was to differentiate commodity products and I think that's really where it can be so powerful and I think one of the reasons that tech companies have been skeptical at brand

for a long time it's because there haven't been Commodities in Tech we've been able to lean on our Innovations but in this day and age where this environment of reaching

consumers is so saturated and crowded you do need brand in every leg you can stand on to try and bring people in and so you know if you look at something like the daylight computer brand or the

Mainframe brand imagine those companies without the brand without the visuals without the name without the typography how different would that make you feel you mentioned the arc onboarding maybe we can just use that as a launching

point to the next chapter in your story which is eventually you joined the storytelling team at the browser company again kind of is this this theme of Blazing your own trail in terms of the

type of role I don't know if if there was much precedent for Storyteller at a tech company up until that point but maybe we could even talk a little bit about what that role was like and what

were some of the things that you were helping Josh and team think through in the early days at the browser company yeah it really was such a breath of

fresh air after seven and a half years at snap uh snap really I think was kind of my Coming of Age my quick and dirty long and dirty experience of everything

you can do right and wrong as a company when it comes to product marketing comms business and so I'm so happy to have had that experience but one thing that

really stands out from that time is that Evan as smart as he is uh didn't want to communicate to the world and I think

part of that was his feeling that talking as a brand or as you know the CEO of a brand was lame and I think there was a point back when Snapchat was

created that that was true but today I think the shift that happened which is completely fine is that brand voices matter a lot less and Creator and

founder voices matter a lot more and EV just refused to do that and it really is a bummer because there were so many Rich

narratives at snap that could have brought people in and created so much love not just from consumers but from the salespeople our philosophies around

uh ephemerality and living in the moment over permanence and Facebook having every message you've ever sent our philosophy around augmenting the real world as beautiful as it can be than

escaping to some virtual world are focus on real friends versus fake friends and acquaintances and so we didn't say any of that and so no one knew any of that obviously and so I was the guy who

introduced every new hire every week to our philosophy and people always told me like how meaningful it was to them and inspired them to get to work and that was really when it hit me just how

pivotal storytelling can be to inspire people to be happier create better think about their lives in a different way bring their friends besides just the age-old idea that well just product L

growth I think you need to put words in people's mouth for how they're going to recommend it give them ideas of how to talk about it so then getting to browser where Josh bless his heart going from

Evan underc commmun to Josh probably overc commmun which I think he would agree with you know was so liberating and fun and Josh is so charismatic and

has so many wonderful Big Ideas and he has this genuine childlike enthusiasm that is just so contagious and so really it was the perfect opportunity for me to

say hey joshh like let's package all these ideas into the internet computer into a way to frame up everything that we're doing since people don't want to

talk about a browser all that much and you know what that's fine if we want to talk about startup transparency if we want to talk about the internet and everything it can be if we want to talk about

personalization as it goes with something like boosts if we can be a leader for all these philosophies the type of leader that I always wanted Evan to be at snap with these ideas then it

makes them more meaningful powerful sharable and fun to try people are more motivated to try these features when they're elevated if you look at something like Peak I just love that

Josh said hey guys we have this thing called Peak it's amazing it's essentially like quick look but for the browser you know it's it's not something

that is brand new to the world but what it can be is a way to not have a [ __ ] ton of tabs that you already looked at and didn't close and really it's about

Liberation and Beauty in that way and so uh I partnered with uh Nash and Josh Lee on the storytelling team to create a video that I think is one of the things I'm most proud of maybe if you remember

it said uh beauty is in the eye of the browser was the tweet and the log line which actually came from Josh Lee was um the what if the best tab is the one you never open and it was kind of like a

crazy Montage about the most beautiful parts of nature opening and closing like a flower an eye and then the last two seconds of the video we showing a Peak

opening and closing and so to go from a place like Snap where all we did was a brand campaign every year and a half to creating something more powerful than a

brain campaign out of the smallest feature was just so fun and fulfilling and rejuvenating and uh so yeah that transition was was really uh a big pivot

for me and and in some ways allowed me to do everything that that in some ways I always wanted to do I think that's why I like that example so much because the vast majority of teams would have taken

something like Peak and they would have dumped it into a change lck maybe a dedicated email maybe but that's probably the ceiling of what it could have become and instead you led with

this beautiful video that you know again it didn't even have the feature in it until the very very end of it it all has to be content and why not take a swing a

feature big or small is an opportunity to bond people to you as a company and as a product the browser is one of the only products that has hours and hours

and hours of usage every single day and so something small like that or like super copy inside Arc command shift C in order to copy the link URL that's uh you

know in your in your address bar things like that can really change people's lives and make them feel delighted and happy in the way that a handmade

beautiful utensil or coffee mug or chair I've always been such a believer that software is Art and is artisanship and handiwork and I think it's still

underappreciated in that way I mean this is the stuff that we're touching and using all day every day the stuff that is very literally how we spend our time on this Earth and so uh why not take a

swing at you know making some of that stuff big obviously there's a R there but uh why not I'm still a daily user of Arc and I do appreciate the craftsmanship you said something

interesting that I'm going to underline though you said bond to the company and to the product and I think that's been my experience with the browser company

and a lot of it does have to do with that difference between Josh and Evan that I had never considered before where so much of the Affinity that I have with the broader team comes from the fact

that yeah I follow Josh on Twitter there's like this level of transparency that you don't often get in Tech I feel like I get the behind the scenes I feel like I understand some part of who he is

as a human where I can't even picture most of the founders of the products that I love and use and so when I even think about how I want to establish the

tone and voice for inflight Josh is probably at the top of that inspiration list for that reason I think it's important to do these exercises in your head like what if we did or didn't have

this and how would it be different I think one of the reasons it was always hard to pitch communication at snap was because it was just growing like Gang Busters we couldn't move the needle no

matter what we did on marketing and coms frankly and I think we could influence important audiences like reporters media investors candidates creators but it was

very hard to move the needle when you know I got there there were 40 people and 100 million da and these were all 21y olds that worked there who you know we were doing our

best but this thing was very much a rocket ship that was going no matter what we did but how would things have been different had Evan communicated more and it's interesting he's just

recently started doing this and he's doing a good job because he's one of the most well- read intellectual people I've ever met but you know I don't know maybe

it's humility maybe it's fear uh in some ways but what if he embraced who he is you know what if Evan did release notes

from a helicopter with his supermodel wife how does that make an impression and obviously you got to be really funny and

self-deprecating and admit exactly what this is but that is who you are and especially in America people just love characters like that and obviously

that's pretty ostentatious to go out to the world like that but the more you do it the more people see the real you and they're like hey this is actually a good guy who's really thinking deeply and just freaking loves helicopters all

right let's talk about the meaning chapter now that you're currently in because you have this tagline that I love you say that you're helping Founders find their truth so can you give us a little bit of context for what

that looks like and the types of things that you're working on right now what I've always felt is that Founders feel like no one is like them you know their internal team is intimidated are scared

to push back on the big ideas and I think that's in Parks a lot of Founders are resistant to that also an under appreciation of writing whether it's ux writing or Super Bowl script writing and

a lot of this stuff only gets done in the context of a giant brand refresh that happens every year or two and I'm just a big believer that like the average person Founders grow every day and change every day and if you're not

making time to think about these big Ideas it's really hard to feel confident in your vision and in knowing how you want to inspire the team and most people have trouble expressing exactly how they

feel and so it's funny I always wanted to be a therapist growing up and in some ways I've been able to do that you know sitting down with Founders putting my reporter hat back on including you yeah

you're laughing CU you're like I am laughing it was very much so therapy I felt like I just would show up with no agenda and then you would ask all of the hardest questions and it would force you

to just think deeply and get really at the Cor of like why are we even working on this and it's a skill and you do feel seen as a Founder in that moment because

it's the stuff that drives everything but you really only discuss the surface level fruit that comes from these core beliefs and uh so it always starts with

rid what was your childhood trauma and how does it reflect itself in this design system I want to go into the weeds of how you work with these teams and one of the companies you listed at

the beginning was raycast for anyone listen to the show they know how much I love raycast so maybe we could just go deep there for a second because I think raycast is interesting in that you know

it's almost like this unending list of features in many ways so how do you work with Thomas and that team to identify the right story to put at the heart of

it all yeah it's funny it really is the perfect example is it that's I think one of the foundational challenges for a lot of Founders is trying to find meaning in a long list of features features that

You' made uh certainly we had that problem at snap especially when those features were so disparate whether it was a map a cloud storage tool a messaging tool a new content format a AR

camera like what's the thread between all that right and so I think that was the challenge when I got to raycast and I am still a writer so at the end of the

day it all does have to be expressable in real world like that's I think what's different between me and a lot of brand strategists I don't use the word brand anyway is that like my stuff gets written it doesn't just live in a deck I

will do your video script or your Manifesto or your homepage tagline or even your onboarding copy or App Store copy and to me the fun part though is negotiating the high level ideas so

really the ideas always come from the founders I mean when I talk to Pedro or Thomas or anybody else at the raycast team it's like well everybody loves

these features like the Emoji picker or now the new Focus mode is just seemingly doing really well and I absolutely love it but what does it all have in common I think no one really wants to be a

company that advertises a 100 individual features people's appetite for downloading apps isn't as high as it used to be and so if it feels like a bunch of little things it's kind of like I don't know if I like this or that or

it's hard to use and so the exercise I do with Founders is trying to and this is design it's finding the problem the most important problem and paino that

you solve in people's lives and so what I heard from them was that if you can bring up your raycast you know Omni bar you avoiding going to those other apps

and I'm like hm interesting what does that mean I'm like why does that matter and they're like well you don't have to switch apps all the time I'm like why does that matter and they're like well then you can kind of stay doing what you're doing and you're not getting

distracted and it's like why does that matter and what we came back to is the idea that like it's not just about avoiding distraction which everybody knows and talks about and so even if

it's true you want to find something new and fresh for your brand but the idea of on the other end of that is we believe in this idea of flow and finding the

right setup for yourself to be most productive that incorporates shortcuts like the calculator or the conversions or being able to create a calendar event that includes things like window layouts

it's like how do you create commonality between those otherwise besides just being these amazing little utilities and so I think where we ended up was you know some place really cool that I was proud of is just kind of the homepage

talks about being the shortcut to everything you know everybody loves shortcuts people are always looking for shortcuts in their busy lives I think it's a bit more broadly appealing than you know uh supercharging your Mac or

something like that if you want to move outside of that audience of of early adopters and uh then you know if you look at the Manifesto It's about this feeling that we all feel every day of uh

switching between apps and forgetting where you even started and that's really just just another way to talk about distraction and so you really have to find that ownable narrative and I mean I

don't know this for a fact but I would bet that all those conversations several months ago either informed or validated the raycast focus idea as something that

was worth investing in I mean if this is a launcher why would you make a focus mode like something that you know you're I assume they're always trying to decide what belongs in raycast what belongs in

the OS what belongs in other apps uh Apple already has their own Focus mode they already have do not disturb and all this but if you are about this big problem of trying to solve the context

switching help people flow using these shortcuts and tools then that's a perfect fit for you and so to that extent I think I'm just as interested in stories as a way to aign on product

strategy as anything else and I really do believe that this gives you so much more to talk about and react to before maybe Thomas was tweeting about you know

changes to Iowa Mac uh apis things that are very much about speed and efficiency now if this is your narrative he and Pedro can make

tweets and videos about anything in the world of productivity flow Focus distraction and it feels not just like a fit but allows them to say a lot more

things and bring in hopefully a lot more people as a result because if you're in a top a cabbits freak you may not want a launcher but you do want the best way to use your computer to focus yeah it's

really as simple as that and I think that's uh what storytelling really comes down to for a lot of products These Days ideas over features there you go I had a note like a question that I really

wanted to ask you which is basically like what are the questions that you are asking Founders to get at these underlying truths but it was interesting just listening to your talk right there

because it seems like the main one is well why does that matter well why does that matter and just repeatedly going deeper and deeper and deeper it is energizing but also you know anxiety

inducing that I think my questions besides the the Ted Talk question and I also asked people if you were Marie condo what was your uh what's your Marie condo you know your your sparking Joy

like literally making cleaning your closet the most meaningful activity in the world that is my favorite example of Storytelling in action for product or methodology and so my but my questions

really aren't all that different I think I probably just have one I have the reporter's background so I don't have a big appetite for [ __ ] which I think is pretty unusual for people in

marketing and coms and also having written every goddamn touch point from a Twitter bio to a error copy in an app to

a TV commercial I feel like I probably have a different criteria for what those nuggets are what causes the [ __ ] radar to go off for you ego is

definitely a big one inflating the value of a product like I try and put myself in the shoes of someone who is on the outside and so a lot of it is word

choice too like do you use the word leverage who talks about pitching their friend like oh yeah like this tool is such good way to leverage your blah blah

blah like maybe if you're a finance bro but otherwise it's just like what the heck does this thing do and so that's design as well putting yourself in the shoes of your audience where they're

going to see you and hear you and does it sound stupid does it sound like Silicon Valley BS does it sound

useful you know and so I think part of that is just I guess having some skills at critical thinking and having a criteria and knowing how to poke holes I guess I just always try and have that

reporter hat on maybe it's just a muscle that you develop because if you're a reporter and you're just rewriting press releases you are going to get tarred and feathered and so maybe it's that muscle

memory of not wanting to get uh made fun of on Twitter by my fellow reporters you used the word muscle as you were talking in my head it was like oh you know in many ways Founders are hiring you for

your taste in writing too like just someone just like I've looked at a bunch of headlines I've looked at a bunch of pieces of copy I kind of have an idea of what good looks like I'm curious if you

even think like do you have a personal style or even a way of describing the type of writing that you enjoy the most it's always different and and so I think

at a surface level it can be appealing when I do my version of whatever the question is is it a fit for every founder my voice I think my voice tends

to be very philosophical and thoughtful about like the meaning and why behind things I think if you look at my work with daylight it's probably a good

example like the headline I wrote for daylight which you know there's a lot of interesting things about that product that could have been in the headline like the world's first 60 frames per

second eink like that appeals to a lot of people you know the world's best eink tablet for doing anything not just reading that's very functional I think what I asked myself in working with Anin

as well fortunately he's a very philosophical guy as well is that people just kind of want to strip away all this distraction and clutter from their digital lives that they can actually

have a more healthy relationship with tech and so a lot of what I do is kind of like common phrases in language that is co-opted or spun in some way so in

Tech all we talk about is reinvention or like the phone reinvented the computer reinvented and so what I did there was the computer de invented on an aesthetic level is just something you probably

haven't read before and makes you think I'm always trying to make people think uh more so than you know be perfectly clear about what it is to me that's what the subhead is about and appeal to that

core human need people want to D invent and strip down and detox their digital Lifestyles and so that headline is really just a way to build that bridge

make people smile uh more than say everything the product does I think that's what headlines are to me and so if it's thoughtful and it provokes ideas that's I think my style uh another one

I'm proud of I worked with um Nicholas Ern uh a designer on the positioning and Manifesto for his uh Studio that kind of works with Founders on building as he

calls them design sensible companies not just how do you do a nice design system but how do you become design Le and build a design culture and what we got to was riffing on an existing phrase

kind of like what I was saying before you know people talk about design as how it looks and then you know if you're good you know design is how it works but if you're even gooder than that what is

it and what we came up with was it's not how it looks or how it works but designed is how it's made and so if the whole zeit gist around what is design

wasn't there that isn't meaningful to you so I guess a lot of what I do is just really trying to like respond and React to what people are thinking about and feeling especially problems if you

don't have a why or a story you don't have a product which was in his book build I think they go hand inand it's all the same thing same with meet the internet again it's got to make you smile and it's got to make you think and

at the end of the day a headline is a hook and so it has to be a good hook you're having all of this back and forth forth with Founders you're you're helping them think you're positioning

yourself as a service for them and you know 99.9% of Founders don't have an Alis but they might have a designer and they still have all of those existing

gaps in the way that they think and so how can a designer at a startup get at some of the value that you're providing I think it's pushing for an actionable

mission and vision the main reason Founders and designers come to me is because they want that Northstar singular vision and so to give you an

example you know at snap uh we certainly had a unique Mission uh but it was so general you know we first talked about being a camera company and it's like if you're internal if you're a designer

you're like all right should I should I try more camera stuff you know when I pitch ideas or if you're in sales you're like all right should I you know pivot my narrative around being a camera even

though camera ads are something that is only a fit for brand advertisers and that's not 99% of our business you know and so that much was really I think kind of a idea to differentiate to Wall

Street initially and show that we don't want to be a social media company which fine then the next lines of the snap Mission um we contribute to human progress which is probably as generic as

an ambition gets which isn't really useful or relatable At All by empowering people to express themselves live in the moment learn about the world and have fun together I think as some idea of

like what the screens of the Gap are about and maybe their goals sure but what is the connective tissue of those things what can only we do what is the

most inspiring what should people be thinking about every day I think without a very tangible Mission Andor vision statement that is actionable uh every

day I think they're kind of not very helpful or useful at all and so when I work on missions and Visions I try and make them as inspiring and as specific as possible and so to give you a sense

of like a Manifesto I was proud of I worked with Amo the team at Amo who I met at snap uh on their new suite of apps which why a sweet of apps you know

why that why are we excited about it why would consumers be excited about it and if you don't document that it's hard to both be inspired by it bring people in and even align the team and so along

with the manifesto called where did our friends go which was once again getting at a very core human need that has nothing to do with apps at all we had a bunch of principles down there and one of the ones that I really liked was

simple apps over super apps and we had this idea that the pendulum was swinging back to simple apps because we were just getting so overwhelmed with having to dig through products to get where we

wanted to go and I'm such a believer in codifying whatever those principles are to the extent that you can because how else do you have signposts internally

for how to make decisions and what to do I think most company values are just absolutely the worst when they're like

something like be kind you know it's like well we all God man I sure hope we all are trying to be kind every day you think somebody's going to be like you know what I've been shitty I should be

kind more just because that's because that's written in stone on the company website it's more like uh how about friends over followers how about

hesitate before gamifying how about the things that we actually encounter every day that we most need codified to be navigated and I think this applies to our religions our governments I mean

when you look at something like the Ten Commandments I mean every startup should have one of those I'm inspired by Bible verses and other mantras and and adages and demonics because how else are people

going to remember this stuff you know and so they have to be opinionated memorable inspiring in order to actually work or else what's it all what's it all for anyway and uh it's funny I worked

with uh Amy with the founder in Europe um the very first line of the video was your calendar is your personal philosophy a picture of you and

everything you care about and then it jumped into a Bible verse about a calendar where there's a time for everything that this founder just absolutely loved and I'm like [ __ ] yeah

let's be inspired by that you know like a lot of these ideas are age-old like your life uh should have everything in moderation you should try and focus on the stuff that really brings you Joy

every day is a microcosm of the rest of your life these philosophical ideas I think no matter what app you're making are the fundamental human need that we're all facing in today's very scary

world and so uh yeah I think every company owes it to their people and themselves to try and come up with some some mantras and ideas and Commandments

that uh feel heartfelt and meaningful and actionable Amy is the perfect example because it's like the definition of the most commoditized market and yet all of Twitter was talking about a

calendar app for a whole day and that's crazy that's like really really impressive and I do think there is something to be said about the word memorable which you just listed and yeah

like even right now I can still repeat back simple apps not super apps there's a beauty in that brevity that I would imagine doesn't come for free or

immediately there's a process to arrive at something that distills the essence of what this is all about down to like four words you know so maybe we could

talk for a second about again going back to that Designer who's working with a founder and and trying to equip that person with some of the tactics that

they can use to get at this Simplicity and and make something that is memorable and you you've talked a little bit you talked about the Ted Talk and you talked

about Mary condo and how you can emulate some of that is there anything else that we haven't touched on on that can make this story Discovery process a little

bit more practical hey it's red I'm constantly asked about my favorite product so I want to take just one minute and give you a quick rundown of my stack deson is how I ship design

changes without having to code framer is How I build my websites genway is how I do research Jitter is how I animate my designs and play is how I design and

prototype mobile apps visual electric is how I generate all of my imag and raycast is my shortcut every step of the way now I've hand selected these

companies to partner with me so that I can do these episodes fulltime so the best way by far to support the show is to check them out you can find the full

list at dive. club/ Partners okay now on to the rest of the episode all the conversations that we have about taste I want my work to be objective uh and I

think objectivity and introspection will only make you better and more confident in the work whether you are a writer designer this or that and so you know

whenever you're having a debate or a conversation or or an argument about why this or why that it is really important to get Beyond Aesthetics which are so

easy to look at as something that kind of has their own intrinsic value and ask why does it matter why is important why is it supporting the product why is is

it reducing friction why is it going to help our audience why would they like it uh how is it different and where is the

meaning in it you know always going back to the consumer need I think a lot of times in design and in tech people say build for yourself which I think is the

same as as a writer people say write what you know and I think if anything it's just a shortcut to making sure you're making the most of your knowledge and able to retain passion

but at the end of the day like I do think you do have a customer right so I think talking to as many customers as possible which I think a lot of

designers are afraid to do you know it's it's scary uh a lot of designers tend to be like more on the introverted side and whether you are kind of hiring somebody

to do it or doing it yourself like and snap did this a lot early on which was great creates objectivity when people are feeling a certain way it gives you a

reality check on your ego and for everything from a ux flow to copy you know I think getting people's reactions is important here's the thing though

they have to be representative of your audience they can't just be randos because all all these uh thoughtful ideas and and mantras we're talking about aside from make America great

again are probably not going to appeal to the average person who is living a very busy chaotic life like I think we have to know who we're talking to and so

that's one of the things that I you know kind of own is that when I write I'm writing for People Like Us investors

candidates internal team Media Partners and I know all those people I've written for all those people but if you ask me how to write prod of copy for someone in

Middle America what I would tell you is I don't know we need more insight and it's always the puzzle the same way but I think everybody talks about

Instinct sure like start there but I think you really do have to validate your ideas through data research talking

to real people because I this was an old advertising adage from David ogal it's like make sure you're saying what you think you're saying like it can be remarkably easy to not say what you think you're saying and just get in your

own way uh I think the computer de invented probably needs to change once they go a bit broader and are you know a bit more accessible to the average person that's

the objectivity right there where it all comes back to and there's a big difference between doing these research calls where you know most designers are hunting for problems and we immediately

go into like solutionizing and translating this into interfaces and flows but a practical takeaway that I'm having from this conversation is just

when I'm talking to users customers trying to ident identify specific language that I can then pull from when I'm writing product copy marketing copy

figuring out that next you know little trailer video to put on Twitter and trying to have as much of that language come from the actual things that people

are saying as possible oh yeah I mean I'm the biggest New Yorker fan in the world but it's like that type of language is targeted at a very specific

group of Elites who still read fre magazines you know so that's part of knowing who you're designing for and who you're talking to you know Tech especially with tech Jaren just doesn't

mean anything to anybody I think even things like faster or better are not things that most people really care about just like show me you know be

inspired by As Seen On TV those old commercials more so than uh Tech marketing show me the problem and then solve it if you look at Tik Tock shop that's how all those videos go they show

you the problem and then they solve it it really should be that simple and that's why all my work is not trying to make the feature sound good but first communicate that I understand you and

your problem in order to get your attention and remind you of the problem and then present you with the solution and that's how I think about headlines and subheads the headline I think asks

the question the subhead is then just as clear as possible about what it does even listening to you say faster and better you've already instilled this knee-jerk reaction in me where it's like

like well why does that matter and I can see the value of continually asking that question yeah exactly and it's probably true I mean most consumer products on

this Earth are probably faster better but uh what does that mean you know uh and not only that but like maybe most importantly it's just not unique it's

not a good hook and for some reason every company is tempted I think by think different to like just make their company like email better browse better

and it's like sure that sounds simple but it doesn't actually have any meaning and I think that's really where that why does that matter come in what does this really mean it might look nice in the

type that you've chosen but uh it isn't really playing to your strong suit as a company and so really you know be honest with you like most Founders I talk to

are in the world of faster better more efficient when I first start talking to them and they know who they're going after but for some reason we're stuck in this like highly functional mindset you

got to use every tool you have to try and differentiate and evoke and most companies don't even do it they don't even take the chance and so I'm always applauding companies that do take a

chance even if I don't know if it's perfectly on the Mark it's like if you look at something like the recent perplexity campaign if you look at something like the visual aesthetic

incredible you know uh super distinct ownable especially versus the competition that is seriously trying to do you know the whole Uber bits thing where our company is just dots like sure

I mean fine that that looks nice and I'm sure it's ergonomically Fibonacci perfect but uh doesn't make people feel something I'm not so sure and then they have this line about

know-it-all and I think it's fine I like it but you know do people want to be a know- at- all it reminds me of this agal debate we've had about Outsourcing

ourselves to Google or to now AIS and I think there's a lot of evidence that that that's true and so you know I'm not necessarily sure that that is the perfect line However the fact that they

shipped it is a massive win uh and it's different and it's short and sweet and memorable clearly I remembered it it's good yeah and so I think it's always better to put something out there than

just to wait forever and ever and ever and I'll give you one more example speaking of faster and better from the snap years which is that we always said that Snapchat was the fastest way to communicate which is highly functional

but if you were to tell that if you were to actually tell that to somebody in person they're like uh texting seems pretty fast to me you know talking on the phone you dial them and then they

pick up and then you talk and so I don't know why we were stuck in that mindset for so long but it took us years to get to a point of asking why does that matter and I like vividly remember making a Google slide with like a

positioning statement that I found online because I did not come from from a conventional marketing background that said we are the best way to blank so that you can blank and I'm like holy

[ __ ] why was nobody here asking that question so that you can and I remember writing deepen your relationships with the people that matter most there's no

other product certainly in Social that's focused on that and that the most obvious [ __ ] in the world led to the real friends Campaign which really

helped us codify that idea that it's not just about sending you know either drunk or sexy selfies but the reason this product has 500 million daily users is

because people do it to send their daily lives that isn't fit for Instagram and you can show an individual snap and you can say look how quickly I sent it but no one can relate to that inside joke or

you show the entire friendship which was that TV commercial campaign we had 20 friendships from around the world there were just like the most beautiful loving best friendships that is what people

want they want to be closer to a friend and feel like they're there with them every day that's what that product is for but if you only talk about it as the fastest way to communicate it's not

inspiring who are you even competing with you know and so moving beyond faster better and asking what does it actually help you do in your life that people really want is always the first

key I love so that you can I love asking why does that matter we've covered a ton of ground it's been super practical I love all of the examples you shared how

do you think we should end this is there some kind of a through line across these different stories or a parting piece of advice that you want to give to a designer who's listening who's inspired

to make this practical take some next steps grow this storytelling muscle start to contribute on the product marketing front anything that you want to lead people with Before I Let You Go

yeah make your onboarding not suck today I think people are starved a lot more for meaning than they are utility and going back to you know some

of the examples we've talked about imagine the 222 app if you played with that that's kind of like one of the more lauded on boardings or maybe more people have seen laps or even dispo like

there's a reason I remember and we remember those they block you from getting to the product faster as some PM would say but we're talking about them because they made an impact once again

it's the trailer for the movie it gets you excited why do we not do that for our software uh with your website with your onboarding obviously having a video

onboarding if it isn't meaningful then it's not good having a video or uh Vibe deal with haptics is not good for its own sake but if you can prime people and

get them into the right mindset to show what you're going after and what you're about I mean you know you could read endless insights about how jensy chooses Brands and products based on authenticity and Vibes and emotions and

as we discussed earlier it does apply more to commodity products I would say than to products with unique utility but that's where the love and the enthusiasm and certainly where the sharing comes from I think there was this old uh Scott

bsky ISM about how like you know people come for the tool but they share the Delight or something like that if you can create these ongoing story moments those are just as sharable as your product and certainly that's what we

found at the browser company that people share our transparency videos about a design review just as much as a product video especially as you move further

down that adoption curve there are a lot of people especially in the valley who probably aren't interested in the idea and the perceived switching cost of moving all their [ __ ] from chrome so

that content about browsers is probably not going to get their attention because they aren't even considering in marketing language a browser but if something crosses their LinkedIn feed

about a company that is insanely transparent and likable they're H maybe I'll try their browser that's objective I think and so you know that's what I've learned from my crash course in

marketing is that it's the story flow is a user flow as much as anything else just picture someone in that process I feel like people in the valley are always surprised that it takes an

advertisement three to seven or more times for you to actually convert it's like why would that be if it's a valuable tool I just buy it or download it like we always say people are

emotional but like let's not rational but like let's quantify that you know it's going to take somebody a handful of times can we make those times diverse meaningful not repeating the same message over and over again that's why I

think pretty much every company can benefit from uh having a story it allows you to be in the world more times and more ways it's really as simple as that well Alis I think that is the perfect way to wrap this up I super appreciate

you coming on and honestly just everything that you're doing in the world today it's really cool you've kind of created this own little path and slice of the internet for yourself and I

really enjoy just seeing every new launch where it's like yeah Alice was behind that you can just tell so it's it's uh it's great stuff thanks for pulling back the curtain a little bit

for us today oh yeah it was my pleasure thank you for the Soap Box hopefully I wasn't too long-winded as you could tell I get pretty animated with our products and our storytelling you do you do have

to come to people uh pushing to the edge knowing that yeah you're going to be in the same feed as the Kardashians so you got to be just as interesting I know you can

r with your coaching Ellis I appreciate it yeah [Music]