ISSUE #2

Growth series: Owning the timeline vs owning the narrative

A live global event: framing the moment

It was a typical Friday morning when, out of the blue, my co-worker sent me a post on X.

The link hit first. Then two messages followed.

“Who makes these brand videos?”

“And how do we get one!”

The link was to Kalshi’s global launch: a 26-second video with 7.5 million impressions, 4.4 thousand likes, and over a thousand bookmarks.

I can’t remember the last time a corporate video made me stop and think: “whoa… this is f-ing cool.” The pacing. The cuts. The music. But more than that, the framing.

The video stitched Kalshi’s global expansion alongside historic events. Queen at Live Aid. The Olympics broadcast. Apollo 11 lifting off. Then Neil Armstrong’s “one small step for man” quote landed just before the logo appeared.

By the time the video ended, it had done exactly what it was designed to do. I had never heard of Kalshi. I barely understood prediction markets. And yet, within minutes, I was Googling, reading, and watching everything I could find.

That’s the thing about well-executed new media. It captures attention. It sparks curiosity. And above all, it gets distribution.

But when the momentum faded, and the feed moved on, there was nowhere deeper for me to go. No artifact in the same cinematic language that explained the company’s vision. No story about why it existed. No sense of why this mattered to the people building it.

So I stopped searching. I didn’t subscribe. I didn’t follow. I moved on. The attention arrived. But my behavior didn’t change. For me, there was no depth.

Which got me thinking: Is there room for depth in new media, or is attention the only thing it’s built to deliver?

The Story of Statsig: The art of framing depth

Back in November, I helped produce a short video for Statsig. About ten minutes long. A narrative-driven piece that focused on the people and our culture rather than the product. It was the first of its kind for the company and for me.

The goal was simple, but difficult to execute. One story. Two audiences. Multiple layers of depth. I needed to get the framing right.

On one end of the spectrum, the video could have been made just for employees. A time capsule filled with lore, inside jokes, memories, and, of course, shitposting. That version would have been deeply meaningful internally – but without context, it wouldn’t land for anyone else. So I had to widen the frame without losing the focus.

Instead of telling a story about our culture, the story became about how culture generally shapes a company’s ability to survive hard moments.

But rather than explaining that idea abstractly, the video showed it through moments where Statsig’s culture resolved conflict. The video followed a series of acts made up of: “the intention | the obstacle | and the cultural practices that triumphed.”

• Working in-office | the pandemic | our commitment to being in person (being scrappy)

• Ambitions to build a robust product | not knowing what customers wanted | our customer-first product practices

• Moving fast | the tradeoff of speed versus quality | dogfooding our product + quality weeks

Each act built on the last, until the story reached the climax:

• Intention | Needing to stay ahead/ survive

• Obstacle | A competitor winning in the market

• Culture | Our ability to disrupt ourselves because we were in-person, so we could move fast; our customer-centricity set the roadmap; and we had the guardrails to ship a product and maintain its quality

Those narratives became the anchor. If you were working at a startup or had ever worked at one, you recognized the pattern. You didn’t need to know Statsig to feel it. The framing for the story allowed for depth. It allowed for meaning.

Depth and distribution: Why attention alone doesn’t compound

Okay. The pieces are in place, but the obvious question remains: why should you care about any of this?

Because every piece of content is competing for attention. Every post. Every video. Every announcement. All of it is fighting over the same scarce commodity – an audience’s time. And some content simply competes better in that environment.

Short, cinematic videos win attention. They’re built for timelines. They compress an idea into something instantly legible, easy to grasp, and easy to share. They spread fast and travel far. Kalshi is proof of that.

But attention and impact are not the same thing.

The kind of media that wins distribution often fades as quickly as it arrives. It creates a moment, not a memory. It shows up in your feed, delivers a hit, and then disappears as the timeline keeps moving.

On the other end of the spectrum is depth.

Depth doesn’t travel the same way. It asks more of the audience. More time. More attention. More intention. And because of that, it often looks like it’s underperforming when measured by reach and reactions.

The Story of Statsig video is an example of that tradeoff.

Longer. Slower. Narrative-driven. Focused on people, culture, and lived experience rather than a headline moment. It didn’t rack up millions of views. But the people who watched it paused. They stayed. It gave them something to sit with.

That’s the distinction. Distribution-first media optimizes for reach. Depth-first media optimizes for trust.

One wins the click. The other changes how someone thinks about the company and the people behind it. One captures attention. The other gives that attention somewhere to go.

The mistake is treating these as opposing strategies. They’re not. It’s a sequencing problem.

Owning the narrative (not just the timeline)

This is where I think a16z is directionally right about new media.

Distribution is too important to outsource. A well-timed launch video or viral moment can translate into real outcomes. Talent notices. Users sign up. Investors lean in. You can, as a16z puts it, win the internet for a day. And that day can matter.

But this definition of new media stops short. Winning attention doesn’t mean you’ve shaped understanding. Owning the timeline doesn’t mean you own the story people walk away with once the moment passes. Timelines reward speed and compression. They’re great at creating moments. They don’t work to sustain meaning.

Why someone has to own the explanation
This is why so many companies are investing in founder-led media.

Not because podcasts are trendy or that long-form is inherently better. But because someone has to own the explanation layer of the company.

A founder. An executive. A clear spokesperson. Someone who can articulate why the company exists, how it thinks, and what problem it’s actually trying to solve – in full sentences, over time.

To me, new media is less about a single format and more about a system.

First, be explicit about who the narrative is for. Customers. Builders. Investors. Future employees. Pick one primary audience and optimize for how they form trust with a brand.

Second, be clear on the message you’re pushing. The idea you want people to associate with the company six months from now.

Third, choose content types that match the job. Short, cinematic videos exist to capture attention. They’re built for timelines. Their job is to pull people in. Longer-form artifacts exist to build trust. Founder conversations. Narrative videos. Thoughtful essays. Artifacts that don’t go viral, but are built to linger.

Fourth, design distribution as a sequence, not a one-off. The snappy video wins the view. The long-form piece earns the trust.

Plus, the longer-form narratives can feed back into the system. One video can be cut into dozens of smaller clips. Each clip carries the same framing, the same message, the same point of view. All of it ladders back to a larger story.

The short clips compete for attention.
The long-form artifact owns the narrative.

New media works best when those two things are designed together, on purpose – not when you end up with one and hope it turns into the other.

Cheers,

Ian at SaaS Weekly