Influencer Marketing for Startups: Who to Work With

A list of people with the best newsletters, podcasts, blogs, and other pieces content that you can work with to get distribution for your startup.

Kieran Ryan

February 24, 2024

Startup influencers featuring Lenny Rachitsky, Packy McCormick, Pete Huang, and more.

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This post is intended for startups looking to partner with influencers for distribution. I omitted podcasts like All-In, newsletters like The Pragmatic Engineer, and blogs like Paul Graham since they do not take sponsorships and may monetize through different methods.

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Newsletters

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Lenny’s Newsletter by Lenny Rachitsky

Subscribers: 481,000

Frequency: 1x month for unpaid subscribers. 1x week for paid subscribers – every Tuesday.

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Ex-Airbnb Product Manager Lenny Rachitsky incorporates expertise from founders and startup leaders with his personal learnings to drive well-written and educational pieces on product, growth, career growth, working with humans, and other topics in the startups’ orbit.

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Working with Lenny’s Newsletter: Highly recommend to startups

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My favorite issues:

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Not Boring by Packy McCormick

Subscribers: 209,000

Frequency: 2x week – every Monday and Thursday

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Not Boring is known for its deep dives into startups that are changing the world, like Varda, Ramp, and Replit. By interviewing the founder and committing to 10s of hours of research, Packy does an excellent job of giving his readers a behind-the-scenes look at how these startups are built and where they are going next. Not Boring also covers topics helpful to startups, like moats, differentiation, trends Packy is seeing, and more.

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Working with Not Boring: Highly recommend to startups

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My favorite issues:

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The Generalist by Mario Gabriele

Subscribers: 70,000

Frequency: 1x week – every Sunday

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With The Generalist, Mario unpacks what’s happening in tech and venture. Unlike most newsletters, The Generalist dives deep into stories that have been developing for months or years rather than going super narrow on what’s happening exactly today. By taking this approach, Mario has enough data and a time horizon to form an opinion on a meaty topic. His writing style demonstrates excellent research and is very digestible, even to people just entering the tech world.

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Working with The Generalist: Highly recommend to startups

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My favorite issues:

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The Pomp Letter by Anthony Pompliano

Subscribers: 262,000

Frequency: 1x day

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Anthony Pompliano built a following during the crypto bull market several years ago. While he still talks about the industry, he has intentionally tried to separate his brand from being the laser-eyed crypto Twitter profile. Anthony’s newsletter, The Pomp Letter, now touches on startups, the economy, commercial real estate, finance, public companies, and everything in between.

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Working with The Pomp Letter: Would recommend to crypto or crypto-adjacent startups

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My favorite issues:

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Seedtable by Gonz Sanchez

Subscribers: 21,000

Frequency: 1x week – every Sunday

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Unlike others included on this list, Seedtable covers European tech. In stark contracts to the United States, Europe’s tech scene is much smaller, heavily regulated, and more siloed from other mainstream industries. As a result, startups and investors operating in that market must adapt, and much of the advice for US-based startups does not always apply to Europe-based startups. Gonz does a beautiful job of unpacking this nuance in Seedtable.

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Working with Seedtable: Highly recommend to startups

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My favorite issues:

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The Neuron by Pete Huang & Noah Edelman

Subscribers: 125,000

Frequency: 2-3x week

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The Neuron is one of the top newsletters covering AI news. Pete Huang, one of the writers behind The Neuron, previously worked at top startups like Airtable, Coinbase, and WorkOS. With a lot of stuff being announced in AI every day, The Neuron’s goal is to help readers cut through the noise and focus on the things that matter.

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Working with The Neuron: Would recommend to AI or AI-adjacent startups

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My favorite issues:

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Andrew Yeung

Subscribers: 10,000+

Frequency: 1-2x month

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Andrew Yeung is a big tech employee, having worked at Facebook and Google, who has built an audience off the back of large “tech” events that he hosts in New York and other cities. The primary purpose of these events is often to introduce tech talent to startups, his sponsor, over an evening of drinks, food, and conversation.

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Working with Andrew Yeung: Would recommend to startups looking to collaborate on event-based marketing.

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My favorite issues:

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Houck’s Newsletter by Michael Houck

Subscribers: 53,000

Frequency: 1-2x week

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Ex-Airbnb and Founder of Launch House, Michael Houck, writes a newsletter focused on tactical advice for founders from his own experience and his research of startups and the teams that run them. He covers equity splits for co-founders, good advisors vs. bad advisors, how to extend your runway, and more.

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Working with Houck’s Newsletter: Would recommend to startups selling to founders

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My favorite issues:

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Podcasts

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30 Minutes to President’s Club by Nick Cegelski and Armand Farrokh

Rating: 4.9 / 5 stars from 343 reviews on Apple Podcasts

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30 Minutes to President’s Club is an insider’s guide on how to sell in today’s world. Armand was previously VP of Sales at Pave ($1.6 billion valuation) and Director of Sales at Carta ($8.5 billion valuation). Nick was previously a Senior Account Executive at Time by Ping (Series B, backed by Anthos Capital) and SurePoint Technologies (acquired by Aquiline Capital Partners). The podcast works because the hosts are credible, and they have built the #1 sales podcast in the world. If your sales team wants to level up, they are probably already listening to this.

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Working with 30 Minutes to President’s Club: Highly recommend to startups

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My favorite episodes:

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Acquired by Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal

Rating: 4.9 / 5 stars from 1.2K reviews on Apple Podcasts

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Acquired has been ranked the #1 technology podcast on Apple Podcasts and has built an incredibly loyal audience. Episodes are 3-4 hours long, extremely detailed, and focused around the world’s greatest companies like Nike, LVMH, and Nvidia. They’ll occasionally bring on a guest to help with the story. Some include Daniel Ek of Spotify, Dara Khosrowshahi of Uber, and Roelof Botha of Sequoia Capital.

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Working with Acquired: Highly recommend to startups

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My favorite episodes:

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My First Million by Sam Parr and Shaan Puri

Rating: 4.8 / 5 stars from 2.1K reviews on Apple Podcasts

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My First Million is structured as a live whiteboarding session. Sam and Shaan talk about different business opportunities they see and how they would approach capturing them. Sam founded The Hustle, which he ended up selling to Hubspot, and Shaan founded bebo, which he sold to Twitch. As entrepreneurs, they give their audience a live look at how they think about problems from first principles and make success in entrepreneurship seem like a more attainable goal.

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Working with My First Million: Highly recommend to startups

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My favorite episodes:

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How I Built This by Guy Raz

Rating: 4.7 / 5 stars from 28.9K reviews on Apple Podcasts

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In How I Built This, Guy Raz interviews entrepreneurs on how they built their iconic brands. It’s an award-winning business podcast that mixes both tech entrepreneurs with small business entrepreneurs. You may hear about Twilio one week and the next about Halo Top Ice Cream. The stories are always fresh because there is no single correct way to build a company.

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Working with How I Built This: Highly recommend to startups

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My favorite episodes:

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Upstream by Erik Torenberg

Rating: 4.6 / 5 stars from 26 reviews on Apple Podcasts

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Upstream is a new podcast, but Erik Torenberg, the host, has been tinkering around with media and podcasts for years. Upstream is part of his latest venture, Turpentine, a network of podcasts covering tech, venture capital, media businesses, and more. While Erik is a host on the other podcasts, Upstream is formatted as his personal podcast – he’s selective with the guests, and conversations are more structured. Some high-profile guests he’s already recorded episodes with include Joe Lonsdale (Co-Founder of Palantir and 8VC), Marc Andreessen (Co-Founder of Andreessen Horowitz and Netscape), and Palmer Luckey (Co-Founder of Anduril and Oculus VR).

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Working with Upstream: Highly recommend to startups

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My favorite episodes:

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The Investor + Operator Podcast by Tyler Hogge and Sterling Snow

Rating: 4.8 / 5 stars from 20 reviews on Apple Podcasts

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The Investor + Operator is another new podcast that made my list. The show interviews operators and investors at the world’s best companies. Tyler and Sterling invest together at Pelion Venture Partners but previously held senior operator positions at startups during hypergrowth periods like Divvy, Wealthfront, and Bill.com. The first two episodes of their show feature Keith Rabois (ex-EVP at PayPal) and Andy Rachleff (ex-President & CEO at Wealthfront). Expect them to continue refining their conversation style and bring on world-class operators and investors.

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Working with The Investor + Operator: Highly recommend to startups

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My favorite episodes:

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Invest Like the Best by Patrick O’Shaughnessy

Rating: 4.7 / 5 stars from 2.1K reviews on Apple Podcasts

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Patrick O’Shaughnessy is best known for his work as an asset manager. Invest Like the Best is a series of conversations with the world’s best investors and business leaders. Unlike other podcasts on this list, Patrick covers venture capital and other topics around investing, like endowment investing, designing new investment products, and secondary investing.

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Working with Invest Like the Best: Highly recommend to startups

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My favorite episodes:

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Blogs

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Boring Business Nerd by Kieran Ryan

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This is my content. I write about startups, investing, markets, and small business. Eventually, my twin brother, an investment banker, will help me write about business finance (capital raises, M&A, shareholder relations, etc.). I stick to topics I have expertise in, having worked at startups like On Deck and Wefunder, and leverage my network to get key insights behind my pieces. I also create resources and data sets you can’t find elsewhere, like my Startup Executive Tracker.

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My favorite pieces:

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Social Media

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Allie Miller

TikTok: 88.7K followers

LinkedIn: 1.3 million followers

YouTube: 10.5K subscribers

Instagram: 57.7K followers

Twitter: 40.3K followers

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Allie is the former Global Head of Machine Learning Business Development, Startups, and Venture Capital at Amazon and Lead Product Manager at IBM Watson. Working for Amazon, Allie got an inside look at how Amazon is using AI for its products and infrastructure. She started sharing some of her learnings through unpaid and paid speaking arrangements, on social media, and through volunteer work. Allie has become one of the most respected and popular voices in AI, and many look to her to help them figure out where the industry may go next.

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Working with Allie Miller: Would recommend to AI or AI-adjacent startups

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My favorite collaborations:

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Dulma

TikTok: 106K followers

Instagram: 5K followers

Twitter: 8K followers

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Dulma created a fragrance retail store called Potion and eventually started a private community of female consumer founders. For the community, she provided peer-to-peer-based learning, workshops, and speaker sessions with DTC experts. Dulma has partnered with leading consumer brands like TikTok, Dash Hudson, and Sophia Amoruso. She is most popular on TikTok, where she hosts TikTok B-School and makes videos on things like raising money from celebrities, why SVB collapsed, The Mr. Beast Flywheel, and more.

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Working with Dulma: Would recommend to consumer, DTC, and beauty startups

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My favorite collaborations:

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More Recommendations

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The following people do not monetize their content through sponsorships, but I wanted to recommend some more people you can follow if you’re interested in tech and business.

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Essays by Paul Graham
Digital Native by Rex Woodbury
The Pragmatic Engineer by Gergely Orosz
Product Growth by Aakash Gupta
Julian Shapiro
Contrarian Thinking by Codie Sanchez
Sahil Bloom
Scatter Brain by Sar Haribhakti