Every craftsman is on a hero’s journey. We started Shapeshift to tell stories of these journeys, starting by helping founders become content creators.
We built the systems to help experts turn their knowledge into stories, and stories into followers. But this process is dependent on how much time and effort you have to create on a daily and weekly basis.
Today, we’re releasing Spotlight Videos. When creating our own content, we thought to ourselves, what is the most effective way to kickstart our community? What is the asset that will keep on giving? What will continue attracting an audience even after this algorithm changes?
Spotlight Videos is the first pinned square on your social media. It is a 60 second video of your journey: who you are, what brought you here to this chapter, and where are you going.
Your Spotlight video serves as a landing page for customers to learn who you are and what your company is about. The first time you meet a new customer, they will already know who you are, because they’ve seen your Spotlight Video. And existing customers, friends, and partners will be reminded of your vision, talking about your story in their inner circles.
This is the first step toward finding your tribe, and connecting with your community as a content creator. We will be releasing Spotlight Videos of some of our favorite cultural leaders on our Instagram @shapeshift.
This is a draft of our official release announcement. Spotlight Videos will be rolled out in phases in 2025.
Ira’s Notes
I experience a lot of conflict between being an entrepreneur and a creative.
As a founder, I want to build predictable systems and a business with predictable revenue (lol).
But as an artist, I want slow mornings and free days to act on bursts of inspiration.
I think content is where many of these feelings meet in the middle.
With Substack, for example, I want to pack each post with helpful information and wordsmith every single word.
But I also want to just get it out there, and capture the lightning bolt moment when an idea meets a nice cup of coffee.
I am an entrepreneur, so I have a content backlog and I have drafts posts that I can schedule. I know it’s content that my customers will probably find useful.
But as an artist, I just want to write about what I’m thinking and experiencing.
Today’s post is a representation of this conflict. Spotlight Videos is a product we plan to officially announce later this year.
We will shoot these videos with our existing customers, the founders of the a16z SR005 batch, and local restaurant owners and artists in New York City.
When I was a product manager, I learned to write the press release of the product before it was created and to design the “perfect turn” (inspired by Nick Kokonas, the founder of Alinea) for how we’d execute down to each step.
As an artist, it feels silly to work so hard on something and not share it. When the inspiration’s gone next week I’m not going to care about this press release.
But as a business owner, I struggle with sharing this unofficial release into the open — what if the press release is not polished enough? What if other companies use our internal memo to copy us?
At the end of the day, it’s easier to document than it is to create.
There will always be tension between how much you open source, and what to keep for yourself.
The challenge and art is in hitting the notes perfectly — and when it’s done well, I think that’s the feeling of authenticity.
If you’ve read this far, thank you for following my journey and Shapeshift’s journey. I hope to see you in front of the camera for your own Spotlight video very soon.
