528: Pro Tip: Share Your Work

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about why you should share your work.

While a lot of startups conduct their business in secret, some are now beginning to share what they are working on with the public, and like everything in life, sharing your work has it’s pros and cons.

In this episode, Steli and Hiten talk about what cross-promoting is, why you shouldn’t feel forced to share your work, what type of things you could share with the public, the benefits of sharing and much more.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:00 About the topic of today’s episode

01:37 Why this topic was chosen.

02:58 Why you shouldn’t feel forced into sharing.

04:53 Things to consider before sharing your work.

05:17 What most startups share about their work.

05:58 How not to share your work.

06:34 Why sharing your work in real-time is riskier.

06:54 How sharing your work shows vulnerability.

07:26 How sharing your work sparks curiosity.

07:38 When to share your work.

3 Key Points:

• Don’t feel forced into sharing
• There’s beauty and power in sharing your work
• Most people don’t share their work

Steli Efti: Hey, everybody. This is Steli Efti.

Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah. Today, on The Startup Chat, we’re going to talk about one of my pro tips that I tweeted about recently. It just said, “Pro tip, share your work.” Here, we like talking about more than just sales and marketing.

Steli Efti: We just want to bullshit and chat about business and life, and hopefully, while we’re doing that, provide a lot of value to people.

Hiten Shah: The world’s best business podcast.

Steli Efti: Oh.

Hiten Shah: Shit.

Steli Efti: Shit, we got it.

Hiten Shah: For people trying to get shit done.

Steli Efti: Done. Yeah. We don’t want to give you feedback that’s bullshit.

Hiten Shah: We want you to do your best. I think it caught Steli’s eye, which I’m not surprised about. What did it spur for you?

Steli Efti: Well, first of all, the tweet popped up in my timeline. I have to look it up again. It was not just you, but it was you with a tweet and a reply. You’ll know from whom. It was your tweet that said, “Pro tip, share your work.” And then below it, it showed the reply of somebody saying, “I love you.” Which was-

Hiten Shah: Yeah, Julian Shapiro.

Steli Efti: Julian Shapiro, who’s a badass. [crosstalk 00:00:58].

Hiten Shah: It was great.

Steli Efti: And a great follow. I had to laugh, both because I love what you tweeted, but also loved his response, just, “I love you.” It’s just classic. As always, when your tweets are inspiring or at least slow me down on my tweets, scroll, track. Wait a second.

Hiten Shah: Yeah, that’s fun, all that.

Steli Efti: This seems right. Hold on. I’m always curious, what prompted this? What happened in Hiten’s life? What thought, what conversation did he have? What happened just before he picked up his phone and was like, “All right, let me share this with the world. Pro tip, share your work.” Tell us.

Hiten Shah: Yeah, one of the most secretive people I know is David Cancel from Drift. I was looking up something he shared on LinkedIn. Over at Drift, they created yet another new category. They created a category called Conversational Marketing over the last few years. They recently, a few weeks ago, maybe a couple months ago, threw it out and said basically, “We’re creating a new category now again, a