Hey y’all — if you’ve been here since the beginning, this is your 148th weekly issue from me.

And I’m doing something different today.

I’m on vacation (hola from España!) and when you’re reading this I’ll likely be running with the bulls in Pamplona.

I never unplug from work — but, for once, I am.

(Tuesday’s issue will still be brand new.)

This week I’m sharing how to build a cult (with your startup).

An employee at my former startup got a tattoo of our logo a few months after joining.

The brand we built created extraordinarily strong feelings from both supporters and haters — and it all happened in under 3 years.

Here’s how you can build one too:

How to Build a Cult (With Your Startup)

What Makes A Brand Loved

The strongest brands look like cults from the outside. Your customers do your marketing for you and never leave for competitors.

But building this level of brand affinity is extremely hard. You can have a massively successful business but still not achieve this.

It starts with the founder, trickles down to the employees and then eventually to customers.

Think about the brands you love the most. Why do you love them?

Most likely it’s some combination of the following 6 things:

Belonging

Make your users feel like they’re part of something special. Belonging is a core human need that most brands don’t think to nurture.

No one has leaned into this more than Airbnb. “Belong anywhere” actually ended up becoming the company’s vision statement.

Brian Chesky explains how they discovered this:

Even if you’re not renting homes with your startup you can build belonging into your product and brand.

Give your users opportunities to connect with one another and, most importantly, make yourself extremely accessible to them in the early days. Blur the line between customer and friend, as much as you’re comfortable doing so.

Tactically community platforms, IRL events, and social features are the most common ways of doing this — just make sure yours stand out and feel inspired.

Mythology

Societies have always been tied together by stories. The Odyssey was told by spoken-word minstrels across the various Greek islands and their extended network of ports as a way of building culture.

Even if citizens had heard the story many times, they wanted to hear it again.

Sharing the stories behind a startup in an engaging way builds similar cultural bonds.

Often these are about the backstory of the founder, how the company was founded, or experiences of specific users or team members that reinforce the values of the startup.

These are repeated to new team members when they join and maybe even shared publicly with users and beyond. If you do this really well people who are even your customers will know the story before they know anything else about the company, ideally because your customers mentioned it to them proactively.

With Megaphone, we’re trying to build this level of affinity by sharing stories like how we helped a founder grow from 0 to 2,500 social media followers in 24 hours, and another from 0 to 13,000 in 3 weeks, but Oculus is an even better example.

It was borderline unbelievable that anyone as young as Palmer Luckey had created a VR device that was truly 10x (or more) better than any existing option. Instantly, this was looked at as the future and he was the chosen one to lead the VR revolution.

The story was so good that even Mark Zuckerberg bought in and paid $2 billion to own the company.

An interesting potential example of this that’s playing out in real time is Bryan Johnson’s journey building Blueprint.

If he’s successful, we’ll look back on his journey with his own body and aging process as a landmark moment in the longevity movement.

We’re already seeing a cult-like response from some people in SF, who are spinning up their own startups based entirely on the movement Bryan is creating.

Rituals & Shared Behaviors

Shared experiences and behaviors build trust among people. Greek life organizations have entire weeks dedicated to this. Once you do it, you’re not just affiliated for life but you’re devoted as well.

The best example in tech is Apple’s large IRL showcases and developer conferences. These are massively-produced events that the company invests millions into nailing.

They know that their customers crave their experiences at this point. Yes, people want to see Apple’s new products, but they also want to be part of the announcement in some way by attending or even watching from home.

Think about it. Whenever a new Apple product comes out, it’s all anyone can talk about on tech Twitter. Even just small, incremental improvements to existing products get major coverage and discussion.

“Apple fanboy” is even a term in Urban Dictionary at this point.

But small startups can’t do something like that right away. It’s much easier (and you’ll have the budget) to do smaller things.

To do this effectively look for rituals that resonate with your early team members naturally or, ideally, emerge entirely organically. You shouldn’t have to sell them on any of this. It should be natural and you should lead by example.

At my last startup we mailed our team members cakes for their birthday, no matter where they were located. We tried to ensure the cakes showed up while we were on a full-team call so everyone could celebrate together.

On the user-side, an easy way to build affinity is a top-quality onboarding process. Superhuman famously changed the game for affordable SaaS products by offering white-glove onboarding for every user. They’re planning to do this at least until they hit $100M ARR. Here’s CEO Rahul Vohra talking about their approach:

Purpose

Regardless of whether they already have it in their lives or not, many people crave a deeper purpose. You don’t need to solve anyone’s spiritual quest to find the meaning of life, though it may feel like that to them (and maybe even you) sometimes.

Rather, can people see beyond your brand into what it means for them? Does it give them something to build towards that is meaningful to their lives?

There are two ways to do this:

1. Tie your brand to an existing cause → This is the easier path, because you don’t need to sell people on the value of your cause. Social causes that large groups of people already care about are essentially a hack to build a sense of purpose with your brand. However, this is the weaker of the two options since it isn’t specific to your startup. It’s just a nice affiliation.

2. Create a new cause → Can you identify something that many people feel deeply but don’t have a brand associated with it already? Then, can you come up with unique designs, slogans, and other branding elements to stand out? This is really hard. But it compounds and makes you known for something.

One new instance of the second case that I love is what Zach Pogrob has done around the idea of “obsession” as a path to success. He used a clear mission that he hits on time and time again across social media. As a result he grew to 1.5 million followers on Instagram in a few months.

He sums it up here:

Another good example here is how Justin Welsh has created a movement around “solopreneurs” who want to escape from the 9-5 and build businesses at their own pace with no investors or even employees.

Transformation

We all want a better life. Startups reach cult-like status when they promise a type of better life that resonates with people deeply. It has to matter to them. It has to be tapping into something they want on a deep, deep level.

You have to be able to convince people that, by using your product, they will transform into an otherwise unachievable and materially better version of themselves.

CrossFit isn’t selling workouts, they’re selling the results for your body that only CrossFit enables.

This is also why MLMs work, but for a very specific reason.

Herbalife isn’t selling weight-loss and nutrition products. They’re selling a means for Herbalife sellers to create a better financial situation for themselves that these sellers would otherwise be unlikely to be able to achieve.

The most important thing here is that the promise your brand makes is actually rooted in truth. You need to be able to back it up with actual testimonials and case studies from real users who are thrilled to be associated with what you’re doing. If they are, why shouldn’t someone new be, right?

Shared Identity

If associating with your brand communicates or signals something to others, people who do associate with it will feel like they’re part of the “in crowd” or in some secret club that only they understand fully.

You can see examples of this in a wide variety of industries:

Harley-Davidson → Bikers who ride Harley’s get Harley tattoos, ride in Harley gangs, and meet up at Harley bars and conventions. They wear Harley merch and travel the country together. They’d never ride anything else.

Taylor Swift → Swifties love nothing more than Taylor. It’s not just her music — it’s everything. When Swifties meet they’re instantly friends. They know they’ve just come across someone they can relate to on a personal level.

Supreme → We’ve all seen, heard about, or been standing in the endless lines around the block for new Supreme drops. They were able to successfully position themselves as hyper-desirable which then added further to their mystique in a compounding way.

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