Social Chain, Diary of a CEO

Steven Bartlett

Left university at nineteen and built a social media company out of Manchester.

He is the closest of these to my own position, which is someone from these islands building without a Silicon Valley on the doorstep.

1. You can start from a city nobody is watching.

   Social Chain was built in Manchester, not London. Being outside the centre meant cheaper mistakes and less pressure to look like everyone else.

2. Leaving early is a real option.

   He dropped out after a matter of months. That is not advice for everybody, and it is worth knowing it was a live choice for someone who then built two companies.

3. Attention is a business input.

   Social Chain's whole thesis was that owning distribution mattered more than owning inventory. That reads as obvious now and did not at the time.

4. The interview format compounds.

   Diary of a CEO works because it accumulates. Hundreds of long conversations become an asset no single episode could be.

5. Publish before you feel qualified.

   He was talking publicly about building while still doing it badly. The audience arrived during the learning, not after it.

6. Selling is not the end of the story.

   He exited Social Chain and started again. Treating a company as a chapter instead of an identity makes the next one easier.

7. Say the unflattering part.

   The parts of his story that land hardest are the failures and the anxiety, not the wins. Audiences reward specificity about the bad bits.

8. Build the thing that makes the next thing easier.

   The podcast feeds the investing, the investing feeds the podcast. Look for the loop rather than the single product.