If you are a first-time founder with no backup, no brand name, and zero credibility of building something before, what I am about to say might be extremely valuable.
There is something called borrowed credibility.
When you don’t have credibility yet, you can temporarily borrow it from someone who already has it.
When I started Error Makes Clever, my only credibility was that I had worked in Accenture.
That alone was not enough.
So I started stacking credibility.
Took this picture when i was doing a podcast with Vijay Pravin - 100cr+ Valued Blockchain company founder
I brought in people who worked in companies like Zoho, PayPal, and Infosys to take sessions.
Immediately the perception changed.
Now it was no longer:
“A random person teaching.”
Instead it became:
“A platform where industry people are teaching.”
Then I went one step further.
I started doing podcasts with industry leaders.
Slowly something interesting happened.
My credibility was no longer dependent on who I was.
It was built through who and what I was associated with.
This is a powerful phenomenon.
When people see you associated with credible brands or respected people, their trust in you automatically increases.
Your credibility compounds.
You go from being an individual with zero credibility…
to becoming a node connected to many credible signals.
And this applies to anything:
Business.
Content creation.
Community building.
Education.
If you can associate yourself with someone or something that has higher credibility than you, your own credibility increases.
We are planning to do the same thing with Lecturehead.
A picture from Previous LectureHead Community Sessions
Lecturehead has already been a good community where edtech founders come together, conduct events, and help each other.
Now we are going one step further.
Instead of focusing only on selling the product, we want to build a company around the product.
So we are lining up more events inside the community by bringing in influential leaders to take sessions on their strongest topics.
The idea is simple.
If someone finds value in the product, they will buy.
If not, they will still gain value from the community.
Let’s see how this experiment goes.
Next week we are hosting a session on How to Build a Sales Engine by Nandha, the ex-CEO of LMES.
LMES currently does around ₹5 crore in revenue every month, and he definitely understands how a company scales to that level.
If you would like to receive the invite or the replay, simply reply to this email.
That being said, we conducted 10+ demo calls for Lecturehead in the past week, and the response has been great.
Since we are still building a few more features, we are intentionally keeping the rollout tight and have not marketed heavily yet.
Moving Slow with Strong Foundation!
- Agnel John
