Our illustrious founder has bitten the bullet and plunged, tank top first, into the world of LinkedIn video content. You have to respect the grind.

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Below is a transcript from his video blog series, the Tank Top Diaries

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“Good afternoon everybody. Freshly back from a little trip to Amsterdam working with Visa, and a small tank top for you on a Wednesday afternoon. 

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As we're in the middle of the event season – from May to June, I think is probably how long it lasts. I think everybody's at Shop Talk this week. We're doing MACH the week after, then we’re back with a NewStore Endless Aisle conference in London and a couple more dinners before the summer. Obviously, Vermont’s excellent Pulse event was last week, too.

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It just strikes me that we talk about the ecosystem all the time as if it's a singular thing, and obviously, it’s not. I often wonder why events are so popular within the tech space – it's effectively lazy marketing because you're renting audiences, you’re renting partnerships etc..  

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But over the last couple of weeks, I've been thinking: the reality is that technology is incredibly tribal. Partnerships are really all about trying to get people to join your tribe, and exclusively join your tribe. And then there are fights over who's in my tribe and who’s in somebody else’s tribe, whether they left or are playing the right part in the tribe and whether they're doing what they should be doing. 

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In events, when we're asked to do them, it feels that quite often, our clients might be trying to get merchants to join their tribe. Not necessarily to do a deal but to become part of their ecosystem…

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So I think the tribal nature of tech is quite interesting because it then gets in the way of the way people actually buy tech – which is not in a Tribal way. It’s through an RFP or through a relatively well-measured approach. But it’s fascinating I think that we’re so tribal in the way that we behave and in marketing terms in tech, but it does explain why so many events happen. 

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That's my thought for the day.”

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