Lulu Cheng Meservey’s “Go Direct” Playbook: How Founders Can Build a Movement

Most founders think communication comes after the product.

Build something great. Find product-market fit. Raise money. Hire a PR firm. Then figure out how to tell the world about it.

Lulu Cheng Meservey sees the sequence differently.

The communications strategist behind companies and founders associated with Anduril, Shopify, and Cognition argues that for ambitious startups, the story isn't decoration around the business. It's part of how the business gets built.

Her description of her job captures the distinction:

“I help founders build a movement to help their company succeed.”

In a wide-ranging podcast conversation, Meservey explained how her unusual childhood, work with Anduril, study of counterinsurgency, and rejection of traditional PR shaped a communications philosophy built around one central principle: go direct.

For early-stage entrepreneurs, the lesson goes much deeper than posting more often on X or bypassing journalists. It's about understanding what you're asking people to believe—and becoming compelling enough that they want to join you.

Before You Build an Audience, Build a Belief

Meservey grew up moving between China, Germany, Norway, Canada, and eventually the United States.

Constantly entering unfamiliar cultures forced her to become unusually sensitive to context.

She recalls arriving at school in Norway around Halloween wearing a full-body rabbit costume—only to discover nobody else had dressed up. Everyone seemingly understood Halloween, but Meservey had missed an unwritten rule.

Her takeaway was bigger than an embarrassing childhood memory: much of human communication depends on context nobody explicitly explains.

That lesson now sits at the heart of her work with founders.

You can have the facts right and still communicate the wrong thing. You can describe your technology accurately and still fail to make anyone care.

Great founder communication requires understanding the beliefs, fears, assumptions, and ambitions already sitting inside your audience's head.

The Anduril Lesson: When the Traditional Playbook Doesn't Work

Meservey didn't follow a conventional route into PR.

She studied diplomacy, international security, and counterinsurgency before entering political risk consulting and eventually helping start a communications firm.

Then came Anduril.

The defense technology startup was entering an environment where many of the traditional institutions of Silicon Valley weren't naturally receptive to its mission. Rather than depend entirely on mainstream media to explain the company, Anduril went directly to the people it needed to reach.

Meservey describes the company going to places such as Quantico, Camp Pendleton, the National Defense University, and the CIA to speak directly with relevant audiences.

The logic was remarkably simple.

If only a relatively small number of people truly matter to your mission, why communicate through multiple intermediaries and hope your message eventually reaches them?

Every intermediary can dilute the original conviction.

A founder explains something to a PR person. The PR person explains it to a reporter. The reporter pitches an editor. The story gets edited and published. Finally, the intended audience interprets what remains.

Meservey's alternative became the foundation of her Go Direct manifesto: founders should develop the ability to communicate their ideas themselves.

Your Startup Needs a Movement, Not Just Messaging

Meservey's study of counterinsurgency gave her an unusual framework for thinking about startups.

An insurgent movement begins at a disadvantage. It has fewer people, less money, less institutional power, and less legitimacy than the incumbent.

Sound familiar?

That's the situation facing many startups.

You can't beat incumbents by pretending you already have their resources. You need something they may have lost: intensity.

That is why Meservey places so much emphasis on manifestos.

A great manifesto articulates a future so clearly that the right people can't stop thinking about it. It explains why the status quo is inadequate, what could replace it, and why the struggle is worth joining.

For founders, that's not merely marketing copy.

You're asking talented employees to leave secure jobs. You're asking investors to put capital behind something uncertain. You're asking customers to change established behavior.

Why should they?

Before convincing any of them, Meservey argues, the founder has to become the first true believer.

Simplification Is a Founder Superpower

Conviction alone isn't enough. The idea has to travel.

Meservey illustrates this with an entrepreneur she once met who spent several minutes explaining a marketplace that allowed home cooks to sell their food.

After listening, she compressed the idea into a handful of words:

“You're turning a cook into a chef.”

That was the idea.

This kind of compression matters because complicated ideas struggle to spread. The founder may understand every technical detail, but the audience needs a mental handle.

Analogies can accomplish the same thing.

Instead of explaining an unfamiliar system across several paragraphs, connect it to something people already understand. Meservey points to Steve Jobs' famous framing of the personal computer as a “bicycle for the mind”: the analogy communicates the benefit instead of drowning the audience in specifications.

Founders should ask:

What is the simplest true version of what we're changing for people?

Not: What does our product do?

But: Who does someone become—or what becomes possible—because we exist?

Make the Human the Hero

This distinction becomes especially important when communicating new technology.

Meservey argues that optimistic technology stories work best when the technology isn't the protagonist.

The human is.

She uses Shopify as an example. One way to tell Shopify's story would be to enumerate its technology and features. A more powerful version tells the story of the entrepreneur whose business became possible because Shopify handled infrastructure that otherwise might have stopped them from starting.

The merchant becomes the hero.

Shopify becomes the enabler.

That's a powerful framework for any startup:

Your customer is the protagonist. Your product changes what's possible for them.

In an AI World, Distinctiveness Becomes More Valuable

Meservey's communications philosophy becomes even more relevant as AI makes competent content nearly free.

Her concern isn't AI itself—she says she uses it—but what happens when founders outsource their distinctiveness to the same tools and templates everyone else can access.

“If you are relying on AI to write for you and to generate ideas for you,” she argues, you're pulling yourself toward the average output available to everyone.

Templates create a similar problem.

Meservey deliberately resists them because every company has different context, and those differences are precisely where opportunities to stand out live.

For founders, this creates an interesting paradox.

As producing content becomes easier, original thought becomes more valuable.

The winning strategy isn't necessarily producing more.

It's becoming harder to imitate.

The Founder Has to Fill in the Story

Near the end of the conversation, Meservey makes perhaps her most important point.

People naturally turn disconnected facts into narratives.

You announce a hire. Open an office. Raise a round. Launch a product. Lose an executive. Change strategy.

Your audience won't simply store those events as unrelated data points. They'll construct a story explaining what those events mean.

The founder's choice isn't whether a narrative exists.

It's whether you help shape it.

That is the deeper meaning of going direct.

It isn't about becoming an influencer. It isn't about rejecting journalists. And it isn't about endlessly promoting yourself.

It's accepting responsibility for articulating what you're building, why it matters, where it's going, and why other people should come with you.

The best founders don't merely build products.

They give people a story about a future worth building—and then make that story real.