4 (Cr*ppy) Reasons B2B Founders Give Themselves to Not Post on LinkedIn

A guide to building content that is NOT cringe, inauthentic and (solely) self-promotional.

“I’m a marketer and even I think LinkedIn is cringe.”

I say this often, usually to founders who are finding every possible reason not to post on LinkedIn. Truth be told, they’re not entirely wrong. LinkedIn can feel like theatre. The platform is full of humble brags masquerading as vulnerability. And yes, posting about yourself does feel uncomfortable.

My take: If creating content doesn’t feel at least 20% uncomfortable, you’re probably not saying anything worth reading.

Whether it is talking about yourself or linking a current event to your product or putting up a picture of yourself on LinkedIn — It all feels cringe at some point. Here are the most common objections I hear and my take on them.

Objection 1: “It feels like marketing theatre”

I get this. The line between professional platform and personal storytelling has completely dissolved and LinkedIn Gurus are here for it.

“Authentic” content is celebrated, but being authentically vulnerable (especially about failures) is genuinely uncomfortable for founders who already face enough scrutiny.

The Shift: Stop making ‘authenticity’ your only goal. Instead, think about resonance. Your buyers don’t need your deepest emotional confessions; they need to know they’re not alone in their specific business challenges.

The Opportunity: Every founder deals with the same chaos: notes you make after a customer discovery call, product decisions you make at 3am, and Excel sheets that track your product feature requests from customers. These can serve as marketing gold for your LinkedIn.

When you share your 3am Slack message that changed your product strategy, you’re not being vulnerable for vulnerability’s sake. You’re demonstrating systematic thinking to buyers who are drowning in generic solutions.

People (including your buyers) want to hear and see other people’s stories. Mainly, they just want to know that they are not alone (and sometimes, yes they also want to be entertained — refer: r/linkedinlunatics.)

Objection 2: “I don’t have time for this”

Fair enough, your priority is running a business and LinkedIn feels like this cringe-worthy platform where people just prop themselves up. You’re already answering the same customer questions repeatedly, explaining your differentiation on every sales call, handling objections via email.

The Shift: LinkedIn isn’t additional work, it is quite simply, documentation of the work you are already doing. Just made scalable.

The Opportunity: Consider the math:

• Average founder spends 10–15 hours/week in customer conversations

• A good percentage of those conversations cover the same 5–7 topics

• One LinkedIn post takes 20–30 minutes and reaches 500–5,000 people

The anticipated result is that when a potential buyer schedules a demo already familiar with your thinking, your sales cycle compresses. Plus, that one post can become evergreen sales collateral, objection handling, and even a topic for a whole webinar.

Objection 3: “I don’t know what to post. How do I know which posts actually works?”

You don’t. You don’t know which posts work until you actually try doing it. Yes, sometimes you’ll post and get two likes. (It still happens to me.) But honestly? Is your goal collecting likes? Or do you hope to increase brand awareness and improve pipeline quality?

The Shift: Stop asking ‘What performs on LinkedIn?’ It doesn’t matter. You need to know what matters to your customers. Think about “What conversations am I already having with my ideal customers?” and how this could be relevant to multiple customers.

The Opportunity: Specific and niche content is much more likely to generate business outcomes than content that is highly liked. Your systematic thinking about niche problems attracts precisely the buyers who need your systematic solution.

Always focus on quality and relevance over optimising for likes.

Objection 4: “Why Spend 2 Hours/Week on LinkedIn When I Could Build a Product?”

Making product tweaks feels productive because it’s comfortable. Putting yourself in front of your market feels risky because it invites criticism.

The Shift: You need to realise that product development without market visibility is just expensive software engineering. Your systematic thinking IS your competitive advantage, if and only if your market knows it exists.

The Opportunity: B2B buyers don’t wake up searching for your product category. They wake up with problems that eventually lead them to solutions. By consistently demonstrating how you think about their problems, you become the obvious choice when they’re ready to buy.

The DDD Framework: Demo, Document, Drill

So now that you know why you need to post more on LinkedIn, how do you begin going about it? Instead of generic LinkedIn advice about “being authentic” or “providing value,” here’s a systematic approach you can use:

Demo: Show Your Product Process

What This Means: Showcase or demo the chaos you’re already managing.

For example:

• Notes from customer discovery calls that changed your assumptions

• The spreadsheet tracking product upgrades based on customer requests

• Decision frameworks you use for prioritization

• The conversation that shifted your GTM strategy

Buyers are interested in you first; your business second. Demonstrating systematic thinking in real time builds credibility that no case study can match.

Document: Turn Decisions Into Growth Experiments

What This Means: Frame every strategic choice as a hypothesis you’re testing, then share results transparently.

For example:

• The technology investment that saved 40% processing time (with before/after metrics)

• The customer problem that pivoted your roadmap (with decision criteria)

• The “obvious” solution everyone else is missing (with reasoning)

This positions you as someone who makes evidence-based decisions, not someone following startup theatre scripts. It’s catnip for buyers tired of vendor marketing.

Drill: Pre-Handle Objections Via Content

What This Means: Every startup founder hears identical objections. Turn your daily objection handling into systematic content series.

For example:

• “How is this different from [competitor]?” → Comparison framework post

• “We don’t have budget for another tool” → ROI calculation methodology

• “Can’t we just build this internally?” → Build vs. buy decision matrix

Buyers are already asking these questions internally. By addressing them proactively, you compress sales cycles and qualify prospects before they even reach out.

Create Your First Post

This week, try this specific approach:

Demo one process: Share your notes from a customer conversation that changed how you think about your market.

Document one decision: Explain a choice you made this week (product, strategy, GTM) like it’s a growth experiment, including your hypothesis and early results.

Drill one objection: Address the most common objection you heard this week, but as a strategic analysis rather than a defensive response.

Aim for the 50–200 people in your ICP who see systematic thinking and think: ‘This founder gets my problems.’

Success on LinkedIn?

Successful founders treat LinkedIn as systematic demand generation infrastructure, not as a marketing channel. They’re not trying to go viral. It is as simple as that. Their goal is to appeal to their customers by systematically documenting the thinking that makes them exceptional operators. By doing this they aim to make their way of working and thinking accessible to buyers who need precisely that kind of systematic thinking applied to their problems.

Your buyers on the other hand, are on LinkedIn looking for stories to connect with. They are seeking people who can solve their problems. And by just showing up you can help them remember that your software or company is available in the market when they urgently need to fix the problem they encounter.

LinkedIn feels uncomfortable because you’re fighting against every instinct that helped you succeed as a founder: focus on product, avoid attention, let results speak for themselves. But in B2B markets where buyers are drowning in identical-sounding solutions, systematic thinking documented consistently is the new competitive moat.

Start with one post this week. Demo, document, or drill. Make it uncomfortable enough that you feel slightly exposed. That’s how you know you’re saying something worth reading.

Bonus: LinkedIn also makes it must easier to do a cold outreach. Especially when the buyer is part of your network and is somewhat familiar with you or has seen your posts pass by.

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