Most Content Is Meaningless. Here's What I Did Differently.
On the Bricks and Bytes podcast, I said something that tends to make people in our circles uncomfortable:
Most people don't post engaging content because most of the content they post is relatively meaningless.
By "meaningless," I didn't mean wrong or low quality. I meant non-consequential. Content that explains. Content that updates. Content that politely informs. None of that creates the energy required to change culture. So I decided to test my hypothesis, and prove that the best place for a founder like me is as a technical marketer.
The Intentional Choice to Poke the Bear
Instead of posting something safe, I intentionally posted about a major planning issue — cul-de-sacs — knowing full well it would irritate multiple professional groups at once. The post was simple:
What's a greater American innovation — the cul-de-sac or turning right on red?
No thesis. No explanation. No disclaimer. Just a prompt that touched planners, architects, developers, transportation engineers, urbanists, and all the other normal people. I wasn't trying to "go viral." I was trying to activate a real discussion.
What Happened
- ~72,000 impressions
- ~52,000 members reached
- 133 comments
- More comments than reactions
- 29% senior-level professionals
- 17% architecture & planning
- Significant engagement from large firms (10,000+ employees)
More importantly: people didn't just react. They argued. That's the difference between post reach and post relevance. Optimize for relevance.
Why Cul-de-Sacs Worked as a Trigger
Cul-de-sacs are not a niche topic. They're a proxy. They stand in for market demand vs professional ideals, efficiency vs connectivity, sprawl, who gets to decide what's "allowed," and whether tools should show options before values intervene.
The fault lines that emerged: planners stated dead ends should be capped at a reasonable distance. Developers argued longer dead ends are more efficient and cheaper. Designers debated permeability vs legibility. Transportation professionals cited emergency access. Others argued the issue wasn't cul-de-sacs at all, but car dependency.
No one was confused. They were activated. This also provides our technical team a list of parametrics that need to be added to achieve product-market fit in low density.
The Real Lesson From This Experiment
The post didn't perform well because it was only clever. It performed well because it was about something that actually matters, it acknowledged the answer isn't clean, it didn't resolve the debate for the reader, and it respected people enough to let them argue.
That's what I meant on Bricks and Bytes when I said most content is meaningless. Meaningless content doesn't offend anyone — but it also doesn't move anyone. Startups must take an angle to have any leverage.
Why This Matters for Builders, Founders, and Leaders
If you're building something real — a product, a company, a point of view — safe content alone won't get you there. You don't need to be inflammatory. You don't need to be extreme. You don't need to be right. You just need to be consequential.
At TestFit, I am willing to be embarrassed by progress — in product and in public thinking — because progress only happens when real tradeoffs are visible, and trust is only earned when we change immediately based upon feedback.