Post on Every Trend? Why Most Founder Reactions Backfire

Emma Grede, the British entrepreneur and CEO behind Good American and Skims, recently called work-from-home culture a “career killer” for women. The responses flooded in. Takes on whether she’s right, whether she’s out of touch, and whether she’s just good at press.

Founders everywhere felt the pull to weigh in. Most of them should not have.

With the founders I work with, this reflex to react to every trending moment backfires, often badly. One of the quietest killers of credibility isn’t bad content. It’s reactive content. The post that jumps on someone else’s trending moment without a reason to be there.

At first glance, it looks productive. You’re visible, commenting, and participating in the conversation. Here’s the truth: Every time you react without filtering, you train your audience to tune you out.

Reaction is not the same as relevance.

A founder who posts about every trending moment builds a feed that tells the audience nothing about what they stand for. The posts sound the same as everyone else’s. They add to the pile, and some of them quietly cost credibility that took years to build.

The founders I work with come to me after weeks of reacting, wondering why their audience stopped engaging. The answer is almost always the same. Every post sounded like everyone else’s. Nothing signaled what they actually knew. Nothing taught the reader anything new.

Being first is not the goal. Being relevant with intention is.