In the early stages of building a business, the CEO carries almost everything. You’re selling the vision, closing the deals, building the product, pitching investors, and trying to hire the people who will help you grow. With that level of responsibility, it’s natural to wonder whether LinkedIn really deserves any of your attention.
It does. But not for the reasons most people assume.
Before you hit $5M in revenue, you don’t need a personal brand on LinkedIn. You just need people to believe in you.
You need buyers, investors, partners, and early employees to trust that you understand the problem you’re solving, that your vision makes sense, and that your company is worth betting on.
Your presence on LinkedIn accelerates that trust. It makes you more visible to the people who matter and gives you a simple way to communicate the story behind your company.
This doesn’t actually require a lot of time. You simply have to show up in a thoughtful, consistent way.
Key Takeaways:
- Before $5M, your LinkedIn presence should focus on earning trust.
- Talk about the problem you solve and the thinking behind your approach. Show you understand the problem better than anyone else.
- Borrowed credibility such as reports, data, and third-party insights helps reinforce your market perspective.
- A simple, repeatable posting rhythm keeps you visible with minimal time investment.
What Do CEOs Under $5M Actually Need from LinkedIn?
When you strip everything down to essentials, the goals for early-stage CEOs fall into two clear categories: survive and prove.
Survive is what keeps the lights on. You need leads. You need to find the first critical employees. You need investors and partners to have confidence in you.
At this stage, you are the brand. When someone considers buying from your company, they are buying from you. When they consider taking a job, they are working for you.
Prove is the second requirement. You’re trying to show that your company is real, that your solution is grounded in a clear understanding of the market, and that your early traction means something.
Prospects and investors want to know that you see the world clearly, that you’ve identified a problem worth solving, and that customers feel the pain you’re talking about.
There’s also a third category, which we can call Grow. LinkedIn helps you educate the market about the problem you’re solving. It helps you begin shaping your category and build relationships with people in your ecosystem. You’re laying the foundation for opportunities that will matter later, when the business has more resources and more momentum behind it.
Your presence on LinkedIn provides a window into your thinking and helps you accomplish all three goals.
Why Does Everything Change at $5 Million?
Under $5M, you are proving product-market fit, leading sales yourself (you make the bigger deals, even after you hire sales), juggling fundraising, and making the earliest hiring decisions. Your team is small, your marketing function is minimal, and your investors are betting on you even more than on your idea.
Once you cross $5M, things shift. You begin building out leadership roles, sales becomes a team effort, and marketing finally has resources. Your visibility strategy becomes more mature because the company itself is more mature.
But that’s a topic for our next blog post. This post focuses on the early stage, when you’re still the engine of the business and LinkedIn is the simplest way to show what you’re building.
What Should an Early-Stage CEO Talk About on LinkedIn?
A lot of CEOs try to post like leaders of much larger companies, and it never feels quite right. You don’t have steady wins to celebrate. You probably don’t have a polished leadership philosophy. And you definitely don’t have time to write long essays about culture.
What you do have is a deep understanding of the problem your company solves, a clear point of view on why the problem exists, and a differentiated way of solving it.
That’s where your content should come from.
The first category of content, and most valuable thing an early-stage CEO can do, is to talk about the problem.
Explain what’s broken in your industry, what customers struggle with, and what misconceptions keep getting in the way. You see the patterns long before the market does. When you articulate that clearly, you begin creating demand.
The second category of content is your point of view on the solution. I’m not talking about pitching. Instead, you should explain the thinking that guides your approach: why the old way doesn’t work anymore, why the problem needs to be solved differently, and what principles or beliefs shape the choices you’re making.
Think of it like a manifesto. How should the world look?
This kind of content helps people understand the essence of your differentiation.
Because early-stage companies don’t yet have a steady drumbeat of wins, the third category is borrowed credibility. Share analyst reports, data points, articles, or conversations that reinforce your perspective. When you add your commentary to those pieces, it shows that your view of the market is grounded in facts other people can see too.
And finally, use wins and founder stories. Both are powerful, but they shouldn’t be the backbone of your strategy. These posts help humanize your journey, but they don’t need to appear every week.
Here’s an Early-Stage Content Mix (That You Can Actually Maintain)
You only need 2-3 posts a week to stay visible, and they don’t need to be long or polished.
A good rule of thumb for early-stage CEOs is the 95/5 rule.
Ninety-five percent of your content should educate and build credibility. The remaining five percent should celebrate progress.
Within that, a sustainable weekly rhythm is straightforward:
- One or two posts each week about the problem and your insights into it
- One post about your point of view on solving the problem
- One repost or reference to external content that supports your thesis, always with your commentary
This gives you structure but doesn’t box you in. You can repeat this same structure week after week because the angles change as you talk to customers, run sales calls, and continue learning.
What Does Good Enough Look Like for a Founder CEO?
You don’t need to be a perfect writer – the authenticity of a few typos can serve you. What matters is showing that you understand your customers’ pain better than anyone else, and that you have a thoughtful, grounded approach to solving it.
In fact, your closeness to the problem is your greatest advantage at this stage. Later, when the company grows, you’ll move further away from the day-to-day pain points. But right now, you see everything clearly. Use that.
How to Make This Sustainable, Even When You’re Busy
This is not a heavy lift. If you build the right habits, you can maintain your presence in about 30 minutes a week:
- Keep a running list of problems, misconceptions, and surprising insights you hear from customers.
- Record quick thoughts as voice memos and let a ghostwriter or someone on your team turn them into posts.
- Share the reports or articles your investors point you toward.
- Approve your posts in batches once a week.
This is enough to stay visible, stay credible, and stay top-of-mind with the people who are deciding whether or not to take a chance on your company.
How to Take the First Step
When you’re under $5M, your job on LinkedIn is simple. Make the problem you solve impossible to ignore. Show that you understand it deeply and help people see why your approach makes sense.
You don’t need a big following for this to work. You just need clarity and consistency.
When you do this well, you build the foundation of trust that will carry you to the next stage in your company’s growth, when your visibility strategy will need to evolve.
If you’d like support creating a simple rhythm that fits a founder’s schedule and still moves the needle, we can help.