I'm the guy who cold emailed Noah Kagan (CEO of Appsumo).

My name is Ernest Bio Bogore. I live in Kigali, Rwanda. And I have a confession that might disqualify me from ever being taken seriously in the startup world:

I hate being visible.

I don't want to be a "founder brand." I don't want to post daily on LinkedIn about my morning routine. I don't want to start a podcast where I interview other founders who will then share it to their audience so we can all pretend we're helping each other while really just cross-pollinating followers.

I'm not built for that.

I'm the guy who wants to build something quietly, make it work, and never have to explain what my "content strategy" is at a dinner party.

And yet.

I've built businesses. Real ones. Ones that made real money.

I started as a journalist. Wrote breaking news for The Sun, Daily Mirror, LA Times, New York Post, and about 50 other outlets.

I was the first to report on Didier Raoult's chloroquine COVID treatment. That story got syndicated everywhere.

But journalism doesn't pay. So I pivoted.

I became a copywriter. Then a content marketer. Then a strategist.

Along the way, I wrote for brands you've probably heard of: AppSumo, Hunter.io, Encharge, Demio, OpenPhone, CoSchedule, Baremetrics, iStock, Getty Images.

I worked with Fortune 500 clients at an agency. Doubled email click-through rates for HP and Dell. Ran a campaign that got 1,200 people to show up to a conference (they expected 500).

I worked with Series B companies, Series A companies, bootstrapped companies doing $10M+ in revenue, and yes, even a few public companies.

And then I did the thing everyone tells you not to do.

I started my own agency.

None of that came from being loud.

I didn't have a Twitter following. I wasn't posting "10 lessons I learned from failure" threads. I wasn't doing the whole performative vulnerability thing where you share your revenue numbers publicly so people think you're transparent (you're not, you're just marketing).

I just... worked.

I wrote cold emails that got replies. I created content that ranked. I built systems that generated leads. I did it quietly, from my apartment, with no one watching.

And here's the thing: I think a lot of founders are like me.

I consume a lot of content. Podcasts, newsletters, courses, Twitter threads, YouTube videos.

And I've noticed something.

Most of it is completely useless for people like me.

Take Lenny's Newsletter. Great content. Genuinely. But most of it is about companies with gazillion-dollar budgets hiring people like Elena Verna to build Duolingo-style growth loops, or heads of growth at Vercel building AI agents with unlimited engineering resources.

That's not my reality.

When you're struggling to get your 15th customer, hearing about how Notion's product-led growth engine works doesn't help. It actually makes you feel worse. Like you're doing something wrong because you can't afford to hire a "Director of Growth" or run a $50K experiment.

The funding event becomes a voice amplifier. Suddenly their "strategy" is just having money and access. But they present it like wisdom. Like a framework. Like something you could replicate.

You can't.

And so you're left feeling like the advice is good, but it doesn't apply to you. Because you're not in the club. You don't have the budget. You don't have the network. You don't have the brand.

You're just a person with a laptop trying to make something work.

Because I looked for this content when I was starting out. And I couldn't find it.

Everything was either too basic ("write good headlines!") or too advanced ("here's how to build a PLG motion when you have 10 engineers").

There was nothing for the person in the middle. The person who knows the basics but doesn't have the resources. The person who needs creative, low-cost, high-effort solutions. The person who's willing to do the work but doesn't know where to direct the energy.

That person was me. And I suspect that person is you.

So every week, I'll share something I've learned. Not frameworks from other people's playbooks. Not repackaged advice from podcasts. Actual things I've done, mistakes I've made, tactics that worked.

The kind of stuff I wish someone had shared with me when I was starting out.

I'm fluent in English and French. I've written content in both.

I'm obsessed with cold email. Not in a "growth hacker bro" way. In a "this is an incredible skill that most people are terrible at" way. My cold emails have gotten me jobs, clients, partnerships, and conversations with people way above my pay grade.

I don't like being on video. I've never done a webinar where I showed my face. I ran webinars promotion programs that got each time 100+ registrations from HR leaders at companies like Coca-Cola, Facebook, and the United Nations. None of them needed to see my face.

I believe that most marketing advice is backwards. It starts with "build an audience" when it should start with "solve a problem." Audiences come from value. Value doesn't come from audiences.

I think LinkedIn content is mostly garbage. I say this as someone who has gotten results from LinkedIn. It's still mostly garbage.

I believe that introverts can build massive businesses. We just have to do it differently. And that "differently" is what I want to explore here.