I needed someone else to see it, too.
One cloudy day, I was having coffee with my friend Bryan Eisenberg in Round Rock, Texas.
I told him about my work: interviewing company founders and using AI to turn those conversations into content.
He thought about it for a couple of minutes. Then he said, “Viral Genius.”
I sat there stunned. “Okay…?”
Bryan explained that I was uncovering the founder’s hidden zone of genius and sharing it with the world. He had recognized something in my work that I hadn’t recognized or named myself.
You may have something like that in your own business.
A judgment call you make before the data tells you to. A shortcut you’ve worked out over years. Something you notice that a less experienced person walks straight past.
To you, it may be so obvious you’ve never thought to mention it.
But if buyers can’t see it, how are they supposed to choose you for it?
Start with what you actually do.
Ask a founder, “What makes you different?” and you’ll often get an opinion.
Ask about a specific decision - what they noticed, what they did, and where someone less experienced would have gone wrong - and you have something to work with.
That’s the purpose of a Founder Excavation.
In this guide, I walk you through:
Four excavation questions that help bring overlooked expertise into the conversation.
A four-step method drawn from cognitive science, with examples showing how to apply it to a founder’s work.
The follow-up questions that get past “I just knew”, so you can identify the cues behind an expert decision.
How an excavation becomes the starting point for One Unforgettable Idea, including the luxury realtor whose pricing approach we named Demand Surge.
You can use the questions with a peer or consultant to begin exploring your own experience. The guide helps you find material worth developing into a clearer reason for buyers to choose you.
The Founder Excavation is a free 25-page guide that shows you how to dig yours out.
In this guide, I walk you through:
Four excavation questions that help bring overlooked expertise into the conversation.
A four-step method drawn from cognitive science, with examples showing how to apply it to a founder’s work.
The follow-up questions that get past “I just knew”, so you can identify the cues behind an expert decision.
How an excavation becomes the starting point for One Unforgettable Idea, including the luxury realtor whose pricing approach we named Demand Surge.
You can use the questions with a peer or consultant to begin exploring your own experience. The guide helps you find material worth developing into a clearer reason for buyers to choose you.
Who it’s for: founders and company owners with real expertise who would rather build than self-promote.
About the author
Fernando Labastida is a marketing strategist, category designer, and author based in Austin, Texas. He coined the One Unforgettable Idea - the thing a founder does so naturally they’ve stopped noticing it’s rare - and founded the Viral Genius Institute to excavate it and build it into the brand that buyers, Google, and ChatGPT cite. He is the author of The Startup Book, The Viral Genius Playbook, and Nearshore Marketing.