Lulu Cheng Meservey
Founder and CEO, Rostra. On 4 shows, 4 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveoperatorauthor@lulumeservey ↗LinkedIn ↗rostra.co ↗
Lulu Cheng Meservey is the founder and CEO of communications firm Rostra and serves on the board of Shopify. She previously served as Chief Communications Officer at Activision Blizzard and Vice President of Communications at Substack.
4shows
4appearances
84statements
5resolved
2supported
1contradicted
40%fully supported
73said about them ↓ Everything Lulu Cheng Meservey said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Palmer Luckey was pushed out and fired from Facebook for supporting Trump
“This was when he was kind of persona non grata in tech and mainstream for supporting Trump and not supporting Hillary while he was at Facebook. So it was pretty soon after he was pushed out, fired for political beliefs at Facebook, which is kind of mind blowin…”
Traditional PR is dead; filtering corporate messages through intermediaries fails
“The key idea in the manifesto is that traditional PR as we know it is dead. Maybe you can see the body, but it doesn't have a pulse. And it's a good thing, because traditional PR meant that you would have to filter your message through somebody else's prism.”
Most successful startups operate exactly like cults in many ways
“I would say that most successful startups are like cults in many ways”
Deel planted a spy at Rippling who tried to flush their phone
“Like in the tech world, we're seeing a very interesting story play out between Rippling and Deal, which are these two payroll processors, and Deal planting a spy, and the spy, like, running into the bathroom, and then trying to flush a phone.”
A CEO's human remorse has never lost a company a court case
“In practice, I've never seen someone lose a case because the CEO expressed human remorse in And empathy, and that was the thing that made them lose in the courtroom.”
Meservey: The Wall Street Journal's tech desk is in shambles after layoffs
“Their tech, honestly, their tech desk, their tech team is in, like, shambles right now, because they had this super bizarre layoff a few weeks ago, and there's just, like, a crazy management decision to lay off a bunch of AI and tech people, the cusp of AI. It…”
Tech leaders smiling while warning about AI job displacement destroys public trust
“If I'm telling you that you are potentially going to lose status, purpose, income, and security. And I seem just fine, and I'm smiling as I say it, automatically there's no trust between us. You don't even think of me as, barely as like the same species, but y…”
Culture is abandoning a decade of aesthetic relativism for objective beauty
“People are allowed to care about objectively beautiful things again. We had probably a decade or the better part of a decade where we had to take this aesthetic relativistic view of everything is beautiful in someone's eyes, and this piece of art that is like …”
Relying on AI writing tools reduces above-average thinkers to baseline mediocrity
“When you use a template, you are giving up on the possibility that you could be better. And I say this sometimes about AI writing. Your AI is a wonderful tool. I use it all the time. But if you are relying on AI to write for you and to generate ideas for you a…”
Enterprise founders like Tobi Lütke and Brian Armstrong make the best communicators
“The top leaders, like the Toby Looker, Brian Armstrong types, they already get it, and that is the most effective person to speak is the person who's leading the enterprise.”
The corporate press release has been an obsolete communication tool for decades
“The press release as a means of communication, I think is obsolete by like a decade.”
Founders who personally confront online critics directly cause attackers to fold
“And so one of the things I tell founders to do is just to show up and defend yourself, you know, defend your people, defend your companies. Sam Altman is really good at this. He defends his employees. And it's very hard, even as much as with any public figure,…”
Material attacks reaching relevant audiences require immediate and aggressive response
“If both are a yes, then you got to respond immediately. Immediately and aggressively. Right away. You can't kind of, oh, I don't know, it feels so bad, maybe it'll go away. The instinct is, let me just, maybe it'll just go away by itself. It doesn't go away by…”
The most powerful statistics lose to average narrative stories in public communication
“You have to fight story with story. There's no, like, the most powerful statistic is probably not as powerful as the median story.”
Underdogs diffuse media pressure by expanding the attack's surface area to others
“And so the way to think about this is if you're trying to relieve pressure, you don't get to change how much force is coming at you, but you can change the surface area. You can spread it out over more surface area. You're not just attacking me. You're attacki…”
Apologizing when blameless incentivizes attacks, whereas holding firm builds strategic deterrence
“If your apology and your subsequent contrition and attempt to make amends is not correlated with whether you did anything wrong, then of course everybody should come after you all the time because it's a lottery ticket, right? Just come after you and then mayb…”
Donald Trump is the funniest U.S. president, which is an incredible communications hack
“He is the funniest president. I'm sorry, Trump is the funniest president. Reagan, close second. He is, and then Lyndon Johnson. He is legitimately funny, and being funny is an incredible communications hack. It gets people's attention. It makes them keep tunin…”
Meservey: Founders can post constantly if their 'ship-to-yap ratio' is high
“It's not about how much you yap. It's about the ship yap ratio. You have to respect the ship yap ratio. And if the ratio is right, you can get away with anything.”
Meservey: AI advancements will make every human worker a "personality hire"
“In a world where AI is better than us at pretty much everything, every human is going to be a personality hire.”
Meservey: Corporate PR responses only resonate when anchored in universal principles
“So obviously my and our ulterior motives is to vindicate the company and show people that this isn't true. But if we had just done that, nobody would have cared. Or maybe a few diehards would have cared. There are people who care deeply about Substack, but not…”
Founders must apply the same seriousness to storytelling as to code
“The same amount of seriousness that you apply to the product or the code or the hiring You have to be applying to your story, and you're the only person who can say it. You're the only person who can do it that effectively, because you have, at the beginning e…”
Anduril pioneered the 'go direct' communications strategy out of necessity
“A lot of companies now that consider going direct as a default, I believe have Andrel and Palmer and Matt, Bryan, and Trey to thank for this, because going not direct was actually just not an option.”
The Jetsons was popular media's last truly effective techno-optimist message
“The last time there was a really effective techno-optimist message was the Jetsons, and it's because They weren't beating you over the head with technology's gonna make your life great. The show was about other stuff. I don't know, they'd go around, they'd go …”
Techno-optimist narratives fail as PR when technology is the focal point
“The tech is the thing people focus on, but the utopian stories about tech, when you make tech the thing people focus on, they write it off as PR, and so I think what we want is for the utopian stories about tech, or the optimistic stories about tech, To have i…”
The other half of the tape: Lulu Cheng Meservey's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 70 times in 29 episodes across the shows. 3 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most John Coogan 27Jordi Hays 13Harley Finkelstein 3David Senra 3Lenny Rachitsky 1Dylan Patel 1
Statements about Lulu Cheng Meservey, by other people (3)
Lulu Cheng Meservey's Anti-Woke Substack Recruiting Post Reached 100 Million Views
“Well, it's because they took a very contrarian position on free speech. And Lulu had that insanely viral recruiting post. Do you remember this? She was like when Elon bought Twitter, She said, if you have a problem with Elon bringing free speech to Twitter, do…”
Harley Finkelstein: Lulu Cheng Meservey is a world-class comms genius
“Lulu is on our board. It was amazing. Probably one of the greatest comms geniuses on the planet talks about this go direct.”
Companies Facing Crises Should Hire Lulu Cheng Meservey
“She was at, she was involved with Activision, which went through a bunch of crazy stuff. She was involved with Substack, so it's like, hire, hire her if you want to, like, drive through the fire, not if you want to, like, you know, try to get around it, right?”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
TBPN 63
the Knowledge Project 3
David Senra 3
Lenny's Podcast 1
2026 7 mentions in 6 episodes 1 per episode
- Tobi Lütke: 21 Years of Building Shopify
- Leopold Stays in the Game, Big Tech Earnings, OpenAI Slashes GPT-5.6 Prices | Diet TBPN
- FULL INTERVIEW: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick is Back with a New AI Startup
- Jason Fried: Your Only Competition Is Your Costs
- FULL INTERVIEW: Dylan Patel Says We’re Still Underestimating AI
- X’s $1M Sweepstakes, Ben Affleck’s viral take on AI, Elon sues OpenAI for $134B | Diet TBPN
- every mention in 2026, scene by scene →
2025 34 mentions in 12 episodes 3 per episode
- GWYNETH PALTROW Just Saved Astronomer — Here's How
- Weekly Recap: Gwyneth Paltrow Saves Astronomer, Figma’s IPO, Top AI Researchers Ranked
- GPT-5.2 Reactions, Jacob Elordi vs AI, Disney x OpenAI Deal Breakdown | Diet TBPN
- Harley Finkelstein: You Must Requalify for Your Role, Every Year
- DeepSeek, Stargate Update, Bees Do Enjoy Honey, Golden Retriever Maxxing, Bring on the Trilly
- Pavel and Delian Asparouhov's $27M Bet on Healthcare Efficiency
- The BEST Super Bowl Commercial (Saquon Barkley)
- Insurance Companies Explained (How they actually work)
- 4 more episodes that year, every mention in 2025 →
2024 28 mentions in 10 episodes 3 per episode
- The Secret Billionaire Party (ep6)
- FACT CHECKERS vs. tech article (ep14)
- How BILLIONAIRES dress for XMAS (ep17)
- How to Spend a Trillion Dollars Fast (ep13)
- Venture Capital Just Changed Forever (ep1)
- You are NOT a Lottery Ticket (Peter Thiel Breakdown)
- Who's Getting Rich Off Ozempic? (e12)
- Crypto is Back Baby (ep5)
- 2 more episodes that year, every mention in 2024 →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Lulu's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KNOWLEDGE PROJECTLEDGER | Founder and CEO, Rostra | 1 | 39 | 33% 1/3 | full record on the Knowledge Project → |
| LENNY'S PODCASTLEDGER | Founder and CEO, Rostra | 1 | 21 | 0% 0/1 | full record on Lenny's Podcast → |
| DAVID SENRALEDGER | Founder and CEO, Rostra | 1 | 17 | 100% 1/1 | full record on David Senra → |
| TBPNLEDGER | Founder and CEO, Rostra | 1 | 7 | — | full record on TBPN → |