tl;dv’s comedian-led marketing

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More than 50% of tl;dv’s leads say they found them through their social channels.

Three people making corporate comedy videos on TikTok drove those signups. No performance marketing team. No sales outreach. Just workplace skits that rarely even mentioned the product.

tl;dv is a German startup selling AI meeting recording software in one of the most crowded SaaS categories. They've hit 2 million users and generated $4.5 million in revenue by hiring comedians instead of marketers.

When tl;dv launched in winter 2020, the AI meeting recorder space was already crowded. Gong had massive enterprise traction. Otter owned consumer mindshare. Fireflies was scaling fast. All with significantly more funding than tl;dv's $4.5 million seed round.

A traditional B2B marketing playbook would’ve meant competing on budget against companies that could outspend them ten-to-one. Running the same plays as better-funded competitors is not a strategy, it's slow-motion failure.

CEO Raphael Allstadt made a different bet. "When we started, we found the problem was well-defined and we had well-established players we knew we had to pick up the fight with. We said we are okay if some people don't like our approach, but others really love us for doing what we do".

That decision ultimately led to 600% year-over-year revenue growth. Crucially, 40% of revenue now comes from enterprise customers despite initially targeting individual contributors.

Personality became their competitive advantage in a commoditised category where everyone has similar features and pricing. Being the brand people actually like matters a lot more than any minor feature upgrade.

Most B2B brands hear "entertainment content" and think it means adding jokes or using trending audio.

That's not what tl;dv does.

Their most popular video shows a sales rep promising features that engineering can't deliver. Millions of views, zero product mentions. Another satirises "PM math," the fallacy that adding developers speeds up delivery. It’s corporate workplace comedy that tech workers recognise instantly.

Only about 10% of their content mentions tl;dv at all. When it does, the energy is deliberately low-pressure. As content creator Ian Evans describes it: "Hi, we're a brand. Please use our software. Thank you so much."

The format is character-driven skits featuring recurring personas. The over-promising Sales Rep. The realistic Developer. The optimistic Product Manager. Followers began expecting these dynamics, waiting for the next Sales vs Developer conflict video.

But, like any real success story, there’s one part people often miss out. Nothing worked for months.

The first two months consisted of trend-chasing videos using popular audio clips. Standard TikTok tactics. Minimal traction. After watching metrics flatline, Allstadt told the team: "Stop doing trending audios and try to be more original".

The breakthrough came from a scripted interaction between two employees describing how a one-on-one meeting works. Simple, authentic, and it hit 300,000 views.

They published 102 videos before the formula started working consistently. After that threshold, the account started gaining 10,000+ followers every month.

Most brands expect content strategies to deliver results immediately or at least show linear progress quarter-over-quarter. tl;dv's journey shows that finding your format is inherently messy. The patience required is systematic learning through doing. Content, just like product development, requires a non-stop cycle of testing and iterating.

Allstadt's approach to building the content team broke every convention.

Rather than hiring a "social media manager" or training existing marketers to create video content, he scrolled through TikTok's corporate comedy niche and directly messaged creators he found funny. None of them had B2B marketing backgrounds.

"It's much easier for a creator to learn jokes about tech than a tech person to become a creator," Allstadt told Sifted. The quote sounds obvious once you hear it, but most companies do exactly the opposite.

They hire people who understand B2B marketing conventions, then ask them to make content for platforms where those conventions actively hurt performance. A marketer knows how to plan a campaign. A creator knows how to hold attention on TikTok.

They post 5-6 times every week, and There's no formal approval process. CEO Allstadt's directive was "if you would make it for your own page, make it for ours". This speed and autonomy makes content feel current and responsive rather than corporate and calculated.

The structural advantage is massive. While competitors route content through multiple approvals, tl;dv's creators can respond to trending topics or cultural moments within hours.

Measuring ROI on entertainment content is where a lot of internal conversations start to stall.

tl;dv uses a signup form asking "How did you hear about us?" and tracks correlations between viral videos and registration spikes. It’s simple, and imprecise, but more than 50% of leads report discovering tl;dv through social channels.

Evans admits "Even after 3 years and everyone says we're doing a good job, I can't point to any numbers specifically and say, 'Yeah, I drove that'". Sales calls frequently include positive mentions of the content. Prospects arrive already favourably disposed to the brand. But you can't exactly put "prospects seem to like us" on a quarterly business review slide.

Allstadt frames this differently. "We actually see really high brand love that helps people feel good about suggesting tl;dv to their wider company. For us, impressions matter—and a great social presence with a lot of character in the content we produce".

The ROI question isn't "how many conversions did this specific video drive" but "would we have this much brand affinity without the content strategy?" Attribution models designed for performance marketing can't answer that question.

The courage required is defending budget allocation without clear return-on-ad-spend for extended periods. Allstadt warns other founders "be ready to burn one year's worth of creator budget for little results".

Most brands never attempt entertainment-first content because they can't justify the investment without guaranteed proof.

77% of CMOs face pressure to prove short-term ROI. You can justify $100,000 in Google Ads because you'll get clear cost-per-acquisition metrics. Justifying $100,000 in content creation over 12 months with fuzzy attribution is a much harder conversation to have with finance…

Control anxiety creates content gridlock too. Some companies have up to 22 stakeholders signing off on a single piece of content. By the time something survives the review, anything controversial is gone. So is anything interesting.

The control meant to protect the brand actively prevents the creative risks that could differentiate it.

But the evidence supporting entertainment is overwhelming. Emotional advertising in B2B is 7x more effective at driving long-term sales than rational messaging and 66% of B2B buying decisions are driven by emotional connections. But only 16% of B2B companies invest more in long-term brand awareness than demand generation.

tl;dv's earlier failures validate these fears. Their first strategy was thought leadership content about asynchronous work. Months of effort produced zero signups, Allstadt recalls it as "the wasteland". The second strategy was transactional content, guides helping users complete specific actions. This generated signups but built no brand affinity.

Only the third evolution, entertainment-first video content, created breakthrough results. But reaching that point required surviving two failed strategies first, burning budget and time with nothing to show for it, and still having leadership patient enough to try a third time.

When Allstadt was asked about becoming a unicorn, he said "I don't care if we make a billion dollars, I just want us to enjoy our lives".

That philosophy of prioritising team happiness and creative freedom over aggressive growth metrics gave the strategy time to work. Most companies just can't (or won’t) operate that way.

tl;dv's approach succeeded because of five interconnected decisions:

The team structure is elegant in its simplicity. Three creators across three continents posting independently to a shared brand account. Weekly meetings for feedback and idea pitching. No formal approval beyond that. The system scales naturally as the company expands.

Brands aren't ignorant about whether entertainment-first works. The evidence is overwhelming. They're afraid to start without proof it'll work for them specifically.

The structural barriers also stand in the way. Quarterly planning cycles demand short-term proof when content needs at least 6-12 months. Approval processes involving multiple stakeholders kill the authenticity that makes content work. Companies hire "social media managers" instead of platform-native creators.

tl;dv's results prove entertainment-first B2B content delivers results. The question is whether leadership has the courage to commit before seeing proof, and whether the organisational structure allows creative risk-taking.

Most brands will continue buying Google Ads they can measure precisely while watching entertainment-native competitors build brand love they can't quantify on a spreadsheet but can definitely see in market share.

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