Pressure = Force ÷ Surface Area
Same effort, narrower target, more impact — shrink your surface area to raise message pressure.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 95%
Meservey imports the physics identity (pressure = force / area) into communications. Force is what you spend — money, hours, and credibility. Surface area is how many people and how many messages you try to cover. Since force is fixed for a startup, the only lever that raises impact is shrinking the area: fewer people, sharper message. This is what makes 100 dollars aimed at the 100 right people beat a million dollars sprayed at a million.
Origin
A direct adaptation by Lulu Cheng Meservey of the basic physics equation P = F/A to comms strategy; she illustrates it with Balaji Srinivasan's launch of The Network State and with NYX's influencer-only marketing.
Core principles
- 01Force = dollars + hours + credibility drawdown. All three are finite.
- 02You cannot reliably increase force as a startup, so shrink the area.
- 03There is a continuum from 'life partner of one person' to 'appealing to everybody'; startups belong near the narrow end.
- 04A message everyone agrees with ('world peace is good') carries zero pressure.
- 05The denominator (the internet) is so large that capturing 0.01% is already a great business — do not fear the narrow numerator.
- 06Watering down to please people who will never like you costs you the true fans who made you special.
How to run it
- 1
Inventory your force honestly
Count the dollars, the hours in the day, and the credibility you can spend ('please trust me' has a balance and it depletes). This total is fixed in the short run.
Watch out Credibility is the force people forget they are spending until it's gone.
- 2
Pick your point on the continuum
Decide where you sit between hyper-targeting one person and appealing to everybody with a weak message. Startups should choose deliberately toward the fewer-people end.
- 3
Carve a tiny monopoly
Choose the specific corner of the internet you intend to dominate entirely. The smaller it is, the more completely you can own it. Aim for 10 die-hards, not general-public awareness.
Pro tip Food colouring in a cup, not food colouring in the ocean.
Watch out Trying to win everybody at once dilutes to invisibility.
- 4
Sharpen the message to a point
Cut the message down until it hits the bullseye of that group's cultural erogenous zone. Do not add clauses to make it palatable to adjacent groups.
Watch out Every extra audience you try to include blunts the point and costs you pressure.
- 5
Concentrate all force on the smallest area
Spend the whole budget and all the hours on the die-hards — free product, direct relationships, deep engagement — rather than spreading it across a broad campaign.
Pro tip Reallocate a million-dollar reach campaign into a hundred-dollar campaign aimed at the hundred most important people; their forwarding does the rest.
- 6
Only expand the area once the tiny monopoly is won
Let the die-hards evangelise outward to the next circle; increase surface area over time as force grows, not before.
In the wild
Rather than the traditional book tour, New York Times review and publisher-roster path, Srinivasan built his own distribution channels, went on podcasts that reached exactly his die-hards, and refused to soften his message to win over people who would never like him.
→ His true fans evangelised the book unpaid — Meservey believes he paid nobody — and propelled it to the top of the Amazon list.
Instead of spreading a marketing budget across broad channels, NYX spends zero on conventional marketing and minimal effort on press, concentrating all of it on fostering a small roster of influencers who deliver a human message with a call to action.
→ NYX out-punches its weight: a commodity black eyeliner sells out at CVS stores nationwide for weeks.
Common mistakes
Going wide and wondering why nobody cares
Meservey names this the most common reason comms fails. Broad targeting forces you to average out 500,000 people's tastes, which by construction makes you unremarkable.
Softening the message so haters stop hating
It is tempting to appease critics, but watering down what made you special drains the passion of the true fans and you end up milquetoast — losing both groups.
Fearing that a narrow niche caps the business
Online, the denominator is the size of the internet. Capturing 0.01% is a great business; the numerator is not the constraint founders imagine.
Chasing follower growth for its own sake
A viral hamster tweet leaves you with an audience mismatched to your value — the number goes up while the relationship goes nowhere.
Is it for you?
Best for
Resource-constrained startups and solo creators deciding where to aim a small budget, and any founder tempted to broaden a message to raise reach.
Not ideal for
Large incumbents with true mass-market products and the force to buy broad reach, or campaigns whose objective is genuinely universal awareness.
From the transcript
“that if you decrease the surface area then with the same amount of force you can apply more pressure so the amount of pressure is…”
“you might end up with a million dollars worth of return because those people were so passionate that they then became their own Messengers without…”
“you choose what is going to be your tiny corner of the internet that you are going to just dominate entirely and the smaller it…”
“so he's not watering down who he is to appeal to people who will never like him”
From the episode
Navigating comms and PR
Lulu Cheng Meservey (Substack, Activision Blizzard)