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Ira Ko

Ira Ko

stumbling out the cave; drawing a map for the captives

📍 Brooklyn https://linkedin.com/in/koira

The magic is in the work

Whenever I look at my feed, it seems like every startup is going viral and that every teenager is making fortunes on iPhone apps. But on the field where I stand, things are hard. Company building is hard. Managing cashflow is hard. Keeping employees motivated is hard. Surviving on $50K

Generational

I talk to great founders every day, some even generational. CEOs who’ve scaled their startups to amazing heights: hundreds of millions in revenue, Series C and D, but everything they built is now threatened. Everything changed in December 2025. Code is free and investors are demanding an "AI

Finding film

How I accidentally became a filmmaker and made our first $30,000 launch video. This post is a reflection on the journey of how I got here, and how you never know what’s on the other side of something. Audiograph Before Shapeshift, I was an ambitious young founder trying

Introducing Spotlight Videos

Every craftsman is on a hero’s journey. We started Shapeshift to tell stories of these journeys, starting by helping founders become content creators. We built the systems to help experts turn their knowledge into stories, and stories into followers. But this process is dependent on how much time and

The future of content is not a feed

13 years ago, YouTube’s head of Trends gave a TED Talk on how content goes viral: 1. Tastemakers (celebrities) 2. Community participation (remixing) 3. Unexpectedness (shock and awe) But today, this framework is basically irrelevant. Here’s how content goes viral today: 1. Tastemakers —> Algorithm 2. Community participation

Is LinkedIn working?

Only if it reaches the right audience Is LinkedIn working? This is one of the most common questions I get from Shapeshift’s consulting customers (Series A+ founders and their content teams). In the early days of Shapeshift, I tried really hard to prove that our CEO’s LinkedIn posts

What is high calorie content?

How to reach busy customers who are default unreachable There’s so much noise on the internet today that most business leaders actively protect their time and attention. They have EAs sitting on their LinkedIns and spend time and money in meditation and cold plunges. These are the customers we

The only way to grow a podcast

12 questions to ask guests to make viral social clips I’m the CEO of Shapeshift. Since 2019, I’ve founded two podcast companies and have spent thousands of hours interviewing, producing, and coaching CEOs on how to podcast. As a business, there are two reasons to start a podcast:

Podcast Questions Bank

tl;dr – A lightweight way to kickoff your content flywheel is to interview partners, customers, and internal cofounders. The goal should be to create a promise on why the viewer should read/watch. And deliver on that promise with educational or entertaining content. Below is a list of podcast questions

Five Principles to Successful Content Marketing

Business Context Traditional distribution channels like television, PR, and radio have been on the decline for years. Since the COVID-19 lockdowns, the replacement of these channels to cordless distribution like YouTube, LinkedIn, and podcasts has only accelerated. It's not just younger generations. Buyers who have traditionally trusted