Our shared workspace
What we're building, where each piece stands, and what's still open.
North Star
Make Christian the credible, constructive, human-health-first voice reshaping plastics, the "Maja Göpel for plastics", bridging a broad public audience with the B2B decision-makers who become Granular's customers.
Jul 2026
St. Oberholz session: B2C pivot, three-level funnel & launch plan agreed
Aug 2026
Prep month for Sept 9 (Christian limited availability)
Sep 9, 2026
Stakeholder meeting, Hamburg: decision day (private)
Sep–Dec 2026
Fundraise leg 1: term sheet before Dec is the ambitious goal
Mid-Oct 2026
Granular podcast launch: 2 episodes, timed to the Deutscher Umweltpreis (Oct 25)
End Mar 2027
Realistic fundraise close · Cirplus liquidation ends
A
The work we agreed
what the proposal covers, and what has landed on top of it
What the proposal covers (Narrative System), and what has landed on top of it. Everything here is delivered inside this guidebook; goals and timing live in the Flight Plan ›.
| Deliverable | Where it lives | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · Messaging strategy | ||
| Map stakeholder groups (wants / interests / objections) | Messaging strategy · Who we're talking to | done |
| Clarify influence goals: what we want them to believe / do / feel | Messaging strategy · Believe, do, feel | done |
| Crystallise the list of key messages to convey | Messaging strategy · The key messages | done |
| 2 · Strong delivery | ||
| Map which topics are covered actively, reactively or avoided | Delivery & reach · The topic map | done |
| Translate key messages into a speaking catalogue: Brain, Heart, Spice | Delivery & reach · The speaking catalogue | done |
| 3 · New platform reach | ||
| Overview of key communication channels linked to stakeholders, incl. calls to action | Delivery & reach · The channels | done |
| Do & don't list: focus on the activities with the highest strategic relevance | Delivery & reach · Do & don't | done |
| Map out key steps for the year, focusing on top-ranked (video)podcasts and LinkedIn | Delivery & reach · The road to March | done |
| Map the top-ranked podcast space: keywords, topics, the outlets worth pitching | Airtable podcast database (pilot of 10) | ongoing |
B
Open questions
What else would you like in this document?i💬 comment
We keep working on this document. Use the 💬 comment buttons anywhere in this tab, feedback gets incorporated.
Clara: cross-promotion and the "double shoot" ideai💬 comment
Co-host billing is parked (she stays host/guide). Still open: cross-promotion with her own platform, and whether to position her as a guest on B2C/climate shows in parallel to you ("double shoot", both pointing back to the podcast). She's a scarce resource, so high-value shows only, and it needs her buy-in. Three-way distribution conversation planned.
Tagline and bios: not written yeti💬 comment
Three lengths (speaker intro · press boilerplate · full backgrounder), all copyable from this document once written. Blocked on the Cirplus-ending decision, since that reframes the second sentence of every bio.
C
Decisions to take
Until these are decided, parts of the story stay inconsistent no matter how good the copy is.
| Decision | Options and my take |
|---|---|
| Framework name De-Creeping Plastics💬 comment | Creeping / de-creeping. It covers direct and indirect exposure, works for both the health layer and the industry layer |
| Email capture at launch💬 comment | At least capture emails from day one, even if the drip series itself comes later. |
Collaboration timeline ▸
Sessions, decisions and deliverables over the engagement. Click to open.
June 2026
Kickoff & scope
- Kickoff session: both ventures mapped (Granular Co roll-up and the Inside Plastics podcast), founder-brand goal and scope set
- Delivered: first Flight Plan, the engagement roadmap
July 2026
Strategy build-out
- Two working sessions (the full workshop day and St. Oberholz) landed the positioning, the B2C three-level funnel, the framework direction and the podcast launch plan
- Delivered: Founder Voice & Positioning Guide
- Delivered: Framework Naming Brief, plus the framework "valuable dozen" options and an industry-facing briefing
- Delivered: investor persona set, early-stage and later-stage PE, with reach and media landscape (three docs)
- Delivered: audience personas and media landscape
- Delivered: podcast SEO strategy, launch countdown plan and guest-pitching agenda
- Delivered: industry "deception lingo" and story bank for the narrative work
- Delivered: research note on the AI reply-agent promotion approach
- Delivered: Mission Control and Flight Plan live sites, built and then refreshed with the latest decisions
- Delivered: podcast targeting database, a pilot of 10 shows tagged by persona and tier (Airtable)
August 2026
Consolidation
- Delivered: this guidebook, pulling the positioning, messaging, delivery and terminology work into one living reference
- The Working tab here takes over from Mission Control as the shared engagement overview
01
The position
The industrial insider who can explain why our plastic system fails and how to fix it at scale
Positioning
- The whole-system expert: production, use AND end-of-life, never "a recycling founder". The myths you puncture are about use and end-of-life ("it's an Asia problem", "it doesn't affect me"), microplastics included.
- Green without being green: your credibility comes from 7.5 years inside the industry. Pro-business, pro-market, Eigenverantwortung.
- "Maja Göpel for plastics": the North Star. At home in the B2C world, yet invited into the policy rooms. A credible voice requested by decision makers.
You are never
- Not an activist: no deep-green fight language, no metaphorical Birkenstocks, no scolding the masses for consumption (mit dem erhobenen Zeigefinger).
- Not the whistleblower: you expose the lobby's arguments, not the people. Inclusive toward everyone working inside the industry.
- Not the doom guy: the hard truth only ever sits in the middle of the story. Opening and close stay constructive, always paired with a path: listen, join the industry, start a company, lobby.
02
Who we're talking to
click a card for wants, red flags and how to speak to them
The three-level funnel:
Level 1: the B2C world. The aware, the health-conscious and the startup bubble. Health and microplastics lead, system issues secondary.
Level 2: the bridge. Widening it, moving people from 1 toward 3, is the podcast's core mission.
Level 3: B2B. Granular's customers and investors. The system and the business case lead, health and microplastics secondary.
Level 1 The broad B2C world
Where reach happens. Health and microplastics carry the story here. Click a card for the full picture.
Mara · the listener the show is written for
Teased by the Luisa Neubauer world, hungry to go one level deeper. Smart, busy, allergic to being talked down to.
Full picture ›
Who she is
- 31, senior comms manager at a mid-size consumer brand, Hamburg. Recycles diligently, has asked "why don't we just recycle everything?" at a dinner party and never got a satisfying answer.
- Stuck between two formats: 90-second reels that oversimplify, or technical papers she has no context for. She wants someone to "explain it to me like I'm an adult."
What wins her
- Clara as guide, not lecturer: a female voice asking the questions Mara would ask.
- Story first: the trunk episodes read like a story she can follow on a walk; branch episodes let her choose her own depth.
- Snackable proof: a striking stat or quote she can screenshot into the group chat.
What loses her
- Jargon without translation, and anything that smells like a plastics-industry commercial.
Jonas · the founder who collects founder stories
Not in plastics at all. He's drawn in by the founder, not the topic. Founder podcasts are a genre to him, not a vertical.
Full picture ›
Who he is
- 34, B2B SaaS founder, Berlin. Listens to How I Built This, Doppelgänger, 20VC, Invest Like the Best. LinkedIn is his main feed.
What wins him
- Honest near-misses: polished success stories teach him nothing. How you handled a hard call, a stakeholder conflict, a moment of doubt does.
- Transferable lessons: the plastics specifics are just the container. "I care what he'd do differently if he started again tomorrow."
What loses him
- Deep plastics chemistry with no founder throughline: he skips to the next show in the queue.
Ben · the health optimizer
Listens to Huberman Lab and The Diary of a CEO. Cares about his body first, the planet second. Microplastics worry him personally.
Full picture ›
Who he is
- 36, works in tech, Munich. Tracks sleep and HRV, filters his water, spends real money on his health and longevity. He has heard "microplastics in the bloodstream" on his favorite shows and wants to know what it actually means.
What wins him
- The risk-prevention frame, straight: numbers, mechanisms and what the science actually supports. The 16,000-chemicals math and the blood-and-brain findings are exactly his kind of hook.
- An honest answer to "what can I do": the direct vs. indirect exposure split. Some things he can control, most he can't, and that is precisely why the system has to change. That answer respects his intelligence instead of selling him a checklist.
What loses him
- Sustainability framing and moralizing. He didn't come for the planet, he came for his bloodstream. Doom without agency loses him just as fast.
Level 2 The bridge
The core mission: move people from Level 1 down into Level 2, into more interest. Level 2 has no persona of its own. It's Mara after ten episodes: she knows the vocabulary, follows the system argument and starts pulling others in. The wider this bridge gets, the more people arrive in the B2B world where Granular lives.
Level 3 B2B · customers, investors, policy
The small world where the money and the mandates live. A B2B listener is worth more per head than a B2C one. Two personas instead of eight archetype categories: the archetype research now lives inside these two cards.
Priya · the diligence check
A PE associate who arrives via due diligence, not discovery. The one whose five minutes of listening moves the raise.
Full picture ›
Who she is
- 29, associate at a mid-market PE fund, London. Someone on her deal team finds the podcast, or you mention it in the data room, and she ends up with two episodes open between calls.
What the show has to do for her
- Pass one test: "okay, this guy gets it." She's pattern-matching founders who understand their industry vs. founders performing understanding.
- Honesty as the tell: a founder willing to narrate the hard parts of Cirplus reads as lower-risk than one with only a highlight reel.
The rule she gives us
- Nothing is built for her, but nothing ships that would fail her. The moment any episode reads as spin, it works against the raise.
Matthias · the first cheque
A family-office industrialist with materials heritage who invests on conviction. He stands in for the whole Phase 1 crowd: family offices, operator-angels, solo sponsors.
Full picture ›
Who he is
- 58, second-generation owner of a packaging-machinery group, NRW. Invests the family's money alongside two operator friends who built and sold recycling businesses. Decides in weeks, not quarters, and thinks in decades, not exits.
What wins him
- Relationship and legacy before numbers: a decade-scale industrial story, not a flip. He watches what the other families do; five committed tickets at the minimum is the momentum he waits for.
- A closeable deal, not a thesis: named targets, offtake and feedstock agreements, and a founder who speaks plant economics. He wants the COO in the room early.
- Your public content is his quiet diligence: he reads LinkedIn and listens to two episodes before he ever takes a meeting.
Red flags
- Cold outreach, VC pitch theater, disruption vocabulary and anything that smells transactional.
Where to reach him
- Warm intros only. Closed-door forums (Campden Wealth, Stiftung Familienunternehmen), IFAT Munich and bvse's Altkunststofftag. Trade press over podcasts. Worth naming in conversation: BAFA's INVEST grant pays qualifying angels 20% cash back.
03
What we want them to believe, do, feel
| Audience | Believe | Do | Feel |
|---|---|---|---|
| B2C (Level 1) | The plastics problem is a personal problem. It's already in their bloodstream. | Listen to the podcast, share the "aha" moment in their group chat. | Creeped out, then determined. Never lectured, never doomed. |
| Industry insiders (Level 3) | The game is rigged and the vocabulary is part of the rigging. Changing it is a public health concern. | Engage with the framework, subscribe to the drip, bring Christian into their rooms. | Concerned, respected, not attacked, enabled. |
| Investors | This is a proven operator with a complete team onto something great. "This guy is worth investing in" - the conclusion the associate reaches when the diligence trail surfaces the podcast and LinkedIn. | Take the meeting off a warm intro; commit a first ticket; introduce the next family. | Early to something legible and in a relationship, not a transaction. |
| Policy rooms | Here's an industry voice who is pro-market AND says the system is broken. A credible witness, not an activist. | Invite him in, the Bundestag-committee, the Maja Göpel path. | Trustful, relieved to hear a balanced opinion. |
04
The key messages
Main repeating themes
- The game is rigged, and it's not about better products. The incumbent owns the stadium, employs the referees, wrote the rulebook, and has moved the finish line for seventy years. That's why the market won't self-correct on its own.
- It's the system, not your sorting. Production, use and end-of-life all fail together. Personal consumption is the least important part. The fix is industrial, regulatory and financial.
- The language is part of the deception. "Level playing field", "Technologieoffenheit", "complementarity", "closing the loop": industry-coined vocabulary that pre-decides the debate. Lifting that veil is the precondition for everything else.
- There is a fix, and it has three pillars. Replace fossil feedstock with bio-based inputs · high-quality mechanical recycling · modern incineration with carbon capture, cascaded by true cost: make the bad stuff more expensive, the good stuff cheaper. The EEG proved the blueprint works.
- Mechanical, not chemical. Granular's case is strictly mechanical recycling and recycled-content mandates. Chemical recycling competes with the model. Its stats never support our story. Correct on sight.
- Health is a risk-prevention argument, never a cancer claim. ~16,000 chemicals, most never assessed, microplastics found in blood and brain tissue: "given the accumulating facts, reducing exposure is smart risk prevention, rather than driving blind." The John Oliver move, not the overclaim.
- A proven operator, not a PowerPoint. private detail Committed early capital, offtake and feedstock agreements signed, targets identified, CEO/COO/CFO complete. In public: "a new European recycling venture" until the company is announced.
- Entrepreneurship here is a relay race. "You fail, I continue; I fail, you continue." Cirplus ending doesn't end the mission. The baton moved. This is the constructive frame that makes the failure story an invitation, not a warning.
A
The topic map
what you lead with, what you answer, what never comes up
Actively brings up the repertoire
- The Cirplus story, unvarnished, including the ending. The honesty is the differentiator; protect it.
- Language critique: exposing "level playing field" & co. (branch episode 1's subject, your sharpest move).
- True cost and the rigged game: the EEG as proof that regulation can flip a market.
- Health as risk prevention: the 16,000-chemicals math, plastic as a sponge, always inside the guardrails.
- The FDP mic drop. Long-time market liberal, never voted Green, and precisely because of that: "the current system is completely fucked up."
- Supply-chain resilience: feedstock dependence treated like rare earths; the strategic case for B2B rooms.
Answers if asked, doesn't lead reactive only
- The fundraise: credibility over lead generation; detail lives in the data room and the living Q&A doc, not in content.
- Chemical recycling: only to draw the mechanical/chemical distinction, never as a tailwind.
- Clara's role: host and guide; co-host billing is parked.
- DBU: acknowledged as funder in show notes; the Handbuch stays out of listener-facing material.
Never hard red lines
- No definitive harm claims: never "plastics cause cancer" unless it's a proven, replicated, additive-specific finding.
- September 9 does not exist publicly. Ever.
- No single-founder framing. Always the CEO/COO/CFO shape.
- No named quotes from private settings without explicit sign-off (Chatham House, stakeholder circle).
B
The speaking catalogue
Brain: evidence & frameworks · Heart: stories & images · Spice: opinions & hot takes
Brain The evidence
Click a tile for context and source. These are the numbers you can say on any stage without a fact-checker flinching.
Chemicals in plastics
16,325
unique chemicals used in or present in plastics
sourced
The core "aha" number: 5,776 additives, 3,498 processing aids, 1,975 monomers, 1,788 byproducts/contaminants, and real products combine them into effectively open-ended formulations. Use it to open the health argument, not to overclaim harm.
PlastChem database, published in Nature (2024/25); covered by Scientific American and CNN. Full source list in the "Scale Problem in Plastics Regulation" doc (Drive, Founder Positioning folder).
The data gap
10,000
of those chemicals have no safety or hazard data at all
sourced
Regulators don't just lack approvals. They lack the basic science to start. Pairs with the "not proven ≠ safe" argument: absence of regulation is a capacity problem, not a clean bill of health.
PlastChem / Nature (2024/25). Fewer than 6% of the 16,325 are under any global regulation; 4,200+ already flagged as chemicals of concern.
Regulatory pace
~5 / year
chemicals the US EPA designates for full risk evaluation
sourced · frame carefully
At that pace, just the flagged plastics chemicals would take ~840 years; the full known universe ~3,265 years. Always say "at current regulatory capacity": it's an illustrative extrapolation, not an agency forecast, and capacity could in principle be scaled.
EPA TSCA annual plan and Federal Register (2024/25); extrapolation built in the "Scale Problem" doc with its caveats attached.
Where it ends up
Blood & brain
microplastics found in human blood and brain tissue
sourced · guardrails apply
The Diary-of-a-CEO-grade moment. Use it as the hook, never as a causal harm claim. The approved frame: "given the accumulating facts, reducing new plastic exposure is smart risk prevention, rather than driving blind."
Peer-reviewed detection studies (blood, brain, breast milk). Cite the specific study when used in print; detection ≠ dose ≠ effect.
Indirect exposure
~28%
of environmental microplastics come from tire wear
sourced
The best illustration of "creeping plastics" you can't opt out of: tires, textiles, soles. Out of the consumer's control, which is exactly why the fix is industrial.
IUCN, "Primary Microplastics in the Oceans" (Boucher & Friot, 2017): tire abrasion is ~28% of primary microplastics released to the world's oceans. Later reviews (2024) put tires at roughly a quarter of all environmental microplastics. In print, say "primary microplastics to the ocean" and cite IUCN; the "per EPA research" attribution traces back to this report.
The tipping point
15–16%
adoption at which a new belief spreads on its own
sourced · frame loosely
Your rationale for talking TO the industry instead of at it: reach the insiders first and the belief carries itself.
Everett Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations: innovators (2.5%) plus early adopters (13.5%) make the classic 16% adoption threshold. The experimental social-tipping-point study (Centola et al., Science, 2018) found ~25% for overturning a social convention. Keep the phrasing loose in print ("around 15 to 20 percent") rather than citing one hard number.
Operator credibility
7.5 years
inside circular plastics with Cirplus, incl. co-authoring EN 18065
sourced
The number that earns everything else. Pairs with: ~10,000 industry contacts, a European recyclate classification standard co-authored, and the honesty of the ending.
Your own bio, cleared for public use (case-study clearance list, July 2026).
Bioplastics today
~0.5%
share of global plastics production that is bio-based
sourced
Why pillar 1 (replace the fossil feedstock) is a decades-long project, and why pretending consumer choice fixes it is dishonest.
European Bioplastics market data (2025): bio-based plastics are roughly 0.5% of the ~431 million tonnes of plastics produced annually (2.31 Mt capacity). The working number from the kickoff was 0.1%; the current industry figure is ~0.5%, and the argument holds either way.
Brain The frameworks
- The three pillars: (1) replace fossil feedstock with bio-based inputs, (2) high-quality mechanical recycling, your own lane, (3) modern incineration with CCUS, because plastic degrades and pretending it loops forever is dishonest. Policy thread across all three: make the bad stuff more expensive, the good stuff cheaper.
- Creeping / de-creeping plastics (candidate name): direct exposure (what you can influence: bottles, packaging) vs. indirect (what you can't: tires, textiles, soles). De-creeping = addressing both; the B2B layer is "de-industrialize the legacy business to re-industrialize."
- Plastic as a sponge: plastic attracts and concentrates other chemicals (flame retardants, PFAS): a risk-prevention argument that needs no causal overclaim.
- The John Oliver move: "So I'm not actually telling you that X…": point at the conclusion you can't state outright. Approved rhetorical pattern for the health topic.
- Not proven ≠ safe: the scale problem: regulators were built for dozens of chemicals, not 16,000+. "No regulation" means untested, not cleared.
- The visual anchor: a scale being tipped, from a playing field unlevel FOR destructive industries to one unlevel FOR sustainable ones, true cost as the lever.
Heart Stories & mental images
Click a card for the full story and when to use it. Pull one block per piece of content, never all at once.
The Rigged Stadium
The incumbent isn't the faster runner. It owns the stadium, employs the referees, wrote the rulebook, and moved the finish line every time a challenger got close.
Full story ›
The story
- Replaces Usain Bolt. The Bolt image implied the incumbent earned its lead through talent; the real point is seventy years of entrenchment. You signed it off in the July 16 session: "let's get away from Usain Bolt and go to Rigged Stadium or Firmenstadt."
- The Company Town variant (Firmenstadt): the newcomer isn't entering a fair market, they're opening a shop in a town where the incumbent owns the land, the bank and the mayor's office. Best for regulatory-capture points.
- Works in German too: "Ihm gehört das Stadion, er stellt die Schiedsrichter, er hat die Regeln geschrieben."
Fake change-maker vs. true change-maker
Why the industry embraced Cirplus early, and what it meant when the embrace cooled as you learned more.
Full story ›
The story
- Invited onto the biggest stages early as the "cool young change-maker who's not aggressive, not Greenpeace", and only later recognizing it as performative: "a true change-maker is not wanted down here; a fake change-maker, yes, because then they can show you off."
- This IS the podcast's arc: your relationship with the status quo deteriorates as you learn more. Pairs directly with the Rigged Stadium.
The WWF "level playing field" episode
WWF asked you for treaty input. Their submission uncritically demanded a "level playing field", not knowing the industry coined the phrase.
Full story ›
The story
- The strongest proof of the language critique: even well-intentioned advocates argue inside vocabulary the other side designed. You've made the same point to industry reps who still insisted on the phrase.
Movement within the status quo
The people inside these companies quietly pushing better decisions aren't villains. They're the movement worth growing.
Full story ›
The story
- The behavioral-science backbone: "you're shitty" puts people in a defensive state where arguments stop landing (the hotel water-conservation study: "60% of other guests reused their towels" beat guilt every time).
- Your twist: name the insiders as allies AND keep the outside pressure. Your own Cirplus lesson: insiders alone were too weak to overcome the structural limits of their businesses.
The historical precedents
Tobacco, glyphosate, smoking indoors, the EEG. "This has happened before" is how you argue.
Full story ›
The blocks
- Smoking indoors: once totally normal, now unthinkable. Norms flip fast once harm becomes undeniable.
- Monsanto / glyphosate: flip-flop garden marketing despite internal risk awareness, until litigation forced caution: the "feed uncertainty until forced otherwise" pattern.
- Tobacco: the internal-knowledge vs. public-messaging gap; reckoning came through litigation, not disclosure.
- The EEG: the positive precedent: feed-in tariffs gave investors demand certainty and flipped a market. Proof the "true cost" policy thread works at scale, and a reference every German audience knows.
The Musk / Roadster contrast
Musk proved EVs with a $120k halo product. Your point: plastics has no halo product, and that's why this is structurally harder.
Full story ›
The story
- Your own reference for founder positioning, with the limit you flag yourself: packaging is cents on the dollar; recycled or bio-based content costs 3–5x and nobody but the CFO notices. No Roadster to seduce the market with.
- The conclusion: unlike Musk, you need public and legislative pressure as well as good unit economics. This is the honest answer to "why don't you just out-compete them?"
The relay race
"You fail, I continue; I fail, you continue." Entrepreneurship in this space as collective progress, not zero-sum.
Full story ›
When to use it
- The constructive close, especially after the Cirplus ending. It invites people into the space (impact plus money-making, without becoming an NGO worker) and counters any doom reading of your message.
Spice Opinions & hot takes
Strategic, sparing: one strong hit per piece at most, and only where the stakes justify it.
The Kirchhoff mic drop
Painted as anti-market in a live debate. Your counter: "I was an FDP member for years. Precisely because I believe in markets, I can tell you this system is completely fucked up."
Full story ›
Usage
- The mold-break in one move: it breaks the deep-green expectation people put on you via Cirplus. Willing to reveal the FDP history in founder-brand content; keep the debate partner unnamed in print (Chatham House).
"Plastic Fantastic"
Polished spokespeople in suits explaining why plastic is great: money spent on image, not on change. You find it "unbelievably bad."
Full story ›
Usage
- Reframing a market problem as an image problem: the tactic you call out. Sets your credibility (years inside, making the pro-plastic case in good faith) against inauthentic PR.
"Creep people out to de-creep it"
"We definitely have to creep people out to de-creep it; we have to de-industrialize the legacy businesses to re-industrialize."
Full story ›
Usage
- Your own line, quote it directly: the sharpest one-sentence version of the framework candidate. Works on stage and in interviews; wait for the naming decision before printing it as THE framework.
"We should all just work together" is a stalling strategy
There's no version where removing crude-oil feedstock is a win for petrochemicals, so calls for consensus function as delay.
Full story ›
Usage
- You'll debate any industry representative on the record: sharp toward the lobby's arguments, inclusive toward the people. This is the line that draws that distinction.
C
How you sound
so every text in your name passes the sniff test
The voice
- Thinking out loud, hedges you own: "Take this with a pinch of salt, since I haven't raised in a PE case yet." The hedging is confidence. Keep it in.
- Concrete numbers over adjectives: "seven and a half years of my life", "80–85%", never "many years", never "significant".
- Anecdote first, then the general point. You argue from lived stories.
- German concepts stay German: Haltung, Eigenverantwortung, Technologieoffenheit, Wegbegleiter. They're texture, don't translate them away.
- Profanity once per piece, max, and only where the stakes justify it.
- Vulnerability is the signature. Open about what Cirplus cost you. Protect this above everything.
How writing reaches you
- "I don't want AI to write the exact words, you can always spot it." Deliver skeletons, bullet structures, and snippets in 2–3 tonal variants. You pick and rewrite.
- The speechwriter model: bullet points in, your words out. Never present polished prose as final for your personal posts.
- Constructive arc, structurally: the middle can be painful and true; the opening hook and the close must give the listener something to act on.
D
The channels
who each one reaches, what its job is, and the ask · click for detail
~10K contacts and the diligence surface for every investor persona. The profile has to hold up to an associate's scrutiny.
Full picture ›
The job
- Top of funnel + diligence trail. Partners may not follow, but the associate building the memo will visit. The profile itself is a deliverable.
- Reaches most of the Phase 1 crowd directly; only the family offices need closed doors instead.
- CTA: everything points to the podcast; founder-story posts with real struggle outperform polished expert content.
Granular · Inside Plastics
The content hub every other channel feeds. Two episodes at launch, bi-weekly, trunk + branch released en bloc.
Full picture ›
The shape
- 5 trunk episodes (the Cirplus story, honest and vulnerable) + 5 branch deep-dives, released in pairs so consumers aren't scared off and industry listeners still get depth. Clara Pfeffer guides; English; Season 1 "Breaking the Chains".
- Benchmark: 500–800 listeners/episode ≈ top 10% globally; retention 30–40% completion is solid. Reach primary, retention secondary. Investor leads are explicitly NOT a metric.
- No Season 2 during the fundraise: Season 1 is a standalone evergreen product; raw material collects in the content bucket.
- CTA: strongest link goes to the email drip (the durable owned asset), then LinkedIn.
Guest podcasts
Listeners already have the app open: the lowest-barrier reach there is. Pitch value for the host's audience; the podcast mention is incidental.
Full picture ›
The playbook
- The Christopher-Nolan-on-the-Daily-Show model: never "come on my podcast". Lead with genuine content for that host's audience. As a host, Marina insta-rejects fake AI-customized pitches.
- Syntax vs. semantic shows: syntax = story/person-driven, semantic = content/industry-driven ("nerdy"). Match the pitch tone to the show type.
- Training-ground tiering: start Top 10% → Top 5% and climb as placements land; smaller shows double as low-stakes practice.
- Current target skew (July pivot): plastics/recycling trade shows, founder-story shows (How I Built This type), and M&A / roll-up / PE-strategy shows: the most direct match since Granular is a roll-up. Doppelgänger stays for DACH founder reach; B2C climate shows deprioritized.
- Database: Airtable "Scaling Nerds HQ" → "Christian - Podcast Database" (pilot of 10 seeded).
Speaking & stages
One repeatable mini-lecture structured along the podcast episodes: scalable in length, never custom-built per event.
Full picture ›
The rules
- One TEDx-style stump speech built along the episodes, so referencing the podcast is natural and promotion is a by-product.
- Story first, then depth: the DBU "Modellcharakter" edutainment angle: human story, then the science.
- Solo slot or fireside over panels: panels don't convert; even 15 solo minutes earns a name on the program.
- Slides carry QR codes (Spotify, Apple, LinkedIn). Always design for conversion.
Email drip
Industry-specific short-article series for Granular's future customers, not a copy of the consumer framework.
Full picture ›
The mechanics
- Aimed at decision-makers who BUY plastics (Henkel-type brands, procurement). Sign-up → a series going deeper into the framework.
- The multiplier: ~5,000 B2B contacts from Cirplus/Surplus + the LinkedIn network, acting as multipliers inside their organizations.
- GDPR clock: the Cirplus list must be deleted ~April 2027 and can't be used for advertising; recipients CAN be informed of the continued work. Build the owned list before the clock runs out.
DBU
Strong network, weak marketing muscle, slow-moving. Sort everything BEFORE launch, not after.
Full picture ›
The asks
- The big one: the podcast featured in the DBU newsletter (~monthly) once a story + expert episode are out. They're waiting; you write to them directly.
- Low-effort stages: "Woche der Umwelt" fireside chats; the Deutscher Umweltpreis (Aachen, 25 Oct 2026, Bundespräsident speaks) as the launch-timing hook.
- Never listener-facing: the Handbuch is a sponsor deliverable: funder acknowledgment in show notes, nothing more.
Instagram / TikTok
Reconsidered now that B2C is in scope, but video-first and hard. Teasers feeding the main platform, never a priority.
Full picture ›
The rule
- The Toni Kroos model: teaser content can live on many channels, but everyone gets drawn to ONE main platform. Non-studio video underperforms unless very well edited. Don't build a channel we can't feed.
Website & SEO
"Granular" is a brand, not a keyword. Discoverability lives in subtitles, descriptions and episode pages Google can crawl.
Full picture ›
The rules
- Every episode gets its own crawlable page + transcript: the single strongest SEO move; app-store search barely matters.
- Title formula: [Evocative title] – [plain-language keyword descriptor]. Never publish "Alone" or "Hinterland" bare.
- Keyword tiers: own the branded terms (Christian Schiller, Cirplus, EN 18065) outright; win Tier 2 niche terms (plastics recycling industry, EPR, greenwashing plastics); skip broad "circular economy": Ellen MacArthur and BASF own those.
- Cirplus-keyword caveat new: the branded strategy leans on "Cirplus"; review how liquidation coverage changes what that search now surfaces.
E
Do & don't
the focus list: activities with the highest strategic relevance
| Do | Don't |
|---|---|
| One repeatable stump speech, scaled up or down per slot | Custom speeches per event; the ROI isn't there |
| Solo slots and fireside chats, even 15 minutes | Panels; they don't convert |
| Pitch real value for the host's audience; the podcast rides along | "Come on my podcast" pitches or fake AI-personalized outreach |
| Start with smaller shows as training ground, climb the tiers | Chase OMR-tier first (except pre-warmed Clara-tier openings) |
| One main platform; every other channel teases toward it | Build every channel equally, especially video-first ones |
| Warm intros for investors; 6 friendly funds are ready to make them | Cold outreach, above all to family offices |
| Lead B2B pieces with cost and resilience; health second | Open procurement-facing content with health or climate; it gets filed as "read later" |
| Constructive open and close; the pain lives in the middle | Doom framing, "the human plastic", finger-pointing at consumers |
| QR codes on every slide deck (Spotify, Apple, LinkedIn) | Stages without a conversion path |
F
The road to March
key steps for the year: the fundraise leg and the season run in parallel
| When | What |
|---|---|
| By Aug 31 | Outreach prep done: target list signed off together, host contacts researched, pitch assets and templates ready |
| Sept 1 → | Tier-1 guest-podcast outreach starts (follow-up waves through Sept 29), aiming at mid-October coverage |
| Sept 1–9 | Quiet period: no public podcast-company cross-references; launch assets finalized in the background |
| Sept 9 private | Stakeholder meeting, Hamburg. Does not exist in public communications. Ever. If approved, notary the next day |
| Sept 10–30 | Post-meeting recording with Simon (current-state intro) · podcast announcement on LinkedIn · feed submitted, trailer live end of Sept |
| Sept – mid-Dec private | First fundraising leg (family offices & angels). Founder brand's job: the diligence trail, not lead-gen |
| Oct 14 | LAUNCH: 2 episodes en bloc (trunk + branch), Wednesday; Deutscher Umweltpreis (Oct 25, Aachen) as the timing hook. Daily LinkedIn through launch week |
| Oct 28 · Nov 11 · Nov 25 | Bi-weekly releases; guest-appearance batches timed around each drop; outreach continues |
| Nov 17–18 | Responsible Investment Forum Europe, London: lands mid-fundraise, the impact-PE room |
| Dec 1 – Jan 12 | Winter break, communicated as such; outreach continues quietly underneath |
| Jan 13 → | Back with "season finale" framing; Jan 27 · Feb 10 · Feb 24 · Mar 10 releases; IPEM Cannes in January sits at the Phase 1/2 hinge |
| ~End of March 2027 | Season wraps (Mar 10) · realistic fundraise horizon · Cirplus liquidation runway ends. Everything above converges here |
What to say, what to stop saying
| Don't use | Use instead |
|---|---|
| "Phoenix Polymer"i | "Granular Co" / "The Granular Company" |
| The working name was retired in July 2026. Old filenames keep it; that's fine, historical artifacts. Everything new says Granular. | |
| "Recycling founder" / "recycling-industry founder"i | "The founder fixing the plastics system": production, use and end-of-life |
| Narrowing you to recycling shrinks the lane you own. The system framing is the whole positioning; recycling is one pillar of three. | |
| "Sustainability podcast" / "impact founder"i | "The inside story of the plastics industry" |
| You want to steer clear of the sustainability bucket entirely; health and resilience frames lead, sustainability arrives as the side effect. | |
| "Level playing field" (used approvingly)i | Expose it: industry-coined, invoked exactly when it locks in seventy years of advantage |
| The plastics industry coined the phrase; even WWF repeated it uncritically. It's the flagship example of the language critique. Never use it straight. | |
| "Closing the loop" / recycling-symbol imageryi | "A delay, not a loop": honest about degradation |
| Plastic degrades with each pass; the eternal-cycle image is exactly the kind of misleading vocabulary he calls out. Don't borrow it. | |
| Chemical recycling as tailwind or comparisoni | Mechanical recycling and recycled-content mandates, specifically |
| Hard red line: chemical recycling competes with the business model. Its stats, investments and tailwinds never support our case. Correct on sight. | |
| "Dirty Dozen" (in print)i | "High-exposure uses", until the naming decision lands |
| EarthDay.org owns "The Dirty Dozen" for plastics, and Christian finds the name too blame-forward anyway. See the Working tab for the open decision. | |
| "Green" / "eco" self-labelsi | "Green without being green": pro-market, insider credibility |
| People kept putting you in the deep-green corner via Cirplus; breaking that expectation is a deliberate positioning asset, not an accident. | |
| Disruption / startup-pitch vocabularyi | "A roll-up with real assets, real agreements and a complete team" |
| The audience is family offices, industrialists and PE: patient capital. "Disrupt" reads as VC theater to every one of them. | |
| "Product evangelist" / "the whistleblower on the plastics industry"i | "Activist entrepreneur" (internal shorthand) · publicly: the industrial insider |
| You're explicit: no whistleblower branding. "Activist entrepreneur" and "missionary founder" are how you describe yourself to us: reference points, not public labels. | |
| Luisa Neubauer as shorthand for the audiencei | "The aware audience": it cuts across the political spectrum |
| Framing Level 1 via Neubauer pushes you back into the green pocket. The aware group includes conservatives; that breadth is the point. | |
| "Cirplus, the recycling marketplace" (present tense)inew | Past tense, owned openly: you're serving as liquidator and say so |
| Cirplus is in liquidation (public since spring 2026). Any bio or show note still describing it as operating needs the review pass, see Working. | |
Your words and images: keep them
The vocabulary that makes a text sound like you instead of a comms department.
- Creeping / de-creeping plastics: the framework candidate: direct exposure you can influence, indirect exposure you can't.
- The relay race: "you fail, I continue": the constructive close.
- "Recycling but right": the Granular tagline concept.
- Trunk & branch, released en bloc: the podcast's architecture: story episodes paired with their expert deep-dives.
Drag the ⠿ handle to move a task, click any text to edit, double-click a task to add notes. Everything saves on its own.
Planets — what we want to land
Rocket — what we communicate
Astronaut — learning to fly the rocket
Boost — more eyeballs & ears
High
Medium
Nice to have
⏳ Ongoing
❗ Urgent
✓ Done
Drag the ⠿ handle to move a task between quarters/lanes or into Guiding objectives; click the bars to set priority;
click the ○ icon to cycle a task through ongoing → urgent → done (done tasks grey out);
click any text to edit; double-click a task (or the pen icon) to add notes. Prepared by Scaling Nerds · scalingnerds.com