Makers: Siobhán Gibney Gomis
David McCarthy
“Makers” is an interview series with people in healthcare and health tech who create bookmark-worthy content and make the industry easier (and more entertaining) to understand.
Few creators in the B2B health tech space sound like Siobhán Gibney Gomis. Maybe no one. Her LinkedIn posts on go-to-market and sales strategies are crisp, unflinching, and immediate. Borrowing her aesthetic of crossover ideas, she’s kind of the Anton Chekhov of GTM content on LinkedIn. I mean, look at these introductory lines:
“Most of the worst things I see in interviews are easily avoidable...”
“Not all sales hires will work out.”
It’s not shocking to learn that VCs stop to read her posts.
Siobhán, who’s the managing partner at SGG, Inc., a sales and GTM consulting firm for healthtech startups, and I caught up about her strategy for LinkedIn, her (refreshing) definition of success as a creator, and her smart heuristic for drafting those scroll-stopping opening lines.
In roughly the length of a Tweet, what's the value prop of your content?
I address the questions and struggles that non-salesy healthtech founders have while leading sales and GTM strategy.
What's been your best-performing or best-received piece of content? What made it so successful?
Honestly, the best performing in terms of likes and clicks is always something with photos, and typically more of a personal edge to it, like a pic and a summary from a conference or a vacation snap and reflection.
But since I’m not trying to be a lifestyle influencer, what I care more about is the qualitative and anecdotal feedback I receive from the people I love and want to work with. For example:
A founder reaches out and says they feel like I read their mind and answered a question they’d been wrestling with
A founder books time in my calendar and hires me after a 20-minute chat, because they’re coming in warm
A client quotes my posts back to me in a meeting
Five minutes into a Zoom call, a CEO remarks that they feel like they already know me because they’ve read my posts, and I sound the same in real life
A few months after I started posting daily, a health system VC told me he never reads LinkedIn posts but always stops to read mine. I was stunned, mostly because he hadn’t “liked” a single one. That was the day I stopped caring about likes and comments.
Ultimately the value-add for a targeted group of people and the ability to drive business from that matter more to me than the likes. So vacation photos will continue to be a rare event. :)
Which creators and brands inspire your work?
There are so many people doing great things! I like to watch how people do things really well in their own space, even (and especially) if it’s not my space. I spent the formative years of my career at InnoCentive, which was built entirely on the principle of crossover ideas, so this isn’t an accident.
A few examples (I wonder if these three people have ever been on the same list!):
I love James Clear’s minimalist newsletter, and how there’s always at least one thing that resonates deeply with me.
Nikhil Krishnan of Out of Pocket uses humor and strong content in such a clever way. His LinkedIn posts always make me laugh.
Cup of Jo is a lifestyle blog, and the founder and editor Joanna Goddard really models how to write authentically. She has millions of readers, and hundreds of comments on every post, and all of them feel like they know her.
When it comes to creating content, what are your first principles or rules?
1. Make it short.
2. Make it clear.
3. Don’t overthink it.
How do you decide on a topic? Do you plan your content out?
I talk to healthtech startups (clients, prospects, and teams looking for a casual convo/free advice) all day long. I jot down common misconceptions, themes, anything that seems obvious to me but doesn’t seem well understood by others. Once a topic has come up at least three times, it’s a trend, so it becomes a post (or several, depending on how complex it is).
I do plan things out a bit. I’m not sitting down every morning before 8 to write and post immediately (I tried that first - great recipe for overthinking!). Typically I’m scheduled two to three weeks ahead and will move things around if something timely arises.
Your LinkedIn posts routinely have (enviously) strong opening lines. What's behind that approach?
Ah, thanks! I picture a busy founder scrolling their feed as they’re walking down the street. I’m trying to catch their attention in that moment.
Do you use any tools for your content creation workflow?
Nothing fancy. I jot down ideas and draft in Apple Notes, plan things out in a Notion calendar, and use LinkedIn’s native scheduling tool.
What is your optimistic contrarian take on healthcare or health tech in 2024?
There’s a lot of nervousness around the funding landscape. I’ve heard a lot of people asking if it’s the right time to build in health tech.
But I keep meeting young teams that have pre-seed or seed funding, and a re-calibrated expectation of what they’ll have to achieve in order to raise more. And with those goalposts in mind, they’re getting strong traction.
Ultimately, when conditions get harder, people adapt. And thankfully, because healthcare still needs innovators and solutions!
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Siobhán Gibney Gomis is the managing partner at SGG, Inc., a sales and GTM consulting firm for healthtech startups. Read her insights on LinkedIn.
