David Munam on Building BoredHippo: Why the Most Overlooked Startup Problem Is a Messaging One

By James Okoye

The BoredHippo founder shares what years of working with FinTech and Web3 brands taught him about the gap between building great products and communicating them effectively

If you asked most early-stage founders what their biggest challenges are, you'd hear the usual answers: funding, hiring, product-market fit, user acquisition. Rarely would messaging make the list.

David Munam believes that's a mistake, and he built BoredHippo to prove it. Munam's content agency focuses exclusively on FinTech, AI, Web3, and blockchain brands. This is not because he couldn't work with other industries, but because he identified these as the sectors where the gap between product quality and communication quality is most acute and costly.

"The founders in these spaces are often technically exceptional," he says. "They've built sophisticated financial infrastructure, or a protocol that solves a real problem in decentralised finance, or an AI tool that genuinely changes how a business operates. 

But when you ask them to explain it to someone who isn't already deeply embedded in the space, for instance, an investor who isn't a developer or a potential user who isn't a crypto native, the message breaks down. When this happens, the opportunity walks away."

BoredHippo's work sits at that exact breakpoint. The agency provides website and service page content, long-form blog posts, white papers, newsletters, and PR communications. But the thread connecting all of it is a single operating principle: lead with what the audience gains, not what the product does.

Munam traces this principle back to a pattern he observed repeatedly across FinTech and Web3 clients. 

"Almost every struggling landing page had the same structure. They opened with what the company was:  'We are a decentralised, AI-powered, multi-chain asset management protocol.' 

The user has no idea what that means. What they need to see first is: what is my life like if I use this? What problem does this actually solve? Start there, and everything else becomes easier to receive."

For startups considering how to allocate early content resources, Munam's advice is specific: prioritise the message before the volume.

"There's a common mistake where early-stage teams start publishing a lot of content before they've locked in what they actually want to say. They produce blogs, threads, and newsletters, yet the core message is still fuzzy. The audience doesn't understand what the company does or why they should care. While volume amplifies, if the message isn't clear yet, confusion soars."

His recommended starting point: a clear, one-sentence articulation of who the product is for and what it enables them to do. "If your team can't agree on that sentence, you're not ready to invest heavily in content yet. Nail the sentence and then build everything else on top of it."

BoredHippo's engagement model is monthly retainers with a minimum three-month commitment. They are structured to reflect Munam's conviction that content strategy requires sustained investment to deliver compounding returns. 

"The first month, we establish the narrative. In the second and third months, we deepen it, distribute it, and refine it based on what's resonating. By month four, clients start seeing inbound interest they weren't seeing before."

For startups in the FinTech and Web3 space looking for a content partner who understands the specific challenges of communicating complex, technical products to non-technical audiences, BoredHippo is accepting new clients.

"We built this content marketing agency for founders who are too deep in the technology to step back and see the messaging gap," Munam says. "This is not a criticism, it's just the reality of building something genuinely complex. Our job is to stand outside it, see it the way your audience sees it, and build the bridge."

BoredHippo works with FinTech, AI, Web3, and blockchain brands on a retainer basis. Click here for all inquiries.