Scout7 logo

Scout7

Back

research_paper

Everyone On Your Team Can Post About The Release. That Is Why Nobody Does: Founder-Led Marketing

September 27, 2026 · 10 min read · Scout7

A group often does less than one person alone. Four studies show why a small team posts nothing after a release, and the one change that fixes it.

Everyone On Your Team Can Post About The Release. That Is Why Nobody Does: Founder-Led Marketing

A group of people will often do less than one person alone. Your team does this with the post about every release. Nobody is lazy. There is a reason, and there is a fix.

This happens a lot in founder-led marketing. That is when the founders and their small team do the marketing themselves.

What you will learn:

  • Why people shouting alone in a room shouted quieter
  • What a 1968 study found about waiting for someone else to act
  • Why the "can someone post this?" message gets no reply
  • The one change that made a crowd act like one person
  • What to write on your next release ticket

They shouted alone and still shouted quieter

Picture a person in a small room. They wear a blindfold. They wear headphones that play loud noise, so they cannot hear anything else. A researcher asks them to shout as loud as they can.

Then the researcher says that five other people are shouting with them now.

It is not true. The person is still alone. But they shout quieter anyway.

This happened in a real study, published in 1979. We will come back to it.

Now think about your own week. Your team is five engineers. You shipped a new feature on Tuesday. In the team chat, everyone agreed it was good. Someone said, "We should post about this."

Friday came. Nothing was posted.

Or maybe something was. The same person who always offers wrote it at 5pm on Friday. They were tired. It was three lines long. Nobody shared it.

That feature took weeks to build. Most of the people who could use it will never hear about it.

There is one small change that fixes most of this. It is not a new hire.

This is not about lazy people. Your team works hard. They care about what they build.

It is about how people act in a group. Scientists have studied this for more than 50 years. They found the same thing again and again. They also found what stops it.

That fix is small. It does not cost money. It does not need a new person. We will get to it after the studies.

This matters more every year. Gartner is a company that studies how businesses work. In July 2026 it said 15 in 100 companies use small software teams today. It expects 60 in 100 to do so by 2029. Small teams of mostly engineers are becoming normal. Most of them will not have a marketer.

Why six people shout quieter than one

Back to that room. The study was run by Bibb Latané, Kipling Williams and Stephen Harkins. It was published in 1979 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

First, they asked people to shout as loud as they could. Some shouted alone. Some shouted in real groups.

The groups were quieter than you would expect. Take six people. Add up how loud each one was on their own. Now let them shout together. The group made only 40 in 100 of that total.

Part of that is simple. Voices clash, and people shout at slightly different times. So the researchers tried a trick.

They put people alone, with the blindfold and headphones. Then they told them that others were shouting too.

When told one other person was shouting, people shouted at 82 in 100 of their full effort. When told five others were shouting, it dropped to 74 in 100.

Nobody was in the way. Nobody was clashing. The only thing that changed was what the person believed. They believed others were doing the job too. So they did a little less.

Scientists call this social loafing. It means doing less when you work in a group.

Your release post works the same way. Five people believe any of the five might write it. So each one does a little less. A little less from everyone can add up to nothing.

But shouting is one thing. What about when someone really needs help?

What happens when everyone thinks someone else will call

In 1968, John Darley and Bibb Latané ran a study in New York. Students sat alone in small rooms. They talked to other students through an intercom. An intercom is a speaker and a microphone that connect two rooms.

During the talk, one voice started having a seizure. A seizure is when a person suddenly shakes and cannot control their body. It was a recording, but the students did not know that.

Some students thought they were the only one listening. Of those, 85 in 100 went to get help before the seizure ended.

Other students thought four more people could hear it too. Of those, only 31 in 100 went for help in that time.

The researchers also tested each student's personality. It did not tell them who would help. What mattered was how many others they thought were there.

These students were not bad people. Many of them were worried. They just thought someone else was already going.

Now look at your team chat after a release. Everyone can see the release. Everyone thinks someone else will post about it. It is the same pattern.

Why the message to the whole team gets no replies

You may think this only happens in an emergency. It does not. It happens in email too.

In 2002, Greg Barron and Eldad Yechiam studied help requests sent by email. They published it in the journal Computers in Human Behavior. Some emails went to one person. The same email also went to several people at once.

The email sent to one person got more helpful replies. The email sent to a group got fewer.

You have seen this at work. Someone writes in the team chat, "Can someone post about the release?" Five people read it. Each one thinks one of the others will do it. The message sits there. By Monday it has scrolled away.

So far this sounds bad. But the same line of research also found what switches it off.

Your team is not lazy. Here is what switched the problem off.

First, some good news. Your team is less likely to do this than most.

In 1993, Steven Karau and Kipling Williams looked at 78 studies of social loafing. Together, those studies had more than 15,000 people. The effect was real, but of middle size.

It got smaller in some cases. It got smaller when people cared about the task. It got smaller when they liked their group. It got smaller when they knew their own work would be seen.

A small team building its own product has a lot of that. So you will see it less than a big company does. But it does not go away. And it is worst for a job with no deadline. A post about last week's release is exactly that kind of job.

Now the switch.

In 2000, Patrick Markey studied 400 real online chat rooms, with 4,833 people in them. Someone in the room asked for help. He timed how long it took for someone to answer.

The more people in the room, the longer it took. That part matches everything above.

Then he looked at one more thing. Sometimes the person asking used one person's name. For example, "Priya, can you help?" When that happened, the crowd problem almost disappeared. The size of the room stopped mattering. Help came much faster.

A second study says the same thing in a different way. In 1981, Williams, Harkins and Latané ran more shouting tests. This time some people knew their own voice would be measured on its own. When people knew their own work could be seen, they stopped holding back.

So the people were not the problem. The problem was a job with no name on it.

Founder-led marketing: what to change before your next release

Here is the answer. Put one person's name on the release post. Not the team. One name.

Here is how to do it before your next release:

  1. Find the release ticket. That is the task card your team uses to track the release. Write one person's name on it next to "post". Write the day it goes out.
  2. Put that person's name on the post itself, so readers can see who wrote it.
  3. Everyone else sends that person one line. What changed, or who it helps. The owner writes the post and posts it.
  4. One other person reads it once before it goes out. Not three people. If three people must say yes, it becomes a group job again.
  5. Next release, put a different name on it. This part is our own idea, not a finding from the studies. It stops the same volunteer from carrying every post.

That is the whole change. It is one line on a ticket.

What these studies cannot tell you

Be careful with all of this. Here is what the studies do not show.

  • Most of them were done in labs, often with students.
  • Shouting and going for help are not the same as writing a post. Writing takes more thought.
  • Markey studied public chat rooms, not work teams.
  • We found no study that measured release posts in software teams. This is the closest evidence we have. It is not proof about posts.
  • Small teams that care about their product loaf less, as Karau and Williams found.
  • A name on a ticket will not help if that person has no time that week. Pick someone who does.

Frequently asked questions

Is this the same as the bystander effect?

They are close. The bystander effect is about not helping when others are around. Social loafing is about doing less work in a group. Both come from the same feeling. The job seems to belong to someone else.

What if nobody wants to write?

Make it small. Three short lines are enough. Say what changed, who it helps, and where to try it. A short post that goes out is better than a long one that does not.

Should the founder always write it?

Not always. If the founder writes every post, the posts stop when the founder is busy. Changing the name each release spreads the skill across the team.

Does this work for a team of two?

Yes. In the 1979 study, people told that just one other person was shouting still shouted at 82 in 100. Even one other person is enough to make the job feel shared.

Sources

One question for you

Last time your team shipped something, who wrote about it? Did someone ask them, or did they just do it?