Startup Marketing: 2nd Class Citizen, 2nd Rate Results
Wait… what?
This quote from Steve Blank (which I realize is taken out of context, but such is the nature of Twitter, I’m not sure where he was speaking today) definitely rubs the marketer in me the wrong way. Why would you ever want to exclude marketing and sales folks at your startup from the launch party (or any of your employees for that matter), as if they had no part in it?
Treat Marketing as a 2nd Class Citizen, Get 2nd Rate Marketers
My first reaction was to feel at bit nauseous about all the startup founders and employees who are influenced by Eric Ries and his popular Lean Startup methodology for product and market development, and probably read this tweet. I feel like supporting this attitude encourages one of the most painful, costly, and damaging mistakes that was made at my last startup — and after thinking about it for a couple hours, I can’t not say something.
This isn’t ultimately about Steve’s quote, or Eric’s support of it, which I see as symptoms of the problem. It’s something I’ve wanted to write about for a long time because I experienced it firsthand in my previous startup and it was very damaging to the product, culture, and IMO ultimately the company.
This mentality of “developers before everyone else” is poisonous in startups, and it’s on the road to dangerous levels of hubris, and “pivoting”, or changing the direction of the business multiple times, due to a disconnected view of the world fueled by a Field of Dreams mentality (“if we build it they will come”).
Here’s why…
- Sales and marketing are helpful to have before launch, to make plans for achieving goals
- The greatest insult to a great product, and the people who created it, is to market it poorly
- To grow the business, cofounders need to trust marketing and sales to focus on things that the technical co-founders can’t or shouldn’t have to deal with on a daily basis
- To make great early marketing and sales hires it had better be “our startup” together, in spirit not just in equity stake.
- It’s not about the launch party, its about launching
Order of Operations
When a startup is founded, ideally the entire team is technical. There is probably someone who is the most business-minded, but not a dedicated sales or marketing person. If there is a non-technical member of the founding team, they’re probably (hopefully!) very deeply engaged in the product development aspect of the startup, and have earned the trust and respect of the engineer(s) co-founders.
Depending on the product and other market conditions, it is possible that the founding team of engineers will launch without anyone in sales or marketing at all, and their developer design and active use of social media will help them spread the word. This is exactly what happened with Twilio, which was launched in November 2008 without anyone whose entire job was to take the product to market.
If the product offering is compelling enough, or the cofounders are particularly interesting to the community, getting a TechCrunch story will require little more than a thoughtful email to the writers and a slide deck on Slideshare. This is the best case scenario, and in my opinion indicates a very well-rounded founding team with strong awareness of their market (business savvy) — even if their primary focus is building technology. However, after that initial burst of attention and activity there are many questions to be answered that have a more to do with building a business than building a product — like how to continue to gain and retain customers. This is where sales and marketing are helpful to have before launch, to make plans for achieving these goals.
Getting Past Day Zero
The launch of a new product is just the beginning of what will hopefully be a lasting and happy relationship with customers, press, analysts, and the marketplace in general. It is a moment of inflection and incredible stress for the entire organization, whether it is three people, thirty people, or three thousand plus. It is gloriously terrifying, and its something teams bond over.
- There is no question that the vision and actual act of creating of the product is what makes it all possible, and that the people who build things that have never existed before are some of the most amazing human beings on Earth. The greatest insult to a great product, and the people who created it, is to market it poorly. This is the core of how I approach marketing. Every day that I am spreading the word about Twilio, getting more people to signup, use, and pay for our product I’m honoring the ingenuity that created it, as well as the combination of intellect and execution that continues to make it better.
A Matter of Trust and Focus
When I interviewed I remember the exact moment I was sitting with Evan Cooke, CTO and one of three cofounders, and he offered me the opportunity to work at Twilio as their first hire. I looked him in the eye and told him, “I can do this job, but we have to agree that marketing will never become a second class citizen to software development”. I was actually afraid, for a moment, that I wouldn’t get the job but I told my husband later that I’d rather know right then what kind of company it was going to be than be miserable for the next year figuring it out. That was 18 months ago, and I’ve never ever felt for a moment that there was a disconnect between the engineering team and the marketing team, which now includes a customer service manager and two developer evangelists, in addition to myself.
One of the hardest lesson I’ve learned in business is that despite all my energy and intelligence, I can’t do everything by myself. Talented people making tough judgement calls aren’t fungible, and in general human beings don’t scale very well unless we can find other people to help us achieve complex and long range goals. The goal of a business is to organize a bunch of individuals to achieve a common goal, and properly celebrating achievements is a big part of keeping them organized. Fortunately, if we recruit well we can come to trust marketing and sales to focus on things that the technical co-founders can’t or shouldn’t have to deal with on a daily basis.
This initial division of labor within the startup seems to be a painful transition for technical cofounders — especially those who have never managed other people before. It becomes even worse because the cofounders are managing people who are experts in something the cofounder might not understand very well like sales or marketing. For the executive, it is harder for them to validate skills and expectations or pass judgement firsthand when they don’t have operating experience with a particular kind of role. This is where building deep trust, and fostering an open culture where the sales or marketing person is responsible for sharing and educating about how they’re achieving their goals is important. It’s also a strong case for objective metrics everyone can agree on, such as adoption numbers or revenue goals.
“You Attract What You Are” – Warren Buffett
I often read about developers who feel they’ve been made into lackeys by some MBA with an idea who wants the software engineer to “just code my startup”. It’s written with so much disgust. ”How dare they undervalue what I bring to the table so much, or suggest that it’s their company and I’m just coding up the project?” Followed by, “what kind of developer would ever sign up for something like that?”
Flip this around for a moment. Do you think good, honest, hardworking non-technical employees are going to join your company if you tell them they’re there to “just market my startup” or “just do customer service for my startup” or “just sell my product”? To be good at any of those tasks, and especially to be the first person to say “I’ll follow you, take less salary, some equity that might not be worth anything, and work 24/7″ you need to have ownership – it had better be our startup, in more than just an equity stake. You better mean it, because these people will be the human embodiment of your brand.
I love this quote from Warren Buffett, “you attract what you are” and I find myself reflecting on it often. I haven’t fully tested this, but I’d be curious to hear if it holds true — does a culture where writing code is considered the most important productive activity in the company attract marketers and salespeople who think their job is the most important thing in the company? Do people with a disconnected view of reality attract other people with an equally disconnected perspective? My gut says yes, although I could use some more data.
The corollary here is that if you are the kind of culture, or the kind of the founding technical team, that sees the launch of your first product as the groundwork for building a fully fledged successful business – you’ll attract early sales and marketing hires who want to be part of this long term vision. Here are some things I’d suggest you look for in your first marketing hire.
- wants to know how the product works
- is endlessly curious, and isn’t afraid to ask a lot of questions
- never has to be told the same thing twice
- will stay up all night while the engineering team races to ship
- is always thinking about how to simultaneously increase throughput and ROI, while decreasing operating expense (definition of “lean”)
- loves customers obsessively, and doesn’t have a cynical bone in their body
- knows when to be a bulldog
- is humble – for example, they would clean the bathrooms when they can’t afford a janitor
- understands the tradeoffs of time vs. money, and values both
- someone who is a logical decision maker and isn’t afraid to argue for what’s right, or back down if it’s not worth the fight
Great Marketer or Great Generalist?
You might have heard the adage “every startup needs a great generalist”. I’m not sure where it comes from, but it makes a lot of sense to me. Some of the hats I wore early on at Twilio to remove workload from the engineering team included: customer service department, recruiter, office manager, shipping/receiving, project manager, sales rep, product tester, PR agent, etc. That was so insanely fun, and we eventually hired people to take over these roles, but early-on it served two major purposes:
- run the company like a real business, achieving strategic goals
- make the dollars spent on non-engineering labor worth every penny, and more
The Company That Launches Together, Stays Together
To get back to the original comments that inspired this post, it’s not about the launch party, it’s about launching.
Your launch party is for show, usually to bring attention to your new product and group together all your well-wishers and potential customers so you can say, “ta da!” It’s a branding thing, and very different from that moment at 3am where you crack open a $4.99 bottle of sparkling wine you bought at Trader Joe’s and say to the team, “we’re live”. Or that moment at 2am where you find a member of your customer service pouring over every last detail of the freshly written FAQ. Or that moment at 11pm where you merge in your latest changes and your sales guy offers to run out and get pizza because the engineering team is starving but has hit on some nasty conflicts.
These aren’t the most important tasks, but they make launch just a little easier and they keep us human and connected through the exhaustion and struggle to build great products and companies. They do honor to the people and products that make startups possible.
Practice Makes Perfect
I didn’t start out my career as a marketer, and I’m sure I don’t have it all figured out, but I can tell you how I try to live by this at the startup I’m working on today.
At Twilio we have a culture where everyone contributes to customer service and the majority of developers attend marketing outreach events, speak at conferences, create marketing materials like screencasts or how-to content for our website. When we hire people for non-engineering roles, we require them to write a basic application using our API. With regard to sales, we take pride in making money, and openly share our revenue numbers and balance sheet with the entire team at our weekly all hands, and celebrate big sales wins together. We’re hiring.
TweetToCall is Becoming a More Social Phone Book
My beloved side project TweetToCall recently turned one year old, and I’ve been procrastinating on re-styling it to look more like a Web 2.0 service and less like a weekend project. This post on TechCrunch tonight about the death of phone numbers motivated me to give it an hour of my time while playing Mario Cart with Kevin and digesting an awesome steak dinner I made for us. Because really, when else can I justify working on a side project these days?
The Changelog (Sort of)
I had updated the main page with this lovely style inspired by a cool piece of graphic art I bought on iStockPhoto, but still needed to refresh everything else. Tonight I went through and tested everything again to make sure it is all working. The signup process, phone number validation and listing of TweetToCall enabled friends have been reviewed end-to-end and I’m happy to report the code has aged nicely. I think we might be doing some inefficient things with API requests to Twitter on certain commonly reloaded pages (really need pagination for those users who are developing a bigger phone book), but that won’t impact the majority of users at this point. Definitely on the list though, since it drives me nuts when I’m testing.
As for the design update, all I have to say is CSS is amazing (there is knowing this and really KNOWING IT, I’m feeling the latter)… the time savings on this update after the previous were minimal. I updated the header, deleted a couple divs, and bam. While it’s still ugly (hey, I’m not a designer) it is a lot less offensive than before.
Other Improvement Plans
I’ve talked a lot about adding Facebook Connect as the next integrated social network, and now I’m thinking Firefox/Chrome plugins could be cool as well. Ultimately, I think I will probably move this all over to DialSocial.com where it will be much less Twitter centric. Other than a few media mentions from back when Jajah launched their @call feature almost a year ago, I don’t think I’ve accumulated much brand value, and having the Twitter account suspended endlessly makes it even easer to abandon the TweetToCall brand.
Another thing on my list is to get @tweettocall unbanned on Twitter, it has been stuck in that state for over a year now and I haven’t been able to get any responses to my support requests (this happened when my own Twitter account @daniellemorrill and @twilio got banned in a widespread block to try to control some malicious spam during the Gov 2.0 Summit in D.C.).
Why It’s Just a Side Project
Beyond the fact that I am super happily employed at Twilio (the voice API platform TweetToCall is built on), I just feel like there’s no point in really building this out and pumping a bunch of money into marketing it. There is a big barrier to getting users to sign up – getting them to give their phone numbers. Twitter, and to a lesser extent Facebook, have all their users and this is really just a feature they could easily implement. The one way I might be able to make it more valuable is to have more networks that you can hook into from a single place — but for now it just feels like a feature, not a full product and certainly not a company. If you feel differently, please let me know I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Tons of Stubs, But No Posts
I’ve been writing a lot of starts to posts these past two weeks – but nothing that feels fit to publish (yet). Here’s a teaser of some of the topcis I’ve been mulling over, I’d be curious to hear which of these (if any) interest you:
- Startup Stuff No One Seems To Talk About – based on a trend I’ve noticed in my conversations with other entrepreneurs about the “unmentionable” elements of entrepreneurship that no one really brings up
- Twilio Quickstart with Ruby on Rails — port of the Twilio quickstart application from PHP to Ruby on Rails
- Understanding the Value of MVC Architecture — yep, writing it as I come to really understand it, so far the key point is the huge increase in efficacy
- Living Intentionally — stuff about career plans, goals, and some reflection on goals I set for 25 (which I turned in April)
- If I Were An Angel Investor (Part 1) — a list of early-stage startups I think are really interesting, and might be killer investments
- No Room for Tall Poppies — response to story I read via Hacker News about anti-intellectual culture of hiring
- Thoughts on Inception — movie review, thinking I will need to see it again (smart producers!)
- U.S. Government Requirement for 1099s to Stifle Small Business — activism post
- Finding Your Own Everyday Entrepreneur — seeing the scrappy awesomeness of everyday choices
- We Live in Public? — thoughts on Facebook, public/private life online and off, etc. — thinking this won’t go out until the Facebook movie hits theaters
Staying the Course: ARI 25 Years Later
Please note: I am writing this as I listen, any items in quotes (often with ellipses where I missed parts) are fragments I am typing in realtime. If anything is unclear, please let me know. I have endeavored not the change the meaning of anything said.
It’s easy to forget how hard it is to keep any organization together and functioning for 5 years, let alone 25. Keeping the mission and vision true, and having the integrity to continue moving an organization in a consistent direction is hard. Tonight, we’re hearing from Michael Berliner, Board Co-Chair and Yaron Brook, President and Executive Director of the Ayn Rand Institute.
“We were never once tempted to compromise, and it’s easy to compromise. Given what we were facing culturally, it took a lot of effort not to water down anything.” – Michael Berliner, during the Q&A session this evening
The Birth of ARI
What are the pre-Institute days, and how did it come about? There was meeting that Ed Synder called in 1983, after trying (and failing) to get a position for Dr.Peikoff at a philosophy department, and he decided it was time to make an effort around academia and the culture.
“Ed was a real entrepreneur, a can-do guy, and he was going to do it and no one was going to get in his way. The intellectuals had the typical reaction ‘oh we can’t do that, how are we going to do that?’ but Ed wouldn’t listen and he just barreled ahead.” – Berliner
Berliner, speaking on why he was chosen to get started directing ARI, mentioned that he had organizational experience in academia and a PhD in philosophy which was important for giving it credibility. Additionally, the group felt that Ayn Rand’s name and brand had recognition and value
Organizational Leadership
Michael Berliner commented on the choice of Yaron Brook as CEO of the institute, and mentioned that he wasn’t well know when he was hired. Brook was (and is) a non-compromiser, Berliner pointed out, and joked that as he was confident that Yaron, as an Israeli, “wouldn’t that anything from anybody”.
Brook was asked by Sean S. whether he expected to see the social change he hoped to achieved in his lifetime, Brook responded “we can start seeing things change in the direction we want to see them change, heading up river… we’re moving in the right direction. We’re in better condition in some ways than I thought we’d be, and worse than others. There’s no alternative for the culture but to be successful in the next 20-25 years”.
Emerging Vision
When ARI began, there wasn’t a long range vision. In fact, the mission of changing the culture when ARI was just one employee in 1985 was extremely daunting. Yaron commented that, “maybe I was young and naive, but I came in and I was like ‘we’re gonna do this’, and that’s still my attitude. But I think its important to think in terms of cultural change, and to note that we already have made a difference and Ayn has already made a difference…. the more you go out and talk to people, the more you discover the leading businessmen in America… just successful people out there… have all been inspired by Ayn Rand. They’re not Objectivists, but they’re better people for having read Ayn Rand.”
“I think America is a much healthier country today, than it would have been without Ayn Rand.” – Yaron Brook
“In 1985 I was surprised if someone knew [who Ayn Rand is], now I’m surprised when someone doesn’t.” -Berliner
Early Memories of the Institute
In the early days, the institute was what Berliner calls “quaint” – the offices were small, minimalistic, and there were no computers… just a phone as far as technology was concerned. The first he was at the office, the phone rang, “Oh great! It was a call meant for the business who had our phone number before that, and not only that… the business was a massage parlor. When I took the job I knew I was going to have to do a lot of multitasking”
Berliner’s wife had a full time job doing research, and it was almost like, “hey kids let’s put on a play” at first.
Ed Synder, who was one of the first members of the board of directors supplied fundraiser, lawyer, and accountant staff to help get things started. The shocking thing, Berliner notes coming out of academia, was that he would call these people up and he would get an answer.
Contrasting the past with today, Berliner remembers what it was like to be by himself getting in at 6am “I’d actually wear a jacket and a tie to work everyday, it’s hard to believe… it was was, kind of quaint, but it was deadly serious and I was on the phone every day multiple times mostly with Harry Binswangers and Peter Schwartz… and we’d discuss the font size of the things we were producing. We needed to show the world that we were a serious, professional organization… we had to live up to that [Ayn Rand] in every way”.
Today ARI has 17,000 square feet of office space and 40 employees in Irvine and another few hundred square feet in Washington D.C. “and we have professionals doing the selection of fonts” quipped Yaron Brook. “It really is an amazing achievement, going from where we were to where we are today”.
Origins of the Essay Contest
Harry Binswanger came up with the idea of the essay contest. It began when The Fountainhead was assigned at Berliner’s daughter’s school – and the students took over the school’s newspaper (!) They didn’t know how widely it was being taught, but they decided to take advantage of teachers’ willingness to teach The Fountainhead. They also felt the target audience, pyschologically, was perfect since adolescents were tring to answer questions like, “who am I? what’s my relatioship with my peers?”
The Anthem essay contest emerged because teachers started coming up to them at tradeshows, suggesting a contest on Anthem… which Berliner says was a real shock, and one of the first times they didn’t have to initiate it themselves.
Ayn Rand Institute Press
They are reducing their focus on publishing, since this isn’t an area of expertise for the Institute. Instead, they’re investing in promoting books published by other authors/publishers. They’ve looked at other think-tanks, and are working on emulating what looks like its working such as finding agents and using them to establish relationships with publishers. They have some expertise in house, and they need to build expertise to increase the marketing power behind these publications when they do go to market. In the next year, they’re looking to bring someone in house to market these publications most effectively. Goals: get them sold, and read by the largest number of people possible.
This is partially a function of the number of new books that are coming out each year, and the necessary division of labor that will make taking these books to market successful.
“It’s still true that books change lives and change minds” – Yaron Brook
Expanding ARI Beyond the United States
The question was about whether ARI has attempted to raise money in India (and other countries). Yaron comments that he thinks the only way to do that would be to go to India, have contracts on the ground, and really dig in since it is already a fulltime job doing what ARI does in the United States. ARI gets very few contributions outside the United States (other than Canada), and people want to make a difference where they live.
It’s certainly worth an effort, and Yaron openly invited the audience to approach him if they’re knowledgeable about how to start making these connections.
Looking Forward to the Future
Keith Schact made the point that it probably was impossible to imagine all the programs, initiatives, and campaigns ARI would put together over the course of 25 years… and invited the panel to look into the future.
“In another 25 years, we could really be — as John Allison likes to say – the dominant secular philosophy, if the world allows us to do it. The changes have been so great at ARI that anything I would guess would probably be too low.” – Berliner
Vision statement for 15 years: Ayn Rand’s ideas, as she understood them, are being discussed everywhere in the culture.
Vision statement for 25 years: Objectivism is the dominant cultural philosophy in the culture.