Zoelle Egner: preference

Transcript context

…I really love the concept of punching above your weight as a startup. What else did you do at Air Table or other places that help you do that? One is just don't let them see how small you are, necessarily. Are there any other technical things you recall that like, "Oh, here's things that really worked really well for punching above our weight as a small company at that point." A couple of these things are very unsexy, but very useful. One, make sure that your landing pages, and your emails, and other things have a level of polish that makes them feel a little bit more done. I think there is sometimes a recommendation or an instinct just like, "Ship things super, super quickly and get them out there. " And I'm not saying don't move fast. Obviously you need to move fast in the early days, but make sure someone rereads your email so that it sounds good. Invest in having a decent photo or a decent illustration. If you have sample content, this is actually a big one, sample content for your productivity app as an example. Take the time to not have it be like Jane Doe 12 times in the name list. Have it be references to your industry so that people are like, "Oh, hey. That's a joke about Steve Jobs. I'm a designer. This person is thinking about me." It's small stuff, but it tells that person, like, "The people who worked on this were thinking about me as a customer, they built it with me in mind, and that means that it is more likely that this is going to fit my needs than something generic." And that builds up both the brand trust that we've talked about, but also the personality of the company, and makes people want to root for you. And frankly, when you are small, you need everyone rooting for you that you can possibly get. So those little bits of polish that don't take a ton of time are absolutely worth it. The last thing I would say is making sure that in your public communications launches, if you ever talk to press, which some companies can and some companies can't, having more of a point of view than just about your product, you can try and say, like, "We are part of something bigger. Here's the broader circle or movement that we are a part of." It makes it feel more inevitable and more like you're not just self servingly talking about your tiny corner of the world, but that it's actually part of this much bigger trend. It will be more compelling and it feels like you're operating at a different level of sophistication that can be really helpful. I love that. On the first point, basically, it's attention to detail and obsession with quality is what I'm hearing.…

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