Zoelle Egner: recommendation

Transcript context

…So you've worked at Box, Airtable, now Block Party. You've advised a lot of companies around marketing product growth. I'm curious if there's a thread that has maintained through all of those experiences in terms of what works well for marketing, and growth, and things you've learned that just consistently- [inaudible 00:24:52] A few pieces that go into how I choose companies that create that thread. And part of this is about me wanting to match what I think I'm really good at with what will have the greatest leverage for a company that I work at. I've mentioned I'm a writer, really care about telling stories, and helping people to understand new or novel things. I also really care about product quality. I'm a little bit of a product snob. And one of my strengths is enthusiasm. So if I can't genuinely go to a customer and tell them, "This product is going to solve a real problem for you and it's going to be amazing." I can't do my job. So all of the companies that I've chosen to go to have had this foundation of an incredible product experience that maybe people didn't fully understand, and where I could come in and help connect the dots between that amazing product that's going to be really, really helpful and the opportunities for a much wider range of people to benefit from that. So in practice, what that means is I often end up working at companies that are in a position to really punch above their weight from a brand perspective. They're typically much lower headcount than you would ever expect. They're typically way earlier stage than you would expect, but I've been able to put together a brand or an experience that allows people to invest themselves into the company with a high level of trust, I guess. I'll be more specific because that's really ambiguous. Airtable, it manages mission critical workflows, highly sensitive data. It's super important. You only use tools you can trust for that type of thing. The same thing is true at Block Party, online safety. You have to trust the company that you're entrusting your safety to. And in my experience, people, and especially founders really underestimate how much every single touchpoint a customer has from word of mouth or the ad that brings them in the door, landing pages, signup flows, customer service experiences. Every single one of those moments is building a brand that is adding or removing trust. So for me in the early days, that means thinking about like, "What are the signals that I can provide to future customers that say, 'We understand you specifically, and our solution is designed for a person like you.' And two, that will say, 'Hey, we're actually operating on a much higher level than you might expect for a company of our size or our stage. We take this really seriously. We have all the things in place to take care of you. So you shouldn't be afraid to spend six figures or put your safety in our hands because we've got your back. We're doing this the right way.'" Has tremendous dividends when you're in a business that is often driven by word of mouth. Because if you take care of people and you follow up that brand experience with a product experience that is really powerful and actually does the things that says it's going to do, then your word of mouth can become a huge driver of growth for the company. brand experience with a product experience that is really powerful and actually does the things that says it's going to do, then your word of mouth can become a huge driver of growth for the company. Of course, the outcome of this in practice is really funny. So I remember really distinctly having to invite customers to go out to lunch with us when they would come to San Francisco back in the Airtable days, because we had 15 people in a teeny tiny office. It's not that I wanted to mislead anyone, but I didn't need to reinforce the fact that they were spending six figures with us when we had 15 people. If they had gone to look on LinkedIn, they could have figured that out, but we didn't need to remind them that we were so small, and they were running some of their most important processes with our product. I think I was on the phone with Slack at one point. And they were like, "Oh, well you guys are probably about the same size company as we are, right?" And I was like, "Not quite. A little smaller, just an entire order of magnitude, no big deal, it's totally fine. We're all smooth. We'll take care of you. It's going to great." But it-…

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