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Geek Girl Haul: The Corner Store
I’ve been thinking about how people make product placements online, and probably have watched over 100 “haul” videos trying to understand why they get hundreds of thousands of views. Â I’d be remiss if I didn’t make my own, and on a startup budget I don’t have that many purchases I can recommend. Fortunately, Alexandra and I took a walk to the corner store today so I was able to find somethings I love around the house. I wanted to do something a little different, so I tried “Daria Style” in honor of the beloved Nickelodeon cartoon. Enjoy.
And because you won’t read the video description…
Would you like to buy the products featured on this video? YOU CAN!
“Its really a good option for if you’re having a down day”
Mango Melon Laffy Taffy: http://refer.ly/abUg“specifically caffeine free because, you know, my hands can’t be shaking when I’m tearing massive holes in the universe with my incredible code”
Caffeine Free Diet Coke: http://refer.ly/abU2“any beverage that is pre-mixed is the best choice”
Skinny Girl Sangria: http://refer.ly/abUi“this is usually a good after-dinner drink, or maybe with dinner, if it’s pizza”
Hidden Valley Ranch dressing: http://refer.ly/abUhCompare it to:
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Got 99 Competitors and Bit.ly is One
When you launch a company suddenly everyone is a competitor, or so it feels.
Then you realize everyone you thought was a competitor might also be a partner at best, and a distraction at worst. Next you realize your idea is changing so rapidly, fueled by customer feedback and sleepless nights hacking on new features or just eating your own dogfood, that you aren’t totally sure how you fit with anyone anymore.
Today TechCrunch wrote that my company Referly is making gains against Bit.ly after their recent redesign stumble. We saw their launch and it lit the proverbial fire under our butts to ship our next set of features in a fraction of the time, which were somewhat similar to Bit.ly’s. It inspired us to move a lot faster. Creating the artificial constraint of Monday morning, and having a clear competitor, helped us focus and get a lot done while calmly ruling out all kinds of delicious feature creep.
Putting it in Perspective
Its funny, because in some ways we are very similar to Bit.ly and in others quite different — ultimately we are trying to skate to where the puck is going by building the sharing and rewards tools we think people will enjoy using. Just like us, our 99 competitors (or more!) are all trying to create engaging social sharing of products and other links – and this is hard. The battle is not won, and we are focused on becoming as formidably useful as possible.
Unlike a lot of other beautiful social sharing sites out there, we are revealling our business model from day one. You refer stuff, you earn rewards. No shenanigans (Hat tip: Twilio). While in beta we are passing through 100% of commissions to Referly users, but ultimately Referly will need to make money too – and when it comes time to do that we will be straightforward about that, too.
For now, we’re heads down writing code and talking to customers. Stay tuned, and please give Referly a try and let me know what you think in the comments or directly at danielle(at) refer.ly
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Don’t Waste a Single Moment
I’ve embarked on a new adventure as CEO & Cofounder of Referly – a startup that is helping anyone earn rewards for referring products they love and generating purchases. We are in the YCombinator class this summer. Learn more at http://refer.ly
Lately I’ve been waking up really early, and working “farmer hours” (StarCraft caster reference – there are farmers who have 9-to-5 schedules, and gamers who get up late and stay up late). It started back in October when I made my first extended trip to London to launch Twilio into the European market, and then I would come back and keep the early morning schedule so I would be awake to talk with the team and partners I was assembling. I needed an alarm clock at first, and I would set it for 6am and 7:15am.
If I woke up at 6am and felt good, I’d hop out of bed. If I woke up and felt crappy (usually if I’d had some drinks the night before) I would get up, brush my teeth and wash my face, and give myself permission to go back to bed until the next alarm. I used the 2nd alarm only 3 times in the first two weeks. Something strange happened.
Freedom
I started waking up naturally, before my 6am alarm. I woke up feeling good, and I really prefer waking up without the blaring sound of an alarm so I was able to gracefully put my mind and body together. The most amazing thing, when you work in tech, is that from 6am to 9am NOTHING HAPPENS. Of course there is news, but there are few emails or phone calls that you’re expect to handle during that time. None of your employees or coworkers are awake. You’re completely free to do whatever you want, for a solid 2-3 hours.
I also have a healthy disdain for mortality – and I truly appreciate now what adults used to say when I asked them why they got up so early. “I can rest when I’m dead” is the refrain. My previous sleep schedule had me getting up between 8am and 10am (with multiple alarms) and going to bed around 1am. My schedule now has me getting up at 6am or earlier (without an alarm) and going to bed to at 11pm. I always believed I was one of those people who just needs 9 hours of sleep, but I am now easily rested on 6-7 per night and reclaiming 2-3 hours a day. So assuming I’ve reclaimed 2 hours of waking hours that is 730 hours a year – and I use about half of that time to do work, so I’ve given myself about 45 more 8-hour workdays in a year. More time to hustle!
I adhere to this schedule 7 days a week – I don’t see the weekend as a time to “catch up on sleep” as many people do. Partly that is because I don’t really have a weekend and haven’t for many years while doing startups – Referly is the third in a row. Saturdays are the “light day” on our team, but for me I find it much easier to just get up the same time every day. On the weekends I let myself waste time on sites like People.com or Pinterest, which I severely limit during the week (thanks to RescueTime which helps me monitor my social media use and make sure I am using it in a goal directed way for the business). I also tend to use the weekend early hours to catch up on all the feeds I have set up on Flipboard, or stuff I’ve saved through the week to read about the industry/competitors/etc.
Routines
I had another habit I wanted to break – checking my phone for texts, emails, Facebook, Twitter, and news as soon as I woke up. I wanted to stop doing this because it pulled me into the reactive world of other people’s needs, focuses, and demands on my sacred morning hours. I got a dopamine hit from scrolling through all the tweets mentioning “Twilio” overnight, and on rough mornings looking at that was great motivation to get out of bed. But it was becoming a crutch. I needed something else to look forward to in the morning that was more internal.
We moved from SOMA to Potrero Hill 3 months ago (and just moved to Mountain View this weekend), and both places offer something I didn’t have in SOMA – a place to safely take a long walk before dawn. For me, early morning sunlight and birdsong feeds my soul. I don’t entirely know why it is so soothing, but I spent the first 19 years of my life with nature in my day-to-day routine and I don’t think I considered the impact of moving somewhere so urban. When I was a kid, my mother would clip roses in the front yard wearing her robe and slippers soaked through with dew, and a coffee cup. She was always so proud of her fresh vase of fragrant blooms on the table, and I see now that this was her morning ritual before my sister and I woke up and made the house crazy with our energy.
My routine was simple, roll out of bed and throw on the nearest sweatshirt, walk down the huge hill to Starbucks and grab breakfast, walk halfway up the hill and sit on the stoop of the pilates studio and watch the sun rise over Oakland, walk home and sit on the fire escape drinking coffee for 10-20 minutes and think about anything (basically meditate).
Adrenaline & Stress
Waking up stressed out is the worst – its great to have a sense of urgency around the day, but I went through periods where I was so anxious to get started on work that I would literally make myself sick. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, think about when you wake up late for a flight or a really important test or meeting and that wave of disgusting panic rolls through your stomach and makes your body shake. A few times it was so bad that it would quite literally bring me to my knees.
The most annoying thing about this, is that it gets in the way of exactly what you want to do: get to work! I really have no idea how many people are afflicted by this feeling, and for me it tends to come and go with how much other pressure I have to deliver on business goals, but I did talk about it with a handful of people and discovered several successful people who suffer from this overblown sense of urgency first thing in the morning. The best analogy someone gave me to work with is that adrenaline, once in your bloodstream, is like any other powerful drug you can take — you need to learn how to trip. Once your body has dispensed you a jolting dose you really have no choice, so you can either enjoy the ride or exhaust yourself by fighting it. Much easier said than done, but here is what works for me and of course I am not a psychologist and your mileage may vary:
0. Preventative – make peace with the limitations of time and your body -if you are giving 14 hours of work plus active monitoring and engagement to your startup online then you are maxing out. If you feel like this isn’t propelling you forward then re-assess *what* you are doing, don’t blame it on *how much*.
1. Forgive Yourself – you wake up a ball of stress, heart pounding, hands sweating and thoughts immediately fly to “ugh not this again, why can’t I just get control of myself and this won’t happen anymore…” you have to let it go. You are already in this, don’t pit your mind or body against itself. But how to let it go?
2. Talk to Yourself – You need something to occupy your mind while you quickly get through the rituals of getting ready for the day – I am a big fan of talking to yourself. Stop worrying about if your spouse or roommates will think you’re crazy – you ARE going a little crazy, and this can help. Things I talk to myself about range a lot, but most of them are topics that I can easily get lost in that distract me from my stress: practice introduction of myself and company – even going so far as to mock interview myself, practice a talk I’m working on and extemporaneously come up with next content, talk through my plan for the day, week, sprint, launch etc. in step by step detail, describe in detail something I saw or learned recently.
3. Triage the Damage – Generally my anxiety falls into two camps: things I can control (yay!) and things I can’t control (damnit!) which means that for the things I can control there are actions I can take, and I need to capture what those might be so that they can become work items. But the bigger thing is to deal with the things you can’t control. Anxiety isn’t a freak accident, its your bodies way of throwing up a major red flag – and its going to keep throwing it up until you acknowledge it. Things you can’t control might be: a conversation that you had that went poorly, a situation you wish you could go back and handle differently, a sense of foreboding about a decision that was made where you felt a red flag but didn’t raise it, an argument you had that you fear damaged an important relationship irreparably.
4. Apologies & Thank Yous – (This section could be a whole blog post on its own) So imagine you’ve triaged the stuff you can change, and that’s in your working queue and you’re on your way to the office feeling much more composed. Don’t forget the last step – now you have this nagging frustration with something you wish you could redo/undo. For this example let’s say I lead a team brainstorm session last night, and now I am worried I marginalized the concerns of one of my team members in the interest of getting to action items faster. I’m concerned that I sent a message to the entire team that I’m not actually looking for their creative ideas, and that I’ve got my own agenda and just want them to rubber stamp it. Ugh – these are the worst, when actions and intentions don’t line up.
I’ve been an employee and managed people for over 10 years now, and it is a humbling thing. I’ve resolved hundreds of conflicts, had hundreds of really difficult conversations, given and received painful but true negative feedback, and one common thread that runs though a lot of this is a need for better appreciation on both sides of the table. As a manager, I need to make sure I’m saying thank you often [for something meaningful and specific] and “I apologize” [and clarifying intent vs. action] occasionally (instead of never). Its not weak to say you’re sorry. Its honest. Being honest is the best possible way to earn and keep the respect of the team.
So that’s great as a manager, but what about as an employee? The same rules apply but with a twist. If you aren’t getting the appreciation or treatment you believe is right, you need to ask for it. Take an active role in the relationship with your manager and let that person know how they can win your trust and respect. Conversations like “I felt that when you said _______ you didn’t understand/appreciate/listen/etc. and that makes it difficult for me to do my job” or “I am working hard on _______ and want to make sure I’ve shown you how its make an impact against [some goal]” are awkward, but they need to happen. Especially – ESPECIALLY – in a startup with a bunch of 20-somethings who have never managed let alone been employees until 2 years ago. This is basically “managing up”.
I remember being a little kid and crying when my Mom told me to “go say you’re sorry to your sister for pulling her hair”. I also remember my parents had to remind me to say thank you, and I could be really stubborn. That kind of mystifies me now, and I see other young kids do it, but saying sorry and thank you get a lot easier now that I do them a lot more often.
Don’t Waste a Single Moment
I’ve seen the incredible power of time passing and the importance of the small choices we make every day. Its crazy to realize the success or failure of a company is a collection of days and the things we decided to do or not do on those days. But that’s it. It really is like poker or chess – trying not to make mistakes that will undermine days, weeks, years of effort. Trying to take our days, weeks, years and make them add up to something meaningful. We are what we focus on. Never have I seen this more clearly than at Twilio, where the company’s ability to focus and move toward several goals with singular determination is what makes it so formidable. I will spend my entire life working to build companies like that, because in that environment you never feel your effort is wasted.
Things that look like small actions can be huge in sum, and every moment is another chance to turn it all around.
Waking up early has changed my life. By reclaiming a couple hours a day I can take the time to be thoughtful, solitary, and answer the hardest questions. Edit: I can also fall asleep at night (though I still struggle sometimes), knowing I have reached the physical limit of what I can achieve in a day and that I have maximized my opportunity to win. When I am unsure what is next, I can work through it with a little less pressure from the outside world. And when I know exactly what I need to do, you will never catch up to me.
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How I Earned $34.91 with Referly
Its been two weeks since we launched Referly to the world, and I’m proud to report that I’ve earned $34.91 using the service to share products I own and love. I’ve tried to act like a (somewhat) normal person with Referly and only share things I’m proud to vouch for, either because they already belong to me or because they were suggested to me by a trusted friend.
At this rate, I’ll earn over $900 in a year – so I’m already thinking about what I want to save up for (and maybe I’ll even build a feature for goals like this into the product!). Maybe a weekend in Napa, or a trip back to Seattle to see my parents. Or maybe I’ll do something much less exciting and just pay down my credit card debt… never know.
Refer Products You Own & Love
It was interesting to see that of all the products I referred, the things I actually owned did much better at earning rewards. In fact, I own every item that generated revenue (see below). I think this is because I can speak about these products credibly, and give them the most meaningful and honest recommendations. I pointed out other stuff I found in passing, like a “cute dress for summer!” or “awesome iPhone case” but I wasn’t speaking with the authority of the owner in those cases, and I think people could tell.
Even better is if you have your own pictures of the product (hello Instragram can we do some biz dev?), or a story about how it was useful or enjoyable to you recently – as I did here in my blog post about how to make my favorite drink the Kir Imperial. Tweets and Facebook statuses are more than ads, they’re the shortest advertorials in the world.
Be Helpful, Not Spammy
Don’t bother sharing hundreds of Referly links in hopes that someone somewhere in your social network will click and buy. That’s just not how it works.  In fact, each time you refer something that people don’t want you lose a little bit of credibility with them, and eventually you run the risk of being called out for being spammy. Good referrers focus on finding recommendations for specific people or groups of people that are actually relevant to them, and helping the recipient of the recommendation understand the reasoning behind the suggestion.
Spammy Example
Helpful Example
Referly doesn’t pay on clicks, so even if you have a huge audience you’ll find that if they don’t take any action on the things you say you aren’t going to get rewarded. You’re better off having a tight network of 100 friends, or 1000 adoring fans, instead of 50,000 Twitter followers who would never ask for your advice in real life.
If Something Works, Keep Sharing It
Referly saves all your links, so you can begin to curate a batch of products that you find useful to share in different situations. For me, the books below are usually right at hand when I am talking to other startup people. The kitchen products are all about my resolution this year to drink more water and work “farmer” hours where I wake up between 6am and 7am (more on that in another post). Both topics come up a lot, and people ask me for my suggestions.
In Case You’re Curious – Here are the Products I Shared
Amazon.com: KOR ONE BPA Free Hydration Vessel http://refer.ly/aa0T
Amazon.com: Bodum 5500-01US Ibis Cordless Electric 57-Ounce Water Kettle, Black http://refer.ly/aabY
The Marketing Playbook: Five Battle-Tested Plays for Capturing and Keeping the Lead in Any Market by John Zagula http://refer.ly/13
Voss, Water Artesian Sprkl, 27.1-Fluid Ounce (12 Pack) http://refer.ly/a0fa
Thomas A Edison Benefactor of Mankind by Trevelyan & Miller Francis http://refer.ly/a09m
Growing Pains: Transitioning from an Entrepreneurship to a Professionally Managed Firm by Eric G. Flamholtz http://refer.ly/t
Amazon.com: Bodum Pavina 12-Ounce Double Wall Thermo Tumbler Glass http://refer.ly/a00V
That’s what I’ve figured out, there is so much more to do. Happy referring!
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Timeline: Starting Referly Took Me Three Years
On Monday we launched Referly, and announced we will be participating in YCombinator this summer. While this is only my second full-time week as a founder, I thought it would be fun to rummage around in my email and Github to grab a timeline of how Referly went from idea to actual company.
As Kim-Mai Cutler of TechCrunch reported, I haven’t been particularly secretive about the idea. I’ve gone through period of active and passive engagement with this idea since October 2009, and got really serious about just this past February.
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April 2009
Just a few weeks after starting at Twilio I was still working out of Founder’s Fund and coffee shops and living in the Travelodge in the Presidio for $49/night (I hadn’t yet moved to San Francisco from Seattle, and Kevin was still based in Beijing with Microsoft). I met my future Referly cofounder Al Abut for the first time, at the first Startup Weekend in San Francisco. We vowed we would work together someday and stayed in touch.October 2009 – Women 2.0 Startup Weekend SF
In October of 2009 San Francisco hosted Women 2.0 Startup Weekend (read my recap blog post of the event). I was invited to join a panel with Dan Martell, Jessica Livingston, Xochi Birch, and Shanna Tellerman. Quite frankly, I was pretty starstruck – these people had built companies, written books, and launched Y Combinator — what had I done to deserve to sit next to them? But I knew what I had done… I had participated in more Startup Weekend events than anyone there.
As panelists our job was to walk the audience of about 150 people through the process of forming an idea, making plans, and answering some questions from the audience. As we convened to figure out what to pitch I threw out an idea that had stuck in my mind for a month or so – affiliate for everyone. We were down to the wire on time, no one else had another idea (and knowing myself I was probably pretty forcefully determined to my idea: Obsession) so we pitched it. The audience had a few questions, but I’d say the reaction was a collective yawn.
We went on to build something completely different on my team, launching Escape My Date and winning the People’s Choice award (Foodspotting was created won the event!) and even getting a little press. I pushed the idea for Referly to the back of my mind.
February 2010 – Leadscon Conference
Went to support our customers and had heard a little about the lead generation industry from the year before (enough to form an idea of it and the idea for Referly) but my eyes were really opened fully for the first time. I was surprised people weren’t doing something similar to Refer.ly and shocked by how little Social Media was part of the conversation for generating business in this channel. It was surprising that it made me wonder if there way some big barrier to entry that I just didn’t know enough to see.
June 2010 – Registered Refer.ly
I signed up for the refer.ly domain name on Libyan Spider:
And another chat that night with a friend from a previous startup, on the idea. Its amazing how little it has changed, and I’m actually surprised to see how confident I was that this was my future company even then!
February 2011 – Shared First Version with Friends
I got the first version of Referly built and shipped to about 50 friends for feedback. In fact, I just found a screenshot of some bug reports from the lovely Liza Sperling, who has been so supportive! This might be the only image I have of the old site. Edit: And yes I do own fuckyeahitscales.com and used to host a lot of my side projects there.
November 2011 – Meeting Alicia at Skimlinks
At first I thought Skimlinks was going to be a huge competitor (I was bummed for about a week, because they are clearly kicking butt and would have been a formidable competitor), but then I realized what I wanted to build was in the consumer space and that they could be a potential partner instead. Meeting her tipped me off — maybe the time was right for this idea.
February 2012 – Refactoring & Redesigning Referly + Alpha Launch
At first I just wanted to reskin Referly using Twitter Bootstrap, but my PHP skills had evolved a lot since I first wrote the app, and reviewing my previous code I found tons of bugs I couldn’t have spotted before. I decided to completely re-write it and move it from my Dreamhost box to its own instance on EC2.
Once it was working, I got good feedback from friends and decided to start talking about it a bit more and to launch to a bigger audience. We added about 500 people through invites at this point. People told me about Gumroad, Pinterest had drama with Skimlinks, and Facebook announced it would re-launch Beacon. The market seemed right.
March 2012 – Applying to YCombinator
I hadn’t really planned to apply to YCombinator when I started coding in February. I felt like I might not be a fit as a solo founder who already had some funding commitments. As the deadline approached I started to fill out the application – at first just on a whim and then more seriously. The morning of the deadline I woke up early and quickly recorded my application video at a friend’s office. I only had time for 30 minutes of practice, then it was just cut it and send it and head off to work.
I also made a ton of last minute edits to my YC application (which I was never very happy with) and sadly I didn’t save the text or I’d share it as well.
April 2012 – Interviewing with & Getting Into YC
I was very surprised to get the invitation to interview. The process of prepping for interviews and interviewing with YC is a total blur to me now, probably because I didn’t sleep much during that time – doing Twilio by day and Referly by night. Byt the time I interviewed I had two employees on board: Alexandra Harris (who I went to middle school and high school with on Bainbridge Island) and Hudson Kelly (who I met while he was visit Silicon Valley with his college class).I am indebted to many YC founders who agreed to meet with me, and gave their brutally honest feedback on the product and pitch. The more skeptical they were, the better they made me – and I’d often fall asleep feeling raw but wake up feeling like I had grown thicker skin and greater wisdom overnight. I met with one every day between submitting my application and going to my interview. I think Referly developed faster in this period than at any other point.
April 2012 – Wrapping Up at Twilio
I love Twilio, and after spending over 3 years there building the marketing team from the ground up to 18 people, I was very passionate about making a solid transition. We brought in two great hires: Lynda Smith from Jive to head things up as our CMO, and James Parton from Telefonica to take the reins in Europe as Director of Marketing in London.
May 2012 – Launch
On Monday, we launched Referly to the world on TechCrunch, AllThingsD, PandoDaily and Geekwire. Next week, the team will be full time and June 1st we move into our house in Mountain View. So in some ways, this is all brand new, but in other ways it is a continuation of something that has been an obsession of mine for quite awhile. I used to think 3 years was forever, but sometime in the last few I’ve learned a bit of patience.
We now are a team of 5, as Kevin Morrill (my husband) agreed to join as cofounder and CTO and Al agreed to join as cofounder heading up all things design. We’ll be moving into our house in Mountain View the first week of June.
Onward!
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“Gold Guns Girls” by Metric
All the gold and the guns in the world couldn’t get you off
All the gold and the guns and the girls couldn’t get you off
All the boys, All the choices in the worldI remember when we were gambling to win
Everybody else said better luck next time
I don’t wanna bend, Let the bad girls bend
I just wanna be your friend
Is it ever gonna be enoughIs it ever gonna be enough
Is it ever gonna be enough
Is it ever gonna be enoughIs it ever gonna be enough
Is it ever gonna be enough
Is it ever gonna be enoughAll the lace and the skin in the shop couldn’t get you off
All the toys and the tools in the box couldn’t get you off
All the noise, all the voices never stopI remember when we were gambling to win
Everybody else said better luck next time
I don’t wanna bend, Let the bad girls bend
I just wanna be your friend
Why you givin’ me a hard time
I remember when we were gambling to win
Everybody else said HA HA HA HA HA HA HAIs it ever gonna be enough
Is it ever gonna be enough
Is it ever gonna be enoughIs it ever gonna be enough
Is it ever gonna be enough
Is it ever gonna be enoughMore and more, more and more, more and more,
More and more and more and more, more and more, -
My Favorite Drink: The Kir Impérial
Editors Note: A lot of you mentioned that I had a very strange glass for a champagne drink and you’re right – but usually I am drinking and working at my desk on the weekends when I have this… so the Bodum double walled tumbler is perfect. It keeps your drink cold much longer without ice. YMMV
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Want to know the fastest way to make my day? Â Order me my favorite drink, or know how to make it.
What’s in a Kir Imperial?
- 6 parts Champagne or sparkling wine
- 1 part liqueur framboise (raspberry)
It’s really simple actually, and this picture should give you a sense of how pink it should be. Â It should still taste like champagne, just with a nice juicy splash of fruit.
Ingredients: Champagne
This drink shouldn’t be pricey to make at home, but it is a treat so pick good ingredients.
First, I like to select a good California or Washington State sparkling wine. Â Mumm Napa Brut Prestige is great, and you can get it on Wine.com for $20. Â Let me tell you a few important things about champagne/cava/sparkling wine. Â Don’t just buy the “good stuff” for other people. Â If you are going to bother, spend at least $20 when you buy it for yourself. Â Don’t buy Korbel. Â You’re ruining the whole point. Â Think what the French would say. Â Actually, they’d probably say go for the Korbel! Â Such confusing people… (Benoit!)
But in all seriousness, I love this sparkling wine because it is primary pinot noir grapes (did you know pinot noir is white until they add the grape skins in?!) and it has some good acidity which you’ll want to cut through the sweetness of the liqueur. Â If you pick a syrupy sweet champagne, this will be an entirely different drink.
Ingredients: Fruit Liqueur
Next is the liqueur.
For people looking to make the class Kir Royale you should get the classic creme de cassis, which is black currant liquer, is a bar staple and you can get it in Bev Mo or any liquor store.  Extra points if it is actually from the Dijon region of France (see below on history). If you are committing to make this drink part of your repertoire, then stock your home bar with a presentable bottle (read: NOT Monin or anything cheaper than that, and yes I am judging you).  But seriously, if you are going to bother with a bar please put some thought into it because this is a bottle that will last a couple years.
Personally, I have experimented quite a bit and prefer raspberry liqeuer for my Kir, which is why it is an Imperial and not a Royale). Â I am loving Alfred Schladerer’s Himbeer Liqueur – actually a German producer (natch! — see history again). Â And yes, I just linked to an Amazon product that is out of stock, but you really should wishlist it. Â I got mine at Bev Mo for $30, so I imagine it is in other liquor stores too.
FAQ: History & Name
This is a French cocktail that got popular after World War II by the mayor of Dijon, named Felix Kir, who served it to international delegations as he worked to rebuild his region. Â Creme de cassis was a local product, and he let local producers use his name. Â Wikipedia tells us:
According to Rolland (2004), the reinvention of blanc-cassis (post 1945) was necessitated by the German Army’s confiscation of all the local red Burgundy during the war. Faced with an excess of white wine, Kir renovated a drink that previously was made primarily with the red.
Pretty damn scrappy if you ask me.
FAQ: What’s the difference between a kir and a kir royale?
A kir is made with white wine, and a kir royal is made with champagne.
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River
River – by LIGHTS
Out across cities I see buildings burn into piles
And watch the world in wonder as mountains turn into tiles
And trees losing their leaves, and our faces becoming tired
I wish I could discover something that doesn’t expire
Come and stumble meTake me river, carry me far
Lead me river, like a mother
Take me over, to some other unknown
Pull me in the undertowSuch are the things that make a kingdom rumble and shatter
The same dynamic that another day would never matter
It really just depends on who’s giving and who’s receiving
And things that don’t make sense are always a little deceiving
Come and stumble meTake me river, carry me far
Lead me river, like a mother
Take me over, to some other unknown
Pull me in the undertowI want to go where you’re going, a follower following
Changing but never changed, claiming but never claimed -
500 Details: The Process of Mentoring Startups
This morning I posted a link on Twitter & Facebook to How I Mentor Startups & Entrepreneurs. Â After it went out, I realized it doesn’t tell the full story. Â Where are the details of how this whole thing works. Â I knew I’d written it down at some point, so I dug up this email I wrote to the 500 Startups list. Â New personal rule: emails longer than 4 paragraphs might need to be blog posts. Â Enjoy!
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As a mentor who has gotten involved in ~12 companies and ended up writing checks to 3, so far, I want to share a little about how I think about the whole process. First of all, I love mentoring and it is one of the most rewarding things I’ve done with my free time. Its teaching me a ton about myself, things I’m interested in that I don’t always get to think about in my day-to-day work, and I get paid back with data — either the advice I give helps the startup or it doesn’t.
However, I don’t work with every start that approaches me. For other startups/mentors here’s my process:
0:  I get an inbound request/intro from a founder/startup/investor/etc. — my first question is, “can I help these folks?”. If they have a startup in an industry or problem space that I don’t know anything about, or can’t find excitement for, or think is a dumb idea then I tactfully decline. Those things make it impossible to become a “true believer” and every time I have gone against this I have regretted it.
1:  I agree to meet up for coffee and find out my about the team, their vision, their execution so far, and how they think I can help them. Usually they come to me for my broadly advertised skills in marketing, but often they find Ican help with a bunch of other stuff too.  I can usually tell if I am likely to invest in them after my first meeting, and this sets how much time I want to commit.
2: Usually I find that there is a period at the beginning where the startup needs a lot of time and attention, and has a specific use for me as a mentor.  I like to commit to meeting a few times over the next 3 months for 2-3 hour working sessions, and if things are going well then I’ll usually write a check in the next 8-12 weeks. If not, then I’ll usually wrap things up after the 3 month period and move on. Some startups just stop using me, whether its because they’re busy or because I’m not helping I don’t know, but I am laissez faire about it. If you keep asking me for my time you will get it… but don’t expect me to pursue you too much.
3: Writing the check. Usually $5k and really I don’t worry about the valuation or think I’m going to get the money back (or care) - I’m paying to be at the table for the long term. Its a way to have skin in the game.  I also have companies where I have a small % equity in return for my time… which is usually only something the really early stage ones can offer. And yes, if one of these companies had a moderate return I would super happy — but the reality is that I’d probably just invest it in more companies (or maybe my own one day).
4: The ongoing relationship - I block out time for my investments/mentorships on my calendar. Sunday is my 500workday :)  I host an office hours at a local coffee shop doing 20 minute lightening mentor sessions, and I meet withstartups at their offices or at my house if they don’t have an office yet.  I work on them even when I don’t meet with them, doing research or catching up on their news. They probably don’t even know how much I stalk them.
And that’s how it works for me, I spend about 6 hours a week on it… so it will take me about 32 years to hit my 10,000 hours of mastery. That’s cool, because my 58 year old self will be a really quirky and fabulous angel investor. Here’s hoping 🙂
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Close the Loop on Your SXSW Campaign & Leads in 5 Steps
This is a followup to my post last week How to Hustle SXSW for Fun & Profit, which is part of my sporadically ongoing Lessons in Startup Marketing blog post series and its focused on what to do post-SXSW to make the most of all the hustling you’ve been doing.
Please let me know what other followup tips you have for event marketing, and thank you for reading!
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Hello 500! Â I hope your hangovers aren’t too brutal.
I wanted to followup on my post about “How to Hustle SXSW for Fun & Profit” and make sure I also told you how I think about closing the loop on the leads and communicating internally about results, ROI, learnings, and expectations for next year. Just sat down in the airport (headed back to SF) and jotted this down, please let me know if I left out any important follow up steps that work well for you.
Who Needs to Do This
If you used more than $5,000 of your company’s money at SXSW you *need* to do this and be accountable for what went down.
Why This Process Matters
This is crucial for a bunch of reasons: it builds trust for the marketing function in your company, it recognizes the marketing team’s version of “shipping”, it increases the chances of opportunities resulting from the leads you worked so hard to collect, it sets you up to justify SXSW next year and understand the value you are getting from this event and events like it company-wide.
Day 0 – Sleep
After epic trips like this one, which involve getting up early, being “on†all day, and staying out late — you are going to be tired.  Rest.  Getting sick after this trip is likely, because if you hustled hard [link: ] you shook over 1,000 hands.
Day 1 – Schedule a Post-Mortem
This should only take 30 minutes, and should include the people who attended and those who were directly involved in planning/execution.  The post mortem with the events team can be a more private opportunity to talk through things that went wrong, and make sure to air any lingering frustrations so that you don’t bring them to the office permanently.  This isn’t a group therapy session though.  If individuals exhibited any inappropriate behavior, it is better to talk with them 1-on-1 about this.  Instead, focus on the goals of the event as a whole and the execution of each piece.
Walk through each piece of the plan, and ask different people on your team to describe how it went, what they liked and the value they feel your company got, as well as what could have gone better. Â Make a list of learnings for next year and a list of achievements to include in your email blast to the company.
Day 2 – Distribute an Event Recap (Internally)
While its still fresh on your mind write a recap for yourself, and then send it to your team (or entire company).  Make sure to show through stories how high impact the event was and also how much work it was – for those who stayed home and might resent not getting to go.  Make sure to thank people by name individually and call them out for specific contributions.  Remember, they worked extremely hard for you 14-16 hours each day and you want them to feel valued.  They’re also likely to be the same people who will attend SXSW with you next year.
Its also helpful to be transparent and to share learnings company-wide, but don’t turn it into a laundry list of things that went wrong.  Inevitably things went wrong (I definitely have a list from our trip this year) but focus on just one or two keys things that had valuable lessons attached to them.
Make sure to call out conversations you had that have a lot of value, opportunities that arose spontaneously, unexpected wins, and how your brand was received. Â Had people heard of you before? Â Did they have a positive impression? Â What were the most common questions? Â What was the elevator pitch that worked best? Â How did you change your interpersonal style to adapt throughout the event? Â Who did you feel you connected best with? Â Encourage your team to reflect on the same.
Day 3 – Send a Followup Marketing Email (Externally)
Take all the email addresses on every business card, all the emails from your party RSVP list, and any other contacts you made and send a big email blast thanking them for spending their time with you and giving your company some of their precious attention at SXSW. Â If you are getting a high volume of leads I hope you are using a CRM like Saleforce, or even a marketing automation and lead scoring tool like Pardot (we use both at Twilio) to capture and organize leads and associate them with a source. Â It will be amazing to see exactly the $ amount in opportunities and revenue these leads have accumulated 6 months from now, and this is ultimately the most objective way to justify the trip.
This email can be pretty HTML or just plain text – the most important thing is SEND IT WHILE SXSW IS STILL FRESH IN PEOPLE’S MINDS.  I know you are tired, but if you wait 2 or 3 weeks to send it then you are losing permission to contact these people.  Ideally, you should be ready to send this email by Thursday March 15th… and probably actually send it the following Monday morning at 8am PST.
What should be in this email? Keep it simple, include some pictures if you have anything extraordinary to share, and focus on the person you met and how they can continue to build a relationship with your brand. Â Provide only ONE link / call to action for them to click on. Â This could be something like claiming a promotional code, viewing a more in depth blog post, entering a contest, whatever. Â The key is to have just one and keep it focused around that.
Day 4 – Finalize Your Accounting
Invariably you spent additional money on food and booze, and this year things like ponchos and umbrellas were definitely on our list. Â Take an account of all costs and finalize your total into a single Keynote slide, breaking out the line items.
Day 5 – Be Accountable
Make a 4 slide deck which includes:
- Overview of activities and their total reach (# leads collected)
- Accomplishments & Learnings
- Final Budget slide
- Callouts for each person in the team and their contributions
This is how you will start the conversation next year about SXSW and whether you should go, what you should do, how much you should spend, etc.  You’ll be able to update these slides with ROI information as the leads you generated start converting into opportunities and revenue.  Send it to your senior management team (at least CEO & CTO if not more).
You’re done.  Next big event for me is Salesforce’s Cloudstock on March 15th in San Francisco – hope to see you there along with 3000 developers!