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I Don’t Do That Job Anymore
Something has changed, permanently, in me. I’ve been trying to figure out how to express it, because the transformation has been so interesting, unexpected, and meaningful to me. If you are a first time founder, or planning to be, this might resonate. I’d love to know if you’ve had a similar experience and what that was like.
Jobs I Don’t Do Anymore
These aren’t job titles, but roles I’ve played in the past that I no longer care to play. During YC (Summer 2012) I made a clean break from a lot of these things in order to totally focus on building Referly, and after letting those activities go for a few months I discovered something cool: I don’t want them back in my life at the same level of importance as before.
Professional Extrovert
For 3 years I was paid to be many things at Twilio, and one of them was what Mark Suster calls a “Conference Ho”. I’m not cynical about it, it was necessary and I made sure I was damn good at it. I did that job so that the three Twilio founders could completely focus on building the company, but I don’t do that job anymore.
I don’t feel like being around people all the time, and never have. Friends who know me understand that there is a deep divide between my public face and my private life. People who don’t know me that well assume I am so transparent online that there couldn’t possibly be more below the surface. I was paid to be extroverted, and I loved it, but I don’t do that job anymore.
Professional Hobbyist
I love hackathons and always will, because they were the first place where I really felt the warm embrace of the hacker community. I came to developers I respected, hat in hand, and asked for help and advice and a safe place to ask stupid questions and I am so grateful. I didn’t have to worry about my code being elegant, and I only built little prototypes to demo the Twilio API for cool videos and live demos at conferences. Now I write code 50% or more of my time, and it has to work. So I don’t do that job (of being a professional hobbyist) anymore.
Startup Mentor
I sometimes thought I knew how to pick the startups that were winners, but as time passes and companies I referred to investors or invested in myself struggle, I realize I still have no idea. I could say that picking Twilio was my stroke of genius, but in truth it was a lot more of luck meeting preparation. I like mentoring founders, but more to help them with personal struggles than company struggles. Lately I’ve taken a big step back from mentoring and decided to double-down on people I already have relationships with. I don’t do that job anymore.
Marketing “Guru”
Twilio was the first place I ever had a marketing job. I’m not a marketing guru, and when Jeff hired me it was to do customer support and make blog posts and video. I told him we should put a reasonably senior job title on my business card so I could get meetings, so we did. I wasn’t really operating like a true Director-level person until probably the last year I was there. I was an avid student of marketing, and I wanted to earn that title and stop feeling like the business card was a lie. I achieved that, but I don’t do that job anymore.
I’m Taking Me with Me
When I say I don’t do these jobs anymore, it isn’t that I don’t take their lessons and skills with me. I carry them every day, to every conference, conversation, interview, coding session, morning walk, phone call, lunch with a founder, late night freak out. I loved those jobs, and when I did them I believe I did them well and gave them my all. But now I am learning to do new jobs, and I have new interests. I am passionate about making things – both with code and with prose. I’m either building Referly or using it to create content, and that’s all. I’m working on being a good CEO, good product person, and better developer.
So if you’ve pinged me about stuff related to any of the jobs I don’t do anymore, and haven’t heard back, I hope you understand why. I don’t do that anymore.
This blog post doesn’t really convey how strange it feels, to let go of things that were so important to me. Things I worked on and worried about and shaped my identity. But if I hold onto them and stay the same, and just get better at those things and lean on them then I know I won’t grow… so I’m putting them away for awhile. It kind of feels like breaking up, that’s the closest experience I can compare it to.
This video kind of sounds like what it feels like:
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I Am Not Waiting Anymore
This post is part of a series called “Playlist” where I post songs I find meaningful in life and entrepreneurship. If you like this I hope you will check out the other posts.
Yet another with less than 10,000 views on YouTube. If you like it spread the word.
American Songwriter has a good piece on the meaning of the lyrics and backstory of the band. It’s the kind of writing Rolling Stone used to do. From the singer/songwriter Christopher Porterfield:
“That’s me saying, ‘You know what, this is ridiculous. It’s time to get real, let’s do this. This being music,†says Porterfield of the aforementioned song. “That song was my personal revelation that if I wanted to try to be a songwriter and a musician that it’s really time to do that and to dedicate time and energy to that endeavor. It’s about the struggle of making art and about destroying things that are precious and it’s about coming to terms with who you are. It’s about being hungry while being patient but mostly giving into the hunger of it and just wanting something.”
I am red in tooth and claw
God’s favorite child, bloodied from the brawl
And this bitterness was killing me all along
I am not waiting anymore
I am not waiting anymoreBlowing through time like nickel slots
In a windowless room, on a credit card
flash it like a semaphore – a vague, drafty metaphor
I am not waiting anymoreI’ve been a keen eyed observer of the movements of concentric parts
Of the bodies, of bones, and breasts and unmapped chambers of heartsAnd the sand in hand has been turned to glass
Like a Jeroboam filled with a life that’s passed
You can toss it off the balcony and listen for the crash
I am not waiting anymoreI spent eight long years working on my screenplay
it’s a teen movie with young actresses that plays to the middle agedI have read between the lines
I have been wrong every time
It burned up on the alter, but I am fine
I am not waiting anymore
I am not waiting anymore
I am not waiting anymore -
Why I Won’t Be Using BetaPunch for User Testing
Alternate Title: How NOT to Do Social Media for Your Startup
This morning, I happily tweeted about the service UserTesting.com, which I’ve been using to get brutal but extremely helpful feedback on user experience at Referly.
The Twitter account for user testing startup BetaPunch replied (see the full thread of tweets here), asking why we weren’t using their service instead.
I replied that I was still annoyed (which I am) that they publicly tweeted links to the results of free usability tests they ran for us when we were trying out their product back in October (thankfully they agreed to delete the tweets at the time). After that, I felt like my privacy had been violated (and who really wants competitors, strangers, potential investors, etc. viewing user tests of their very early stage and admittedly confusing product) and we already were familiar with UserTesting.com so I decided to stick with them.
I figured there was some very junior social media person manning the account and assumed the conversation would probably end there. But it didn’t, so we have a little social media case study in what not to do if you’re going to chase after your competitor’s customers.
So, I won’t be using BetaPunch. They’re rude, don’t respect my privacy, and clearly don’t want me to be their customer anyway. Not sure how they missed “the customer’s always right” – but I’d settle for “don’t be mean to customers” in this case.
I don’t need to be right, I just need to be right enough to want to pay you.
What do you think, is it ungrateful to trial a freemium product and then not upgrade? Let me know what you think in the comments.
And BetaPunch, you’re welcome for the traffic… enjoy the SEO, too.
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2012 Blogging Year in Review & 2013 Goals
For those of you who might be visiting this blog for the first time, welcome. I’m a unpaid blogger (read: not a professional writer) living in San Francisco. I am cofounder and CEO of Referly alongside my husband Kevin. I write about whatever interests me. Usual topics include marketing tactics, personal productivity, things I’m learning as a first time CEO.
This year I published on my personal blog, the Twilio company blog, as a guest writer on TechCrunch Europe, and launched DistributionHacks.com where I focused exclusively on tactics for marketing and growth. I also took a very active role doing content marketing through the Referly company blog and on my Referly profile (I am counting collections as blog posts… I think we might be slowly be morphing into a blogging platform – more on that soon).
Blogging, by the Numbers
- 41 posts with 200 or more pageviews
- Averaged 3.5 posts per month
- Just over 200,000 total pageviews
- Averaged 3,760 pageviews per post
Traffic on DanielleMorrill.com Since It Started
My Top 10 Posts of 2012
#10 – Introducing the Distribution Hacks Blog
#9 – Who Owns the Website, and Why
#8 – Why Advertising on Mobile Sucks, From the Marketer’s Perspective
#7 – Got 99 Competitors and Bit.ly is One
#6 – Starting Referly Took Me Three Years
#5 – Post Startup Launch Checklist
#4 – Accidental Startup Office Manager: Ordering Food
#3 – How to Hustle SXSW for Fun and Profit
#2 – The Best Advice My Dad Ever Gave Me (for Demo Day)
#1 – Don’t Waste a Single Moment
These ten posts generated 75% of my pageviews in 2012. The top 3 generated 37%. Here is the distribution curve for traffic.
Goals for 2013
Write About Amazing Startups Not Getting Press Coverage
I know I’m not alone in my complaint that I wish tech publications covered a broader range of startups with interesting stories beyond funding and product launches. For those blogs it might not make sense, as long think or column pieces don’t always hit their mark and result in traffic. But since I don’t have to care much about traffic, I’m free to write whatever I want and take as long as I please.
Consistently Publish at Least 2 Times a Week
In 2012 I definitely published at least once a week on average, but my activity was spikey and inconsistent leaving readers wonder when the next piece would come out on Distribution Hacks for months (thanks for being patient with me). Accomplishing this goal might mean I actually need to make myself an editorial calendar, which I’ve been avoiding because it makes blogging feel like a job. But that might just be what it takes.
Do More Funny Video Projects Like This With My Friends
Experiment with Having Guest Authors Post on *My* Blogs
I think it would be awesome to feature guest writers on Distribution Hacks, so I need to figure out how I want to approach people and get a bit more specific about the type of content the audience there expects. Guest posts are great because I can probably bring visibility to some awesome growth people who are just getting started with blogging. Are you one of them reading this? Contact me!
Figure Out a Syndication Strategy
Publishing across multiple sites it awesome because it let’s me segment audiences, reach new people, and explore different styles and topics. I expect I’ll be doing quite a bit more guest blogging in 2013, so figuring out a central place where people can subscribe to get everything is probably something I should work on. This is likely to be that site. This is the breakdown of where I’m generating pageviews this year:
Finish Some of My 216 Draft Posts
One good habit I’ve developed with blogging is to write whenever an idea strikes, even if I’m not sure if/when/whether I’ll ever publish. Now I’ve got 216 stub posts in various stages of completeness on this blog alone, with plenty of Google docs and other notes that might be worth finishing.
Rankings for My Remaining Blog Posts
Curious how my other posts did this year? Here are the other posts I made this year in order of pageviews:
#11 – Must Read Blogs for Entrepreneurs
#12 – Creating an Unfair Advantage
#13 – The Little Signup Page That Could – A/B Testing Results Are In
#14 – Growth Hacking Referly: New User Onboarding Workflow
#15 – Go Ahead, Feed the Trolls
#16 – Introducing Customer Acquisition as a Service: Referly API & Shopping by Categories
#17 – Announcing “Recommend It†– The iPhone App for Product Photo Sharing
#18 – Startup Office Snacks
#19 – Why We Buy: Redesigning Referly to Focus on Experiences
#20 – Referly Friends & Family Emails (aka Early Stage Investor Relations)
#21 – Books for Entrepreneurs
#22 – Finding a New Voice
#23 – Import Your Pinterest Boards as Referly Collections
#24 – Startup Metrics to Obsess Over
#25 – Saying No
#26 – 500 Details: The Process of Mentoring Startups
#27 – Don’t Break the Chain
#28 – YC Demo Day Prep Resources
#29 – Angry Birds Halloween Costumes
#30 – Referly + InternMatch Office Furniture
#31 – How I Earned $34.91 with Referly
#32 – Close the Loop on Your SXSW Campaign & Leads in 5 Steps
#33 – Referly Goes Social – You Can Now Follow Profiles
#34 – Introducing Referly Reviews: Hands-On Video Reviews of Products We Love
#35 – Halloween Decor
#36 – New and Improved Referly Website (Signup, Onboarding, Friending)
#37 – Click Metrics: What Referly Reporting Looks Like
#38 – Turning Recommendations from the Reddit Community Into a Store
#39 – So Meta: My Startup is a Tool for Distribution Hackers
#40 – Geek Girl Haul: The Corner Store
#41 – My Favorite Drink: The Kir Imperial
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Call the Shots & Stop Being So Nice
I gave a long rambling talk at Thinc Iowa. Â So rambly in fact, that I was scared to watch it on video for a few months.
Here’s the short version:
- Stop being so nice
- Gather the facts and judge people
- Don’t be the no in your own life
- If you don’t make decisions no one will
- Inertia is death
Don’t miss the part where I tell people to STOP DOING ALL THE THINGS and also the part (around 17:20) where I’m really honest about how women having the biggest problem with being too nice.
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“Towering” by Seryn – with Incomplete Lyrics
9,233 views on YouTube… whatever. Â This is great music.
And because I could not find the lyrics online
Oh, oh, oh, oh
towering
Oh-oh, Oh-oh
Oh-oh,
Oh-oh, towering
Oh-oh, towering
Oh-oh, towering
Oh
2-3-4-5-6
Oh that we’re only able to see now
We anticpate
What will become
This is not easy
We underestimate
Only the lonely get away unharmed
But even the lonely have their scars
Oh that we’re only moving right along
And oh-oh-oh-ohOh, that we’re only
Where this is moving
We can feel the …
Come like the sun
Know that you’re glowing
Feels like we just begunOh that we’ve only just arrived
All that we have is … inside
Only the lonely get away unharmed
And oh oh oh-oh-oh,Instrumental break
Only this one sweet hour (heart..?)
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Come Schlep with Me! Seeking Paid Content Intern at Referly
Referly enables anyone to share links to products and earn rewards when the link they share results in a purchase.
We are building out rich content pages that need a lot of curation. We’re eagerly looking for someone non-technical with a sense of style and visual composition, passion for browsing the Internet for unique and interesting products, efficient and self-directed work style, and passion for learning about working in a startup. You are the kind of person who loves Gilt Groupe, used Pinterest before it was hot, and snags the best stuff on Fab.com on a regular basis.
You’ll be showcasing the best content from our community, and coming up with creative concepts of your own for various promotions and new landing pages. You’ll build tons of public-facing content that you will be able to point to at the end of your internship and say “I made that”. You’ll be blogging, talking to customers, learning about the things people love, and creating content that will help them be successful with Referly.
The ideal candidate is open to becoming more technical but doesn’t need to be technical at all to start with. You will probably have to complete repetitive tasks and we will be happy to show you how to quickly automate them. You will learn to browse files and run scripts from the command line, write formulas in spreadsheets, pull data from databases with mySQL, tweak HTML/CSS, and argue for your awesome product improvement ideas with the team.
There will also be a lot of schlepping, not because you are an intern but because that is what startups do – you’ll be cranking 24/7 alongside the team at our office in San Francisco. Between the 5 of us we’ve worked on over a dozen startups, so we’ve got lots of war stories to share.
Bonus points if you: know how SEO works, know how HTTP works, know how the fashion industry works, can fix an air conditioner with a Leatherman
Interested?
Please send your resume, Referly profile (sign up at http://refer.ly) with some links and descriptions (we’re testing your ability to write interesting short content), and a draft blog post of how you’d introduce yourself to our community on our blog (http://blog.refer.ly) if you were a member of our team to danielle (at) refer.ly — please do more than just copy the job description, we can tell when people do that. Add your own unique flavor!
Location: San Francisco, CA
Pay: Hourly, $15-$25 depending on experience
Term: 3 months – but could become full time role with the right person
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Accidental Startup Office Manager: Ordering Food
I’ve been thinking about writing about the “less glorious” parts of operating a startup company in the past. Â This is my first post on that theme. Â Let me know in the comments if you’d like to see it become a regular series.
Before I was a “growth hacker” or even pa
rt of a successful startup, I was the only non-technical person on a team of geeks determined to revolutionize telecommunications. Â Of course the company was Twilio, and one of my early (self-assigned) jobs was to make sure we had enough Diet Coke, Goldfish Crackers, and other stuff to make the office a decent place to work.
Before you go on the typical rant “of course a girl would be put in charge of this” let me tell you – no one put me in charge of it.  In fact, I’d put it on my personal card and expense it because our team was really frugal.  And they worked ridiculously hard, and I could see that they wouldn’t eat or go grab food because it wasn’t convenient.  From what I could see, solving this problem would let them write more code, and writing more code would help us win.  So I did it.
Some of the things to consider as you are shopping:
- Where are you going to store all this stuff, especially non-perishables?
- Who is trying to lose weight? (Can you avoid ordering foods that are their weakness?)
- Who is doing low-carb or other types of diets? (Kosher, diabetic, vegetarian, etc)
- How healthy do people want to be?
- Do people need you to supply (or can you afford to offer) full meal replacements or just snacks?
- How much do you want to spend per day on food?
- How long do you think this order will last?
In the early days, any food is appreciated – and as time passes people start to have preferences and healthy concerns. I’ve created a Referly collection of products to help with your own startup food shopping list. Â In fact, I just made a $900 purchase from Amazon.com for Referly and InternMatch (we share and office) that will hopefully last us 6-8 weeks.
Important Note: We also order in fresh food from restaurants with GrubHub.com or Postmates, and pick up fresh fruit and vegetables as needed from the local farmer’s market (for us at Pier 1). Â You can also arrange to have farm fresh baskets delivered locally, or from TheFruitCompany.com to anywhere in the U.S. (disclosure by lovely brother-in-law is their CFO).
Check it out and let me know if I’ve missed any key items you recommend.
Quick Top 5 Products (for those who don’t have time to click through)
- Nature Valley Crunchy Granola Bars – 96 bars for $21 on Amazon.com
- Kellogg’s Fruity Snacks – 24 packs for $15 on Amazon.com
- Quaker Instant Oatmeal Variety Pack – 52 packets for $19 on Amazon.com
- Sugar Free Redbull – Pack of 24 8.4 Ounce cans on Amazon.com
- Office Snax Peanut Butter Pretzel Nuggets – 2 44 Ounce tubs for $50 on Amazon.com
Disclosure: If you decide to make a purchase through one of my links I may receive a commission from Amazon. Â This does not impact the cost of the product you are buying, and is generally 6 to 8% of the purchase value. Â I hope you will consider buying the products I suggest if they are a good fit for you, but if not I completely understand and just wanted to let you know.
Are you a blogger? You can create your own links to recommend products and earn rewards if people buy at Refer.ly
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Startup Gangnam Style PREVIEW TRAILER
Full length music video COMING SOON!
Gangnam Startup Style Teaser from Fawaz Al-Matrouk on Vimeo.
View more pictures and video stills here
Huge thank you to so many people for helping us make this drunken post Demo Day idea into a reality! From a couple beers and a night of K-pop, to many practice sessions, to a Facebook group of over 350 helpful friends who let us crash a wedding at 111 Minna, film at the original Facebook house, visit the set of the upcoming Bravo reality series on Silicon Valley, and take over the block of a peaceful neighborhood. We salut you, Gangnam style! Oh and sorry Google, we left as soon as security showed up…
Thank you to Fawaz Al-Matrouk who drove up from Los Angeles to do this shoot at the last minute and made it beautiful and high production. We can’t wait to release the final version, but this trailer will give you a few sneak peeks.
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Scaling Myself
One of things that excites me most about building Referly is that I am able to take figuring out the best method for acquiring customers to a whole new scale. Â Instead of working as the head of marketing for a single company, I can now literally participate in the customer acquisition planning and execution of thousands.
Referly API: Leverage Existing Users with Refer-a-Friend
The most obvious use case for Referly is to set up a refer-a-friend program on a business website and encourage existing users to participate by sharing their customer tracking link with friends.  This is what Love With Food and hundreds of others are doing, and since we launched our API hundreds of businesses have signed up to get our help generating new sales and signups.  Referly helps businesses acquire customers in two ways:
Referly Customer Acquisition as a Service: Pay for Results
When you sign up with Referly you set a reward amount you are willing to pay, usually it gets higher the greater your lifetime customer value is.
While existing users are the best and highest quality referrals you can get, sometimes their referrals just aren’t enough.  This is why we  also work to create campaigns to get you additional customers through paid, SEO, and other methods.  We make money when you get customers, because we try to acquire them for you for less than your bid amount.  That way you never pay more than your bid but you begin to access a whole new base of users.
How We Make Money: Performance
For example, if you bid $2 per new user and we are able to run a Facebook campaign that acquires them for $1.50 each then we keep the $0.50 each time. Â This starts out small but it begins to add up as we learn more about your business and work with you to refine the customer acquisition models and bring higher value customers.
Alternately, some businesses bid so low that we can’t get them customers – but we are able to run experiments and give them that feedback without them risking a lot of money up front.
Marketing of the Future
Referly has just barely scratched the surface of customer acquisition automation and crowdsourcing, but we believe what we are offering will be the distributed sales and marketing department of the future – where millions of small and medium businesses will turn first when it comes to acquiring new customers online. Â Try it and see!
