-
My Thoughts on LBS… Almost 3 Years Ago
Someone asked about how I got into all of this marketing and PR stuff, and it began with this unauthorized interview with Mashable about the launch of the Whrrl iPhone app in the summer of 2007. So funny… how LBS was the hot topic then, and it is again now with the looming Foursquare acquisition. I’m happy I’m not working this anymore, but it was a lot of fun and still think offering these kinds of features and localized lead gen for business, footstreaming, location awareness, etc. are cool. Long interview, enjoy…
-
Birthday Post: I’m 25 Years Old Today!
Time for some navel gazing, because just a couple hours ago marked 25 years since I entered the world at the first daughter of Daniel and Kathryn Clark. People always remark that life is so short, or life is so long, but lately I’ve been feeling like its just right. I know I travel a ton, work like a maniac, am great at planning for the hyper short term (spontaneous) and super long term (procrastinator) but not as great in the middle, etc. I really love being alive, I love the people I’ve chosen to spend my time on Earth with (Kevin, my family, my friends, my professional colleagues, etc.)
At 20, I wasn’t nearly as self-assured or confident in what I was doing, but I did know that I would be an entrepreneur. In fact, I new I would be an entrepreneur when I was 17 working at McDonalds to pay for garage band gear, and when I was 15 working for the family business, and when I was 12 and visited my Dad’s startup in the Maritime building (heated with steam pipes) or when I was 9 and figured out how to get all the Moms on the block to contribute lemonade to our lemonade stand. At each age, that idea of what I might do in the future took on different forms and when people asked, “what do you want to do when you grow up?” I would grasp around for the words to describe it.
Growing up I wasn’t taught that work was something to dread about adulthood, from my viewpoint it was an exciting adventure that I couldn’t wait to be a part of.  A place where applying your mind to problems earned you more than just a good grade, and more than just money, it earned satisfaction and personal fulfillment. I always knew I would do work that I loved, because I never did anything I didn’t love. The second the smell of McDonald’s Egg McMuffins became too disgusting our the dread mounted in my chest about spending another day helping people ship freight, I made the choice to move on. Often I moved on without knowing what I would do next, fully confident that I could figure out how to make money paying the bills (building random websites, training old people how to use their computers, pulling espresso shots at the neighborhood coffee shop, etc).
I have extraordinary parents, who have stayed married in the face of plenty of challenges from rebellious kids (especially me) to financial hardship (multiple failed companies and near bankruptcy). They’ve taught me so much about love and commitment. I criticized them for staying married when I was younger, because I couldn’t see or understand their romance, but now that I’ve been married to Kevin for almost 3 years it makes a lot more sense. Relationships with human beings are fragile, beautiful things to be treasured and appreciated – and my parents loved me even when I was behaving terribly, when I was their heart walking around in the big bad world they couldn’t protect me from, and they watched in fear as I danced with danger from time to time. Fortunately (miraculously?) I kept on being right about decisions they thought were insane, from attending my senior year of high school part time to pursue my band (I was so ahead on credits) to dropping out of college to join the workforce at a Fortune 500 company, to quitting that kick ass job 2 weeks short of my wedding to join a tech startup.
Beyond my parents, I have the kind of marriage I never could have imagined. Kevin proposed to me when I was 21, and we were married when I was 22. The divorce rates for people married our ages aren’t great (37% chance for me, 22% for him) and a lot of people were skeptical when our on-again off-again relationship turned serious after 2 years of dating. Getting married young is probably the riskiest thing I’ve ever done, and the one agreement we came to was that I needed to have the space and freedom to fully discover who I am – outside the marriage. We weren’t going to be a hyper co-dependent couple, and I wasn’t going to have any kids for a long time (right now the plan is to revisit the topic when I’m 30). Instead, we would travel, live abroad, take turns doing startups, and development independent circles of friends. All the things we saw married couples NOT doing, and then complaining about as they filled out the paperwork for divorce. Not a guarantee of happiness, but certainly helpful. Since our marriage, I’ve worked on 3 startups and Kevin left his long-time role at Microsoft after living in China for 6 months. We’ve lived in separate states and/or countries for 50% of the time we’ve been married, made countless friends, founded a company together and travelled a ton. In short, my marriage is my grandest ongoing adventure.
Looking into the future…
I’m more open about my past, and guarded about my future. The future for my company is probably the most clear, and everything else follows from there. I know that when I leave this startup there are 2 things I will do: 1) take a trip to the remaining continents I haven’t been to with my best friend D’Laina 2) catch up on sleep. Then I’ll probably found a company of my own, I’m ready. Will we continue to live in the Bay Area – probably, since the heart of the tech industry is here. Will we ever move back into our blue house in Kingsgate – probaby, when we’re older? I’d love to have kids there, if I have kids at all. Will my life continue to be full of passionate, adventure and people I love – definitely. And being certain of that is enough for me.
-
My Best Friend’s Wedding: The Startup
Update: No, it isn’t TweetToCall – although I love that project (yes, it still works and has a few thousand users now) and do think Twitter is going to become the new phone book. TweetToCall should be a feature of Twitter, and if anyone wants the code etc. I should just open source it.
You know that Julia Roberts movie where she doesn’t realize how much she’s in love with her best friend until he calls to say he’s getting married to someone else, and then falls off that bed? That’s how I feel about my startup idea getting founded and funded by someone else.
To be clear, I’ve probably had thousands of ideas for startups – but I’m a fan of failing fast and most of them have been crappy, or usually technically “cool” but not monetizable. That’s okay. But this idea was actually something I pitched in the few moments I had between leaving Whrrl and joining Twilio. It was something that nabbed me an offer to be an EIR with a reputable VC, which I was honored to receive but ultimately turned down. Most importantly, it was an idea that I am still obsessed with.
Today, I read that someone I know of and respect a great deal received some funding for this business, and is forming a company to execute on it. It haunts me. I know I’ll get over it, and I’ll be watching closely in the next year to observe how it goes as I consider whether or not it is the startup I’ll found someday. I can’t deny part of the pain is over not being first, but that is mainly pride. The rational part of me (or mercifully rationalistic) reminds myself that it may benefit me in the long run not to build a product in a consumer market that will require so much education. Time will tell.
Bottom line: the timing is wrong for me. I love my current company so much, and it is exciting, challenging, fun, growing, amazing — all the things we dream of when we talk about starting companies.
Ideas are a easy to come by, but ideas that you can imagine executing on for YEARS of your life are not. When I learned of Twilio I was immediately intrigued, and when Jeff approached me about joining the company I couldn’t say no. The alignment of market, team, and timing is undeniably awesome. Twilio is an idea I enjoy walking around inside of, thinking about constantly, living and breathing the brand. If I ever found a company as incredible, cohesive, and useful as Twilio I will have succeeded — so for now I’ll have to swallow this momentary pain, and look forward to the exciting future.
-
Hitting the Road Again
After a couple weeks at home, except for that quick trip up to Seattle for Valentine’s Day and my going away party, I’ve been free of business travel. I love to travel, but it was good to take some time to be in the office with the team and we got SMS launched. Sometimes its like we run so hard, our feet don’t even touch down. Well, I had my time to touch down briefly. I mean, I did laundry so that means I came home a few nights. My little room is bursting with stuff… clothes and gadgets, but mostly with papers and books and ideas and my anxiousness to become more connected in this new town.
Tomorrow I’m on the road again, headed to Las Vegas for LeadsCon for a couple days, then back home in San Francisco Thursday and then out again to Sunday for a trip to New York where I’ll be doing some speaking and meeting with cool geeks to spread the word about Twilio, host a hackathon, and maybe even find some people we’d like to hire. So I’m back late Thursday night from that trip and home for about a week, then off to South by Southwest. And so it goes.
This song made me think about what its like being on the road. I’m happy, although I do wish I had heeded my Dad’s advice to travel light and hadn’t bough the house back in ’07. Oh well, live and learn I guess. Hopefully I’ll see you in my travels.
-
Reflecting on “Stuff”
As I make the move to the Bay Area, dealing with my “stuff” is a big thing. Going from a 4,000 square foot house to a 10′ by 12′ room in a friend’s apartment has been an adjustment both physically and mentally. But more interestingly, its lead me to reflect on all the stuff I have and what it really means to me. This Paul Graham essay on Stuff from 2007 also resonates with me.
The Story of My Stuff
In 2004 I purged everything I owned except for what would fit into the Land Rover I bought, and moved to downtown Seattle. That felt great, and being free of stuff also kept my mind free of clutter as I embarked on the beginning of my career. While I was making $9 as an hour, I had no money for buying anything except for the occasional professional clothing item or meal out with a friend. If I was spending money, it was on experiences.
By 2006 I was making good money, and dating the man who would become my husband. I had moved into a penthouse studio apartment and wanted to impress him (duh) with my taste, as well as enjoy the freedom of not having to conform to the tastes of a roommate. Ikea furniture, books I had been storing at my parent’s house, kitchen utensils, clothes, SHOES… the “stuff” began to accumulate, and soon the studio was feeling pretty cramped.
We got married in the summer of 2007 and moved into his bachelor pad, which had even less personal space than my studio. The cheap Ikea furniture had to go and once again my personal style was subordinated to someone else’s idea of “home” – which at the time was uber-sparse and uber-expensive (and uber-masculine) urban chic. I got rid of my car too, which was wonderful at first but later felt stifling, in favor of his Audi. In all, from a materialistic point of view my entire lifestyle was upgraded when our possessions became shared. All I really brought my ever-growing book collection, and enormous collection of designer shoes and fabulous clothes. For two newlyweds, this was a lot of stuff to manage.
So what did we do? We bought a bigger container for our stuff, in the form of a 4,000 square foot house in the suburbs. What started out as curiousity about what was on the market turning into me finding our dream house. We moved in on Halloween 2007, a mere 3 months after getting married. Our stuff began to expand again… we left all the furniture at the Seattle condo (we were renting it out) and took on a bunch of furniture from my parent’s house that they had been saving for us, as well as piano, 8 person dining room table, and new couches, bar stools, etc. AHHH! We were in stuff acquisition mode, shopping every weekend for stuff to make our not-so-little nest feel like a home.
And then the economy tanked.
I wish I could say that we’d been frugal with our acquisitions, but with Kevin’s job at Microsoft and my investments flying high we weren’t too concerned. I was working for a startup, making a startup income, but we were still a two income household without anyone depending on us. My walk in closet was stocked with fabulous outfits, I wore labels, and we threw dinner parties almost every week. While the market crashed we were in Las Vegas, treating my little sister to a memorable 21st birthday. Looking back, that was probably one of the best ways we spent money that year.
Traveling Sets Me Free of My Stuff
On Friday, I flew from SFO to Seattle with my most important “stuff”: my black Kate Spade purse, MacBook pro, iPhone, engagement ring and necklace my husband gave me for Valentine’s Day this year, my passport and some cash. I could have flown anywhere in the world and started my life from that moment in time with the items in that bag. That’s a pretty empowering thought, and lead me to think that the lack of “stuff” might be part of why people find travel so liberating – it certainly is for me.
What I’ve Learned: Buy Experiences, Not Things
Enabling great experiences and memories, shared with people I enjoy, is the most important leisure activity in my life. My rule of thumb now is that my “stuff” needs to enhance or enable experiences in some way, or it isn’t valid. Additionally, the more expensive the item (both in terms of money and amount of trouble I go to keeping it) it better generate lasting and repeat value.
Another important thing I’ve learned is that owning expensive things is great, but only if you use them. Each time you use them, its a part of the experience of owning something. If you know me, you know that I have a thing for expensive leather purses and shoes, and that’s because when I use/wear them the luxury and stylishness of the items creates an experience for me personally. I love that. It’s the same for things like owning silver and china, or crystal. Use it or give it to someone who will.
10 Things I Need to Travel the World
- Internet (Sprint mifi)
- iPhone & charger (Apple)
- MacBook pro & charger (Apple)
- jeans & a t-shirt
- expensive & indestructible purse (Kate Spade)
- expensive & durable/comfortable shoes (Tory Burch)
- all-in-one makeup kit (Lancome, buy it at the airport)
- passport
- cash (or access to cash via ATM card)
- my wonderful husband Kevin
-
We Launched – Check out Twilio SMS
I love when I can finally talk about something secret that I’ve been working on. Yesterday we launched Twilio SMS, a new API that makes it ridiculously simple (or as someone on Twitter said, “stupidly simple”) to send/receive text messages from Twilio numbers.
Here is the screencast we made to go with it – which I am very proud of 🙂
-
Launching a New Blog: ConstraintMarketing.com
While I love my DanielleMorrill.com blog, it is pretty much a smattering of random things I am thinking about and pieces of my personal life. And don’t worry, I won’t stop writing here, but I am looking forward to creating a more structured home for all my ideas about how marketing can be done effectively at startups.
Lately, I’ve been following along more closely with Eric Ries, Steve Blank and others who are talking about Lean Startup. I think it is really cool that “lean” has finally made it down from the ivory tower of Six Sigma to the nerf gun wielding floppy haired startup kids. And with the state of the economy, it couldn’t come at a better time.
How I Came To Love Lean
When I was 15, I started working for my Dad’s newly formed financial consulting company (he’s blogging now, woo!). After two failed startups that had attempted to marry technology and the finance/healthcare benefits industry he was ready to strike out on his own, and I served as his tech-support/office-manager/generalist. It was my sophomore year of high school, and the first year I really got to know my road-warrior of a father. As consult, the business was basically a one-man-show so I began to set up processes that would help things like reporting to scale as we took on more customers. The first business book I ever took down from his shelf was The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox, and it was the seminal work that brought the concept of lean manufacturing to the average businessman when it was published in 1984.I was fascinated by the “Theory of Constraints” – the idea that you have to run your business in a way that is appropriate to your constraints. You have a broken machine, materials shortage, broken supply chain, damaged orders? Figure out how to restructure your processes to serve your end goals and take the reality of your situation into consideration.
Why “Constraint Marketing” for Startups?
Marketing in the technology world is more than just brand awareness, it’s a core distribution channel for consumer and enterprise products that are sold on the internet. The new product supply chain isn’t interested in planes, trains, trucks, and boats. Instead it is interested in channels like display advertising, social media, webinars, and ultimately a call-to-action that leads to conversion.
So what if we applied the rules of lean manufacturing and supply chain to startup marketing? What would happen, what can we learn, and would be more effective marketers? I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve heard marketers derided for not being cost conscious enough, or efficient enough – and in that way I think I have a lot in common with a plant manager at a factory.
I think my experiences working in logistics (Expeditors International) as well as on-site for highly productive lean manufacturing factory concerns such as a Genie Industries and distributors like Zumiez were some of the most fascinating and formative experiences of my life. In the same way I am marrying the old and the new in telecommunications with Twilio, let me marry the old and new wisdom of product distribution for online products. We’ll see where this goes… I’m looking forward to feedback.
Stay tuned, http://www.constraintmarketing.com will be live soon
-
Ignite WordCamp Boston Videos
Want to watch one of the super-fast presentations, or weren’t able to make it last night? Never fear, Flipcam HD to the rescue! These are also on YouTube for your embedding pleasure.
Getting the Moneyshot: Making Screencasts without Going Insane – by Danielle Morrill (me!)
You Beta’ Test Your Plugins – by Michael Erlewine
Turning WordPress Into a Social Media Monitoring Dashboard – by Kevin Palmer
Yo Dawg I Heard You Like Publishing Platforms – by Eric Buth
more coming soon, they are still uploading on the airport wifi…
-
Wordcamp Boston is Tomorrow!
Wow, this morning I woke up and I’d slept with the balcony door open in 80-degree weather in Miami Beach and now I’m in Boston, and there’s snow on the ground! The joys of air travel, it’s just amazing. ITEXPO was a good show, and I’m very happy with the launch of the 1st StartupCamp Telephony, where my company was the premier sponsor and two of our customers presented their startups – I’ll recap on all that soon.
Outside my hotel room I haven’t been to Boston in almost 6 years, and it’s so cool to be right here next to all the geeky goodness of the MIT campus, Akamai, etc. In fact, I’m checking on Gary’s Guide and Plancast right now to see if there are any tech/entrepreneur type events scheduled for tonight. It would be fun to meet new people – I don’t know very many folks in this town at all.
WordPress Boston Tomororw
Tomorrow it’s all about WordPress. We’ve got a Twilio WordPress plugin that I’ll be showing off, and then I’m speaking about screencasting at Ignite in the evening (right after the closing keynote). I’m 2nd up, so I need to go watch some YouTube videos of previous presentations and do quite a bit of practicing to get the timing right.
I’m not in love with my slides (quite a rush job) but I think I can compensate for them with great spoken content. I’ve also been considering making a screencast on how to make screencasts – that way people can see how the entire process works if they like the talk. If you like this idea, or think it would be useful, please drop a note in the comments.
I’m sure there will be some video footage of the event coming from your’s truly soon. See many of you tomorrow! You can follow along with what’s going on using the #wcbos hashtag on Twitter search.
-
Time to Say Goodbye Seattle, Hello San Francisco
Cross posted from Seattle 2.0 >>
A series of events yesterday convinced me that it’s time to write the blog post that I haven’t being willing to touch for over six months. This is the blog post that says goodbye to Seattle and hello to San Francisco.Seattle is a great place to start a company and, after traveling a ton this past year, I strongly feel it is also one of the best places on Earth to live. I anticipate that you, Seattle 2.0 readers, might point out that it seems a little ridiculous to be editor of Seattle 2.0 and then to move away. As numerous people can attest, I’m a huge fan of Seattle startups, entrepreneurs, and as someone who was born and raised in the Seattle area I’m homesick as hell. But I don’t live for the scene, much as I enjoy being a part of it. For awhile, I did feel like the startup community was an end in itself and I think that is one danger to be aware of as you’re starting your own companies. Your fellow upstarts are not, for the most part, your customers. Impressing them is optional – impressing (and making money from) your customers is required.How Long Has This Being Going On
I’ve been avoiding talking about my move kind of like someone who’s in a new relationship but doesn’t want to call the guy her boyfriend. But the truth is that Seattle and I had to break up, because I’m seeing someone else… and it’s very serious. I wasn’t planning to fall in love with a startup in the Bay Area but it happened, and as one of our investors (who is partial to the New York tech community) said, “you have to go to the place where the startup you want to work on is”. I think he’s right, and beyond that I think you have to take your business where it is most likely to be successful. For Twilio, that’s San Francisco.I saw Mikhail Seregine of Seattle-based startup Jambool (their San Francisco team shares an office with us at Pier 38) today, and we laughed at how much one chance meeting at a WTIA event could do. One year ago Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson, Mikhail, and I were eating dinner together at an event where our respective startups were presenting and look how much has changed since then (Twilio took funding, ClayValet closed, and I left Pelago).It’s a Choice, Not a Sacrifice
Right about now I’m missing everything from our weather to our (often crappy) sports teams, and for the record Seattle really does have the best Thai food no matter what these foodies tell you. Most of all, I’m missing A LOT of people including my parents, my sister, my friends, and the majority of business contacts I’ve built up in the past five years since dropping out of college. Case in point, I saw Dave Schappell today at our office here in SF and probably hugged him hello a little too tight (sorry Dave).Why give all that up for a startup? Why give it up for a company that, despite an impressive trajectory, still has statistically high odds of going nowhere like every startup? Why risk messing up my marriage, going bankrupt trying to sell my real estate, etc. just to be constantly exhausted, have panic attacks, get sick, travel too much, sleep too little? Why live like this? My reason might surprise you. It’s not that I love startups (although I do, for many reasons).My reason for choosing this crazy life is simple, I want to give people back hours of their lives. I want to take things that are hard, and make them easy. I want to free people up to do higher value things with their time. It is the common thread of everything I’ve ever worked on, and it is the motivation behind each company I’ve chosen to work for and each product I’ve worked to create or bring to market.Tactics: On Becoming a Maker
One of the top reasons I took on the role of 1st non-founding multiple-hat-wearing something-or-other (we call is “Director of Marketing”) is because I need to become more technical to achieve my long term goals of founding successful startups of my own. Startup Weekend taught me something important about startups in the earliest stages: he who writes the codes makes the rules. As it turns out, I really like the freedom and immediate gratification of creating working prototypes. One of my proudest moments was when an app I wrote made it to the #3 spot on Hacker News, and no one said anything nasty about my code. Phew!Tactics: On Becoming a Marketer
Although I hold the title “Director of Marketing” I am not a traditional marketer, meaning I didn’t study it in school and I didn’t even really intend to get into marketing. In most startups, engineers are the rockstars and marketing plays second fiddle but its becoming increasingly obvious that startups with engineering gurus who never bring anything to market are not viable businesses, and ultimately a waste of time and money for investors. What I’m doing now allows me to stretch my wings as a marketer, and become intimately familiar with marketing channels and how to bring a product to the public.Thank You, Thank You, Thank You
It’s not like I’m disappearing or anything, I’m still going to post my ramblings on here until Marcelo or the commenters kick me out. I wasn’t going to do this because it is a little cheesy but what the hell. I really want to thank some people who have been helpful to me in the Seattle startup community, and who I think are part of what makes Seattle a great place to be in tech. I apologize in advance for anyone I’ve forgotten, and I’m sure I’ll be updating this post.my husband, Kevin – for putting up with my single-minded obsession with entrepreneurship, supporting me endlessly, and also kicking my ass when everyone is telling me what I want to hear- Marcelo Calbucci (Seattle 2.0)- for encouraging me to write for Seattle 2.0, live broadcast, and generally inspiring me to go after things I want in life, cooking yummy food and talking for hours
- Michelle Goldberg (Ignition Partners) – for being a supportive mentor who believes in me, listens, and gets excited about the same things I do
- Brian Westbrook – for being my better half when we cohost Seattle 2.0 TV, up for anything every time I call with something I want to film, teaching me to fake smile on camera for hours, and letting me play with his gear and toys
- Rob Eickemann – for being the first person to say hi to me at the first tech event I ever went to, Six Hour Startup, as well as a friendly face at Saturday House and organizer of Startup Weekend
- Cassie Wallender – for interviewing me at my first attempt to join a startup (I didn’t get it, maybe because I wore a suit to the interview hehe) at iLike
- John Cook – for cofounding TechFlash, because it is helping keep Seattle startups on the map where they belong and helping them be taken seriously
- Ksenia Oustiougova – for showing me how hard you have to dig in to get what you want, sharing your office space, and inspiring me to be less nice and more badass
- Josh Maher & Nathan Kaiser – for hosting Lunch 2.0 and nPost events (respectively) that helped me meet tons of people, learn to pitch, and feel like I was a part of something special
- STS mailing list – for letting me lurk, the entertainment, the wisdom, did I mention the entertainment?
- numerous geeks like Brian Dorsey, Calvin Freitas, Colin Henry, Damon Cortesi and Aviel Ginzburg – for explaining things to me without making me feel stupid, encouraging me to keep getting better at coding, and answering my (often dumb) questions
- Poker 2.0 – for your money 😉
